Mum and Reg moved again, back to another part of Elizabeth. They were working their way around every part of the place. This time they moved to Elizabeth South. It was hard to get to my school in the west from there. I was beginning to get in trouble at that school anyway. So it was time to change again and rather than go too far I moved to Elizabeth High School, the roughest school in the area – and that was saying something.
Our home in Elizabeth South was another housing trust house that looked the same as every other housing trust house. It was in an older part of the town, so there were a few more trees, but it was not a lot different from anywhere else. Still, it was only a short walk from the town centre, which meant I could get into more trouble if I wanted, and I often did.
It was the start of term three in Year 9 by the time I went to my new school and it wasn’t long before I found new friends. These friends weren’t like the guys I knew at Le Fevre, or even at Elizabeth West High. They didn’t do any work at all. All they did was create havoc and cause the teachers grief. The school looked like something from a bad movie. It seemed every kid there was from a broken, dysfunctional home, and all the problems they had at home made study impossible. These kids were hooligans. By the time I moved there, so was I. My studious days were over. It didn’t help that this new school was co-ed like the last one, so I was completely distracted by girls again. We spent most of our day trying to impress the chicks – if we weren’t terrorising teachers or other students.
We must have looked like extras from Blackboard Jungle. We all wore leather jackets and did whatever we wanted. Some of the teachers were quite young, on their first posting. They weren’t ready for what they had to face when they came across us. They would be enthusiastically teaching us English and our gang would be sitting with our chairs tilted against the back wall of the class, showing no interest whatsoever. When they thought they were doing really well we would get up and walk to the fire escape near the front of the class and kick it open, walk out onto the oval and lie down and smoke cigarettes or pierce each other’s ears with needles.
There were big fights in the schoolyard too. I soon found out that at Elizabeth High things were different. Everyone was much more vicious than I remembered and I had to sharpen my fighting skills very quickly to survive. The guys in this area didn’t think twice about stabbing people or kicking them half to death. In fact, they thought it was funny and did it as entertainment. I wasn’t like this, but I had to find a way to make them think that I was, before I was found out and became one of their victims.
I learned something in that school that served me well: a barking dog doesn’t bite. In other words, the guy who seems the scariest, with the biggest mouth, isn’t always the best fighter. If he talked about fighting too much, he probably wasn’t that good at it. So I would always wait until the biggest, ugliest bloke pushed me around a little or mouthed off trying to impress the other guys and then I’d turn on him and give him a hiding. It was simple.
‘Hey, you, I’m going to bash your fucking head in, mate!’
Bang! Before he had even finished the sentence I would be tearing into him, hitting him with everything I had. Everybody thought I was fearless but in fact it was the opposite – I was terrified. Pretty soon I was accepted into the gangs with the toughest kids in the area. I had them all bluffed. They thought I was an animal just like them so they would never push me. I could fight if I was cornered, but my heart wasn’t in it.
Some of the teachers were very nice, like the English teacher we drove to the brink of a nervous breakdown. She was just a young woman trying to make a difference to some kids’ lives. ‘Today we will be reading poetry from . . .’
Smash! Down went the fire escape again and four or five of us would walk out of the class onto the lawn and lie back in the sun. After a month with us I think she quit teaching. She probably never went back to it. Looking back on those days I feel ashamed of my behaviour, although I was one of the nicer students at the school. Some students beat up the teachers and the strangest thing was no one ever seemed to get expelled or even reprimanded. The school was just a place where we could gather and do whatever we liked. A meeting place for the gang.
I think it was only there to get us out of our parents’ hair. In the few months I spent there I started caring less about what anyone thought of me and just did whatever I thought would be fun. My schoolwork went further down the drain. Don’t get me wrong – I was still a very quick learner. But the things I was learning now could have had me locked up, and the key thrown away.
* * *
The hard guy in our year was a guy called George. He was big, he was wild and he had no fear of anything or anybody. I worked out on the first day that if I was going to survive at this school, I would have to have him onside. He was a smartarse who wasn’t that likeable, but I was a smartarse too and I was smarter than him, or so I thought.
He had the worst taste in music and he insisted on singing everywhere he went around the school. To make it even more unbearable he had a really bad singing voice. But he loved music, I could tell, and so did I. It wasn’t long before he and I were friends and I was playing some decent music to him. He, in the meantime, was scaring the other hoodlums away from me.
After hanging around with George for a while I realised that he wasn’t dumb at all; he just didn’t care. Whatever had gone on in my life, had also gone on – maybe even worse – in his life. That’s why he didn’t give a fuck about anything. Under his brutal exterior there seemed to be a brutal interior. But I could talk to him and see the tears welling up in his eyes. I could play a song and he would have to pretend he wasn’t crying. I knew that underneath he was really a softie. We became good mates. We got each other into a lot of trouble but we watched each other’s back and where we lived nobody else did that.
I was too cool to listen to pop music but George used to sing ‘Sylvia’s Mother’ all the time. Was he doing this to provoke people?
‘La la la . . . Sylvia such and such,’ he would sing in a voice that sounded like fingernails on a blackboard. ‘I love you whoever you are . . . la la la.’
He would make up his own words, singing at the top of his voice while walking down the street, especially if we walked past girls. Then George would sing even louder and stare into their eyes, whether he knew them or not.
His shirt was untucked and he walked with the kind of swagger that only a dangerous teenager can muster. Guys from the older gangs around the shops would sometimes get sick of him and have a go at him. They hated that song. But George would take them down. He was hard. At the start I hated that song too but now I really like it because it reminds me of George and his stupid antics. We would fight and drink and run amok all over Elizabeth and always managed not to get caught by the cops; we were too fast. No one else anywhere near our age could push us around or tell us what to do. We ran the place.
I lost contact with George not long after I left that school and I was really sad to hear that soon after he died in a car wreck. He acted like a thug but underneath it all he was a good guy and deserved a better life. But he didn’t stand a chance from the start. He was never going to escape Elizabeth and I wondered if I would either.
I can still hear him. ‘Sylvia . . . la la la.’
In the meantime, my brother John had decided to join the army. I think that he was so out of control that it scared even him and he thought the army would straighten his life out. He wanted stability and routine and to feel safe. He later told me he wanted to buy a house of his own so he didn’t have to rely on anyone. Somewhere he could be safe from the world. The only way he could see himself doing that was to join the army and get a service loan. So, at a time when everyone else in the world was marching to stop the war, he marched straight in and saluted. I can imagine him saying, ‘Put me in, I’m ready to kill.’
He went to basic training and things didn’t go as well as he expected. ‘Who the fuck are these people who think they can tell me what to do?’ No one told John what to do. ‘I’m out of here.’ He ran away from base. But it wasn’t long until they caught up with him. He was back and in trouble. But he pulled his head in and knuckled down to work even though he knew the army just didn’t suit him. How he thought that the army would work out for him when even high school discipline was too much for him was beyond me, but he tried. He was learning to be a cook for a short while. By this point he had already volunteered for Vietnam but his volatile nature at that time lead to his discharge before any active service. This suited John just fine. He went back to singing in the trenches of the Australian music scene and fighting hand to hand on the street. At least there you knew where you stood.
John told us of many people he met during his time in the service of his country, including officers who were real psychopaths. People who didn’t feel anything for anyone, and who felt no remorse for anything or compassion for anybody. One of these people was a guy who I’ll call Shane. John had become close to him until the day that Shane went up to another soldier in the mess hall and stuck his thumb into the corner of his eye, popping it out onto his cheek and then smashing it on his face simply because he wanted his seat at the table. Now, John didn’t mind exaggerating a bit if it helped to make a good story even better. But when John told me about this I could tell that even he thought it was too much. So I don’t think he was embellishing at all.
This guy was an absolute nutcase, but for some reason John had given him our address. And soon after John got out of the army he turned up at our door. John had told me that story and a few others about this psycho so I was afraid of him. He should have been locked away but instead he was at our door. Not only that, but it didn’t take that long until Mum asked him to move in with us.
We seemed to have strange and dangerous people staying with us all the time. Mum said it was because she felt sorry for people and wanted to help them out but I’m not sure it was that simple. She liked to help people and had trouble saying no to anybody, a trait that her kids all seemed to inherit. But I think there were other reasons too. Maybe she needed other people around to help her put up with us or life in general. Maybe she didn’t want to be in the same house as Reg.
Shane was a classic Australian conman and he had my mum conned. He was not a good-looking bloke but was brim full of confidence and smooth talked any vulnerable women that came within earshot. Reg didn’t want him anywhere around us. He could always pick the people we should avoid. He had no control over Mum though, so she just let whoever she wanted get in close.
Mum and Linda in particular were taken in by this cheap conman; the rest of us had not a lot to do with him. John, in the meantime, hardly spent any time at all with him. I think John knew how dangerous Shane was and didn’t want to be responsible for him or anything he did.
It wasn’t long until Shane was the chosen one in Mum’s eyes. She fell for his lies, hook, line and sinker. Pretty soon he had the run of the house, much to Reg’s dismay. He had something going on with Linda while they were both living in our house, even though Linda was only about seventeen. No one seemed to care but Reg.
Soon he was getting drunk in the house and playing up with my sisters’ friends. This was not a good thing. But he could talk his way into anything.
One day he asked if he could take me out to help him with some work. I had no idea what he had in mind. I’m sure Mum didn’t know either, but she agreed that I could go, and the next day, very early, there was Shane at the end of my bed. ‘Get up, Jim, we’ve got work to do.’
We left the house before the sun came up and headed down to the docks near Port Adelaide. He had a bag with him, full of photos and videos.
‘I want you to just walk around with me while I talk to a few of these blokes at the bar,’ he said.
They were all merchant seamen and shift workers. Who else would be drinking at the early opener at seven in the morning?
‘Just pretend that you’re my little brother. But don’t fucking speak, all right? Don’t say a fucking word. Just agree with me and that’s it. Got it?’
Shane kept reaching into his bag and getting what looked like picture books or magazines from it. It didn’t take me long to work it out. I wasn’t allowed to handle the merchandise but I wasn’t stupid so I knew what was going on – he was selling porn, and he was pretending to be looking after me. ‘I need money to look after the young lad here. His mother left us and I’m all he’s got.’
A couple of guys didn’t want to be hustled. They’d been working all night and just wanted to drink. ‘Fuck off and leave us alone, you scumbag. Can’t you see we’re talking?’
Shane beat them senseless and then we left in a hurry and moved on to the next pub. After a couple of hours, he turned to me and said, ‘Well done. That was a bit of fun, eh. Time to go home now, but I’ve got to make a stop on the way.’
We were at this house and I could hear banging, screaming and moaning coming from the next room. He and the woman who lived there had left me to look after her young children while they went to talk about a few things. I tried to talk over the screams and thumps coming through the walls. I didn’t want the kids to be afraid but it sounded like he was beating her up in the next room. I just kept playing with the little ones, knowing they were as scared as me.
He came out and looked at me, grinning. ‘That’s a lot fucking better.’ He picked up her purse, took some money from it, and we left.
Shane stayed with us for a few months. Towards the end I think that even Mum had had enough of him. He was an animal.
* * *
Linda always had wild people around as well. Sometimes they were dangerous and other times they were just crazy.
She had a friend who was a little older than her. This girl was cute with a bob haircut and big teeth. She was maybe twenty years old. She would stay at our house and when everyone had gone to bed she would come into my room and go down on me, right there in the house. Or she’d wake me up in the middle of the night.
‘Hey, Jim, psst Jim! Wake up and come with me. I’ve got a little present for you,’ she’d laugh.
Then she’d take me out to the backyard and fuck me. This became more and more frequent, even getting to the point where it was affecting my schoolwork. I didn’t mind but I was getting very little sleep and couldn’t think about anything else at all.
She spent more time with us every week and she seemed to find more time where we could get away. At the time I thought that this was great, being a young lad. But it was wearing me down. The more she stayed with us, the more I wanted to fuck her. I was becoming just like her.
She hung around for a long time and she started to get angry with me when my interest in her dwindled. I wanted to chase after the girls at the centre with my mates. Things turned nasty towards the end and I had to keep away from the house as much as I could.
Around that time, Mum opened the door to the Mormons, who door-knocked in short-sleeved white shirts, riding pushbikes. No sooner were they in the door than Mum wanted us all to get baptised and join the faithful. She was an easy touch for anybody with a story and the Mormons were very good talkers. At least these guys never meant us too much harm. In fact, sometimes I think Mum was trying to make up for all the shit we had been through by saving our souls. Lord knows they needed saving by this time.
It seemed that every day the house was full of these Mormon guys and the coffee table was overflowing with pamphlets that none of us wanted to read. We had no need for the coffee table anymore anyway, as Mormons didn’t drink coffee or tea, much to the dismay of Reg. Tea was his only vice and Mum had seen to it that that particular avenue of pleasure was cut off.
‘Reg, if we’re going tae be proper Mormons then aw the coffee and tea must be oot the hoose. I don’t need it and neither do you.’
‘All right, love, whatever you say.’ Once again, Reg went along with anything Mum wanted. But he was becoming more and more miserable. He already felt close to his God without a bunch of American lost souls trying to ram their faith down his throat. I think he secretly wanted to kill those Mormons. How dare they take away his tea?
The family were invited to barbecues at the homes of other Mormons. And we were expected to hang around and play with the little Mormons. But by this point we didn’t want to play with anyone or anybody. We were delinquents. But Dot and Linda, like my mum, were easy touches and so Mum, Reg, Dot, Linda, Alan and Lisa all agreed to get baptised into the Mormon faith. Well, Mum did and the others didn’t have a choice. John and I just told them to leave us alone. I don’t think those were the exact words we used but they certainly got the message quickly.
The ceremony involved all of them being laid back into a swimming pool until they were submerged completely. Apparently this was the way to let the Holy Spirit in. He would only come in if you were saturated. Lisa told me later that her long, thick hair wouldn’t go under the water and they had to keep trying to get her completely submerged, dunking her head under the water quite a few times. She was worried she was going to drown, but apparently God won’t talk to you if your hair doesn’t go under the water. He’s very fussy. He hates dry hair.
They were all successfully baptised but after about a week of Mormon life my mum got bored and made all the family quit the faith. We were heathens again and happy about it. Of course the rest of us, including Reg, had seen this coming right from the start. The Mormons stopped trying to save our souls and Mum started swearing at us again. Things got back to normal very quickly, and Mum never mentioned the Mormons again unless it was, ‘Those fuckin’ Mormons.’
Reg got to have his tea in peace. ‘Put the kettle on, love.’
We did whatever we were doing before Mum saw God.
Linda found new and more interesting people to hang around and it wasn’t long until she invited me into the fold.
One guy Linda took a shine to looked like another conman to me. I was fifteen by then and I’d seen enough conmen to pick one when I saw one. There was definitely something wrong with this guy but Linda liked him and they ran away to Melbourne.
After fighting with Mum one too many times, I decided to go and join her. So I hitchhiked to Melbourne. Linda was living in an apartment in St Kilda by this point. I turned up on her doorstep late one night and said, ‘I’m here, where’s my room?’
No one looked up. They were all drunk. So I made myself at home. I could see piles of things stacked around the room. There were televisions and stereos with the leads all wound up neatly lying on the floor. Between what I was seeing and what was being said in the flat I soon worked out what the guy was up to. He was a thief. He had been making all his money breaking into homes and robbing people.
Now I never wanted anything from anybody but I was wild and wanted to do anything that was illegal by this point. I could climb anything and had no fear at all. So he recruited me as a cat burglar. I didn’t steal anything, all I would do was shimmy up poles two or three storeys high and break into apartments. Then I would open the door and walk away. He didn’t mind that I wasn’t interested in taking things, he just wanted me to help him get into places.
I could see in my heart that this was wrong. But I did it. I still feel guilty about that time in my life. Just what I needed – one more thing to regret. But back then I tried not to think. I could have died, climbing up five storeys on the outside of an apartment building in the rain. But I didn’t care about dying either.
I didn’t die, and every day I would wake up, and there I’d be, ashamed, afraid and guilt-ridden, waiting for the world to catch on to me. I’d tell myself, ‘I’m not doing this ever again.’
But the next day, off I would go. The world was a fucked up place and it was never going to get any better.
I only lasted in Melbourne for about two or three weeks before I wanted to go back to Adelaide. The guy had a Dodge Phoenix, a big American gas guzzler. That’s the car, not him. He said he had an offer for me. I got the feeling he wanted to get rid of me.
‘I’ll drive you to Adelaide, but you’ve got to help me steal the petrol first.’
I agreed and off we went, the guy and me. We pulled into a car park, stopped the Yank tank next to a nice-looking car and jumped out.
‘You start siphoning the petrol and I’ll keep watch.’
‘Why do I have to do the work?’
‘It’s my car, mate.’
I seemed to be getting the bad end of the deal here.
When I finished filling the can, and spitting the petrol out of my mouth, he came and took the can off me and left the hose in the other car’s tank. Then he started filling his car with a funnel.
Suddenly we heard a noise. The guy he was stealing the petrol from was walking back to his car with his girl. We hid quietly, a little way away.
‘Shit,’ Linda’s friend whispered. We had left the hose hanging out of the other guy’s car and the funnel in ours.
‘What the fuck is going on here?’ The guy scowled and turned to his girl.
It didn’t take long before he worked it out. He looked around but couldn’t see us. So he started siphoning the petrol out of our car to put back into his. As he was in the middle of it, the police drove into the car park.
Like a bullet, Linda’s mate shot up and called out, ‘Help, these bastards are stealing my petrol.’ He was screaming hysterically, at the top of his voice.
Now, if you had just got there, that’s exactly what it looked like. The police grabbed the poor guy who had done nothing and let us go. Linda’s friend was a very good talker. He gave a false address and we left. The car must have been stolen too so they could never trace it back to us.
With a nearly full tank of gas we headed back to the flat to get Linda before driving to Adelaide. I had the feeling she didn’t want to be there anymore either.
By the time we got to Adelaide the shine had well and truly worn off this guy. Linda didn’t like him anymore. He was dull; the only thing he had going was that he was a smooth talker and we had heard everything he had to say. So Linda gave him the flick, much to his disappointment.
He pleaded with her to let him stay. ‘Come on, Linda, come back to Melbourne with me. This town’s a hole.’
Linda was a needy girl but she’d had enough. She didn’t need him anymore. The last thing we saw of him, he was driving at high speed down a little laneway in Elizabeth, screaming ‘Fuck you,’ at the top of his voice.
Linda had something similar to say to him, but I don’t think he heard it. She moved back in with Mum and so did I. All was forgiven. Mum was just happy to have us all home again and not locked up in jail.
I went back to school and tried to study but all I really wanted to do was chase girls. The biggest problem was, I kept catching them. Girls liked me. I was different from the other guys we hung round with. I was softer and not as violent. I liked to hang with them and not the guys. I was running around and had different girls for every day of the week.
I started taking time off school and going to different girls’ houses during the day while their parents were working. We would drink and have sex all day and I loved it. One day the parents of one of the girls came home early and I had to hide under their bed until I could escape. They were in the room, telling off the girl for skipping school. She must have looked very dishevelled but they never worked out I was in their room, under their bed. Her dad would have killed me. He went out about twenty minutes later and I lived another day.