Bac Fu Do Kung Fu. Since 1969.
Back in the day it was written Pai Hu Tao.
Both ways it means White Tiger Kung Fu. And it means David Crook.
David Crook introduced me to martial arts and, in particular, Kung Fu, in 1977. I did not spend more than eighteen months with him, but he set me on a warrior’s path, and his example and attitudes were a significant influence on the rest of my career in the martial arts.
As a teenager I was not sporty. I was a nerd who did gymnastics and surfed. I saw Hong Kong movies called The Chinese Boxer and Five Fingers of Death and found these intriguing. I trained gymnastics at the YMCA in Pitt Street in Sydney, and John Taylor started a Kyokushin dojo there, in, I think, the early 1970’s. While practicing gymnastics I overheard the screamed kiai of karateka sparring in a room upstairs.
After university, I was offered a job working in the Commonwealth Department of Administrative Services in Canberra, working in IT. “Uneventful” was a pretty good description of life as a single person in Canberra in those times, though the job was working out, and the money was quite good, as I was doing a fair bit of overtime preparing the computer system for the 1977 Federal Election.
One of the more jocular and gregarious members of the department had arranged for this guy who worked in another section, and on a different floor, of the CAGA Centre building to run a few introductory Kung Fu sessions in Glebe Park, which was right across the road.
This was David Crook. He had neither the mesomorphic Marvel Comics superhero’s build nor the Zen Master’s transcendent demeanor, that I might have expected from a high ranking martial artist. His appearance was quite innocuous, his manner down to earth but with an undertone of deep confidence. But I soon found out he could deliver the goods … and how.
Maybe eight of us went to the park for a few weeks, decked out in various types of seventies vintage trackie dacks and the like. David charged us a dollar each per session. After a few weeks the numbers had dwindled to me and a couple of other guys, one of whom was already training in a traditional jiu jitsu system.
David’s style of teaching did require your full attention, a level of effort, and some occasional pain – one of the maxims he quoted and followed was ” a good boxer is stung frequently and hurt occasionally” – and he’d occasionally sink in a shot to the solar plexus, or a momentarily agonizing pinch attack to a “nerve point” (a skill at which he has few peers) while demonstrating techniques. He’d also unceremoniously throw the occasional sneaky backfist or hook kick at you when you met outside of training situations to gauge your awareness level. I saw and felt him deliver transient moments of agony in the search for higher martial consciousness. A fellow student conjectured that he might have had a need to occasionally inflict pain. However – and this is important – I never saw him injure a student.
I met a couple of his other students, Bill McCasker and Michael Quinn, on a couple of occasions. After a while, I was invited to train with David and Bill at Bill’s house. The arrangement was that Bill would provide the venue, David the tuition, and I would bring two large bottles of beer. We’d train for an hour, or hour and a half, and then listen to David tell Kung Fu stories for another hour or thereabouts while drinking the beer.
This was magical. I felt like a sorcerer’s apprentice.
I decided to get fit for Kung Fu. I stopped smoking and took up a running program. A guy in my section was a fairly keen runner, so I went out on some weekends with him and one of his mates. We ran twelve miles up to and around the Mount Stromlo Observatory once, through that State Forest. I was totally wasted for the rest of that day. We did a few long runs down near the Cotter River, and places of similar ilk. I got fit and lean,
Canberra is a beautiful city. There were running tracks around Woden Valley where I lived, where I could be running through apparent and gorgeous wilderness less than half a kilometer from my flat.
The Public Service had a regular lunchtime run around the Lake and Commonwealth Park, the Bridge to Bridge route, which I’d enter with some of my colleagues. My personal best was a shade under seventeen minutes, which was pretty good for a recreational jogger. You’d see the occasional serious athlete weave through the rest of the crowd like a Formula 1 race car through a pack of Honda Civics, so I didn’t get too impressed with myself.
I also found some pretty, though usually deserted, places in the Canberra parklands where I could practice my Kung Fu forms. I still practice David’s forms to this day, and I still like to practice them outdoors, and in solitude. There are some netball courts at a park near where I live which are perfect.
After a while, David told me I had no need to pay him for tuition anymore.
My favorite forms of his remain:
- San Chien / Sam Ching, Three Strengths, which has similarities to karate’s Sanchin kata
- An Lung / Huh Loong, Dark Dragon or Secretive Dragon, a complex and beautiful form with a mix of straight and circular techniques and kicks
David taught me all his forms up to Red Sash / instructor level. Once I told him I would be leaving Canberra, he went out of his way to step up his instruction to ensure that I had learned all the forms.
After I left Canberra for Sydney, it took me quite a while, with a few weird twists and turns along the way, to find someone who I regarded as a good instructor. David gave me a few ideas to pursue, but for various reasons none of them panned out. I trained with Michael Quinn for a while – he was in Sydney with the Army – but he was reassigned to Queensland about 18 months later. David visited Sydney occasionally for work and would do his best to hook up with us for training when he did.
I attended several Camp Davids, a camp which David ran annually for a decade or more in rural locations near Canberra. Local and interstate martial artists of all styles and organisations were invited for a weekend of training, information sharing, and friendship. I met karate guys, Taiji guys, even saw a bit of Systema at these events. All good.
In those days there was no Google, Youtube, or Facebook and Yelp reviews to find martial arts instruction. It was magazines, the Yellow Pages, and word of mouth. My bar for instructional competence had been set very high by David, and thus I found a good instructor difficult to come by.
Eventually, though, I came across Rick Spain, and my real education in the martial arts finally recommenced. After more than two decades with him, I reached Red Sash level, the highest grade in his system. Rick also introduced me to John Will and Anthony Lange, and from these three gentlemen I studied Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, an art in which I was recently awarded a Black Belt second degree.
I was pleased that I was able to arrange a pleasant meeting between Rick and David over dinner one evening. A while ago.
I have had some wonderful experiences, met a wide variety of highly intelligent and creative humans, many of whom remain friends, and found a life with purpose and heart through martial arts.
David set me on this path and showed me its possibilities. His generosity towards me was amazing. I still cannot believe how lucky I was and how well he treated me as a student.
His rejection of the potential pitfalls of high rank and competence were admirable. He worked a regular job until retirement, and was a fine husband, father, and provider to his family, while pursuing and achieving martial arts excellence.
He is highly skilled in all aspects of combat and self defence, including firearms, blades, cudgels and traditional weapons as well as a well rounded empty hand arsenal, including grappling and groundfighting. I had my first groundfighting lesson from David in 1977.
David did not seek fame and fortune on the world stage, though his skills and contributions were impossible to ignore.
He sought to build bridges with other martial arts and martial artists, where many would stay in their silos and bubbles. He went out of his way to assist students and fellow martial artists regularly. He saw other martial artists as potential friends and collaborators rather than competitors.
Sifu David Crook, my friends. A consummate martial artist and a great bloke.