The above startling image shows a statue of Steedman , he with a raised finger to fascists and power mad regimes , armed with a knife , being pulled down in Morocco . The great illustration was almost certainly inspired by the American comedy film Road to Morocco , starring Bing Crosby, Bob Hope and Dorothy Lamour .
Steedman is clad in a leather jacket, jeans and boots , his regular attire when an ALP member of parliament and judged Australian Politician of the Year by the Canberra Times.
The distinctive drawing was the work of architect, author , activist and longtime friend , Peter Burleigh , who penned and illustrated a marvellous , madcap travelogue about the time he and Steedman made a dangerous overland trip in a dodgy van from London to Afghanistan.
Along the way , they rendezvoused with Steedman's girlfriend , model Julie Reiter, later his first wife , and the trip became something like the Very Rocky Road to Morocco. Steedman was involved in a dangerous misunderstanding by a man over payment of an accommodation account in India , resulting in Pete brandished a flick knife and telling Julie to defend herself with a tomahawk carried in a suitcase , if attacked by a wild mob .
There was another episode on the trip where Steedman saved their bacon by jumping out with a weapon when men came pounding on the van door late at night demanding money .
It is fact that Steedman also brandished a knife when American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan -The Times They Are A-Changin'- unexpectedly knocked on his door in Melbourne at night .
During his life Pete received death threats and much abuse because of his fearless stance on many issues , including opposition to the Vietnam War,
The writer of this post knows of a Darwin incident in which a man threatened to kill Steedman with a knife.
This month's well attended celebration in the Melbourne Trades Hall of Steedman's extraordinary life even attracted the attention of a serial gatecrasher , who was given the bum's rush.
Australia's first female prime minister , Julia Gillard , sent a video message in which she told of her early contact with the notably bad mouthed Steedman , describing him as unique in the true sense of the word .
Former distinguished politician Gareth Evans, who knew Steedman from university student days in Melbourne in the l960s, delivered an entertaining speech, a small part follows , in which he said Steedman was an extraordinary combination .
,
"On the one hand, potty-mouthed student enfant terrible, potty-mouthed middle-aged enfant terrible, legendary campus lothario, bikie hoon, wild-eyed political radical and provocateur, and keeper of the nation’s largest and most meticulously catalogued dirt files (as comprehensive, I suspect as ASIO’s, although with a rather different cast of characters).
"But also a brilliantly innovative journalist and editor, shrewdly pragmatic political professional, highly disciplined grassroots political campaigner, hugely capable publishing and music industry administrator, effective and respected trade union official, loving partner, father, and grandfather and – perhaps most implausible of all to those who only knew him at a distance (but I’ll explain), sweet-natured gentleman."
During those university years ,he said Steedman had been the heart and soul of protest against long neglected social issues – including censorship, abortion, capital punishment, Indigenous disadvantage and White Australia racism , apartheid and opposition to the Vietnam War .
He recalled an episode in a Vietnam War debate in which fanatically anti-communist Dr Frank Knopfelmacher said : " My only objection to you ,Steedman, is that you exist .The gas chamber is too good for you. You are filth and vermin."
The following is not from the Gareth Evans speech but is inspired by the above abuse hurled at Steedman by Dr Knopfelmacher .
Pete Steedman once told the writer of this post that he only had one hero - Simon Wiesenthal - a survivor of the Nazi death camps, who set up the Jewish Documentation Centre, Vienna, which documented the crimes of the Holocaust and hunted down nearly 1100 Nazi war criminals.
At the end of World War II, thousands of Nazis who participated in the systematic murder of some 6,000,000 Jews and millions of Gypsies, Poles and other "inferior" peoples, slipped through the Allied net and escaped to countries around the globe, where many lived in freedom, some in Australia.
Near the end of his life , Steedman expressed concern about rising extremist right political parties in Europe and some of the extreme groups and individuals taking part in demonstrations in Australia .
