“The winter’s sun was going down on Surfers Paradise. It was my 98th day on the wagon, and I didn’t feel any better than my 97th. I missed my hip-flask of Johnnie Walker, my ex-wife Jean, my pet dog Somare, and my exorbitant salary as deputy commissioner of police. I wasn’t sure any more that I was cut out to be a writer of controversial exposes of police corruption. At the moment, I couldn’t lift the lid off a can of baked beans. I wanted to be twelve years old again and the best spin bowler in Southport High. I wanted a lot of things”.
Mike Stacey (Ray Barrett) – who narrates the film Raymond Chandler style – is the former Deputy Commissioner of Police who has retired in a drunken fog to write a tell-all whistle-blowing memoir on corruption in Queensland. He sleeps with his landlady (Carole Skinner) in lieu of the rent.
His old lover, Kate (Robyn Nevin), sings in a piano bar on the gaudy Gold Coast strip known as Surfers Paradise, which is where “Stace” bumps into an old friend and discovers the rebellious teenage daughter of prominent Labor politician Senator Les McCredie (Don Pascoe) has disappeared.
Short of money, Stace reluctantly accepts the job of finding the runaway Cathy McCredie (Janet Scrivener) and finds himself pulled into a bizarre world of corruption, conspiracy, danger, and deception involving a free-love cult run by Bill Todd (John Clayton), a shadowy paramilitary group, and a radical plot to seize control of the state, backed by foreign corporate interests.
As powerful enemies close in and bodies start piling up, Stace must navigate a landscape where loyalty is fleeting, and the truth is as elusive as a cool breeze on a Queensland summer day.
“I had a mouth like an Ayatollah’s armpit and a pressing need for a drink . . .”
There are enough ideas in the plot for three films, and a farcical final jungle warfare scene has ASIO and Army Intelligence saving Australia to an 1812 Overture-like musical theme as Stace reels drunkenly about the battlefield, dodging flamethrowers and dropping wisecracks to the last.
Goodbye Paradise earned Ray Barrett an Australian Film Institute award for Best Actor and Best Screenplay for writers Denny Lawrence and Bob Ellis (the film has a literate, wordy wit, which might have made it a better novel than a film).
Michael Francis Xavier Stacey
Ray Barrett
Kate
Robyn Nevin
Quiney
Guy Doleman
Con
Lex Marinos
Con’s Girlfriend
Jay Jay Bailey
Curly
Paul Chubb
Godfrey
Tex Morton
Cathy McCredie
Janet Scrivener
Senator McCredie
Don Pascoe
Mrs McCredie
Kate Fitzpatrick
Landlady
Carole Skinner
Bill Todd
John Clayton
Crystal Mountain
Kareen Michelle
Temple Teacher
Mervyn Drake
Disciples
Hugh Arnold
Michael Lynch
Shawn Thorburn
Lonely Buffalo
Waverney Ford
Temple Receptionist
Geoff Healey
Keith
Frank Gallacher
Clyde
Wallas Eaton
Igor
Mark Hembrow
Bluey
Stew McAllister
Igor
Mark Hembrow
Bluey
Stew McAllister
Kim Long Sam
Ronald Mee Lee
Entertainer
Ray Shaw
Drag Queen
Holly Brown
Hooker
Kris McQuade
Compere
Bob Rogers
Hotel Receptionist
Shirley Cameron
Doctor
Allen Bickford
Agency Madam
Diana Davidson
Seaworld Boy
Grant Dodwell
Soldier
Peter Lawless
Director
Carl Schultz
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