I particularly detest books that begin something like, 'Ah there was joy and happiness in the quaint Tasmanian home of Professor Flynn when the first bellowings of lusty little Errol were heard ...' So, if you are interested, lets get down to the meat of the matter." So begins Errol Flynn's unexpurgated autobiography "My Wicked, Wicked Ways" - click here.
Places like Salamaua, Wau, Bulolo, Lae, Finschhafen, Port Moresby, Laloki, Rabaul, Kavieng, Madang, and the Sepik River have become famous because of "My Wicked, Wicked Ways". It remains a bestseller to this day and, in places like Salamaua or Wau – just to name two – people still talk about him. "This is where he went mining for gold", they’ll reminisce in Wau, or "Flynn used to drink here", they say in Salamaua.
The 18-year-old Errol Flynn arrived in New Guinea in October 1927 to make his fortune on the newly discovered goldfields at Edie Creek, Wau. From his arrival he tried unsuccessfully to bluff himself into money as a cadet patrol officer, gold prospector, slave recruiter, dynamiter of fish, trapper of birds, manager of coconut and tobacco plantations, air cargo clerk, copra trader, charter boat captain, pearl diver and diamond smuggler.
He was also a prolific writer and contributed regularly to Australian newspapers and magazines with absorbing tales about the untamed jungles of New Guinea. Flynn soon discovered that the Australian government had a severe shortage of patrol officers, and he hoped to bluff his way through in Rabaul, but this colonial career was short-lived when his background was discovered. He moved restlessly from one job to another, acquiring many different skills but no great competence.
In Rabaul, although considered a likeable and capable young man, his reputation for roguery quickly spread and he ceased to be with the Administration. Long after Flynn had left he was remembered around Rabaul, mostly for the unpaid bills he left behind. Even after he became famous as a film star, he never paid any of those bills. If people wrote asking him to pay, he would send them autographed photographs of himself, saying these were worth much more than what he owed them. The story is told of the famous occasion when a film of Flynn’s was showing in Rabaul, and at the end of the credits, a dentist to whom Flynn owed money, jumped up and shouted: "And teeth by Eric Wein."
His autobiography ends with the words, "Where am I now? On June 20th of this year I turned fifty, so I gave myself a birthday gift. A big stone house on the north side of Jamaica, overlooking the Caribbean. As I read the galley proof of this book I am seated on the front piazza - I shall have to find a fancier name for the porch - it is a long stretch of stone. I stare out nine miles at the green Carob. It is quiet out there and quiet up here, a few hundred feet above that sea. I can be relatively happy now ... The second half-century looms up, but I don't feel the night coming on."
But the night did come on. Errol Flynn died, aged 50, on 14 Oct. 1959.
