Oz (magazine) - Oz in Australia

Oz in Australia

The original Australian editorial team included university students Neville, Walsh and Sharp and Daily Mirror cadet journalist Peter Grose. Other early contributors included future Time magazine critic and art historian Robert Hughes, student and future author Bob Ellis. Neville, Walsh and Sharp had each been involved in student papers at their respective Sydney tertiary campuses—Neville had edited the UNSW student magazine Tharunka, Walsh edited its University of Sydney counterpart Honi Soit and Sharp had contributed to the short-lived student magazine The Arty Wild Oat while studying at the National Art School in East Sydney. Influenced by the satirical style of Britain's New Statesman and Private Eye and the radical comedy of Lenny Bruce, Neville and friends decided to found a "magazine of dissent".

The 16-page first edition, published on April Fools' Day 1963, caused a sensation, selling 6000 copies by lunchtime of publication day. It parodied The Sydney Morning Herald (and was even printed on The Herald's own presses, adding to its credibility) and led with a front-page hoax about the collapse of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. It also featured a centre spread on the history of the chastity belt and a story on abortion (then still illegal in NSW) based on Neville's own experience of having to arrange a termination for a girlfriend, but these stories would soon rebound on the editors, leading to the magazine's first round of obscenity charges. There were also more immediate consequences—as a result of the controversy generated by the abortion story, the Maritime Services Board evicted Oz from their office in The Rocks, the Sydney Daily Mirror newspaper cancelled its advertising contract and they also threatened to sack Peter Grose from his cadet-ship unless he resigned from Oz.

In succeeding issues (and in its later London version) Oz gave pioneering coverage to contentious issues such as censorship, homosexuality, police brutality, the Australian government's racist White Australia Policy and Australia's involvement in the Vietnam War, as well as regularly satirising public figures, up to and including Australian Prime Minister Robert Menzies.

In mid-1963, shortly after the publication of Issue 3, Neville, Walsh and Grose were summonsed on charges of distributing an obscene publication; the shock of the charges caused Walsh's deeply religious father to suffer a serious heart attack, so their family solicitor arranged for the case to be adjourned until September 1964 but he advised the trio that, as first offenders, they could avoid having their conviction recorded if they plead guilty. Word soon went around the publishing trade; after their current printers pulled Issue 4 from the presses Neville shopped around for a new printer but he was turned down by a dozen other companies until, on Sharp's advice, he approached maverick writer-publisher Francis James, editor of the Anglican Press, who agreed to take it on. When Neville, Walsh and Grose appeared in court on 3 September 1964 the Walsh's solicitor plead guilty on their behalf; each was fined ₤20 and their convictions were recorded, an outcome that was to have serious repercussions in their second trial.

With end-of-year exams looming, Oz #5 was postponed until the Christmas break. When eventually issued, it included a scathing satire on the ongoing police harassment of homosexuals. "The Stiff Arm of the Law" (which became a regular feature on police misconduct) featured a parody of a police report in which incriminating sections of a supposed account of an officer's real actions in a gay-bashing incident were crossed out and replaced with far more anodyne language, e.g. in the line "I was at Philip St Station in my homo hunting togs", the words "homo hunting togs" were crossed out and replaced with the handwritten words "plain clothes", "this little bastard" with "a youth", and "I myself punched him several times" was amended to read "I was punched several times", and so on. As a result of this perceived slight on their integrity, police seized 140 copies of Oz from a Kings Cross newsagent and took them to a magistrate, who ordered them to be burned.

Two other items in these early issues incurred the wrath of the NSW police. One was Martin Sharp's ribald satirical poem about youths gatecrashing a party, entitled "The Word Flashed Around The Arms"; the other was the now famous Oz #6 cover photograph (pictured at right), which depicted Neville and others pretending to urinate into a wall fountain created by sculptor Tom Bass, which was mounted in the street facade of the Sydney offices of the P&O shipping line and which had recently been unveiled by Prime Minister Menzies.

In April 1964 the Neville, Walsh and Sharp were again charged with obscenity, but this time the situation was greatly complicated by the fact that they had already plead guilty on the first charge and this previous conviction would count heavily against them in sentencing if they were found guilty on the new charges. As soon as the case began they were confronted by the blatant bias and hostility of the magistrate hearing the case, Mr Gerald Locke, SM. To the dismay of the Oz team and their friends and family, Locke decided to make an example of them, sentencing the three to six months in prison with hard labour, but they were released on bail pending an appeal. Their supporters decided to raise money for the defence fund with a benefit concert, which was held at the Sydney University Theatre on 15 November 1964, featuring legendary Sydney garage-punk band The Missing Links, members of the popular satirical TV sketch series The Mavis Bramston Show and actor Leonard Teale (then starring in the popular TV police drama Homicide), who recited a "surfie" parody of Clancy of the Overflow.

The case created a storm of controversy, but the convictions were overturned on appeal mainly because, like their subsequent British trial, the appeal judge found that Locke had misdirected the jury and made remarks that were found to have been prejudicial to the defence's case.

In subsequent issues Sydney Oz made several investigations into the murky realms of Sydney's underworld. One celebrated feature delved into the illegal abortion rackets which were then flourishing in Sydney (and around Australia), because at that time abortion was still illegal for all but the most exceptional cases, and corrupt police were widely believed to be running lucrative protection rackets that netted them substantial sums.

In 1965 Oz editor Richard Neville had a close encounter with Sydney's alleged "Mr Big" of organised crime, Lennie McPherson, a notorious criminal who was at that time well on his way to becoming Sydney's most powerful underworld figure, thanks in part to a systematic program of public assassinations of his rivals. Late in the year, Oz published a feature called "The Oz Guide to Sydney's Underworld", which was based on information from two local journalists, and which included a "top 20" list of Sydney major criminals. The list deliberately left the number 1 spot blank, but at number 2 was the name "Len" (i.e. McPherson) who was described as a "fence" and a "fizz-gig" (police informant). Soon after the list was published, McPherson made a visit to Neville's house in Paddington; ostensibly he wanted to find out whether the Oz editors were part of a rival gang, but he also made it clear to Neville that he objected to being described as a "fizz".

The Top 20 list also reportedly played a part in the death of Sydney criminal Jacky Steele, who was shot in Woollahara in November 1965. Steele — who had been trying to take over protection rackets controlled by McPherson — survived for almost a month before dying from his wounds, but before he died he told police that McPherson had ordered his execution because Steele had bought multiple copies of Oz and had made great play of the fact that McPherson was not number 1. Oz revealed this in a subsequent issue, which contained extracts from the minutes of a confidential meeting of Sydney detectives, held on 1 December 1965, which had been leaked to the magazine by an underworld source.

Sharp and Neville left for London in 1966, while Walsh returned to his studies, although he subsequently revived and published a reduced edition of Sydney Oz, which ran until 1969. In the 1970s he edited POL magazine and the Nation Review and later became managing director of leading Australian media company Australian Consolidated Press, owned by Kerry Packer.