Welcome to conversations, everybody. My guest in the studio is Jim Mavlomatis. I hope that rolled off the tongue properly. Jim is a veteran of the Vietnam War who joined the army when he's a kid, had nine years in there. Fair to say he came back slightly damaged. But he's involved in an organization called Guitars for Vets. It's a nonprofit organization. It's tried to help ailing and injured veterans, providing them with free guitars and music lessons and using
the power of music to heal veterans. It's fair to say Jim was damaged and his life story is interesting, starting as a kid growing up in Port Pirie, running away from home when he was fourteen, joining the army a few years later and serving in Vietnam. He joined us in the studio. Jim Mavramartis, thanks for your time.
How are you? Thank you for a long time.
It has been a long time, and what a story you have to tell. Look, tell us about Guitars for Vets first. I'm really interested in in the backstory though, your mum and dad's story and your early days. But you're here to talk about guitars for vets.
Guitar for vets. It's been in America for a long time, especially like after the Vietnam War and the number of casualties they hadn't the number of really lame people over there. It's in their brain. But I've become very passionate about this because I'm seeing the results of the guitar. I had a guitar when I was fifteen. That was the first guitar. And when I went to Vietnam and I came back on a stretcher, I had to leave my
guitar behind, and that was a real killer. I'd spent I'd spent eight months into a park with all these hookworms and old tropical disease, tropical diseases. Yeah, And I got posted to the Army apprentices School at balcom And and I was nowhere near the fitness or the body that I had when I was prior to going to Vietnam. But when I came back it was just absolutely so weak. But my passion for a guitar was still there. I never learned to play guitar. I just picked it up
and I would ask somebody what's a chord? And they showed me and that was a C chord and a D chord and a G chord. And then I just naturally picked it up. But I didn't go to a teacher. I didn't read any books or what's TV or look on today? Was a blue teeth or blue YouTube by me. It's just said I had a neck with it. And when I was a orderly sergeant walked through the lines talk to the kids, and one of them had a guitar.
And his name was David Cox, now young cock. He were rusty, as we used to call him because he had red hair, and he became he was doing an electrical trade, but it was more of an electrical technician, and he used to show me chords and and and then one day I just picked it up and started playing Proud Mary. And they're looking at me doing bar cords, and that's all I could do, you know. I was doing barks up here and barkours down there. They were fascinated.
So every time this big sergeant came through the thinking he's here, and they'd be running to all the different huts and the huts would be packed seeing this sergeant playing a guitar.
Did you sing as well?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm a good singer to I don't mind. Dam My wife says to me, you know, if I sunk for a chick shit, I'd get maybe truckload. I was there for three years. I was having I was having a running all the time with the rs M there because he hadn't been to war and I was still I was very psycho. Nothing worried me to go to a pub and to abuse people worth they're making too much noise, like throwing glasses at him, or you.
Were damaged by absolutely realized.
And I wasn't the only one there. Guys, there were I've seen one or two of them punch a person in the seat of a car and go through the window, the side window. You can imagine how strong they are
and no sense, no feeling. A number of times we would go down the beach at Mount Martha and dig a hole and put our beer in, and some sneaky, little bloody what were they they were signalers would come along and try and knock off our beer, and a number of those went back with broken noses and years half cut off.
So so David Cox reintroduces you to the guitar. So how did that's? How did that get? How did that become?
I was I'd been married for quite a while and we moved to Dromana, and then we moved to Roastbud, not far apart. We came over to Ocean Grove and I got this phone call and it was David Cox. He said, Hey, Jim, I'm no sad, because he always calls me saying, they said, I'm setting up. I've been
to America. How he got involved with Americans? That something that he had done with his electrical tech trade or whatever, and went over there and they used his part in planes apparently anyway, so he became very familiar with the numbers of people people, and they took him to and like our RSLs. I don't forget what they call their things. But they introduced him to guitars for Vet's USA, and there's all their guitars come from the top, you know,
Martins and Fender and all that. And they could be electric or they could be acoustic, could be acoustic, electric amplifiers, the whole works everything. The car companies would supply them with vehicles. Well, we do all our own stuff. We don't get grants from anybody. So Dave said to me, I want to start this up, and I remember you playing the guitar and I thought, will you helped me?
And I said yeah. That was twenty sevent eight and we've been doing it ever since, and so far we've put over six hundred veterans through this program, and the six hundred veterans that we know haven't committed suicide. And that's been our whole objective is to I'm.
Going to come back to that the work you do and how you do it. But it's interesting about you just in those you know, the few minutes we've been chatting and the moments we chat before the microphone was turned on. Your life is full of you know, turmoll sadness, adventure and obviously trauma. Can we go back to the start year of Greek heritage to tell us about mom and Dad?
My mum and dad have got a story. I've already written it, and it's amazing me how she has she survived him. And my dad came out here in two thousand and nineteen sixteen. He came out to Australia nineteen sixteen. Yeah, and my grandfather came out roughly about the same time. That's my father's my mother's father. He came out eleven years before he brought his family out from Cyprus. In that eleven years he was supposed to get a lot of money because he had been tee told the streets
of streets in Australia just paved with gold. So like most of the refugees they got over here. And so that.
Was just post war during the World War.
No, no, just after World War one. Came back. Yeah, because my father went to jail in World War two because he had an Italian passport. But just put into one side. We'll get to My grandfather came out and he became a gambler and a womanizer and whatever you do when you're away on your own for a long time. And meanwhile, my mom and her mum used to do
all the work. She had three brothers and they would go off and help other people plant their crops and pictures the back back inside sight, yeah, where the temperature ge just about fifty five degrees most times in summer, so she had a tough life. They used to walk twenty kilometers to they'd load up there their donkey with bamboo baskets. My mum made Doiley's Grandma would have made all these pickles or whatever, and they would walk twenty
miles to the market. So they get up there in the morning, go twenty miles to the market donkey, and when they got there they'd sell all their stuff and buy other produce that they could take back loaded up the donkey, and then they both got on the donkey and came home. They could go to sleep, because the donkey did this so often, used to just walk up back and forth on his own. And Mom used to tell me that there were a number of times she
had actually fallen off the donkey. Well, well they're going home.
So they're still back in Cypress.
Your grandfather they were still living in Cypress and Grandpa's out in Australia. Drink you're having a great time.
How did they catch up with him?
The mail wasn't like it is now, Okay, So you's got to go on to from your village to that village and then to that place, and then it goes on the ship and goes to say port said, and then it goes to wherever then the freemantle and it was months, you know, maybe six months in between mail.
So where was your grandfather was here and that later on poor period he went to period Fisherman.
Was poor period. This is another story. Port period is a transition place for all the especially the Greek men would come on these steamers and they'd go to Fremantle and then from Fremantle they would get on another steamer and they would go from Fremantle to Adelaide. That steamer would go to Melbourne to Sydney and then back again.
We need to take a break because this is a fascinating story. Well cover the guitarist Vets charity, but Jim Mavramatis, the ambassador for Guitarist Vets, is in the studio. But I'm more interested in these early days. Back shortly, folks, Welcome back, everybody. My guest in the studio is a gentleman called Jim mavra Martis, a veteran of the Vietnam War. Mavramartis means black eye in Greek, and he said, that's what I'll get if I don't pronounce it correctly. But
just tuned in. It's an interesting story. Family. Mum's from Cypress, dads from Greece, and his grandfather came out. He womanized spent all his money. But eventually, obviously your mom must have caught up with him.
Yeah, eleven years later he built this humpy out out at Bungamma, which is seven kilometers out of Port Pirie, and it was made from ash that he got from the smelders that was like fly ash and he could mix it up and he would make these that was called piase in the old days, where they put two planks together throwing all the rocks and then pour in the cement that they had or mud, and they just tamp it down and then they'd lift the planks up the next day and do the next row, next row.
The windows were just holes in the wall and with corrugated iron on hinges that would shut the wind own. And many a time as a kid that we would we would ride our bikes out of Bungamma and come back with But my grandfather used to have lots of lots of plants as well. He had tomatoes, great tomatoes, carrots, onions, all the vegetables you need, and he would load them up on his bike and he had handlebars that went
normally that way. And somebody in the smelters welded on handles going the other way, so he could put a great big box in there, and in the box he'd have bags with tomatoes and onions or whatever, and used to get out where the men would gather at the smelter's gates. But this is another story. And he would just get there and go carrots, carrots, kurtles, and people would buy the carrots from him and the onions and whatever else he had. So he was getting paid that way.
But to get into the smelterers you got to have them. You had to have a number, so that was another thing. He'd be at the smelters waiting to get a number. So when they called they wanted laborers for the day, they'd callers, so he'd go in and you'd work. Well, he was he was like a donkey. He had He had no sense of what how hard the work is
that he was doing. And he'd work his guts out all day, ride his big bike out the Bungamma, go and tend to his garden, get up in the morning and and he would load up the bags again and ride into period. And I used to say when did he sleep, you know, and when when did he take
a break. But he managed to find the time from knocking off at the Smelterers and coming to the Guffernil, which is a Greek club, the guff and Neil, right, they said, in there they'll gamble, and to keep those gamblers in there, the proprietor would come out with big gloves of bread and cut off grape slices and sticks of salami. You give them, you know, give them drinks and make the coffee and all this, and they stayed and played.
I'm more interested in what happened when his wife and you're going to get it, daughter caught up with him.
You're going to get it. He finally got enough money to bring them out. The mother, my grandmother, my mother, and their four sons. And unfortunately, the uncle that I was named after, Jim, he was involved in a car
accident when it rolled. He was underneath the car and another car came along with these old t forwards, right, and they tied a rope on this car and a rope on the car, and they actually got the car off him, but the rope broke and it went down again, and the petrol tank was pierced, and he was ended up drinking petrol and he died. I think he ran out of petrol.
He can't make a joke about that. Okay, that's your mom. What about your dad? How did your dad get here?
He came. He came out on his own. He came out on his own when he Jesus well, nineteen sixteen he was it would have been eleven eleven. Still, yeah, we come out with other families. That's what they did. You know, they look up because at the island that they were on and Castell, Roudism was ind by the Turks. So just like when they were in Usa per year
where he was born. He was actually born on the ship and when they got to Castell, Ladies and they got off there, and then another steamer took him to to Port said, and then they went from there to Alexandria and got on the steamer that brought them to Australia. Now, his father, his father, another grandfather, had a girlfriend. This is the Greek men, had a girlfriend and had a wife. He had he had six boys. Your dad's dad, Yeah, dad's dad. He had she he had six boys and
girl with his girlfriend and with his wife. He had six boys. Now they came all the way from did they meet each other. No, that's the whole thing. And the only time they met was when that my father's father died and they were at the funeral and we had a photo of one family on this side and one family on that side. But when they got off here in Adelaide, right, he put one family. I don't know. I still don't know how he made contact with people.
I mean there was no phones, no phones whatever. And he ended up putting one family at one end at Gilly Street and the other family at the end of Gilbert Street. So he's got them. He's got these two families. But he had to work, so he went to the steamer and said, you know, can you give me a job or whatever? And they got a job on the steamer. And he has gone back and forth from Fremantle, Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney.
Like that for so how many kids were the third kids.
Thirdey kids. So he would when he got back, Dad, you'll get off the ship. And you didn't go and mix with this family. They're mixed with that family.
I don't know how the study missed. They didn't didn't.
The place is full of Kakody's. But you would know you most well. You would know George Kakody who had sat George.
Motives not the name, doesn't think about Okay.
Anyway, he ended up with in the one of his yards next to bib stillwell, okay, so.
How did how did this Greek man marry your Cypriot mother? Because they they clashed, don't they?
They do? But my father was also a gambler. Okay. So when he started going to the Greek clubs and womanizing and drinking as well, and my grandfather owed my father a lot of money. And when the daughter came out and the mother and other boys, he says, here that pays my debt. Okay. So he gave my mother to my father. They got married and within twelve months she was having a baby. And then he was in
real debt and ended up in Western Australia. Your dad or your grandfather, my mother, my father and the boys. I went to West Australia, West Australia, and then my father was a gambler over there. He was a fisherman. He was working with not Raptors, the other big fishing group Angelikas angel Harkas. Him and Michael's father or grandfather. He just got to school together on a donkey back in Greece, and I used to get all those stories as well. Anyway, So they came because he got into
debt gambling in Western Australia. My mom decided, you're going back to We're going to go back to Port Piriy, all right, So on the ship back to Port Pierry.
Now they they clashed. It didn't. It doesn't sound like a harmonious relationship.
Believe me, it wasn't. You know. I had three sisters and a brother, and my sisters were married off at sixteen. Yeah. I mean, goodness, what they did in those days. And my brother became a biky and I don't know what he did. He died.
That sounds so dismissive. But that sounds so dismissive when you said he died, so well, what else?
I mean? Obviously good bodies in Vietnam? What's another body is your brother? Yeah, but it's just a shell. Okay, a bit callous, but death is part of living, you know, dying as part of living.
Yeah, I guess. But they were so that sounded like, as you were saying before he came on here, your mother and father's relationship was quite violent.
Well, it would be classed as it would be classed as me stick violence now, but that was the way. That was a way a lot of men.
Sounds like she gave as.
Good as she she did. She did.
Jim Mavramatis is my guest, Folks, fascinating story back shortly. My guest in the studio is Jim Mavramatis. I hope I'm saying it correctly because it means black eye and Greece. And he said he give me one if I didn't say it correctly. He's an ambassador for Guitars for Vets and organization which helps veterans who are troubled suffering with post traumatic stress disorder, just helps and get the back
on track. But I'm being distracted by his family history and the way they immigrated and how they settled in Port Pirie. Mum and Dad's relationship was quite violent. Your mother was a victim of domestic violence. She gave back sometimes as good as I can't imagine she gave back as good as she got there being a she must have been.
Yeah, he didn't. He didn't actually beat her up. Okay, it was the womanizing and the aga and there's no money. O.
You run away from home at fourteen? How why it led to that.
My mother was forever hugging my brother, you know, because his name was nick named after my father's father, which is the right thing to do, and I was named after an uncle. But but I never felt the love from my mum because she had four miscarriages before I was born. And then again I thought that I was the result of a miscarriage because I never felt love. Really,
I never, never, I want. I lived out on the farm with my grandpa and my uncle from like I said, from at the age about seven, and then there was no chasing me to say come home, come home. And my uncle con was like my father. He was a merchant navy, and he was genuinely like a father. I loved him.
He gave you that love back.
Oh absolutely, yeah, yeah yeah. And as I got old, as i'd come home from leave from the army, I'd go straight to the farm that he had and we'd set out under the grape vines, drinking wine and having a great time.
So how do you make this decision to run away from home? And where do you go?
When I was fourteen, I had a girlfriend and I went around her place and her big brothers just said, you can't see her again?
Well really? Was she Australian?
Yeah? Yeah, And I was pretty upset about that. And we had this coffee bar in Port Perry called the Coconut Grove, and i'd go there because a lady behind the counter chick, she was absolutely beautiful and would feed me. And that particular day I went there and this guy said to me, Jim, I'm sorry your girlfriend's left you and she's coming with me now. So that that upset me, and I at that age, you know, it was really hard, you know, fourteen and losing your girlfriend to some dickhead. Anyway,
so what's happened? So I just went home and I went in home and I got my little sugar bag that you always had on my bike just in case. I found some empty drink bottles, just like they do now, because they were worth they were worth six months, I think it was sixpennies and I just jumped on the my bike and I thought it's a long way to
Wala and I was just out of Poor Perrie. So I threw my bike in the bushes and I had thumb to ride and I got to ride all the way to Whaler and I was great and the guy bought me, brought me a pass and a pie and sauce, and it was yeah. And then I stayed in Whaler until.
So let me get let me clarify this. You see, you're fourteen, You rock up in a strange town. How do you find somewhere else?
Well, it was a stranger my sister was. And this guy took me straight through thirteen Nelligan Street where she lived. I still remember that. And they were beautiful. My sister was just a bundle of joy. She had the greatest sense of humor, told the fowlless jokes. And her husband smoked Peter stuyves and he smoked about sixty cigarettes a day. Poor bugger died of cancer. But he was a beautiful man. Yeah, and my sister was just so happy. There was no violence.
She still was, no, no, no. She died years ago. She died from a modern neurone disease, as caused by the side smoke.
Okay, did you ever reconcile with your mom and dad?
Uh? My dad died and Mum rang me and said, your father just died. And I went down and I rang the undertaker, and again I had there was no There was no I just lost my father, none of that. But when that happened to my uncle con it was totally different. It was an out flow of motion. But when my mother died, it was to me was there was the nail in the coffin. I went to kiss her because we knew that she was going to die
within a couple of hours. I went to kiss her, and she turned her head, and I thought, Jesus, she never loved me. And she did that right at the very end. And I haven't forgotten that. And that's why my kids at at the any moment, I just hug them and kiss them. And even their friends used to come around. What about my hug give them hugs as well. And that's just my household is all love.
And so how old were you when your mom died?
Ah, I would have been. I would have been close to sixty, I reckon, But she lived. She suffered with the age on set diabetes. And then I had my uncle. My three uncles also died with age on set diabetes. And I just don't take sugar, and I drink really good wine when I do, but I don't want to get diabetes because it's a death sentence.
Yeah, Okay, So when did you join the army at seventeen?
I turned seventeen in sixty two and I joined in May sixty.
Three before the Vietnam one.
Yeah, yeah, well the Vietnam War started in sixty two. We had our advisors over. The advisors. Yeah, yeah, they really put the shits up me too when they come back and to a chuke, you know, a model of this, and then they show you pictures of all these heads on steaks and say you've got to be carefully by these people that take ahad of us.
So I.
Was terrified to go to Vietnam. And but that was my job. I was trained as a green clad jungle killer, train to ruthless efficiency. And I believe that that I was a killer.
That's what they that's what they pounded into it. Absolutely, you indoctrinated to.
That, and I believed it. It didn't like to talk about death. Well, I was prepared to die for God, Queen and country. It's you know, it's it's that loyalty that it's not here in this country anymore. I don't feel it, I don't see it.
It's an interesting concept that are you prepared to die for your country? We haven't been faced with that dilemma here and as young people here in Australia were compared to what's happening overseas. But you're sent there as a soldier.
What unit were you with? Was with five Battalion. I was a section of commander. I was acting platoon sergeant at one stage. But I had a section of eight guys who were nine of us and we went to the top of Neuir Dad and we cleaned it and cleared it, I mean, and then I got sick. And that was, you know, that was the turning point in my life that I always said when I got better, I would I would look after veterans, do what I can do. This this whole thing about PDSD, it can
be PDSD in many forms. And mine was chronic, really chronic. I was self medicating three bottles of red. I was a general manager. I was I was a human resource manager at a brewing company. What a great job if you're an alcoholic and you've got a fridge that gets filled with beer every day. My mind got filled every day. But and where I remember the boss coming down and saying,
how come your fridge gets filled up every day? And I say, I've got a lot of friends, you know, they come a visit me, tell us.
About the illness. Though you had to come home. It was a understand in the conditions in which you lived and operated, you infested with hookworm.
Oh well, that's a real story. That still pains me that to think. There. I was fifteen stone five. I had just missed out on paratrooper because I was too heavy, because a couple of New Zealand has just under that weight landed broke their legs and so they said no more at this weight. So I didn't bother about that. What it was that I want to be be the
best I could. And you know it's great with spit polishing and ironing and all those things, but going to Vietnam and being on patrol, you know yourself, you flake out or anything happens. It takes four of you to carry to carry you, and the others are carrying the weapons and defending you, right, And that happened a couple
of times. I just and then when I was put into the hospital, Vuntao, uh this, this doctor said to me, we didn't know what's wrong with you, you know you I was I was constantly the fluids coming out and I couldn't understand that. And then they sent me to the Republic of Career Hospital that was there for a burium enema and a burium meal to see and they found that I had I had, I had a huge shadow just here and they determined that was an ulcer on the stomach. Yeah, in my dual dinum, but it wasn't.
It was the hookworm. There were millions of them because the microscopic, not like the hookworms that that people think about. These are all microscopic and they're like just three teeth and they hook in and they suck the life out of you. Anyway, so I was in there.
It's one of the more guys, did you contract an out exactly through food or I.
Have no idea, no idea because I used to walk around and the paladron in their bottles and in.
My own's the medication we had to take to fa malaria for malaria, and the then CEOs would have to walk around to make sure you took it.
Yeah, yeah we did. And I don't know that nobody could tell me what was wrong with me. It's just that my eyes were you know, great, you know what's his name? That when they used to bite the chucks off their head off the chokes. Well, my eyes were like that. I had big black rings around there. And if you press my nails, like if you press them now, it will go pink, but mine didn't. It will stay white underneath. And that's how a nimic I was.
We need to take a break, but this is a fascinating story. We'll get to the bottom of. Jim Mavromatis is my guest, folks, my guess in the studio is Jim Mavramadas. A young fellaw of Greek and Syparate heritage, ran away from home at fourteen, joined the army at seventeen, went to Vietnam. Contracted hookworm.
They don't know, they just ended up. They just mentioned it was hookworm. I didn't forget. They lost by rosis where what was scratched yourself? You just bleed and it was caused by rats here there.
So they eventually diagnosed what was wrong with you.
They did not not in not in not in Vietnam. I was flying to Butterworth and then flown to Peers, and then from Peers they flew me to Inaugra hospital and then from Inaugura I came to uh Door Park. I was in there for two weeks before they told my family I was back in Australia. And even even there, they didn't know what was wrong with me until one day because I said that my feces was like water. They were They started taking samples out of that and found the lava of of hookworm and that that was.
That was after. We used to be members of the Colombo Plan and we used to bring doctors out from Malaysia. And I had a few doctors that came into the hospital with their tutor and I coughed. I coughed this enormous phlegm and this guy went scooped it off from a chest. He said, I'll be back in a minute. I'm going over the laboratory. So he took it over and he started incubating it to see what was in there, and they found the hookworm and came back and he said,
is what I expected. I suspected. So this is a guy from from Malaysia And he said, you've got hookworm. And then hookworm was rife in New Guinea, right, so did I get that from New Guinea? Totally different type of hookworm? In our troops got the big hookworm, and they were treated with this stuff called al capar, and al capar was it was. It's like like making jelly and letting it set and then trying to drink it. It was and the taste was absolutely disgusting. And so
I struggled with that, but nothing happened. Nothing worked. Ten days. They wanted me to do this for ten days, and my fieces didn't change other than they've got the color of the alcapar.
Would they get rid of it eventually? They must have.
Yeah, When when this Malaysian guy came in, they said they had been doing trials with carbon tetri chloride, which just try cleaning fluid. So I would have these capsules, six capsules right of this carbon tetrachloride in a gel capsule, so one every minute, and so the first one after six minutes that it would explode and then I had to breathe like this anyway, and sometimes you know who you know ticklish, I could sneeze and all the time.
But anyway, I did this. It took the six capsules and they let me go for two days, and then they tested my fieces to see if there was anything in it. And they found some dead bodies right of hookworm, and they said, we'll do another, do it again. When they did it the second time, they waited ten days, so really let it get into my system. And what they found that was the hookworm were getting into my dualdenum.
They got into my bloodstream, and then they would come up and go through my lungs right and breed in my lungs. They'd lay their eggs in my lungs. They would have to come up and go down my sophocus, down to my trick head, down into my well.
You got rid of it.
You're a big strong guys. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I went. But I was nice stone six. Then I just lost a bit of weight, but I reckon, I look good, the.
Most fine looking man you must have been. Okay, so your hookworm's fixed, but then you're beset by, you know, the trauma of your time in Vietnam. How did you deal with that? What were your symptoms?
So I had already seen a psychiatrist because I joined the VVF Vietnam Veterans Federation, And they said to me that have you seen a psych yet? And I said, no, I haven't. So they sent me to a guy called Marty, youre lovely guy. And he wrote out a chit for me not to go back to work for three months. So I didn't go back to work, and then I was still I was seeing him and I was getting worse. You know, I was just angry with everything. It didn't matter. It was the kids and my wife. They saw all
this coming through for years. When I got this chit, I rang up and told him that I won't be coming to work for three months, and stupidly they terminated me, and not understanding that you can't be terminated while you're while you're on sick leave, and in my case, while I was had pat PDSD as a result of the Vietnam War. And so I contacted marter you were saying that they they had sacked me, and he said, well,
I can't do that because of the certificate. Just take the certificate in and put it on the counter and walk out. So I did that, and then I got this lovely letter that said, dear Jim, you know, thank you very much for your your time with us, but due to your abrogation of your of your position because I was a senior manager, we have to terminate you. And I didn't mind because they were they paid me out for more years than I was there. But they
stuffed up. They tried to take my car and turned it into an ovated lease and so they wouldn't have to pay as much money. But I I tripped them up on that as well, because I was the human source manager. I knew all the rules. I said it Chris, I actually it was Chris, my wife and Marty. I was in with her with Marty Eyore because he wanted her to come in. And then I just I really broke down emotionally. Just everything got to me, the family thing, the running away, going to Vietnam, and it was just
a multitude of events within my brain. But I've put it down to I call it perturbation. It's like when you put the red balls on a billiard table in the triangle, take the triangle off, you go down the other end, you get the queue, and you hit the queue as hard as all the white ball as hard as you can, hoping that the balls would go in the pocket. And that's what my head was like. I couldn't compartmentalize, and it was a constant wearing, you know,
dishwasher watching machine. And I was angry all the time, and I mean angry, but I didn't. I didn't damage the furniture. I didn't damage my relationship with my wife or my kids. It was just I just I just wanted to kill someone.
It sounds like your journey was long and difficult. How did you find peace in the end.
Guitars were when Dave rang me in twenty seventeen and I went and did my very first. I got my first application for him in and I checked it out, checked out the guy's number and whatever. And he lived in Lara, which was just up the road from Ocean Grove, where I lived, And so I jumped in my car and I went there, and there was the guy you're
build anyway. He's got these two guitars in his hand, and he put one under his shoulder and put his hand out like that grabbed my hand and I thought the bars has run over my hair with a truck. It was so strong. Played concert guitar, classic guitar. When I sat with his wife and we had lunch to get he gave me these two guitars and he said, whoever you give these two, just tell him. My name was Brian and I'm a wood chopper and I make sleep red gum sleepers. No wonder you keep putting a
crush my hand. Anyway, two days after he gave me the guitars, he died. Oh but that was my that was my turning point.
So you're able to get some funding through the assistance of Sarah Game, our independent and member of the legislative council here. And so where does that take you? And how many of you? How many guys you're working with now?
The ten thousand dollars I got does twenty veterans, right, So we have payment for the guitars, which we have a wonderful deal with artist guitars. They delivered to the door. The whole thing about we've been noticed, you know, we've been going twenty seventeen and we've been going to rssels. We've been going to rsseels are not even interested in too talking to you. But I've got four now that are right on top of this. It wasn't the money. It was Sarah Game who who said, you know, come
and have a cup of coffee. And we talked about over a cup of coffee, and you were there and it was just wonderful that all of a sudden somebody's really trying to help us.
So you have to you have to have any experience of playing guitar to join Guitars for Vets.
I could use you one of my mentors because I've got I've got these four groups now that I'm looking for mentors. Yeah, that you're on and I know you play the guitar. Well, I hold, I don't mind homework.
So anyone like a VET who might be it doesn't It doesn't matter from which conflict because we've got the young events. These are not just Vietnam bets.
Look, these are the driving factors for me. Every six weeks i'll wring somebody up with one of the vets has done the program very quickly. The pro is this, you fill out an application form, I check it, go through, make sure you're a veteran. I then ring you up and say have you got a guitar? Or sometimes on the thing they say they don't have a guitar, and then I order a guitar from They get the guitar, hopefully within a week or if they're South Australian or
in Adelaide, I will deliver them. Last weekend I delivered eighteen guitars Wow, it's eighteen veterans in that we've picked up now over the six week period, right, so it's like three a week. But I had eighteen guitars sent to me and I went out and delivered them, shook hands. But the feedback I get because when they do the course, after they've done the course at random, I've just pick out a name and I speak to the veteran, how are you going, what's it like with the guitar? And
can I speak to your WiFi? I know not at the moment anyway, but do you need a hand, you want to do a refresher or whatever? Because I've had guys back to as I said twenty seventeen, and then one day I rang this guy Pete. He was one of my first guys in South Australia that filled out a form and I took a guitar to him and then I went home and he looked a bit whatever. Anyway, I went home, I rang him again and he didn't
answer the phone. His wife answered it and I said it's Pete there, and she said yeah, she said who is it? And I told her and he's in the shower. Is anything I could talk to you about? I said, I just want to know how he's going. You want to know how he's going, ask me how I'm going. I said, well, how are you going? She said, no more bruises? Wow, And I thought, what am I doing this for? You know, no more bruises was such a
powerful statement. But some of the others that, you know, the writing I get from a thank you very much, he's a different person. I've had guys ring me up and say I'm going to sue you. To Jesus four, my wife doesn't buy any more cigarettes. I say, well, what's that got to do with me? He said, I tell her to get me the cigarettes, and what she does she puts him in my guitar case. And She've got these chains around the bloody guitar case and locks all over the place, and I've got to unlock it
order to get a cigarette. I don't smoke anymore, and I've won. One guy say that he leans his guitar on the door of his beer fridge every time he goes to get a beer. He's got to pick up his guitar and he starts playing that and forgets about the beer, and his wife saying, I'm earning an extra twenty five to thirty dollars a week with his beer money.
Just quickly, Vett's listen to this. What do they do? How do they contact you?
They can go online and go to ww guitar Soavets Australia dot com.
That's four. That's a number four.
Guitars, Number four bets the Vets Australia. Yeah, oh god.
Jim, great story, I mean a sad story in times and a traumatic journey that you've had, but great work you're doing. So thanks to Sarah Game for supporting you and thanks for you for coming in. We could have gone for a lot longer. All the best, mate, Jim mavro Martas Guitars for Vets, Thank you so much for joining us, folks,