Home again........

This was to be the last of the big moves. We were living in Victoria at this point. In a mobile home. We had been here not long ago to visit my uncle and his young bride. And now suddenly we were living here. the mobile home was our home.

I remember now the day we arrived here. To see my uncle. It had been months since i'd seen him. Months since he had arrived given us a watch and a backpack between us and then departed again. He was sitting on the chair when we arrived. It wasn't "a" chair. it was definitely "the chair" and he was playing nintendo. Super mario bros 2 I remember. Watching princess peach pull the vegetables out of the ground and throw them at evil koopas.

He also had a bird on his shoulder, a pink galah aptly named Apollo. You may realise this was not the first bird to be named Apollo. it seemed to be a family tradition.

So we meet him once again and his wife and we see the nintendo, the light gun, the sega and an awful carrot cake. I was made to try some against my better wishes and it was a poor decision. I'm sure that cake was a punishment for something.

And that's all of that meeting I recall.

We lived here for a few months before returning to Queensland. We even had a xmas. My sister and I both received a VHS copy of TMNT, and 2 of the turtles each. So between us a full set. I know i had Leonardo and Michelangelo, only because I remember which ones my sister had. I also had splinter and she received shredder. These videotapes stood out because they were green. The TMNT phemonenon was in full swing. I also received a remote control truck that xmas. It was reduced to clear for being faulty, but Paul fixed it. So I now had a very expensive remote control 4x4 truck. And could finally impress other kids with something I owned rather than knew.

The trip to Queensland came out of nowhere again, I don't recall it at all. I do remember visiting my Aunt again and then suddenly we were living with them. A few key points stand out here before i started school.

• We visited the local supermarket, and i had never seen a "pick and pay" section before. hundreds of tubs of lollies, spices, ingredients, many things you could pile into bags and pay for by the kilo. No more needing $3.20 for a bag of lollies, just buy as many as you can afford. (i always wondered why bay leaves were so expensive, it's because they don't weigh much folks. You can get a LOT of Bay leaves for a kg, hence the $76 price)
• This was my first celebrated Haloween. We went trick or treating and the only thing we got were Muesli Bars and a Ferrero Rocher each. I didn't like the look of it so handed it over to my cousin. And to this day still haven't tried one.
• It was exciting to be living near the beach again. It was nothing compared to the white sands of bowen, the giant basalt cliffs or the deep rock pools. But the water was so close and there was a salt smell in the air.
• We had a paper route together. All of us kids. Each Tuesday we would deliver the local newspaper from 6am. It paid $30 a week. And $10 a week for each set of pamphlets. Pamphlets generally came in sets of 6, so we made around $100 each week. Between us, $25 a head. not bad money for 11 and 12.

Then I started school. Right around the corner. It was an exciting time as primary school was coming to an end, for the second time. This is where I think I did the first heart breaking. We all break hearts and here was where i did mine. It was a school dance, and you came in costume. I was a space man. I had a silver jacket, silver gloves, a rocket pack and silver pants. All of this had been normal clothes spraypainted by Paul. So you can imagine how itchy it was.........and rubber gloves all night? not a good idea.

So here I am sweating and itching in my silver space suit. And Danielle asks me to dance a few times. I say no. I'm a young boy, I don't dance for anyone. A few boys did, but most of us did not, stood around drinking cordial and talking.

All of a sudden Danielle leaves crying. Now I can't be entirely sure if I did start to dance with one of the twins, or if it simply got to the point where she had enough. But she left crying and days later i find out this is because of me. She wanted to dance with me more than anything, and i couldnt do it. I was too scared. So she left, upset.

This was an important lesson. I did nothing. Therefore I couldn't have done anything wrong, yet I hurt someone without intending to. How does this world work. I didn't know how she felt, but apparently I should have.

To complete the Danielle story........ I obviously lost contact with her over the years, but we started talking again not long after high school finished. She sent me a formal photo which I still have in a photo album. She was beautiful. Stunningly gorgeous. And she was so very friendly to me. I did nothing to deserve such an angel, and I hope she found someone to treat her as she deserved to be. She deserved a permanent love.

And I was only a guest.

Sometimes we imagine it, and sometimes we don't

I'm talking about pain. Internal, emotional pain, and physical pain.
let's clarify something I was hoping I wouldn't have to say.
Paul. as many great stories as we have. The memories of playing in the pool, making monster movies, fake FBI badges, Zuchini dragons and ski-ing prawns, he was a monster.
There are so many other untold stories of nights drinking, empty bottles of beer and Ouzo. Screaming and shouting, fighting, punching, hair pulling, crying, falling, pain.

The things shown in movies, the horrors of drunken abusive families. And I could do nothing. I was small weak, unable to defend my mother from being hurt.
This was pain, real pain of both kinds. Burning striking pain of being knocked down for nothing more than going to bed. When told to.

And the emotional searing pain of being mocked, tormented and teased.
He was an alcoholic, a violent man, and possibly a sociopath. It was not a good time in life. But like many people we stayed. There was seemingly no other choice, and it's not to be dwelled on. I am not defined by these awful memories. I am strengthened by them.

My courage, my desire to love, to look after those around me grew from those moments.
He was not a man. He was an adult, and he should have been ashamed of it all. But he wasn't, he was probably unaware he had done anything wrong. And for that I should hate him. I should despise all he stood for and the fact that he existed. But I don't.
I don't give him thought. He does not deserve it.

Earlier in life, you've heard about us leaving David. My mother's husband. The man I though was my father. This was not easy. I hated him. I was angry. My father left me. I knew he wasn't, but I thought he was, and he wasn't around anymore. Did he miss me? Did he know I wasn't there.
At this point I didn't think about my real father, not a thought. He was gone for now, never to return.
A few more years later, My little sister left us to go and live with her father. David. And things were never the same again. I was forgotten. Lost and alone.

Isolated from my family for my intelligence, my father had left me, my new father hurt us. We moved so often I had no friends, my sister made my life miserable.
But I smiled. I was alive.
At a young age, little things mattered, life was full of plans and hopes. I would become something and someone. I would not be these people. I would not repeat the mistakes of the father.
I didn't want to be superman at this point. I wanted to be a man. But I was only a guest.

Times are skewed......

There are many smaller incidental memories that carry on from here until the next major chapter of my life.
let's visit a few of them before we arrive back in Queensland. This was the end of Primary School. The start of High School. Scary times ahead and the playing field would change.

Memories.....lonely ones. I'm not lonely, theyt just sit by themselves for the moment. Maybe the rest of the life that surrounds them will be found later.

• We lived in a small house with prickly pears behind it. Fields full of them. We would go out in the afternoon with a tennis racquet and hit rocks through them. Occasionally we would hit rocks up into the air. I have no idea what was originally supposed to be around this specific house, but it was away from the world and there was nothing within any kind of distance of us.
• I lived in a cupboard. Literally.
• I guess the cupboard needs some explanation, we had moved into a 1 bedroom house, and my mother and Paul decided my sister and I would share the room and they would use the loungeroom as a bedroom. After all who would come knocking in the middle of nowhere?
  Unfortunately as luck would have it, my sister did NOT wish to share, and convinced my mother that she should have her own room. And it was agreed. Where I would sleep had not yet been decided. And then genius struck them. I would live in the linen cupboard. Now don't be confused about my residence. It was a cupboard by any description. I slept on a hammock they had built and I had 2 shelves for my stuff. I could even close my door as i had a light and all.
  My shelves contained a collection of plastic soldiers only 1cm tall. And an Atari 2600 and about 50 games. This may seem a lot, but this is what poor people spend money on. Friends, relatives, and second hand shops had supplied us with MANY games at a very low cost. ( I beleive about 30 of them came from Telelist in one spectacular $12 purchase). Have I mentioned I didnt own a tv?
• We lived in a tractor shed. One end of it was sealed off into a 2 room 1 bedroom flat. Don't mistake this as a house next to the shed, it was very clearly the end of the shed sealed off. When living here I learned to light fires. No, I wasn't an arsonist. It was my job to light the donkey.
• I also learned to love watermelon. There is a life long love affair between me and watermelon. I used to buy them enormous, Large. MASSIVE. 12-18kg of watermelon. Which I'm sure I've mentioned already in the blog.
• Then we all moved to Queensland, once again to be near a relative, my mother seemed to grow lonely from time to time. So we followed my Aunt again, a few months behind.

If it mattered. If my life impacted here. it didn't feel like it did. I was only a guest.

Pink death and the Monster

The monster is entirely unrelated to the pink death. But it did take place at the house.
I don't recall where exactly but we got our hands on a video camera.
It was small and portable and for a family without much it was an incredible prize. At first we bought some tapes and filmed us. Saying hi, waving at the camera. Everyone loves seeing themselves on tv, especially when you haven't been seen before.

A mirror is only instant, immediate.
To be able to see yourself move while you're in a different pose is why we watch ourselves on camera. It's the little voyeur inside. Watch myself, see what I do. Oh my is that how people see me. Wow, my hair sticks up at the back. I walk funny.

And then a master production was born.
It would be filmed entirely in one afternoon and I was to play 2 different parts. A Navy Commander with great authority and a lone Ninja who would fight evil. Filming went off without a hitch.
I walked onto camera in white pants and shirt, huge army boots on and a Navy hat. I spouted some entirely forgettable line and for an as yet unknown reason I kicked the door in on the cubbyhouse. Well that was the half baked plan. In actual effect my foot slowly, very slowly prised itself from the mud taking a large chunk with it. It hit the door with a wet thud and the mud instantly bonded. Next thing saw little Kal falling backwards into the mud and the camera making a sudden pan left.
Next scene is where the eventual title came from. I don't know why (the plot wasn't well planned) but I was to play a poor;y dubbed ninja and rescue my sister from the tank. She had fallen in the water for some reason. The scene went without a hitch until Paul emerged from the tank with welders goggles on and a pink rubber glove stretched over his head. Imagine a surreal cross between a tattoo-ed rooster and riddick.
Paul burst forth from the water complely unexpectedly, pushing me out of the way and diving onto my sisters foot. As he wrapped his mouth around her foot, he spat out the mouth full of tomato sauce he'd been hiding.
It was simultaneously terrifying and hilarious. It looked brilliant on film, and we never could have acted as effectively as we were thrown into shock.
The brilliant masterpiece was christened "Tank Monster" and we even re-filmed some of the earlier scenes to make it clear that defeat of the tank monster was our ultimate goal.

The tape was unfortunately lost in the great land cruiser migration several years later.

One of the other major highlights of life in Victoria was our video shop.
My uncle made friends with a Doctor, who for some reason or another loaned our family the money to open a video shop. Now this was a big deal. There were no videoshops in the entire of Robinvale at this time.
Many takeaway shops had a small selection of movies available for hire, and these were rotated once every 6 weeks or so. Ours was to be a whole store devoted to movies. And this was before computers were really feasible, in fact the PC wasn't even in existence in my world. Computers lived in movies.

We made a trip to Melbourne to buy stock. We didn't even plan in advance, just walked into some video wholesaler and Paul said we need some videos and you're going to help us find them. The man was a little short, and then Paul showed him a cheque for $32,000 and said we needed to spend it.
Things changed. People were brought to help us, we pushed trolleys around the store and filled them up. I purchased all the kids movies and helped pick the action ones. And they had stickers for us. We decided on a simple pricing structure. $4 overnight for new movies, and $2 a week after that. Really old movies were $1 a week.
This was a revolution at the time, Video shops in Bowen and other towns we'd been in charged $8 to $12 for a new release.
We wanted them to be for everyone.
Loaded down with movies in our broken transit van. We headed home. Over the next few weeks, cards were printed, cheap home-made shelves were painted and the shop was leased.
Everything seemed to be sailing smoothly until the day before we opened.
An angry greek woman came banging on the shop door. Her name was Toula and she ran the fish and chip shop around the corner. We couldn't open this store. Not allowed.
This was all the information we could get, my mother tried to talk to her and got some more information regarding her sister (who ran the shop next door). By an unexplained twist of fate, Toula's sister was english. And blonde.
She explained that Toula and her had a deal with the landlord, they couldnt sell the same things.
This prevented any price cuts and fighting.

Our Video store would have broken the agreement. Except we werent in it. It was only between Toula and her sister. So the big opening went ahead.
Customers would come in and show their license to get a video card. We would write their details in a book, along with the number on their card And the movies were written in another book. ( Each movie had a numbered sticker and we kept them out the back. The empty cases were easier to store and less likely to be stolen)

The primary downside seemed to be the manual paper method of writing the movies down and the locals lack of willingness to return them. The average movie stayed out for 4 days. And occasionally one would stay out for months. Each person you asked for the film would claim it had been lent to a cousin or a brother. Which meant half the town saw it for $4.

The two movies I recall in the video store above all others were ”The Lady in White” and Bill Murray in “Scrooged” I waited 4 weeks for scrooged to arrive. And when it did, I watched it twice before I let it go to any of the customers who had it booked.

In the end the store closed down, this was after we had moved to Queensland again and then back. I’ll always remember “BB Video” The shop named after a cockatoo who had been to war.

The next piece of desert life is a little more close to home. Not that the rest has been specifically vague ;)

We still lived in Victoria at this stage, except we now lived in a mobile home. It was a nice step up from where we had been and it was cosy. It was on a property belonging to the parent’s of my Uncle’s new wife. She was only 19 and he was in his late 30’s. At the time it seemed odd to me, and today……….well I still don’t think it seems entirely right.

Life on the farm was good, and mum and Paul saved money so I could go on year 7 camp. The end of school and the start of another. Actually it would have been year 6 camp. High School starts earlier in Victoria.
So, the big trip to Adelaide was prepared and we boarded the bus.
It was an amazing 7 days and I spent half of my allotted $40 on the first day buying a film for my camera. I didn’t imagine anything like this happening again, and wanted to remember it always.
We stayed in a scout camp in the hills outside Adelaide, and every day we got on the bus to visit a location. Everything from the zoo, the Berri Foods factory, down to the World’s largest Rocking Horse. And to think, I was there almost 20 years ago, It looks just like I recall.
The next big event on the trip was the Adelaide Grand Prix. We got to and walk around the track and even saw a real ferrari. Then they brought out the "stunt" car for the year. It was a backhoe with an enormous engine that shot flames out the side. We watched it play for 15 minutes and then we were given the chequered flag to keep. A long drive back to the scout camp followed.

The highlight of my trip though was Cassie. She was a girl from Queensland so we had something in common and spent most of the week yelling ridiculous things like “Everyone from Queensland run!” and rushing off ahead. I held her hand several times, including for the whole hour drive back from an observatory and finally on the last day I asked if she’d be my girlfriend. Unfortunately no. She wasn’t interested in me like that. It was the excitement of the trip, I understood didn’t I.
At the time I didn’t. I was heartbroken.
Neither she nor I was from here.

Our stay wouldn’t be permanent. I was only a guest.