History of My Life

This is something I've been meaning to write for many many years, and now that I'm probably permanently unemployed (story for another time) I've finally decided to put some notes down.

It will be an ongoing creation, subject to rewrite, editing, revision, deletions and otherwise modifications for many many months.

So let's start.

Birth

I was born in 1959 at 2 Underwood St Paddington (I tried to find a photo of it but it's now a butt-ugly block of flats). My parents, who were 21 at the time, had lived there with my paternal grandmother ever since they had married, as my paternal grandfather had "disappeared"  soon after returning from World War II service, so I never met him. A little more on that.

I started trying to track him down several years ago and found a few interesting things. He and my grandmother originally came from Balarat in Victoria, and moved to Sydney before my father was born. I managed to uncover the usual voting enrolments with their addresses, as well as my grandfather's military service record, although that is the sum total of what I know about him.

Through some digging and some helpful people, I found him - unfortunately he passed in around 2012-ish on the Central Coast of NSW, having an entirely different family which I don't think anyone in my family ever knew about. That's what "shell shock", now known as PTSD, does to you I guess. I wish I had met him, it could have explained why my own father was such an insufferable and violent asshole.

About 1962, as far as I can ascertain, my parent purchased a property in Sheridan St Granville. My paternal grandmother "lent" them the deposit and then ended up moving in with them and selling the Underwood St property. Because she had allowed them to live with her they felt "obligated" to ask her to move with them, and what a massive mistake that was.

They built an extention on the back of the house for her, but when I was about 4 years old I was accused of going into her bedroom and stealing something (money probably). I knew I didn't do it, but I got punished anyway - and I can remember her backhanding me across the face and calling me a liar. From that day I refused to have anything to do with her, which was a pretty dramatic move for someone so young, but it was fairly traumatic from what I remember.

Early Life

Over the years other kids were added to the brood - my mother had a miscarriage when I was about 5, then had my sister Bev a year later. Then Jane 2 years after that, and Peter another 2 years later. All I really remember of that time is my father was a complete asshole to me, and my brother was quite ill for a while (he's OK now).

One thing my father did was force me to play Rugby League - and I absolutely hated it with a passion, in fact I hated almost all sports, not that I was allowed to try any that my father didn't "approve" of.. But as much as I tried to tell him that, at around 7 years old, he just wouldn't listen. He used to say, "Of course you want to play it," and ignore my requests or get really angry about it, hence my propensity to fly off the handle and say things like "don't you dare fucking tell me what I want or don't want". So I used to leave training early and go to a mate's place. When he found out years later, boy, didn't I cop a beating from him about it.

I wasn't into sports at all - partially because I was overweight (completely crap diet in those days) and partly because I just didn't like it. I was more into reading, music, science, and electronics - in short, I was a complete geek.

We moved to Winston Hills, a (then) newly developed subdivision north of Parramatta, NSW, in 1967 to a 1/4 acre block and a new 4 bedroom house - of course, the kids had to share because the old battleaxe was still living with us. I remember that they paid for the house and land, $13,000 at the time, from AGL (where my father worked). I don't know if it was a special deal for staff, but I remember seeing a loan document for $200 at the time, so wages couldn't have been all that great.

Kids these days have it pretty easy, I walked to Primary School about 2klm each way, and when I hit High School, that doubled to 4klm each way - and we didn't think anything of it. Not like kids these days - "Oh, I need to go 1k to the shops, can you drive me"... pussies..

Or we could catch a bus, which at the time was 0.02c one way - I know it sounds pretty unbelievable, but that's what 0.02c got you in those days. Of course, the NSW Government brought in school bus passes, so they were essentially free.

Bullying

To say I hated school was a massive understatement. Primary school was, from memory, almost bearable, except for one or two bullies, but High School is where it got unbelievably bad. Keep in mind, I wasn't athletic by any stretch of the imagination, I think at my heaviest, I got up to about 130kg or slightly more, which, for a kid of my age and size, was pretty bad.

I started doing Karate/Judo for fitness and weight loss, which only put a target on my back. I'd get kicked, pushed down the stairs, have my schoolbag thrown out the second-floor window, ambushed after school and beaten up - mainly because I wouldn't take part in the assinine stupidity that other kids were into - drugs, stealing, smoking, sex (yes, at that age !!), and lots of other things that I won't mention.

We had that one school bully that everyone was afraid of, it seemed, and who couldn't fight without his mates backing him up, and at Northmead High, it was Ussi Tilika (spelling probably wrong), and he was a complete asshole. I avoided him and his "boyfriends" because it just seemed safer.

One day I see this twat with one hand around a friend's throat, punching him in the face and bouncing his head off the toilet block textured concrete wall. I lost it, I rabbit punched him, threw him off my mate, and tried to get him to the school nurse, it looked like he was bleeding from the ear which is a pretty sure sign of brain damage.

This asshole jumped me and started wailing on me, and I completely snapped. You know the expression "I saw red" ?  Well, I did. It was like looking through a red filter - I knocked him to the ground and started pounding on his face and bouncing his head off the ground, and I LIKED it !!  I couldn't stop!  If it were not for the fact that 4 of his mates pulled me off and a teacher arrived, I am convinced I would have killed him.

The fallout was interesting - I had my parents called and was sent home, suspended for a few days for fighting, while he was taken to hospital.  I only had bruised knuckles, but he had two black eyes, two missing teeth and a broken nose. His father, probably quite rightly, wanted the Police involved.

I said, "Yes, call them. I'd love all my witnesses to tell them what really happened, how your son was brutally beating another student, how I stepped in to save him". His father turned to him and asked, "Is that true?" and when he said yes, he was backhanded out of the chair. His father apologised to me, and they left. He was never seen at that school again.

Did that stop the bullying?  To a certain extent, they were more circumspect about when they did it and made sure there were no witnesses. There was one other instance where a guy named Peter Bowman stabbed me in the ass with a pair of compasses in Tech Drawing class - although it backfired. I jumped up off my stool, reflexively snapped my left arm back and my elbow connected with his nose, and sent him across two rows of desks and out cold. Funny, never touched me again.

Life in general

After we moved to Winston Hills, my father still tried to get me into sport, even getting himself elected Manager of the Blacktown Football Juniors and signing me up for the team (again, without asking me), which I hated. His threat if I didn't go (and I know now how empty it was) was to say he would send me to the old Westmead Boys Home (now UWS I believe) for 6 months to "teach you some respect". He was so aggressive and intimidating I truly believed he would do it.

After training the fathers would go to the pub ("Comb and Cutter" I think it was called in those days, I think now it's "Blacktown Tavern"). He'd buy me a schooner of lemon squash and a big bag of chips and leave me in the car for several hours, where I'd amuse myself by rewiring his electrical system - horn sounding when indicators went on, that sort of thing.

Most nights, he was completely and utterly pissed and still drove us home - how we didn't die in an accident, I have no idea

If I rode my bike to school (the bike that my father wanted me to have and didn't ask me, not the one I wanted), they'd spit all over the seats, slash the tyres and I even had it disassembled once and strewn all over the school.

I started going to CEBS (Church of England Boy's Society - sort of like Boy Scouts) at the local church, St Thomas at Northmead, and you can imagine the beatings I got when the bullies found out about that.

Through that group, I made some good friends, and the leaders (Ian Gleadall, his brother Peter, and Clive Arkley) became almost like my own family. Peter was to die of cancer before I turned 18, which, to be honest, almost destroyed me - he was like my own brother to me and someone I could always turn to if I needed help. His brother Ian lives in Queensland, and I lost touch with Clive not long after leaving school.

At the time, I was a crap student in anything that didn't interest me, and all I was interested in was music and science. I wanted to study music more in-depth, but my parents refused to allow me to change subjects, giving me the usual "Nah, you don't want to do that" which seemed to justify their crap actions every time.  I played trumpet in the school band, which they hated, but I still can't read a note of music - something that has to do with having an almost perfect pitch. I play guitar completely by ear (like Tommy Emmanuel, but not quite as good)

The only thing I really wanted to do was become a Pilot - I started doing all the ground school study in my own time and working a paper route to pay for the lessons - the only problem was that I had to ask my father to drive me to Bankstown Airport, where I would fly and stay in an onsite caravan for the weekend, and then pick me up Sunday afternoon -. Still, he wouldn't even do that, and, at the time, there was no public transport. So that was ended.

Back at school, we had "work experience" for two weeks, where you'd find a store or company that was willing to take you on for two weeks of unpaid work - I worked at the local Tandy Electronics store (a.k.a. Radio Shack) and I loved it. The store manager got caught stealing and was sacked, and the regional manager asked me to take over - not temporarily, but as the permanent Manager. I was managing a store just before my 17th birthday !!  Finally I could earn my own money and pay for my Flying.

I went home and told the parents, and Mum was happy, but my father said, "Great, but you'll be quitting in a few weeks to return to school". I said, "No, I'm not going back", and then we had "The Discussion" - the outcome of which was "Go back to school or there's the front door". So I went back to school for 2 years, sat on my ass and did absolutely nothing at all. In hindsight, the front door would have been a far better choice.

Skip forward several years, and I went to University and came out with a Law Degree and a Political Science Degree; neither of them have been much use to me; I just wanted to wave them under my father's nose and see his reaction.

Ultimately, I think I figured him out - because he grew up missing many opportunities, and without a father, he wanted me to do all the things that he never had a chance to do, whether I wanted to or not. And THAT was the issue. He was forcing me to live his life, not my own.

<to be continued>