Some things are more obvious than others.

The most obvious is my survival of the cyclone. Maybe it was a severe tropical storm? I'm not 100% sure. I am not a meteoreologist. I can spell it however. If that's any consolation.

After that storm, there was a lot of cleaning up to do. Mud and leaves and rubbish and general mess. It didnt reduce my love of storms, it did however make me a little more thoughtful of the side effects when you see one come through.
Our lives in Hervey Bay didn't continue there for very much longer. We moved on again quickly. Now I'm itching to tell some further stories, but they arent til much later in the tale, so I'll abate for a moment and move on to Victoria. As started in the Desert post.

In Victoria we lived in several places, Most notably they were Merbein, Mildura and Robinvale.
(I'll try and link you to these locations when they come up. Think Desert.)
Robinvale was where we arrived in Victoria, and it was to pick grape's for the Gareffa's. Nice people. Their son Donny took me riding on his 4 wheeler. And I had a young crush on Carmel the daughter. Donny was my age (approx 10) and Carmel was a yr younger. Crushes were a strange thing at that age. It's all about emulation. You have no idea what you would do with a girlfriend, but your parents and movies are all about having a partner so you want one. Even if you don't know why.
I never ever told Carmel I had a crush on her. In fact I don't think we spoke more than a few times. Girls and boys led very seperate lives. This was the 80's and the world was a different place.
We lived in free accomodation (I'm sure it was free) provided by the farm. It was a small shack. For lack of a better word. No more than 30 feet long and 15 feet wide. It consisted of a bathroom with a shower, a bedroom and one other room. This room contained our lounge/dining and kitchen. Not a complicated life, but noisy when the wind blew as it came through holes in the walls. Did I mention corrugated iron? No insulation, no interior. Just one layer of iron. I never realised until this shack that we insulated our walls. Never bothered to notice our houses werent all white on the outside, or all brick on the inside.

So, here we are in our little iron house. Wind whistling through the walls. Occasionaly some rain.
Stand out moments from living here.

• Donny came by to get me one day, and I quickly hid the fruit off the farm we had been eating. He took me for a ride on the bike and stopped and cut me a big bunch of grapes. I asked if we'd get in trouble. He said "No this is a farm, who cares what you eat. You're one person we sell grapes to stores that sell to thousands of people"
• We found a turtle one night down at the creek. Well Paul did. We brought him home and filled one side of the old twin tub washing machine. Tommy the Turtle lived here fine until my mother switched on the machine. Tommy was not spun to death, the water draining into the second half flooded it allowing Tommy to float right over the top and run away. I'd like to think he lived happily, but odds are a turtle in the middle of a farm did not make it far. :(

• My older sister K decided to mix cordial together. Lime and Raspberry. It became a strange murky colour, A deep purple with a hint of black. Like Death's garden in Terry Pratchett's "Mort". She christened this curse to all flavour "Berri Juice" and proceeded to mix it up on regular occasions. This resigned me to mixing up my lime cordial on a "per-glass" basis and foregoing the benefits of premixed and fridge cooled lime goodness :(

I only ever had one friend come to stay in the farm. It was more than a little embaressing to have porous walls. But I got past it. It's another defining moment. My children wouldn't do this. They wouldn't ever feel they werent warm and safe at night. I decided this at 10 yrs of age. Big decisions for a little man.
Money is important to me even now. Not accumulating wealth. Having it. Being able to buy what I need and some of what I want. Being able to buy a badge from people on the street and to drop money in when you see the Salvo's. I always, always give to the salvos. Sometimes twice on the same day. They were there for me.....

We eventually moved out of the shack and into another. This was on a small farm owned by one man. Vincent.
Vincents he called himself. And we could live here for free in the "pink house of death".
It was a whole house, walls, ceiling, floor. (did I mention the shack didnt have a floor?) And it was a nice pink. It just wasnt very well built.
There were gaps where walls should meet. Some rooms had larger holes where 2 walls and the cieling should meet. We quickly stuffed these gaps with newspaper and settled into normal life.
My uncle came to live with us for awhile, which was always exciting.

Outside the house was a cubby house. well built with walls, cieling, floor, windows etc. We lived in it almost. Next to this was a river water tank. Not for drinking, and used for irrigation. (river water tanks are used to get higher water pressure. You pump water from the river uphill to the tank and fill it. Then you can use a second smaller pump to generate water pressure for your farm) And this tank was huge. It would have been 40 feet across and we used to swim in its filthy black watered depths.

I think the other stand out point with this house was the external laundy. Outside the house. In a seperate building. And across a 2 foot wide 5 foot deep Chasm. yes, there was a trench that ran the length of our house, and yard, and as far as I could see. Perhaps the forgotten remnants of some wishful piping project.

The pink house of death was a gorgeous place. After multiple "shacks" and caravans and tractor sheds. It was lovely to be in a definite place.

My uncle brought things along to us that we didn't have before. For starters he bought our family a CD player. This is at a time when they cost thousands, or something. Very expensive. And he overtalked the technology like so many did. "Indestructable" "Lasts forever" and proceeded to stand on one of his new cd's and slide around the footpath on it. Rest assured it never played again.

He also brought along a bird. A cockatoo named Apollo Creed. Apollo lived in the backyard during the day. Tethered to a metal clothesline by a dogs choker chain. It seemed to suit him and he would bark along with the dogs all day. Occasionally he would call out. "Watch.....watch.....FLIP!" and he would leap off the clotheseline.
Sailing through the air until he reached the end of his 3 foot chain. He would stop flapping and drop like a stone. The chain carried him through an arc and as he approached the peak of the other side, a few quick flaps would settle him on the line again.

A few months later my uncle decided to let Apollo off the chain. I'm not sure why. He was the perfect guard.

You see, thepink house of death was at the bottom of a road. And there was nothing else on this road except us. So whenever dust could be seen coming down the road my uncle would yell "INCOMING!" at the top of his lungs. And Apollo soon caught on.

Anyway, back to the chain. Uncle would wake up at 6 and let Apollo out of his room and Apollo would walk and wait at the front gate. Someone would open the gate and the bird walked out and off through the fig trees. He would return sometime after sunset and knock on the door at the back of the house.
One day after months of this, he was followed.
Apollo would walk through the trees and across the property, he then emerged some 800m away behind a service station and would circle it. climb into a birdcage and proceed to greet people for the day. When the service station closed for the day at 5, Apollo would leave after the lights were off and come home.
The owner confirmed for us and said he used to have a cockatoo to greet people, but it died, And Apollo had often come to see it.
How he thought of replacing his friend amazes me. But our bird had a job.

That's most of what happened in the pink house of death with vincents.
Actually it isn't.... I'll revisit this time shortly.

The landlord didnt speak english, I shared a room, and I had no friends. I was clearly not a part of this house. I was only a guest.