Australia’s viceregals are just not what they used to be

IT’S an ancient story but when Groucho Marx resigned from The Friars Club in Beverley Hills, he said he couldn’t, in conscience, belong to any club that would have him as a member.

Here in The South there is a shortage of snooty clubs, and we are childishly blind to the knowledge the most desirable club is the one too posh to accept you.

I was reminded of grand clubs when I read of the recent death of grizzled Wallaby front row forward Sir Nicholas Shehadie. Sir Nick was a bloke’s bloke who captained his country and accomplished the rare feat of taking home a Bledisloe Cup from Eden Park.

The last time I talked with Sir Nick was during a Sydney heatwave. Shehadie, still the size of a capacious brick commode, was clad in dark suit and tie and sweating mightily as he watched a woman address a children’s charity.

‘‘What’s up?’’ I asked. He nodded wearily towards the speaker and mopped his face with a large handkerchief. ‘‘I’ve been promoted — I’m now Official Handbag to The Wife.’’

Sir Nick had been President of This, Director of That, and twice Lord Mayor of Sydney. Dame Marie Bashir was the freshly minted Governor of New South Wales, and the frontrower’s task was to accompany his spouse without being taken for her bodyguard.

Neither Sir Nick nor Her Excellency could know her elevation was to create angst several suburbs away, at Sydney’s second grandest golf club — The Australian.

(The story which follows is ramshackle but jog along with me. It’s conceivable there’s a moral).

The Australian greatly enjoys the prestige of being the nation’s oldest golf club. It has Sydney’s finest course, its swankiest clubhouse, and joining is deliberately made impossible. The supplicant must unearth five people hidden inside its confidential members’ list, all whom know you well enough to risk telling a porky. (They’re to swear they’ve admired you since you sat at your mother’s knee, or thereabouts). The rule serves its purpose beautifully.

However, in terms of cachet, Royal Sydney, 10 minutes distant as the cockatoo flies, is (unfortunately for The Oz) ‘‘Royal’’ and that’s that. You’d decimate Sydney’s upper crust with a handful of weekold prawns hidden in its Sunday buffet.

As you learned in Form 2 geography, Australia is a federation of former colonies. Each cherishes its own spit and polish, and thus keeps a ‘‘governor.’’ And the ‘‘GovernorGeneral’’ is the grandee who wears the hat for the Queen in Canberra.

While The Australian isn’t ‘‘Royal,’’ its tradition had been that the club’s patron would at least be viceregal. This worked swimmingly until 2001, when Dame Marie was appointed to Sydney, and around the same time Canberra chose the Archbishop of Brisbane as its next GG.

You’d think the Archbishop was a shooin for patron, but when the club’s committee met it decided that really, a reverend was a step too far. Dame Marie, the next viceregal in line, was both Lebanese and a woman — so preferable to an archbishop — but she was by trade a psychiatrist. And a psychiatrist as club patron? Honestly. We’d have witch doctors next.

So where does a top notch club turn? Committees have a way of arriving at their own wisdom, and among the club’s members was a famous grump who’d turned up at the first tee swishing his driver, only to discover the course was booked out for a corporate day.

‘‘How much a year do you make from these damn corporates?’’ he barked. Told the sum, (it was large) he produced his cheque book and wrote the amount. ‘‘Now keep this club for its bloody members! You got that, sunshine?’’

Kerry Packer, the billionaire media mogul, was a generous, if capricious, supporter of the club, and the richest man in Australia. So if the viceregals weren’t up to snuff, why not? Still, when the club captain knocked on his door, I doubt Packer was told he had been third on the list.

The Australian would (wisely) deny this story, but I played in a group with the captain each Monday, and I’m sure I have the inside gen. And while Mr Packer had requested I be ejected from the premises, this was but once, so I have no great axe to grind.

Now where was I? Yes, a Wallaby prop, a pernickety billionaire, the Archbishop of Brisbane, and Groucho Marx. I suggested we could link these and come up with a moral. Perhaps Wits End readers will accept this as their homework?