Mal has style of smiles

For 32 years, Kooweerup wordsmith Mal Pugh constructed buildings, furniture and other objects in his role as a carpenter but as he considered retirement he began to channel his creativity towards another pursuit.
“About 12 years ago, I was sitting on the seat in the small room one morning and it was my mate’s birthday and a few lines went through my head,” Mal, 58, said.
“By the time I came out, I had four lines written down!”
From those humble beginnings, the legend of ‘Mal Function, the Poet Larrikin’ has arisen and he now has vast audiences roaring with laughter.
“I came up with the name mainly because 87.3 per cent of Australians can’t pronounce Pugh. One of my mates had called me Mal Function once,” he said.
“I could have changed it to Mal Smith or Mal Brown but with Mal Function people start smiling even before I read the poem, which helps.
“If you pick up one of my poems thinking it’s serious, you’re going to be halfway through before you realise you should be smiling.”
Despite packing the tools away in the occupational sense a decade ago, Mal’s craftsmanship has carried on and his backyard is a testament to this fact.
Before moving to Kooweerup five years ago, Mal and his wife, Margery, lived in Moorabbin and his unique humour led to the creation of Bewilderie Home of the Bewildered, which he has lovingly named his backyard construction.
It consists of what Mal calls his pet dogs, which have been carved out of tree stumps, several dummies, one of which he has leaning across his bar and christened Vic Bitter, of which Mal said: “Vic wouldn’t be so bitter if I paid him,” and his flying saucers, which are empty sauce bottles hanging from his outside patio, to name a few.
The setup has been transferred to his new residence and he is continually adding to the collection.
“My uncle called around once and he came up to me at one stage and looked at my face and said, ‘I hope you’re real; I’ve been over talking to that bloke (one of Mal’s dummies) for five minutes’,” Mal laughed.
“Five minutes might be exaggerating, but no doubt he spoke to them and he got no response.”
He does his writing in what he calls the Bull Shed, an enclosure he has developed as a quasicountry pub, complete with batwing saloon doors, Vic Bitter serving drinks at the bar, a piano and a clock with all fives on it because, as Mal said: “We only ever have a drink at five.
“I’m sure the ambience helps with the stuff I write. I mean I couldn’t sit here and write a serious novel,” Mal quipped.
His assortment became so popular that Don Burke, from Burke’s Backyard fame, contacted Mal and ran a story on the garden on his program.
After its appearance, Mal estimates that he had 500 people come through his house in the ensuing months, despite Bewilderie’s private status.
“A few people have asked us why we don’t make it public.
“I tell them we’d have to put car parking in, public toilets and organise all sorts of insurance,” he explained.
“It’s just a private home and if you want to come have a look you can.
“If you ask us first, you’ll be invited guests and you’re automatically covered by public risk.
“Apart from that, if you fall over and hurt yourself properly, I’ll throw you over the fence and deny everything!”
He struggles to define the inspiration for his unusual conceptions but, as with his poetry, it is created with a singular goal in mind.
“I enjoy putting smiles on faces, whether it be family, friends or strangers,” Mal said.
“It gives me a great buzz showing people around the place. Not to be able to say, ‘I made this; I made that’, or anything, but to see them giggle.”
His giggleinducing abilities have even been used for the past two Australia Day functions in Kooweerup and he will return next year.
After graduating from Ferntree Gully State School, Mal had no idea his life would head in the direction it has, and he certainly never thought his poetry would grace an esteemed stage such as Australia Day.
“It was a big honour. There were about 150odd there – all strangers – and most of them didn’t know who I was. I was bloody nervous!” he said.
“We’d just moved in a couple of years before that and I thought, ‘gee, you can’t muck it up here or they’ll be pointing you out in the street!’.”
Despite his acknowledgment of the seriousness of the situation, he still manages to work some Mal Function gear into his Australia Day poems.
“The second year it was all about Kooweerup the township, with a few funny things chucked in, like seeing Tasmania from the tower (on South Gippsland Highway) and things like that,” Mal said.
“It sort of finished off with ‘Kooweerup is the best place in the world’.
“I’m halfway through the next one but I won’t let that one out of the bag yet.”
It has been an unbelievable journey for an individual who did not have a writing background before he began dabbling in poetry 12 years ago, and has no family history of writing.
“My grandfather was a great reader. I remember being told when I was very young that he had read a dictionary, which was about five inches thick,” Mal said.
“He had read the whole thing and no doubt he didn’t remember the whole thing and recite it at family gatherings but that was a big deal to me.”
There is little doubt that his grandfather has had a major influence on his work and the dictionary has become a pivotal tool in his life.
On top of helping him develop the Bewilderie brand, the dictionary has become an intriguing source of inspiration.
“My favourite book to read is the dictionary – apart from the Gazette, of course!
“But occasionally in winter, with the fire going and a beer in one hand, I’ll flop the dictionary open and run my finger down the page and every now and then you get a doozy of a word,” Mal said.
“Sometimes I’ll pull a word out of it and a whole poem comes of it. It might not be about the word, but it will appear in it somewhere. It might just trigger something.”
For now, he is restricted to selfpublishing his poems and performing the odd live show but he is still holding out hope of hitting the big time.
“It’d be good if I was ever discovered.
“Who was the guy that discovered Elvis? He did a good job for him,” Mal joked.