What happens when a city slicker comedian finds himself dwelling in the country? Well, one of Australia’s best, Lawrence Mooney, is here to tell us.
Despite having many past lives from customs officer to salesman, nothing prepared Mooney for the ropes he now ties.
“I don't think any of my previous lives have even slightly approximated what I'm up to now,” he remarks from his Southern Highlands abode. “I'm still a stand-up comedian, just living on a lot of land with horses, which is a full-time job in itself, from feed to poop to exercising.”
“There's also the welfare of our tanks, our fences, all those things. Farmers are not only farmers, they’re builders, plumbers, electricians, geologists and meteorologists, they're everything. I'm just a ring in. And the learning curve is steep,” he shares – with surprising emphasis for someone who has made his career out of sharing his most intimate and vulnerable details on stage for the world to hear. He recounts the events that led to his greener pastures.
“I moved from Melbourne to Sydney to work on Triple M, and then we wanted to get away from the rooftops, get out into the sticks. So we moved to the Southern Highlands. We're sleeping like the dead, it’s unbelievable.”
While comedy has been a highly successful walk in the park for Mooney, the ACRA and multiple comedy festival awards-winner won’t be winning any awards for bravery anytime soon if his daughter has any say.
“I said to my wife, I will confront life in the country like I confront everything – with a great deal of equanimity and a good splash of hysteria,” Mooney shares candidly. “I can overreact to stuff. My daughter thinks it's very funny that I was walking through the garden and got a spider on my face. I was like sh.tting my tights, saying ‘get it off me!’ and it was the tiniest spider. She said, ‘my view of you changed that day, dad’. Every girl has to learn that their fathers are flawed individuals,” he emotes philosophically.
Life on the farm can be great one day, and crappy the next, Mooney recounts another fresh obsession.
“I’ve become pretty obsessed with dung beetles. I’d only ever seen them on David Attenborough. My wife wanted to diversify our dung beetle population, so she got in contact with a guy who breeds dung beetles and he sent us a box full of thousands of them. So we had to go around and find fresh horse poo and break it up and sprinkle the dung beetles on it. I'm on my hands and knees prodding poo, thinking, ‘wow, this is country’.”
“I've also learned to fix an electric fence. Kangaroos rip it to pieces and bounce off it. So I have to put it back together, and the downside is, to test whether it's working, you gotta touch it. And that's a bit of a bummer, although the feeling is disturbing, but not altogether unpleasant.”
Mooney muses on what he would produce if he were to make a sole living off the land.
“I know it sounds perverse to farm something which inevitably you're going to kill, but I love the idea of pigs living on our bush blocks, having a snuffle and living a pretty good life. Marijuana plants are also a lucrative way of farming, especially with medicinal marijuana. And there's some benefits too,” he alludes. “We've currently got six horses. It's lovely looking out and seeing them living their little life, having a fine time and seeing a bird occasionally sitting on the back of one.”
“Also, there’s nothing like a big tractor. Kenny Chesney has a great song called ‘She Thinks My Tractor’s Sexy’. I think there's something about farming and men on the land that does have an aphrodisiacal nature. My wife and I have become more organic since we've moved out here. It really has brought us closer together.”
Mooney will no doubt elucidate when he brings ‘Dead Set Country’ to the Adelaide Fringe for a raucous, red dirt time.
“It's gonna be pretty irreverent,” Mooney promises. “Some of it's confronting and some is heartfelt with a little message, it's just that the focus this time is on the country. I remember there was a guy who used to say, ‘I grew up in a country town and the town bike was actually a bike’.”
“Of course, I'll talk about the new president, he’s walked away from the Paris Climate Agreement, with ‘we're gonna drill, drill, drill’,” Mooney mimics Trump’s accent quite well. “And I’ll talk about what's happening in Australia. I would never farm potatoes, because it’d remind me of Peter Dutton too much.”
With a run of shows and an upcoming tour as long as the Bruce Highway, Mooney shares his tips for keeping each show fresh.
“Before you go on, you think that everyone in that audience has paid tickets to see you, people have organised babysitters, booked a restaurant for dinner, they've come from all over the place and you're the focal point of their night. So my duty to my audience makes me keep it fresh.”
“That enthusiasm for it keeps it alive. And it’s still evolving, so in a way, every show is different. That goes for a whole lot of things in life, sitting down to roast chicken or making love, you've got to enter it with a newfound enthusiasm every time. I love that with KFC. Oh my god, that does feel like the first time.”
Like a good mate should, Mooney ends by sending a coo-ee out for some of his current favoured comics.
“Damien Power is going from strength to strength, he's amazing. And Luke Heggie as well. Mel Buttle has been at it a long time, but she's stepped out of the shadows in a big way. Those three, I’ll say.”
With too many stories to write down, Mooney’s show is sure to appeal to city slicker and charismatic cowboy alike.
Lawrence Mooney plays The Factory at The Garden of Unearthly Delights (Adelaide Fringe) 21 February-23 March.
