Jade Jungwirth
Visiting the volunteers at the Castlemaine Community Lunch two weeks ago, a friendly, chatty Englishman caught my attention, so I immediately opened my diary and locked him in for a profile interview.
Sitting at his kitchen table in Chewton, I was immediately enthralled by his tales, told with turns of phrase that are both witty and raw.
Mike grew up in the west of London, but spent many years travelling back and forth to America to visit his mother.
“She ended up buying a business in South Carolina, of all places, and I ended up working as a baker there, with a red Mohawk in 90s deep south America!”
Around this time, Mike travelled to India, partying with his friend Duncan.
“I was born with a missing finger and a missing leg, and I was wearing shorts, so my prosthetic was obvious. A lot of people would come up to me and ask what happened,” he said.
“Duncan has a missing finger as well, from a chainsaw accident. We sat at the bar one night, and this American guy came up and said, ‘Hey, what happened to your leg dude?’ My friend and I just locked eyes, and I said, ‘A shark.’ My mate Duncan clocked it immediately and said, ‘Yeah, we were surfing in Mexico in the 80s, and a shark came along.’ I said, ‘The shark grabbed my leg, and that’s how we both lost our fingers.’ This guy bought this, lock, stock and barrel. We didn’t buy a drink for weeks afterwards!”
Mike has two adjuncts to this tale.
“While we were there, we spent time hanging out with two girls from Israel. A few years later, Duncan went back out there and bumped into this same girl, Hannah. She said, ‘You’re the guy who saved your friend’s life.’ And he said, ‘No, that was just bull; it was a story we told so we could get free drinks.’ She was furious! And now, they’ve been married for 15 years!”
The other adjunct is Mike will no longer swim in the sea, certain there’s a shark out there with his name on it!
Throughout his 20s, Mike worked various jobs for different organisations.
“I woke up one morning, looked at the people I was working with and thought, ‘Oh, I don’t want to be like you in ten years. I really don’t.’ Literally, two weeks later, I went to university to study film,” he said.
After uni, Mike decided he needed a job, so he went to a temp agency.
“They sent me for a job working in mobile phone research and development and it turned out that the guy running the department was my boss from ten years before, when I worked as a mechanic!”
His new role took Mike all over the world. He worked in Paris, Rome, California, Chicago, Hong Kong, Japan, South Africa and most of Europe.
During this time, a friend introduced him to Jo, an English woman living in Australia, and the pair started an email romance.
“She flew to the UK to see me, and then I flew to Australia for the first time,” Mike said.
“I’d always been put off by the horror of breathing in farts for 24 hours in an aluminium tube, which is ghastly!”
After flying back to the UK, Mike boarded a plane bound for America to bury his mother. Flying back to England and then to Australia, the tedium became too much, and he found a company to sponsor him to live in Australia.
“I sold up everything in the UK, and Jo came over to England, and we drove around Europe for a couple of months, got on a plane and moved to Melbourne,” he said.
“I love Melbourne. Having worked all over the world, I still think Melbourne is my favourite city. The whole vibe. The nearest city I’ve been to that’s like it is Chicago. They both started out as working-class cities, and there’s no pretension. It’s fun, and the people are cool and welcoming, and it’s got an incredible music and arts scene. It could do with nicer beaches, but I don’t do beaches.
“”I sold my property in the UK, gave my now wife, then girlfriend, all of my money, because I couldn’t buy a house on the visa I was on. There are a few points in my life where I’ve chucked everything up in the air. Giving someone I’d only known for a year all of my money to buy a house with is one example.”
The second installment of Mike’s two-part of interview will be published in the Mail next Friday September 4.