Bird's Big Burnout
- Stu Lloyd
- Aug 8
- 7 min read
For many people the Australian band Mental as Anything are all about colourful clothes, colourful on-stage antics, and colourful memories of great times. Yet there was a darker edge to them as people -- a complexity I tried to get across when I wrote their official biography. But nothing could be darker than when drummer Bird aka David Twohill aka Wayne DeLisle lost his home -- and every damn thing inside and around it -- to a bushfire on Christmas Day. Yeah, Christmas Day, can you imagine? Then his marriage imploded. Here's how I captured it ... and read to the end for the surprisingly happy ending.
Christmas Day 2001, and Bird and Sue were up earlyish because they needed to get to Christmas lunch at the rellies in Gladesville, western Sydney. Sue headed off first, and Bird followed later because he had to prepare his stuff for the imminent summer tour.
As a member of the local bushfire brigade, Bird always made a habit of scanning their acreage, and scoping out the weather conditions. A hot and gusty day was predicted but the sky was clear that Tuesday in Kurrajong. Let Christmas festivities commence!
Halfway through lunch the phone rang. ‘My neighbour rang up,’ says Bird, ‘and said, “There’s smoke around the place.” He went back to the lunch because they’d had a similar false alarm back in 1993. Then the phone rang again. More smoke. Seemed a fire had worked its way across the mountains from Penrith. Sue jumped into her car and raced back.
Westerlies were driving firestorms from the lower Blue Mountains into the outer western suburbs, and Kurrajong was right in the crosshairs. By now there were firetrucks on the road, sirens blaring, a pall of blue-black smoke belching into the skies. She made it through before the road was closed. The closer Bird got to home, the higher the flames and billowing smoke seemed to be. Until he had to pull over, and he spoke to one of his fellow firies.
‘They said, “Oh, you’re right. We'll fight it from here.” We couldn't get near our home because of the smoke and flames.’ Sue made it to a neighbour’s. Bird had to just sit and wait anxiously roadside. His fire brigade mate later told him: ‘We watched this fireball blow your house up.’
His neighbour was heroically trying to grab stuff. ‘The animals were okay. That was the main thing. We had these Dexter cows and a couple of horses. It was like a war zone, fucking unbelievable. It's not like you're going, Oh my god. You're just going, Ugh! Fuck! It's just a sustained sort of trauma.’
The acrid smoke seared his eyes as he tried to get a better look at the carnage. ‘The whole joint was gone. There was just a bathtub sitting on a pile of rubble. There was this eternal flame going for a couple of days after it. And that was the vinyl collection in the music room, a couple of hundred albums at least.’Also gone up in smoke was his memorabilia. Gold records. First drum kits. Band and family photos.
Luckily his proud and supportive mum, Nancy, had several of his gold records on her walls at home. Bird realised he also had a bit of stuff stored in his mum’s garage: ‘Snare drums and cymbals and things I'd collected.’
He soon felt the community spirit. His neighbour, Bernie Whelan (whose wife Kerry had been abducted four years earlier with a million dollar ransom requested) turned up with a caravan: ‘Here’s something to live in if you want.’ One of the first calls was from Rob Hirst, drummer of Midnight Oil. ‘Rob said, “I've got a place in Haberfield. You can move in there tomorrow”. Things that you just wouldn't expect.’ An art sale was organised, with friends and locals donating paintings. ‘We had a big auction.’
Then Tony Grace from the Harbour Agency organised a benefit night at Revesby Workers Club — Bird's Big Burnout Gig. Posters and T-shirts were made up. ‘Midnight Oil, minus Peter Garrett, played, and I was just sort of going, Fuck! Richard Clapton who was a mate of mine, Ian Moss, GANGgajang were there. Tim Freedman, because we'd been doing a bit of touring with him.’
Plus the unmistakable figure of soap super-salesman, Big Kev, well known to the band as a regular at their Queensland gigs. And Sandy Gutman aka comedian Austen Tayshus, who’d worked as a gaffer on their Egypt clip, and Bird’s Sue knew from high school days. ‘Sandy rang up and said, “I want to compere this … and can I put shit on you?” So he was pretty funny.’ No holds barred — hilarious, he brought the house down!’ Ahem.
What was not funny was finding out that Bird and Sue’s house was uninsured. ‘That was my fault,’ Sue admits. ‘We were flat-out in the vet clinic and I thought, I’ll whip down before work. I got to Richmond and there’s a queue all the way down the street getting into the NRMA. And I thought, Oh man, I’m gonna be late for work.’ She left it to do after Christmas.
Bird remains philosophical. ‘When that shit happens, you have to realise you didn't fucking die. The hard reality is that you didn't die, and nobody else did, and that this is just stuff.’
Sue adds to the philosophy: ‘I was upset but I didn’t cry. I thought, There’s a reason behind this. Which sounds a ridiculous thing to say. You’ve lost your house and it’s horrible, and all your possessions and it’s terrible, but it’s not the end of the world. I wasn’t insured for the first time ever. I left that queue. It was just all these different things had sort of aligned.’
Only a week after the disaster, it was time to tour again: a New Year’s Eve gig in Coffs Harbour and then on up the East Coast. ‘Sue’s going, “You should go and do it. We got it all under control”,’ says Bird. She had to stay behind to look after the animals. But Bird didn’t have it under control. Then it was off to Western Australia.
‘I remember walking around the shopping mall in Perth and I thought I was in Adelaide. And I went, woah, I think this is getting to me. I can't do this — this is too hard. I remember walking into my hotel room and Channel 7 had a re-run of an interview with my wife and me. That was weird: feck, it’s me on TV! The worst bit was after the show, when people would come and sort of talk to you, “Oh, you’re okay.” The band were really supportive and saying I handled it pretty well. Well, what else can you fecking do? And I thought, I’d better go back.’
Bird’s Big Burnout Gig raised enough cash to begin rebuilding. ‘We only rebuilt a single-story joint,’ says Bird, adding that Sue didn’t like the new dwelling.
But not only was it the worst Christmas ever. It was the gift that kept on giving. Things started to unravel around Bird, and within three years he’d lose the two key things that remained in his life — Sue, and his beloved band.
‘If that fire hadn’t happened, I would never have left Dave,’ Sue tells me.
She sensed an unravelling, something that picked up pace in the late ‘90s when there were no more radio hits and Reg had left the band. ‘They all really, really respected Reg,’ says Sue. ‘So Reg leaving made it difficult for all of them — they’d lost a rock, an anchor. If Reggie had stayed it probably would’ve been a bit different … and easier for Dave.’
Her theory is that musicians and artistic people have a self-destructive side. ‘Dave’s really clever but very self-destructive. Maybe they don’t think they’re good enough. It goes hand-in-hand with the artistic gifts that they have, so it’s a double-edged sword. The self-doubt and self-destruction. Dave was drinking again, there was a lot of stuff going on that was impossible to live with for me. I was not happy.’ She admits she changed in some ways, too. Bird was back on the booze after the fire.
‘Your house burning down and your bloody marriage breaking up fucking helps,’ says Bird. ‘We were traumatised in different ways. So that’s when I started drinking again.’
Initial frustration morphed into anger. He went to a counsellor: ‘Just blabbing to them.’ Sue saw him losing confidence. ‘When he was drinking, he was very depressed. A dark side, some sort of pain. He would just get angry really quickly. Being contrary for the sake of it. I didn’t know what was going on, but there was a lot going on.’
I put it to Bird that he is a contrarian. ‘No I’m not,’ he laughs at the irony of his answer, referencing the Life of Brian you are all individuals segment.
‘My sister was dying of cancer and I decided to go live with her,’ says Sue, who headed to Auckland using Bird’s frequent flyer points. ‘I decided then that I wasn’t going back to him. He’s intelligent, talented, a good person. I can’t really say a bad word. I certainly don’t regret a single day I spent with him. When I broke up with him I missed that mental stimulation.’
Bird began spending more time in Bondi. ‘After my place burned down, I looked forward to touring again — something I was comfortable with,’ Bird tells me. ‘Just to escape reality a bit.’ Reality was biting him hard. ‘Shit happens!’
‘I’ve had some wild times in my life, but that was up there,’ Sue says.
Postscript: The most wonderful thing happened. In November 2024 when I launched this book in Sydney, the band members, media, and friends were invited. Someone invited Sue, who Bird had not seen for more than 20 years -- didn't even know if she was still living in Australia or not. The re-met, clicked, and have been hanging out happily together again ever since ... they even came up together to do the event I did at Orange library. You've gotta love a happy ending! Everybody: Aaaah!
(This is an edited extract from my music bio 'Started Out Just Drinking Beer: The Mental as Anything Story', available now in paperback, eBook, and audiobook.)
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