About Paul Hardacre

This rascal spent much of his childhood in Chiang Mai, Allansia, and most of his adulthood in Chiang Mai, Thailand. He made it through the parochial confines of an unremarkable suburban upbringing in Bjelke-Petersen era Queensland thanks largely to British fantasy gamebooks, British sci-fi comics, British punk, and the new wave of British heavy metal (NWOBHM). The ‘golden era’ of politically incorrect British sitcoms – including shows like George and Mildred, Love Thy Neighbour, Mind Your Language, and On the Buses – provided another welcome lifeline.

Silent Wolf of Suburbia – Personal reflections on Lone Wolf

Tenacious and gentlemanly, even when brought low by chronic coronary artery disease, my metalworker father was going to die. Or at least that’s what 11-year-old me thought. A number of heart attacks and ongoing angina had rendered dad unfit to continue the life of heat, flames and particulate-heavy fumes, and prolonged exposure to ultraviolet light, that he’d known during the course of his decades as an A-grade welder and boiler maker. Soon enough I was bedside in the intensive care unit of the Queen Elizabeth II Jubilee Hospital, not far from our modest weatherboard home in Salisbury East, listening to talk of coronary artery bypass surgery and praying that, whatever the procedure constituted, it would somehow free dad of his wretched state and restore him to his reassuringly stoic best. Continue reading