Hope Is A Verb - Paulie Stewart - Punk Magic

Episode Date: August 15, 2025

Meet Paulie Stewart, an Australian punk rocker who teamed upwith a group of nuns to help disabled kids in Timor Leste. From walking on the wild side, to almost crossing over to the other side – Paulie’s story is about full circles, second chances, and the one of the most unlikely and inspiring partnerships.Topics discussed: the deathbed encounter that changed Paulie’s life, why the Alma Nuns are more punk than Billy Idol, the impact of Paulie’s work in Timor, the power of faith and the unexpected twists that have defined his extraordinary life journey.  If you want to support the Alma nuns, you can donate throughtheir funding platform, Myriad Australia.This podcast is hosted by Angus Hervey and Amy Davoren-Rose from ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Fix The News⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Audio sweeting by Anthony Badolato at Ai3 – audio and voice.

Welcome back to Hope as a verb. At the beginning of this season, we promised you that we would turn up the volume on a lot of the voices in the world that we don't hear every day. The voices that fly under the radar that are doing their work out of the spotlight, away from the cameras, and we are delivering on that promise today. Agreed, Amy. And I've been thinking about the best way to introduce today's episode, maybe it's with a question. What happens when one of Australia's wildest punk rockers teams up with a group of nuns? Yeah, that's not a question you hear every day. No, it's not a lead into a joke. It is a lead into an actual episode of Hope is a

verb. We don't want to give away everything up front. But today's guest is Paulie Stewart, who has spent most of his life walking on the wild side as the lead singer of the painters and dockers, otherwise known as the wildest punk rock band in Australia ever. He's also a music journalist and author, and another interesting fact about Paulie is that he's the younger brother of one of the Billerbo Five. They were a group of Australian journalists

who were killed in Timor-Leste in 1975 during the Indonesian invasion. Their story has been a subject of lots of articles, a play, and even a movie. We actually found poorly unexpectedly through one of our giving partners that fixed the news. The Elmer Nons. Now, there are a group of sisters who run an orphanage and a school for disabled kids in Timor Lester. We were blown away by the work that these nuns are doing up there. but when we discovered that the person who's driving donations and supporting them was Paulie Stewart, we just had to find out how these two unlikely forces came together.

This is a story of 80s pub rock, second chances, and unexplainable magic that is just too good not to share. All right, Pauley, I would love to just dive straight into the deep end of your story. Thank you, buddy. So it's August 2007. You've been waiting 500 days for a liver transplant and things are looking pretty bleak. Yep. You're in palliative care. You've been read the last rites.

Yeah. Your loved ones are prepared for the worst. Yeah. Can you tell us what happens next? Well, when I first went in to have a liver transplant, I didn't know anything about it. Actually, I had a gig book with the band, and I rang up the pub where we were playing out, and I said, I'll just put it back a week. Well, yeah, I'm just going to get a new liver, then I'll be back.

No, no, no, no, no. You have to get a perfectly matched liver. And unfortunately, for 18 months, they couldn't find me one. So my health just deteriorated, and I really was skipping along the edge of the abyss. said, have you had a good life, prepared to sort of cross over, which freaked me out a lot. But yeah, I woke up in the hospital one night and sitting at the end of my bed was this little nun who was a palliative care nurse, you know, helping people cross over from life to death. And I started talking to her and we were about 10 minutes into the conversation

until I realized she was dark-skinned. And I said, oh, whereabouts are you actually from, sister? And she said, oh, this little country called Timor Lester. And I said, Is this some kind of a joke? I've got a huge connection with Timor Lestay. My brother was one of the five journalists who was killed up there in a place called Balabo. 50 years ago this year actually. He was only 21 and I was 15 when that all happened

and I said, yeah, and she said, why are you actually here? And I said, oh, I need a new liver sister but they've all said there's no way I can get one and this little nun sat there and she contemplated for a bit for a bit. And then she said, I'll get you one. And I went, sorry. And she said, no, I'll get you one. And I went, gee, it's a bit early to be hitting the altar wine and said, no, what are you mean? You're going to get me one. She said, well, I'll get all the other nuns in

Timor and we'll pray to the big fella upstairs. But if I get you one, you've got to help the women in kids in Timor. Is that a deal? And I went, this nutty little nun. Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever, sure sister. And she sort of left the room and I was just laughing to myself going, And that was so wacky, you know, what a thing to happen? Is that some kind of an omen or something? And she left and then at 5.30 that morning, this doctor comes running into my room and says, poorly, unbelievably, a perfect match for you has just arrived. You're going in for a 12-hour operation.

And that was 14 years ago. And I made a full recovery. And then I went, oh, bugger it. I think I did promise it. that if she got me delivered, that I would help the women and kids in Timor. And so I go from singing out the front of punk rock bands to hanging out with nuns.

Can you remember, Pauley, because you were obviously really sick at the time. Yeah. When that doctor came in and said, we have a liver match, can you remember what you thought or felt? I mean, it's so unbelievable. I didn't sort of tell you seriously.

because I couldn't believe it was happening and then, you know, I'm being wheeled into this room going, this is all bizarre. I thought I dreamt it all or something and since it's happened people have gone, oh, it's just a big coincidence and I go, listen, you weren't like in that bed dying

you know, and it was just an overwhelming sense of relief that I wasn't going to pass on and yeah, couldn't believe it, couldn't believe it, still can't. When you used to hear stories like this of miracles or things like that, in the past What did you used to think of those kinds of stories?

Bullshit, you know, man, I was far from a card carrying Catholic. In fact, I was completely disillusioned with the whole Catholic Church. In fact, I can remember when my brother died, a little nun came around then, funnily enough. And we were all crying and everyone was very upset. And this little nun, I can remember, said to me, oh, you know, why are you all carrying on? You know, you should be so happy that he's with Jesus now. And I looked at this nun and went, what do you mean happy? know, and then it was 30 years of sex, drugs and rock and roll to the max.

But meeting these little nuns, I went up to Timor and saw where they were working and saw them in action. And the first thing that got me was they were people who just didn't talk about doing stuff. They were actually down in the gutters looking after these kids. You know, having a disabled child in Australia is really hard. But in a place like Timor where there's no ramps or wheelchairs or any kind of help, and it's virtually impossible and every woman has on average seven kids

so if you have a kid that's disabled you just can't handle it because you've got to look after the other six so the nuns all the time there's a knock on their door and they go to the front doorstep and there's just a little baby bundled up and they take them in and look after them

and love them and they just set about their task every day with a big happy smile on their face and the kids love being in their presence and I was just so blown away to meet people that did that for other people. Being in the rock scene around people with really big egos who think they're it.

But these nuns just do this incredible work that's unacknowledged and I was so sort of inanimate of that. Paid us a picture of what it's like there. The sights, the sounds, the smells, what does it look like? What are the nuns doing? Help our listeners

is going to stand exactly what we're looking at here? Timor for a start is really hot. It's a tropical sort of place. And East Timor in particular, Timor Lestay, has had 25 years of Indonesian occupation, but before that it had 300 years of Portuguese occupation. And the Portuguese didn't develop any of the roads or bridges or unies or schools or hospitals.

So it's a very poor place. There's still lots of cases of malnutrition up there. You know, it's kind of bizarre. You're in East Timor, and then you get on a little light plane, fly an hour to Darwin, just across the water there, and you'll go to a barbie and an opulent amount of food and drink and stuff like that. But when we first met these little nuns, there was five nuns, and they're looking after about 60, I reckon, disabled kids.

And these kids were all really badly disabled. A lot of them don't have arms or legs or... very bent out of shape and the little nuns between them had one motor scooter to get all these kids around on and I was up there with a Timoree's friend and we went around and met them and we went, hang on, this is just crazy, you know, how are they supposed to put a kid that's all bent over in the back of a motorbike? So I came back to Australia and put a shout out and as you two can probably testify, Australians are really generous people when they're I hear about a cause, and we were lucky enough to raise about $60,000,

and we bought them a brand new Tarago that had a lift up the back. But I could remember bringing the Mother Superior and going, oh, great news, we've raised you 60, and she said, poorly, $60, mate, we can get food, medicine, water, band-aids, and I said, no, no, it's 60,000, and she just couldn't comprehend what happened. And then one thing led to another, and you realize a lot of these little kids, they're all bent out of shape, but their minds are really intact still. They're really clever little kids, but they don't get any opportunity.

So we did another shout out and call around and raised enough to buy them two classrooms that we sent up there. But what I love about the world at the moment is we were building these two classrooms in Timor and one day, and Army Jeep went past and slammed all. on its break and this Chinese captain from the Chinese army got out and walked up to the Mother Superior and said, excuse me, sister, what's happening here? And she said, oh, the Australians are building us two classrooms. And he went, oh, okay, no worries. And he left, but he came back two days later with 10 trucks and 100 guys and he said, we're going to build you two as well. But I can

remember saying to the Mother Superior, it's a bit like having two boyfriends you're playing off against each other, and this little nun did miss a beat. She went, yeah, that's exactly what it's a lot. So I don't know what she got up to before she joined the nuns. I think she was a bit of a rascal. Takes one to no one, right? Both see the glint in each other's eye. Actually, Paulie, that is one thing. When we first chatted on the phone, you mentioned that you would think the world of punk rock and these nuns would be worlds apart, but you actually think there's a lot of similarities. Well, no, I reckon they're more punked than, you know,

and you're talking to someone who's been on the road with Billy Idol and Nick Cave and Midnight Oil, like I've toured with those guys. They're all pussycats compared to these nuns. The nuns are up at 4.30 every morning, 4.30, and I've had to take them on a few tours around Australia to do schools. And, you know, they wake me up at 4.30. I'm going, sister, go back to bed, mate. But they don't take rules from men.

They're very feminist. They're like, no, no, no, we do it our way. And then you have to follow suit. They don't live life where making lots of money is the main reason for living. And they sit around at night, play a bit of guitar, might have the odd glass of wine. And given that Indonesia is the biggest Muslim country in the world, but these are Roman Catholic nuns,

like they're real rebels who go against the grain up that way. And the choice is having seven kids and a useless fella that you have to bring in the money anyway or hanging out with the sisterhood, playing a bit of guitar, looking after kids. I think I'd join the nuns too myself. You know, one sent me a message two days ago, I going, oh, Paulie, I'm worried.

And I'm going, oh, what's the matter? She goes, I don't know if, you know, Beyonce's taking the right approach with her country album. She should go back to the R&V stuff. and I'm going, what? You know, okay, fair enough. Fair enough, sister. I really got a sense of that.

I spoke to Sister Anastasia. And she was so cheeky and she had so much spunk and joy. At a time in the world when most of us are dragging our feet around, what is their secret, do you think? They obviously have got a firm faith that gets them through a lot of tough times.

Their religion's a big help to them. And because we've sort of worked with them really closely for the last 10 years, I've managed to spread the word about them a bit. So when Pope Francis went to Timor, of all the places he could drop in and visit, he dropped in at the orphanage to see the nuns. Wow. And I went about a week later, and it was like Mick Jagger had been in the place. These little nuns were about three foot off the ground,

just so rapt that the Pope had dropped him to see them. And he thanked them for keeping me strong in my faith by showing me the work you do, that has restored my faith. And you think, wow, that's awesome. All this magic sort of stuff happens around these nuns, yeah. I think the word miracles gets thrown around a lot. And I'm not sure I love the word miracles, but I do like the word magic.

Yeah. And it feels like there's a lot of magic in this story. How do you account for that, the fact that you're a non-believing hedonist? How does magic come into it? When I first met them, I started going around Timor with them, and dropping in at different villages and you'd see the local girls

and then you'd see these nuns and then I'd said to one of the nuns actually, sister, you look different from these other girls up here. Where's your village? And she said there's a few of us who are T-Marie's but most of us are Indonesian. And I went, wow, you know,

I've gone the full 360 journey from the nation that killed my brother that now I'm working with a group of people from that country which was another weird kind of. of magic that it took me on that journey. This whole story is full of these crazy moments. Going up there with a group of activists one time

when the Indonesians were still in charge there and we all got arrested and deported and thrown out of the country. One of the activists was an Irish senator. You know, and he said to me, it's a shame that we didn't get in. We wanted to draw attention to this issue. And then he said, this Irish guy's given me a poem to use it in the struggle.

it in the struggle and we're not great, you know, some drunken paddies written something down on the bloody beer coaster, yeah, yeah, give me this poem and I got this thing and read I went da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-lovono and I went, yeah, I think I can use this. Amy, we've banked almost 40 of these conversations on this podcast, and every person we've spoken to has a different version of the hero's journey. And if there's one common denominator that brings them all together, it's that this kind of work always begins with a choice, right? Sometimes that's made in early childhood,

but more often it's a random event that creates a fork in the road and sets someone on a new path that leads them to do something extraordinary, just like Paulie. Yeah, I think there's this temptation when you look at people who are doing the good work in the world to assume that they're different to us somehow or that they have this really rare quality or some kind of superpower.

But what inspires me the most, conversation after conversation, is just how human and real and ordinary, and I mean that in the best possible way, these people really are. Now, we've heard a lot about the Elman Nuns in this conversation. And Gus, I just want to play you a snippet of my conversation with Sister Anastasia. I reached out to her, I think it was way back in February, to tell her about

the donation that we were making. It is not the best audio. This is a WhatsApp line from Australia to Timor. But I really think it will give you an idea of the energy that Paul is talking about. We have 70 kids living with their parents, and every morning they are coming here to take a therapy or school or playing how to read, how to write. You know, I mean, it's in here in public school. They didn't expect the kids with disability into their school. But the challenge is you have to work hard to take care of them because they have a different disability. Every day it's challenge for me. I have to extra take care of them.

When we put this story out to our newsletter and we told all our readers about the donation, we got contacted by Stadastasia and I think by you later that said that she got inundated by emails and requests from all our readers. She said, how else can we help? We're not the only ones that have picked up the story.

You're not the only one that's picked up the story. They seem to have this gravitational pull, I guess. Absolutely. And after your story came out, a mate of mine who was an old activist, he's now Timor's ambassador to Singapore. He rang me out of the blue saying, oh, Paulie, how do we get money to the nuns? And I said, how do you know about this? And he said, oh, everyone's read it on Fix the News. And I went, where are you again? And he said, Singapore. And I went, wow, those guys have got an enormous reach. That's incredible. It's funny, you know, because. Because they've got nothing these little nuns, and there's a lot of people who've got lots.

I have to say even myself, people always go, oh, poorly, you righteous dude, you're helping out these poor little nuns. But I can honestly say, honestly, I get ten times back from them what they give me. Just their love and friendship and how they make me see what's important and what's real. So I'm in their debt. Plus they got me a liver. That's not bad either. Just not forget that detail.

Was there anywhere in your childhood, this idea of service giving back? Was it something that maybe had always been there just waiting for the right opportunity to sprout? Well, my mum was always big on. We're all the same. Don't think you're better than anyone else. I can remember there was a few disabled kids lived next door to us. And my mum just welcomed them in and they played with us like you would with everyone. And that was my childhood, but I suppose it really kicked in for me when I got a liver

because I wouldn't be here unless some really generous Australian hadn't have gone, well, I'm going to donate my organs to help someone else live. So after my operation, I thought, wow, I've got to give back now because somebody's done this for me, so I want to make their choice to do that worthwhile. Can you tell us a little bit about how you made the transition? from Aussie rocker to activist in Timor? What was that bridge? Well, I played in the Painters and Dockers, obviously,

and we were pretty full-on punky band. It's probably an understatement. Yeah, yeah, that's a bit of an understatement. But I used to get called to go to rallies to talk as the brother of one of the dead jernos. It was there I met this Timorese guy, Gil Santos, And he was in a reggae band, which was completely different to me. And we both sidled up to each other.

And we got on pretty well. And we had a long conversation. And he said something to me. He said, guitars are just as important as guns when it comes to changing the world and doing social change. And I went, wow, that's an interesting way of looking at it all. And so we formed this other band, the Dilley All-Stars. and yeah, the activism just grew not because I was that big of an activist, I think.

It was just because I ended up with all these Timore's mates, you know. I saw what they were going through, and I never thought the country would get their independence ever. I can remember meeting Jose Ramos Horta, who's the president up there now. I met him in St. Kilda, and he was sleeping on a friend's couch. He had this battered old little suitcase and a bow tie, and he had hair like Jimmy Hendrix. big afro. I said, who's this guy? And they said, oh, he's Timor's foreign minister who's in Australia trying to drum up support. And he said, yeah, we're going to work hard and we'll get our independence one day. And I looked at this guy and went, this guy will never, ever get

independence. What is he talking about? But the Timorese stuck to their guns for 40 years and finally won their independence, which was quite remarkable. What do you think? young Paulie, who was in Painters and Dockers, on stage, doing all the things, what do you think he would think of Paulie now? I've got no idea. I don't know. I think he'd just be going, what's happened? You know what? We didn't it all change. Because I was very into a burn, baby burn kind of lifestyle, and I think he'd be amazed at the twists and turns that life sends you on. But I never thought I'd be in a band. The painters and dockers were only supposed to play.

one night. That was 40 years ago, and we've done like 1,500 gigs around the world now, and it was to pay off her friend's parking fines. And they had a band, but they needed a support act. I met this guy at the South Melbourne Market over the banana store, and he said, oh, Paulie, didn't you tell me you play trumpet? I said, mate, they threw me out of the trumpet class at school. He said, it doesn't matter, it's punk rock. You know, come along, and I went, oh, okay. We called ourselves the painters and dockers because the painters and Dockers Union, had a pub in Port Melbourne, we started playing our first show. And the guy who lived next door to the pub hated the sound so much.

He jumped the fence with an axe and started chopping up the mixing desk. And an all-in brawl starts, and I'm on stage doing the one song that I was going to do. There's police fighting dockers, the speaker stacks are falling over, there's people throwing beer. and I'm on stage with the microphone and I went, I want to do this for the rest of my life. What could ever beat this? So there you go. There was a classic night we pulled into a pub in Queensland,

the dockers one night, really late at night. And this other band pulled in. And they said, oh, you know, how did you got your show guys? And we said, oh, no one turned up. And I said, you know, how did you guys go? And they said, oh, no one turned up. and one of them said to me, in fact, Paulie, we're getting out of rock

and we're going to get into kids' entertainment. And I went, oh, you're mate. There's any money or flaming kids' entertainment. Will the Wiggles make $98 million a year each now? But they've been incredibly generous as well to the nuns in Timor, and they've given me over 300 boxes of their merchandise to give out to all the kids up that way.

They're actually schools in these Timor, seriously, there's schools in these Timel where the official school outfit are Wiggles' outfits. What? That's the school uniform. Oh, that's brilliant. And they're really generous, loving guys, the Wiggles. I can only sing their praises. They've been fantastic, great supporters.

Now that you're a famous author and a retired rocker and various things in between, what do you do when you're not rocking it out at libraries? You're still doing work, are you still raising money? It's taken on all these other sort of different forms now. Even though I'm a white boy, born and bred in St. Kilda, my daughter, Aretha, is an Indigenous girl. And she was voted the first female prime minister of the National Indigenous Youth Parliament.

But she's also a big mural painter. So I took her up there and she met the nuns. But she heard that up in Dilley, the gay community up there because it's such a Roman Catholic country they face a pretty sort of hard time you know so she worked with that community

to do all these great murals around Dillie but I got the nuns to come down and help out there was this most remarkable day that I was just standing there laughing my head off because you had you know some flamboyant gay T-Marie's boy painting

and next to him there'd be a nun and I can remember saying and assistant, Anastasia, listen, you're not going to get into trouble for this that you're working with these crew. And she looked at him and said, Paulie, you know, they're our brothers and sisters. We love them. What's your problem? And I went, no, no, I've got no problems. But everyone I tell about these nuns, they end up getting involved. So it's not going to surprise me when I hear that you two are up there working in the orphanage or you visited for sure. poorly on that is there any way that people can help anything that is needed at the moment

we've got a site mirrored m y-r-a-d people can make donations every cent gets spent on the priorities which is food and medicine a lot of Australians have heard about their facility now so drop in with clothes and sporting equipment they love up there. It's very basic, but everyone's happy. And now it's expanded so much that there are kids that actually come there for the day so their mums can work and then their mums grab them at night. But there's still a large percentage that live with the nuns. And because we got this van, they do go out into the districts a lot more, which is really important in Timor because everything seems to be stuck in Dilley.

but there's a big wide country out there. It's great when they go out to the rural districts, which are really poor. But also, I really love to thank you guys because your interest and involvement and the money you help us raise has been fantastic. We're just so in gratitude to you.

I think you are both on the prayer list so you can muck up tonight, go out and go crazy. You hit Oxford Street. Don't roll off, you know. It's fun. Time to start doing the sky down being. The pearly gazed you say, I sister, Anastasia said my name's on the door.

Polly, you have such an incredible story. What would you say is the lesson in it all? Expect the unexpected. It's amazing what life throws at you, you know, how your life direction can change. Nothing's written down and life is unpredictably fantastic because I can't believe, but I do what I do now. I'm the first person to go, nuns, little nuns?

What are you talking about? Paulie, one final question for you. What does the word hope mean to you? It's funny because the nuns, they're going through another bit of a difficult patch now because they're called on so much to help so many different people that are getting the last week or so to the stage where everything was just about to run out of money.

But then last night, out of the blue, someone just donated five grand, another five grand. wow, don't give up hoping because good shit happens. Well, I don't think we've ever had a last line quite like that. Talk about a mic drop. Polly Stewart is a very hard act to follow. But I really think his story is proof that there's no set of qualifications or DNA for changing the world.

And it's also never too late to start. The line that I am going to keep with me is that guitars are just as powerful as guns when it comes to changing the world. And it's just this amazing reminder that we have all got something to share. It just feels great to hear a story like this right now. It's more than a pilot cleanser.

It makes things feel a lot more real. With all the headlines and all of the data that's thrown at us, And we are guilty of doing that as well. I think it really matters to know that there can be magic and that life can still be really, really surprising. You know, these tiny glimpses of possibility, they're really important to pay attention to.

We're going to keep sharing stories like this. If you want to support the almanons, we've popped a link into the podcast notes. And next week, we are back with Rutger Bregman moral ambition. Make sure you don't miss this. subscribe to the podcast. We'll catch you in a week's time. We'd like to thank our paying subscribers for making projects like this podcast possible. If you're interested in finding out more about our work, check out fixthenews.com.

There are a lot of podcasts out there. It means a lot to us that you chose this one. This podcast is recorded in Australia on the lands of the Gardagal and the Wurundry and Wei Wurong people. If you enjoyed this conversation and would like to support Hope as a verb, make sure you subscribe and leave a review. Thanks for listening.