April 1994, Melbourne

Good evening everyone.

A twenty first speech is much like a circumcision - both involve blood letting and it's best if the parents don't watch too closely. If we continue the analogy, which some might argue is an unwise move, I suppose we three are the doctors here tonight. I hope for Harry's sake we have steady hands.

There are a few things that twenty-first speeches are not about. They're not about justice. They're not about fairness. They are an opportunity to focus in on the 0.1 percent of a person's life that is basically of any interest to a drunken audience.

Take Harold Antony Burnett as a case in point. How many hours has he spent helping young kids. How many hours as he spent saying nice things and thinking nice thoughts about old people. He is a man dedicated to both family and community and has probably given as much to the cause of Dr Seussian poetry as anybody alive today. Nelson Mandela won the Nobel Peace prize last year. Harry must have been an unlucky second.

But are we going to pay homage to these hours of benevolence here tonight? Are we going to put up a slide of Harry helping a small child cross the road?

No. We are in fact going to show you a shot of the fifteen seconds Harry spent standing naked in front of the Eiffel Tower.

Harry has always been a bit of a writer. Indeed, most people would agree that most of his work is quite alarmingly well-written. During his trip away to Israel he regularly wrote back, but very rarely did he ever say anything about either the trip away or Israel. He did however have plenty to report on green lemurs, eukeleles, whale penises and fridge lights. He is often silly, sometimes weird and nearly always strangely brilliant. Receiving a letter from Harry is a joy.

He also writes on his envelopes. Take the following examples.

- This one has an arrow pointing to the seal - "Please do not feed the seals".

- "Contents - coded message regarding the development of Tibetan nuclear

arms"

- "To read secret writing, hold envelope in hot flame"

- " Note to Postal inspector - do not open for inspection unless you really wantto. "

- "Dehydrated letter - just add water"

One month ago, he composed the following RSVP to a friend's 21st.

I'm coming. Let there be no mistake, I will be there. Drunken and joyous. Dancing the two-step with nubile beauties and mooning the moon in symbotic recognition of your transition from adolescence to manhood. I will also be there the morning after - sallow and forlorn, as together we attempt to stop various internal constituents of our manhood from escaping to fairer climes. I undertake to swill beer, spread cheer and decorate each of my ten digits with an encircling cheezel. I pledge to spar mercilessly with both proponents and opponents of VSU and to compel scholarly admirers of modernist fiction to retreat ashen-faced to their squatid academic hovels. I furthermore will endeavour to ensure that no party-goer leaves unaccompanied by a traditional cellophane wrapped lolly-bag. Thank-you for your splendiferous summons.

And yes, as good as his word, Harry did indeed perform some tricks with cheezels before departing - stone cold sober and before eleven o'clock.

At school Harry was at the bottom of almost every scandal and every big bust that involved Weet-bix cards. When he got his hands on card number eleven of the much sought after and often under-rated "Great Australian Motor Races" series, he was crowned the undisputed Mr Big of the Weet-bix card collecting fraternity. Which I think we'd all agree was some achievement.

What this passion of Harry's demonstrates is just how scary a place our school was in the late eighties. The closer one got to adulthood the more one felt like collecting cereal novelty items. Just ask RM. Or ask Simon here - he's still got his snap crackle and Pop 'Under the Sea' mobile'

Harry's car looks forever like it really wants to kick your teeth in. A meaner looking fender I've never seen. It has an attitude. It harbours grudges. There is some evidence supporting the thesis that this avocado green FJ has in fact a grudge against Harry. I refer in particular to one September night which as memory serves me was both dark and stormy. We were in Collins Street. The fairy lights were on the blink. Harry was doing a handbrake start on a fairly substantial incline. All of a sudden we started rolling.

"Harry we're rolling"

‘Yeah, I’m aware of that. The handbrake isn't actually strong enough to hold the car. It’s really only here for aesthetic purposes and to make that comforting handbrake noise."

"'When are we going to stop?"

"Oh soon enough"

Some of you might be acquainted with the concept of touch parking. Harry that night introduced me to an expansion on that idea - "touch stopping". We just rolled back into the Valiant behind us.

There isn't a lot you can say about Harry's music taste. He was once asked to list his top five songs of the eighties. Number one was "We Built This City" by Starship. Number Two was "Current Stand" by Kids in the Kitchen. That's either an indictment upon Harry or the eighties.

But Harry and I have shared several very special musical experiences. Musical here is to be taken in its loosest possible context. One day we decided to translate all the theme-songs to Australian soap operas into Latin. Soap opera operettas we called them. i think I can safely say that we have since that day proceeded to sing them in nearly every possible public forum. It seems a shame to stop here. Harry.

[Neighbours in Latin]

I've got some bad news - the songs just keep on a-coming. ! We have in fact put together another tune. It's song about hardship, it's a song about pain. In fact, this song could be likened to a circumcision .If you take the bits we had to cut...

[To Gilbert and Sullivan's The Very Model of a Modern Major-General]