Mandy Nolan
I am sitting in the foyer of the Byron Aged Care talking with Beautiful, aka Preacher Barry, or Barry Donald John Mcrath, a bona fide and ridgey didge hippy and the founder of The Fairly Serious Church of the Occasional Giggles. There is an open invitation to all he’s touched to attend his Living Wake at the Byron Surf Club on Sunday.
Beautiful has been delivering unsolicited compliments to the human race for the past 40 years. And he doesn’t let me down. As I come through the door this he catches me with ‘Mandy Nolan! You are fabulous! I have had a picture of you up above my bed….but someone took it down.’
Beautiful’s bigget goal in life is to make people happy. Even his recent diagnosis of cancer hasn’t slowed him down. He knows everyone’s name as they walk past and he greets them in a large loving voice that almost brings me to tears. Nothing gets by Beautiful without him calling it to his attention. He may be dying but his spirit is certainly in full flight.
I ask him how old he is.
‘I am 25 but I tell Malcolm Turnbull I am 78 turning 79 and he sends me money every week to stay in this luxurious palace!’
His two adult children Elendel and Arlo McCasker are both here too. Arlo is out from Bali with his partner. The two of them are clearly enamoured with their father. Who wouldn’t be. There should be a picture of the man in the dictionary next to the word ‘unique’. Arlo’s name in the Church is ‘God’. Elendel’s is ‘Daughter’. ‘I got a bit short changed on that one’ she laughs about being the sister of God.
In the 25 years I have lived here Beautiful has been an integral part of our vibrant community. Wearing flowing white with his hair and beard long and always covered in flowers he would hand people affirmations. Say nice things to them as they passed.
‘I think everyone needs to be told they are fabulous and glorious beyond worth. Like you, everyone has put themselves down, I want them to realize how glorious and wonderful they are’ says Beautiful. He adds ‘I think all people even the bastards are wonderful and everyone knows the truth.’
His ‘office’ was the park at Byron’s Main Beach. Daughter says ‘I want to ask the Mayor to put a seat there in your memory’. Beautiful quips back , ‘A seat? I want a statue!’
So who is Beautiful?
‘I am the entirety of the multiverse. Whatever exists in any form. That’s me.’
I love this answer. It’s not what you expect from an older gentleman in an aged care facility. But this isn’t any ordinary man. This is Beautiful All, the man who changed his name 40 years ago in his quest to spread love and get famous at the same time.
‘I am a show off,’ laughs Beautiful as he holds my hand. ‘I have an ego larger than the iceberg that sank the Titantic. I want to be famous!’
He’s flirting with me. But it’s not personal. Beautiful flirts with everyone. And he totally gets away with it.
He laughs,
‘I want you to marry me… you are an attractive lady, but I have piles.’
He giggles again and then he tells me he’ll make me a high priestess of his church for $15000.
Although he got close, the Church never got the 500 people signed up to make the Fairly Serious Church of the Occasional Giggles a registered religion. His daughter Elle is hoping that on Sunday they might get the numbers to make it happen.
There is an attempt at telling me his life story, but Beautiful doesn’t seem to be tied down to reflective linear narratives. I gather that his turning point was when he was a missionary in New Guinea. Someone gave him a joint, he smoked it, went into the forest and the transformation had begun. He hitchhiked from Rome to Calcutta. He and his wife rode push bikes from Sweden to Rome. He loves Tina Turner. Stevie Wonder. Al Green. He still wants to travel to the US to go to the South. He left his wife and mother of his two kids, a lovely ‘Swedish girl’ and ran off with the hippies. He was at the Aquarius Festival. In comment to that he says ‘ Our next one will be bigger than Woodstock. We’ll put a rostrum on top of Ayers Rock and the whole world will be there, and I will be the main speaker. I will speak about me.’
He has lived as a free spirit for most of his life.
So I am thinking about his offbeat spirituality and his uncanny wisdom and I ask ‘so what’s next do you think?’ I am meaning his Wake, what will follow. Death I guess. His answer is unexpected.
‘Hollywood. I imagine Hollywood will call me again.’
Fame is definitely still on the bucket list. And I could just be his passport there.
He turns to me and smiles again.
‘I tell you you’ve made a great error Mandy Nolan, a big fault, you fail to see how glorious how amazing and majestic you are and I am also saying that to get attention…. I want to be on the cover of Australia’s biggest selling newspaper.’
I haven’t got the heart to tell him it’s just the Echo. And it’s free.
There’s no pretense with Beautiful. He’s old , although he keeps insisting he’s 25, and he’s still disarming. It hasn’t been all flowers and love though, you don’t live the life of a free spirit and not invoke the ire of the system.
‘I have been in jails and psych wards not only in Australia but overseas’ he tells me. But his ‘free mind’ has certainly got him in trouble.
‘That’s why they put you in jail’ he says. ‘In Stuart Creek, my most used jail I was there mainly for possession of marijuana and stealing a vehicle. Nothing really serious. It wasn’t a car. It was a Volkswagon Kombi.’
He asks me if I take drugs. He doesn’t anymore. But he fondly recalls the time when he did.
‘I always wanted to go to university, even for the social side. So I eventually did. I went to Melbourne Uni for a Legalisaiton of Marijuana March. We didn’t do much marching. We just lay on the floor laughing.’
We’re coming to the end of our chat. I wonder still about his take on God. Afterall he may have been a pot smoker, but he was a deeply religious man.
‘Deep down you know the answer to all the questions. I don’t think tadpoles and chimpanzee were created, I think a super race made them and a super race made them and you get back to that bloke who was so popular- God. And no one made him, he has always been. I believe you have always been. I admire this guy Jesus and all his miracles – but you have done all those miracles.’
Beautiful still makes his way to the markets on a Thursday and the elderly drum circle. He’s frail and unwell but his giant spirit and love of life is so much bigger than his tiny body.
I’m about to leave and he says to me….
‘If I have my way you will be seeing a lot more of me. Your clothes look great but they look better over the end of my bed.’
Elendel gently chides him ‘Dad, be appropriate’.
I tell her that as a comedian who says embarrassing things to people all the time, it’s probably the most appropriate thing anyone’s said to me all day.
Bring a flower, a plate to share, a Beautiful Story and share the love at the Living Wake for Beautiful this Sunday at t the Byron Surf Club from 1pm – 6pm.
And please, join his church and make him famous. Time is running out.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
