Men’s club members don’t want ‘sheilas giving them sh-t’

Amid chatter their single sex status could soon be be a thing of the past, some male members say they just want a place free of ‘sheilas giving them sh-t’.

Tales from inside the secret men-only clubs reveal some men don’t want admit women to escape “sheilas giving them sh*t”.

Guttural noises to a savage beating of chests during a member’s initiation dinner. Deals done over late-lunch cognacs behind club doors.

The great and the good celebrating the wins and drowning the losses in the easy chairs, away from the disapproving eye of the missus.

Jolly tales of what happens inside the secret men-only clubs have again crept out this week.

Elite Sydney establishment, the Australian Club, voted a deep-throated no, no, no when put to the ballot on Tuesday to allow female members.

So, what of Melbourne’s men-only clubs? There are more here than in Sydney. After all, in Sydney you are judged by where you live, but in Melbourne it’s where you went to school and boys are brought up to be men.

In shock news to absolutely no one, there is no, repeat, no move, to allow women as members to men-only clubs like the Athenaeum, the Melbourne club, the Australian Club and the Melbourne Savage.

Caught after a long lunch, one member of the Australian Club (“by God don’t you dare tell anyone I’m talking to yooooou”) let slip there were rumblings that president Michael Bartlett might move a motion to admit female members.

Maybe not!

“If so, he will get handed his head,” was a member’s response.

But a call to the Australian Club (similar attitudes to Sydney’s Australian Club) could have you thinking you’ve rung one of the spy agencies: ASIO or perhaps Pine Gap.

After a simple request to speak with President Bartlett (not the one from West Wing, but the former stockbroker and chair of Melbourne Grammar), the female receptionist was tongue tied.

“I cannot confirm if Michael Bartlett is president. I cannot confirm if he is a member.”

Can you confirm anything or can I speak to anyone? “No.”

Some members claim their wives won’t let them go if women are admitted to their clubs.

Calls to other clubs were met with the same wall of silence, although the concierge at the Athenaeum did have a prepared statement when asked about the likelihood of the club opening its doors to female members: “Unfortunately we can’t comment at this time.”

Savage Club president Simon Hanger was more direct.

“No,” he said when asked if having women voters was even a consideration.

“There hasn’t been any discussion about any of that.”

High-profile business leader Geoff Cousins, who quit Sydney’s Australian Club this week after members of that august institution voted against allowing women, said a no-female policy boiled down to men not wanting to change their behaviour at lunch.

A somewhat indiscreet member at the Melbourne Club simply said it’s because the blokes are sick of mixing with the sheilas.

“I’ll tell you why,” he told Page 13 in what can only be described as after-lunch blokespeak:

“They have sheilas up their wazoo at work and they don’t like it. They just want some place they can go where there are no sheilas giving them shit.”

Poor diddums.

“Secondly the wives let them go there because they are just getting pissed at the bar with a bunch of men.

“As someone said to me recently, ‘I don’t want sheilas here, I won’t be able to come here if there are sheilas. There will be rooting, the whole thing will fall to pieces. The clubs have bedrooms for Christ sake, people will hook up there.’ ”

We will stop there. But God save members from the temptation of women in their midst.

Another member said women complaining about being excluded from “the so-called networking thing is overstated”.

One loose-lipped member claimed the men had “sheilas up the wazoo at work” and wanted to get away from women.

Also speaking after lunch, he said members have shifted clubs to get away from blokes out to network and press the flesh.

“The members who are there to network and do that shit, people avoid them like the plague. If a member is in there because he’s on the make, it’s just a bad look. Mainly it’s guys getting shit-faced and having a few laughs.”

Former Savage Club member and human rights QC, Julian Burnside, quit the club in 2019 because of its single-sex stance.

He said if women’s clubs such as the Lyceum or the Alexandra Club (affectionately known as the snake pit) accepted men, it would make it difficult for the male clubs not to follow suit.

Pin-striped, of course!

“Everything changes eventually,” Burnside told a doubtful Page 13.

“I think the real difficulty will happen with the women-only clubs, if they change. I think the pressure on the men-only clubs will increase.”

The prominent lawyer said he was shocked at some of the conservative views towards women held by some men-only club members.

“It shocked me quite a lot in the past to recognise that there were some very, very conservative people who were members of these clubs and the Savage Club is arguably the least conservative of all these men-only clubs.

“I don’t understand that ultraconservative way of thinking and I wouldn’t want to try and guess what they were thinking.”

Up at the Savage Club in Bank Place, a three-storey mansion with basement, once said to be occupied by the mistress of 19th century baronet Sir Rupert Clarke, the mood is jolly rather than snooty.

The occasional chest beating is said to come from the belief among outsiders that the club prides itself on its members acting like savages.

No, no, no. The club is named after 18th century English poet Richard Savage, although old club dinner menus often depicted black men with bones through their noses dancing around cooking pots.

The club’s splendid third-floor dining room is fanned by swaying Indian punkahs in summer, but electrically driven rather than by some dozing Indian punkah wallah pulling on a rope.

Other such colonial connections can be traced to the Melbourne and Alexandra clubs, where the gentlemen stayed at the Melbourne Club and their wives down Collins St at the Alexandra Club.