“When they told me, ‘You’ve got to have a liver transplant’,” he continues, “I went, ‘okay,’ and Painters and Dockers were booked to play at The Espy and I rang them up and said, ‘Just put it back a week, I’ve just got to have a liver transplant’. I just thought I’d rock up to a room, a doctor would say, ‘Here you go mate, I’ll put one in, swap it over, right off you go,’ and I’d be doing a gig in a week. I actually spent 18 months in and out of the Austin hospital.”
Stewart admits he was definitely one of the lucky ones and along with the other musicians he met who were also lucky enough to receive a donation, felt they needed to try and do something to help increase awareness about the issue. “We all just hung out at the Austin,” he remembers. “We were all waiting to get new livers and then most of us got them and we just formed The Transplants to encourage people to donate their organs because we’re all so grateful to be alive.”
To say it was a life changing experience would be an understatement. Today, Stewart’s life is miles away from the life he once lived. Gone are the drugs and so too the serious drinking. “It’s a cliché to say you’re born again but I had my transplant five years ago and this is all…you know five years that I shouldn’t have had.”
Originally formed for a one-off show, The Transplants have continued on performing as well as continuing to help raise awareness. “We sort of had a similar music base and because we were all musicians we were roped into one first little thing at a pub in Brunswick and that got a really good crowd and then we started getting other offers to do stuff,” Stewart says. There’s also been the occasional guest appearance by other recent well known recipients.
“We’ve done lots of gigs now and last year Darren Hinch joined the band, would you believe, for the day. People say to me, ‘Paulie can he sing at all?’ And I said, ‘Does it fucking matter? Who cares? It’s Darren Hinch, get him on the bill!’”
Despite being a slightly uncomfortable topic, it seems that in this country, awareness about organ donation could certainly do with a boost. “I know that Australia’s got one of the poorest rates of organ donation in the world. Despite the fact that there’s lots of publicity about it, it’s not getting any better,” admits Stewart. “In Australia you have to sign something and say, ‘Yeah I want to donate my organs’. Whereas in some countries in the world you sign a thing saying, ‘I don’t want to donate my organs’. So they reckon a better way to do it is to put everybody on and if you object you can take your name off.”
BY JAMES NICOLI
