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Renowned Melbourne activist , editor, publisher, media commentator ,once dubbed Australia's Federal politician of the year, Pete Steedman, 82, has been given six to 12 months to live, palliative care discussed.
The above poster , featuring hairy Steedman, armed , holding the son of internationally respected Australian art criic Robert Hughes, with a gun toting model , was a send up of an American university magazine , appeared in London , circa l970.
In typical Steedman fashion, his colourful repartee , on being informed of the time line, caused the medico delivering the grim news to laugh .
Following an operation for cancer last year, it is again spreading through his body. In addition , he also has emphysema.
Mind you there was a time when this battle scarred warrior , who dressed in black, and famously nearly cut Bob Dylan's life short in Melbourne , seeming rose from near death,
In Melbourne in 2006 , he suffered liver failure , traced to Hepatitis B he had picked up in South East Asia 40 years earlier , which had been dormant in his system .
He weighed just 45 kilos and was orange in colour . So ill was he that the word went out that he was soon to die. A transplant was refused and his body recovered over several years .
In recent days Pete has been continuing to sort out his wide ranging files, a large part of which is already with the Victorian state library.
Much to his surprise , up surfaced a postcard he received when he was a young boy from an Australian in a German prisoner of war camp.
Pete read to Little Darwin parts of the faded pencil message , dated July 3, 1944, from Tracy Rowley, who wrote he knew Pete's mother and father and hoped to tell him about his parents at some time in the future.
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