CHARLES WOOLEY
In more than 200 years since the first gentlemen’s club was founded, not a lot has changed
On the hottest day of this very hot summer I was summoned to lunch at the grand old Amnesia Club in the sandstone heart of town. “Wear a jacket and tie.” I chose a grey suit matched with grey socks, a dark tie and regulation black shoes.
Only in a TV studio would I worry about these matters, but at the Amnesia Club colourful socks, a lairy tie and scuffed shoes might raise an eyebrow and in the depths of that dark timber and leather sanctum, a chap should strive for invisibility. A chap should look like all of the other chaps otherwise, clearly, “he is not one of us”.
When I first went there as a young television reporter, ancient gentlemen almost fell off their chairs. I was a mere pup from an impudent ABC local current affairs program called This Day Tonight, which boldly questioned orthodoxies in a state overburdened with convention and fawning proprieties.
We had the temerity to question the Hydro and the Forestry Commission whose commissars were all members of the Amnesia Club. The editor of the local newspaper was a member, so was the general manager of the ABC, who could be relied upon not to take the side of his journalists.
I would love to see a new generation of reporters reprise TDT but sadly, like Rome in its decline, the ABC has abandoned the empire and withdrawn its legions to Ultimo in Sydney where it has become increasingly remote and irrelevant.
I was first entertained at the Amnesia Club by Tobias Droole, who was a rising star with the venerable Hobart legal firm of Ogle Perve and Droole.
“Nothing wrong with nepotism, my boy,” he told me. “It keeps power and authority in the right hands.”
Today Tobias Droole QC*, now a senior partner at OPD, was waiting for me in the club’s impressive stone portico.
If you are fortunate enough to be a guest at the Amnesia Club, just one of a thousand obscure protocols is that you must be met outside the front door.
“Can’t have any riffraff just drift in, Wooley.” I assume he was joking, but you can never tell.
“We take as much care selecting our guests as we do our members. The golden rule is to only accept the right sort of chap.”
Was I ‘the right kind of chap’ I was wondering as I adjusted my eyes from the hot glare of a 21st century summer to a dark, panelled interior and the quiet, privileged, carpeted sanctity of the 1800s. It was 32C outside, where I had been overdressed for the heat. But when I started to remove my jacket, Droole QC gently chided me.
“No Charlie, gentlemen cannot remove their jackets in the dining room, though it is permissible afterwards in the billiards room.”
Clearly, he loved this kind of stuff, which I would’ve found amusing on a cooler day but now, in the heat of the moment, I might not be that ‘right kind of chap’. I haven’t entirely lost the temerity of my journalistic youth. Beneath a portrait of a very young Queen Elizabeth II, I gently wondered if in a warmer clime, half a world from London, perhaps we might relax a little? But Droole QC insisted that despite appearances, things have changed at the Amnesia Club.
Way back in the history of the Amnesia Club there weren’t too many ‘right kinds’. Hobart’s population consisted of a small upper crust of gentry atop the roughest unleavened loaf of convicts, emancipists and unruly free descendants of transportation.
“I still make a good living from the nefarious activities of the criminal classes,” Droole QC told me. “What’s changed is that thanks to the welfare state they can afford to pay me.”
Droole QC speared another fresh Bruny Island oyster. We washed them down with an excellent bottle of Kelvedon Estate sauvignon blanc, then a wonderful pinot.
Perhaps I could be the right kind of chap, after all. Droole suggested as much over a few ports in the billiards room.
“Only landowners and government officials were once allowed. Now we have jobbing lawyers like me, ministers of religion, real estate agents, and the motor trade and perhaps even journalists. You should think about it. It’s only $1200 a year.” “Are you on a recruiting drive, Tobias?” “Well, we always need new members. Carried one old bloke out last week. He was dead on the lounge. It was days until someone noticed he hadn’t moved.”
“You don’t allow women members, do you?” “Of course not.” “That could be a problem.” “How on earth could that be a problem?” “Have you heard of social media? I could be vilified for being a member of a sexist and misogynist organisation.”
“Well look, it’s early days. You mightn’t even get through the selection process. You might be blackballed.” “Why ever?” “I think it depends on what you write about us. Just remember the old golden rule, Charlie. No one likes a smart-arse.”