Aramac

Aramac, central Queensland. If you put your finger in the centre of a map of Queensland, it’ll probably rest on Aramac. If you travel 70 km due north of Barcaldine, you’ll come to Aramac. You can’t go any further than that unless you want to travel on a goat track over 350 km through thirty gates. So Aramac is at the end of a road to nowhere. The future premier of Queensland, Robert Ramsay MacKenzie, travelled through the district in the 1850s. He blazed R R Mac on a tree and that became Aramac. It was surveyed as a town in 1875.

The town had 750 residents when I lived there (now 340). It basically consisted of the Dicksons, the Kingstons and the Storches. If you had a go at a Storch in front of a Kingston, you might be in trouble as they could be cousins. The Kingstons versus the Dicksons was an annual football match. What a crazy town. Dad, my brothers and I loved it. Mum hated it.

Girls

Off to high school. It only went to Junior, so I ended up going to Longreach to do Senior. I’d just turned fourteen, I had pubic hair and a bit of bum fluff emerging on my cheeks. This school had girls, beautiful girls: ‘Heaven, I’m in heaven.’ I love girls, I still do; I’m living with the most beautiful woman in the world, it doesn’t get better than that. I describe myself as a chronic heterosexual. I can’t imagine having sex with a man. They’re so hard, it’d be like making love to a door. I don’t even know how women can do it, but I’m glad they do. I’m not at all homophobic. I understand emphatically that people of the same sex can love each other. I’m in the entertainment business and I’ve seen it first-hand. It’s been happening since Adam was a poof. One of my heroes is Stephen Fry. Love QI. His doco on exploring homophobia around the world is sensational.

Any chance of me paying attention on any subject at school disappeared with my coming of age. I was interested in one subject at school from then on: women.

Aramac had three places you could take a girl on Saturday night: the outdoor picture theatre, the pool or a dance, if there was one on. Either ballroom dancing or rock ’n’ roll. If it was rock, a band from Barcaldine turned up called the Rubber Band. They were pretty good, playing covers, the Beatles, Elvis, the Stones. We loved them. For ballroom we had a big-bummed country girl on piano and a skinny old drunk on drums who never used drumsticks, just the brushes. One of the highlights of the evening was the drunk falling off his stool and into his drum kit at around eleven o’clock.

I loved the outdoor cinema. It had no roof (because it never rained), sway canvas seats, two to a seat. We took a rug to that cinema, summer and winter. Mum said, ‘What do you want a rug for, it’s hot as hell!’ We did everything except intercourse under those rugs. If you weren’t sitting with a girl, you’d wait for a couple to be going hammer and tongs and slice the canvas with a pocket knife. They’d fall through the split and onto the dirt floor with dresses up and pants down. Good for a laugh.

I lost my virginity at the Aramac pool. It was open nights on the weekend, because it was so bloody hot. One of us would go out to the fusebox, pull the fuse and cause a blackout. The pool guy would take about twenty minutes to fix it. In that time we were heavy-petting in the dark. I’d been going with this girl for a few months. Well, that night the heavy petting led to the loss of my virginity. Clouded by the pool experience, I thought after that she was the one.

I went to Sydney for the school holidays in 1967. I got a job and bought my girl a friendship ring. It wasn’t cheap. As soon as I got back, I gave it to her. She accepted it, although she seemed a bit sheepish. I met her at the pictures, only to find her on the arm of another boy. I was crushed. She gave me back the friendship ring, I dropped it on the footpath and stomped on it until it was flat. Her new boyfriend told me to take it easy and I threatened to do to him what I’d just done to the ring and to please make my night by throwing the first punch. He didn’t, and I went home.

My God, the pain you go through at fifteen when you lose ‘that girl’. The bastards had to walk past my place to get to hers. They made out under the streetlight just outside my house. I wanted to kill him. You can kind of understand how young men from bad homes go nuts and do something crazy. They’re usually from bad homes. It makes you realise the importance of good parenting in this world. We’re taught reading, writing and arithmetic at school, but they don’t teach you the most important thing – how to live.

Hunting

When in Aramac, do as the Aramacians do.

Run, jump, fuck, fight.

Wheel a barrow, ride a bike.

That’s what real Aussie blokes do. All the teenage boys in Aramac ‘shot shit’. Mainly feral pigs and kangaroos. I’ve changed since and, unlike the guy in Wolf Creek I’m famous for, I no longer want to shoot things. But I couldn’t wait when I was a young bloke in Aramac.

Dad bought Brian and me single-shot twenty-twos. They didn’t have mags or scopes. You could only have one bullet at a time ‘in the spout’. This was to prevent me accidentally shooting my brother as we went through a fence or something. We hunted on foot. We’d go down to Aramac Creek and start walking along its banks in search of roos or pigs, whatever came first. Our Labrador–Great Dane cross, Rumples, would join us. He wasn’t a hunting dog, just a fun dog. We could only shoot two small roos at a time, because you had to carry the carcasses back. Pigs were easier. You’d cut off the snout and tail and you’d get a few bucks for that. They were much easier to carry, so we preferred pigs when we were on foot. A twenty-two wasn’t the best weapon for the job. I remember Brian and I once took half an hour to bring down an old sow. We shot her in the arse and she ran to the next thicket, so we waited for her to emerge. Each time she took off, all we could shoot was her arse. When she went down, we counted nine shots in and around her arse.

We came across a big old man red kangaroo one day. He was about 1.8 metres tall and had muscles on his forearms like Big Arnie. He was too big to shoot, as we could never carry him 10 km back to town. Bloody Rumples decided to chase him. He never attacked, just ran up to them and wanted to play. There was a bit of rain around and the creek had a big pond. The big red jumped into the water to try to shake Rumples. Rumples just dived in and started swimming around this big roo. Next thing, the roo grabbed Rumples in a headlock with these big forearms and started to drown him. Brian and I waded in with a big stick. The roo was growling and grumping, as mad as hell. We started belting the roo in the head with the stick. It didn’t seem to have any effect. Brian kept belting him and I tried to release his grip on Rumples. The bloody thing was so strong, I couldn’t budge him. Finally the roo started to flake out from Brian’s blows to the head. He let Rumples go and sort of floated off. He found his feet finally, got to the shore and jumped off like a drunk. We got Rumples onto the bank and he coughed up about 3 litres of water, got his breath back and came good, thank Christ. We needed a car.

Cars

As soon as our feet could touch the pedals, Dad started to teach us to drive. It was a bit spasmodic for me as I was in boarding school for a year and a half. Not any more. Dad had a unique way of teaching us. He took us to the racecourse (Aramac races were an annual event) and we had to drive in reverse around the track.

Only when we could drive in reverse at 70 k’s without fishtailing were we allowed to drive forward. ‘Any silly bugger can drive forward’ – and he’s right. Driving forward was a piece of piss.

After that we were encouraged to drive everywhere, mainly on rough-as-guts dirt roads. Finally Dad trusted us to take the car shooting. We were a bit older and we’d acquired much better rifles with scopes and mags: 222s, 243s, and a year or so later Brian bought a 3025, a bored-out 303. Dad let us take his 1963 nipple-pink EJ Holden station wagon shooting. ‘As long as you stay on the road.’ Yes, Dad. Off we went. If we spotted some roos off the road, off the road we went. Over holes, stumps, antbeds, you name it.

We went spotlighting at night. It was a rough set-up. We wired the spotlight up off the battery and trailed the lead through to the back seat, on the passenger side. I’d wind down the window and sit out of it, hanging onto the roof rack with one hand and panning the spotlight with the other. Brian drove and two mates would be hanging out the other windows with rifles, not on the road of course. One night we were spotlighting and Brian hit a big bump. I fell backwards, I was hanging on with my knees, and my head and shoulders were bouncing on the ground. Brian was yelling out, ‘Where’s the fuckin’ spotlight, has it shorted out?’ and kept driving. I could hear the back tyre cutting through the dirt. I thought if he didn’t stop my head was going under that tyre. He stopped. It was only twenty seconds or so, but it felt like half an hour.

Dad always serviced his car. Across the road from us was Kevie Karl’s Service Station. Dad and Kevie were mates and he let Dad use the hoist. Next thing Dad’s big bull elephant bellow rang through our ears at home.

‘Joohhn, Briaaan, git over here nooow!’

Over we went. We knew what was coming. He was standing under the car looking up. The car floor, especially in the back, looked like it had been attacked by a sledge hammer and an axe. ‘I thought I told you mongrels not to go off the road? That’s it, no more car. You’ll have some work to do next weekend.’

He’d eased up on the beltings. We still got them occasionally, and usually when he had a brain snap you’d cop it on the spot. We still got a belt across the back of the head on a regular basis.

He was far from a bastard, just a hard-headed, short-tempered mongrel. He felt sorry for us and about a month later he gave us an old Prefect. A crappy, under-powered, Pommy-built Ford. It was long and narrow. We took it down a creek bed one day and it fell on its side. Luckily we had about eight boys in the car (which is probably why it rolled in the first place), so we righted it and went on our way.

I could write a separate book called Bad Boys of Aramac Go Hunting. There are so many stories, so I’ll give you two more.

My best mate at school was Greg Wright; sadly he died young in a truck accident, he was a top bloke. Greg’s dad was a dogger (shot dingoes), so Greg was a very good shooter (that’s Aussie for hunter).

Greg had enough money from shooting to buy a Mini Moke. He was sixteen at the time, and at this stage we mixed shooting and beer, unbeknownst to our parents. We had one hell of a night. We knocked over thirteen roos. We were heading home at about three in the morning, drunk as skunks. There were five of us and thirteen roo carcasses stacked onto the Moke. Billy Storch was sitting on the back with his legs dangling, looking back at the road. Next minute, I looked over and Billy’s not there. We turned around and went looking for him. We found him staggering up the road scratched, bruised and bloody. Nothing broken, nothing snapped, just a very sore shoulder. He reckons he fell asleep and woke up when he hit the road. We figured his drunkenness saved him. He hit the road totally relaxed.

Brian had a 3025, like an elephant gun. He was up at Lake Galilee, a huge salt lake. He looked out across the dry lake and noticed this small dot way out. He brought his rifle to his shoulder and looked towards the dot through the scope. He discovered a big red old man roo. The chance of hitting a target that far away was extremely thin. So he aimed at its head, rose the rifle up a bit to allow for the trajectory of the bullet falling. The roo dropped dead, shot in the chest, arsey shot.

The Eromanga Sea existed about 100 million years ago. It was an inland sea stemming from the Gulf of Carpentaria, taking up about a third of Queensland. The old shoreline of this sea was close to Aramac. In places it could be seen as a small rise, the line of which extended off towards the horizon of this flat semi-desert landscape. We’d jump out of the car and go exploring. You’d find evidence of seashells and at this location there were small caves where Aboriginals would camp. We were in one of these small caves looking for signs of ancient soot from fires, when we noticed a little natural shelf higher up near the roof. We scrambled up, got a hand to it and felt around. To our surprise we found an old club, a nulla-nulla, which could have been there for hundreds of years for all we knew. It was made of a heavy, hard wood with a pattern carved down two sides of it. We kind of took it for granted, for some reason. We just threw it in our messy bedroom along with a lot of other teenage junk. Years later when I was in Sydney in my twenties, it suddenly occurred to me. ‘What did we do with that bloody nulla-nulla? It could be worth a fortune.’ I asked Brian, but he couldn’t remember what happened to it either.

I never really liked killing animals. I didn’t ever feel comfortable about it. I didn’t let on or I’d be ‘a big girl’. I loved the chase and I loved hitting the animal, but if the bullet didn’t kill it? I hated turning up and looking into the eyes of a fellow living thing, then having to coldly put it to death. That’s why I haven’t hunted since I was seventeen. I’m not against it, I’m from the bush, I know it’s necessary. I’m as green as anybody, but I’m sensibly green. When something reaches plague proportions, you need to cull. With animals, you shoot them; with humans, you let them slowly starve to death.

Fighting

Johnny Marks was an Australian amateur boxing champion. He was also the Aramac baker. Every Wednesday night we’d go to boxing training. As you can imagine, the Jarratt boys took to this like ducks to water. Barry was nine, Brian was thirteen and I was a few months off fifteen.

Most of the boxing tournaments were held at the Aramac community hall. What a night. It’d start with the kids and slowly move to weight divisions. For instance, I could find myself in the ring with a skinny bloke in his late twenties (still not as scary as Bruce). We won most of our fights. Brian was phenomenal. Three three-minute rounds doesn’t sound like much, but if you have a tough fight, you’re looking around for a coffin afterwards. I had one such fight; it was the toughest. I slugged it out with this guy from Muttaburra; we were evenly matched and we punched the shit out of each other. It was called a draw and people threw money into the ring for me and my opponent.

The last four or five fights were the best. Middle, light heavyweight and heavyweight. These were all men, cowboys, tough-arsed, hard as nails. They could ride anything, shoot anything, drive anything, fight anything, drink anything and then try to fuck something. They were solid, young, muscular. They hit so hard it’d echo. There’d be sweat, snot and blood flying everywhere.

I had more fights in Aramac than anywhere else. It’s what happened in small outback towns. Every weekend there’d be punch-ups outside the pub. The town had a small group of late-teen thugs lead by Vaughny Boland. At a dance one night I got in an argument with one of them and I asked him to step outside. He stepped outside, along with the gang and me. I don’t think they were all going to get into me; I think they came to watch the fight. Dad caught sight of us leaving and he followed us outside. He took one look and single-handedly spread the gang all over the footpath and took me back inside. I was so humiliated and the gang kept at me after that, threatening, ‘We’re gonna get you.’

One Sunday, one of Vaughny’s minions found me and informed me that Vaughny wanted to see me in the park. I’d had a gutful by this time, so I grabbed Brian and went to confront them. If we had to, we’d take them all on. I found them in the park, about six of them including the bloke I was going to fight at the dance. I said I wanted a fair fight with him only, and may the best man win. Vaughny agreed. This bloke couldn’t fight to save himself. I easily set him up with my left and belted him with my best weapon, a right cross. By the third right I nearly knocked him out and it was over. I turned to the rest of them. ‘Anyone else wanna go?’ None of them did. They never bothered me again. Brian and I walked home glowing with victory. ‘Once you got that right goin’ he was fucked!’

Dad stopped hitting us in Aramac. Both of us had to front him though. I was sixteen and all my mates were allowed to smoke at home. I decided I wanted to as well. After all, Dad smoked.

I was sitting at the dining room table talking to Dad and he lit up a smoke, so I thought, This is the moment. So I took my cigarette packet out, pulled a ciggy out, tapped it on the table and put it to my lips. Next instant I copped a backhander across the side of my head that sent me off the chair and into a wall. I looked up from the floor.

‘Spose that means I can’t smoke in the house?’

‘You got it in one, boy.’

I wanted to hit him back there and then. A few weeks later, he stormed into my room, arm raised ready to belt me for something, I can’t remember what. I spat out, ‘If you hit me, Dad, I’m gonna have to hit you back.’ It stopped him in his tracks. We were almost nose to nose, and by this stage I was a lot taller. After a long stare-off he said, ‘Fair enough.’ And he never hit me again.

A year or so later Brian was runner-up in bantam weight at the Golden Gloves championship. It’s the highest achievement in amateur boxing. Brian was built like Dad, a tank. Because of this he was quite heavy for his age and ended up fighting a thirty-two-year-old bloke who worked as a navvy on the railway. He was a fully set man and hard as a rock. Brian copped a couple of big hits, and one punch broke his nose. He didn’t go down, but he lost on points. That night Mum put an end to our boxing careers. We loved our mum and we agreed. Dad was pissed off.

Not long after that, Dad went to hit Brian and Brian blocked it. He went to hit him again, and Brian blocked. ‘Aaw, it’s like that, is it, boy?’ So Dad shapes up and starts swinging. Brian easily blocked every punch and cleverly kept moving around our sprawling house. If the old man got you in a corner, you were history. Finally Mum came up from the laundry and screamed ‘What’s going on!!?’ which put an end to it. He never hit Brian again.

I only got away with punching Dad good and proper once. Sometimes we’d do some boxing training at home. We’d use gloves thick with padding, called the pillow gloves. I was sparring with Dad.

‘Come on, son, don’t muck around, try and hit me in the head, don’t hold back, you can’t hurt me.’

‘I don’t wanna hit you, Dad’

‘Come on, don’t fuck around, hit me!’

As I said, I’ve got a great right hand, and Dad was as slow as a wet week. I right-crossed him on the lower jaw, close to his chin. He wasn’t ready for it. I was, I gave it everything I had; he got fifteen years of gut hell rage that made his brain ricochet around his skull. He fell on the lounge, got straight up and started shaking some sense back into his head.

‘I’m sorry Dad, you all right, you all right?’

Inside I was screaming, I got the bastard, I got the fucking bastard!

‘Yeah, I’m all right son, good shot, righto, let’s go, let’s go.’

We tapped gloves, we circled, jab, jab, circle. Suddenly the old man went whack, whack, whack, whack, WHACK! Fair in the guts. I was on the ground, holding my stomach, desperately trying to get oxygen.

The old man looked down on me. ‘Just in case you were getting any ideas.’

Horses

On many a Saturday afternoon, three mates and I would go horse­riding. They were Greg Wright’s horses and they were on a property just outside the town. We’d ride our bikes out. Greg had his favourite horse, so we’d have to fight over the other three. One of the horses was a short, stocky pony; this horse was literally the short straw. Occasionally I’d be lumbered with it. I hated it. My long skinny legs would be almost scraping the ground; the bloody thing couldn’t keep up, so I’d end up frustratingly behind all the time. We galloped down this hill once, and at the bottom of the hill was a gully about 2 metres wide. The three bigger horses jumped the gully, and I followed at a gallop on ‘old short arse’. He shied at the gully, tried to pull up, couldn’t. He didn’t jump the gully, he went down and up the other side. By now I was only just clinging on. When he came out of the gully, he flicked his arse and I got flipped off his back and went bum-first into a patch of goat heads. Goat heads are four-pronged thorns, 30 mm long. About ten of these ended up embedded in my arse from the impact. It hurt like hell and made my arse itchy for hours. Yes, of course the others were laughing their guts out.

I had the time of my life galloping around the wide open spaces of central Queensland. I fell in love with horseriding. Nothing like lining up with your mates and racing full tilt across a claypan. Moseying back to the yards with the sun going down, imagining what it was like for my dad’s dad mustering from Hay in New South Wales into the Aramac area, where he met a shearer’s cook, my grandmother.

My grandad had many a good story. This is one of my favourites. He was sitting around the campfire after a hard day pushing cattle. They had a singalong. Among them was a very posh Pommy, mustering ‘for the experience, dear boy’. It came to the Pommy’s turn, and he sang ‘Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do’, which he pronounced poshly ‘give me your on-sa, do’ and one of my granddad’s mates whispered, ‘Hey Bob, what’s a ronsadoo?’

Longreach

Aramac High only went to Year Four, or Junior as it was known then, because most of the students left school then. Except me. Dad wouldn’t let me. Out of eight kids, I was the only one to kick on, which was funny, because I think I came seventh that year. I was sent to Longreach High. Longreach was west of Aramac. It was the biggest town in the district. Population around 4000, then and now. Famous for the founding years of Qantas and the Stockman’s Hall of Fame.

Mum used to take me to Longreach High on Monday morning and pick me up Friday afternoon. I’d drive across and Mum drove back. It was 130 kilometres of dirt road. It took me an hour to drive there at 130 km per hour and it took Mum an hour and a half to drive back. Not bad for a sixteen-year-old.

During the week I stayed in the hostel with other outta-towner students. Girls on one side, boys on the other. Meal room, manager’s office and Mr and Mrs Arsehole’s lodgings in the middle. I had a love-hate relationship with this joint. Loved sneaking out at night onto the trampoline and getting intimate with the girls. Hated the Arseholes, especially the husband, he was about thirty and he was a Nazi. After about three months he hated my guts, and the feeling was mutual. Things came to a head one night in the meal room. I was laughing loudly at a mate’s joke. He told me not to laugh so loud and I argued with him that you couldn’t even laugh in this joint. He ordered me to stand up, so I did. He told me to stop smiling, so I smiled some more. He came over and threatened to wipe the smile off my face, and I dared him to try. He did, so I flattened him.

Mrs Arsehole went to ring my father and I went and waited for him at the fence outside. Dad turned up and went in to find out from the Arsehole what had happened. He came out with a big smile on his face and we went back to Aramac. He said to Mr Arsehole after finding out what went down, ‘ I’d like to smack you in the mouth for what you’ve done, but looks like a sixteen-year-old could do that.’ We laughed. ‘Fuckin’ smarmy cunt.’ It was the first time I’d heard Dad say ‘cunt’, not the last, of course.

Dad found a little cottage owned by a little old lady close to the school. There were two other rooms there occupied by girls. The old man must have known this. The best thing I ever did was punch Mr Arsehole. One of the girls went to my school. She was a year older than me, attractive, and loved getting into my bed. Once she brought her girlfriend home and they both got into my bed.

No girlfriend-boyfriend thing, purely let’s just have fun. Oh man, did I have fun. The other boarder was hot. She was early twenties, a working girl, very nice to me, friendly but very much out of my ballpark. She was very much in love with her big hairy boyfriend, who could’ve quite easily crushed me into dust. I could write a book about this wonderful six months of my life and call it Fifty Shades of Puberty, so I’ll let you imagine what happened. Here’s a hint, put ‘vivid’ in front of ‘imagination’.

By this stage I’d inadvertently started my acting training. I wasn’t interested in the educational side of school, I was interested in entertainment – getting laughs, flirting with girls, annoying teachers, entertaining the class. For the life of me I can’t remember why, but I put on a concert. My parents were naturals. In Wongawilli, Island Bend and Aramac they were the driving force for town reviews and concerts. They took a big part in writing the sketches and coming up with the songs. I was given a song in the Aramac review. They’d ‘localised’ the lyrics of ‘Hello Mudda, Hello Fadda’. One verse went like this:

Once there was a…

Lotta roos here

But the shooters

Are on the loose here.

I sang very innocently to a packed house:

Once there was a…

Lotta roos here

But the rooters

Are on the loose here.

In those days ‘to root’ was a very common phrase that meant ‘to fuck’. I was fourteen at the time, and in those days the worst thing you could say to women or kids was ‘shit’. I was bright red with embarrassment and went home.

So I got material from Mum and Dad and put on a concert at Longreach High. I organised the whole thing and gave myself all the best parts. At the end of it, our headmaster Mr Bob Spearot came up to me.

‘You know, Jarratt, I thought all you were good for was disturbing the peace, but it turns out you could be an actor.’

Ding.

‘Don’t you have to be born in Hollywood to be an actor?’

‘Not at all, anyone can be an actor.’

The seed was sown. In 1978, I had the pleasure of Mr Spearot attending a performance of A Streetcar Named Desire for the Queensland Theatre Company. I played Stanley. He was proud of me. He was a lovely man. He’s either passed or he’s 120 by now.

The big smoke

I found Longreach High fairly uninspiring and I don’t have a great deal of memories of my time there. I know I wasted a lot of time and I failed Year 11. Mum and Dad decided I should repeat Year 11 in Townsville. I was to stay at Grandma Sellers’ beautiful Queenslander in Hermit Park. She was Uncle Ben’s mother. He was raised there, along with his four brothers and two sisters. So she was a sort of grandma-in-law. I loved her. She was an English rose, with a peaches-and-cream complexion. She must have been in her sixties, which seemed old to me. As I write this I’m sixty-two, scary! I stayed there for most of 1969. We got along famously.

I only crossed her once. I lied to her about the time I got home one night. I told her 12.30 a.m. but it was 4 a.m. and she knew it. She went me big time about never, ever lying to her again. She was one of those extremely rare rigorously honest people. I never lied to her again.

I was in Townsville, a city. This was like going to New York for me. Telephones, TV, movie theatres (more than one), supermarkets, traffic lights, airport, bitumen roads, live bands, dances in pubs every Saturday night, Magnetic Island, beaches, bikinis, women in miniskirts everywhere, Beatles, the Stones, Led Zeppelin playing on 4TO 24/7.

I rode my bike to school, which was only a five-minute ride. I walked into Town High and leant up against a post, waiting for someone to come up and fight me. This was my eighth school, and I just wanted to get the ‘Welcome to Town High, dickbrain’ fight over and done with. So I leaned there looking as tough as I could, with my long skinny legs embarrassingly protruding from my shorts. I had a greasy Elvis do, and all the boys had dry hair coming down and across the forehead in what I came to know as a Beatles do.

Boys my age started arriving, a lot of them big and athletic. They looked at me quizzically and walked on. Then I saw why. This bloke walks in, he’s about 110 kg, and he was so broad I thought he was about 5 foot 11, turns out he’s 6 foot 2. If this is the guy who sorts out the newcomers, then they must all be dead and I was about to die. He walked past me, looked at me as if he’d just seen dogshit and walked on.

This was Nial Greaves, man mountain, who ran 100 yards in even time, started last and came through like a freight train to be first to hit the tape. He jumped 6 foot in the high jump, won the 50- and 100-metres freestyle, and played outside centre in our Rugby League team. He was like Mal Meninga, the massive iconic centre. Nial could have played for Australia. Why didn’t he? He was in the North Queensland Schoolboys versus the South Queensland Schoolboys. He broke through and the only thing between him and the tryline was his opposing centre, an average-sized teenager who had enough guts to tackle Nial front-on. He was carried off on a stretcher with a busted spleen. Nial hovered around the hospital, absolutely gutted at what had happened. He’s a gentle giant and it frightened him. The other thing that held him back was his weak ankles, which had to carry the weight of his massive legs. He’s also very modest, but he enjoys slapping me, so he’ll read this and inflict some pain for embarrassing him. It’s worth it. Needless to say, he’s a lifelong very close friend, thank Christ. So he didn’t try to kill me on day one. Nobody did, to my surprise.

So I kind of shrugged to myself and followed these big guys. We ended up at assembly and this friendly dude about my height and size (including the bony legs) put out his hand and introduced himself.

‘G’day, I’m Max. You’re new, eh?’

‘Yeah, I’m from central Queensland.’

‘Aw yeah, what class you in? I’m in subsenior.’

‘Me too.’

‘No worries, stick with me.’

I did stick with him and I still do, he’s one of my best mates. He later told me that everyone thought, Who’s the mean-lookin’ bastard with the Elvis do, what’s his problem?

The next two years, 1969 and 1970, were some of the best years of my life. I don’t have any schoolfriends from my previous seven schools. I have about a dozen really close friends all up, and seven of them are from Town High: Nial, Max, Herbie, Rubin, Denis, Billy and Geoffrey John, in no particular order. They’re the close ones, but the whole goddamn year was amazing. We have ten-year reunions and they are really wild weekends. We’re making them five-year reunions now because we’re in danger of dying these days.

My first night out was at a place called ‘the shack’. I went there with Denis. We lied to these two girls that we were eighteen and that my Monaro was getting a new paint job so we were stuck without a car. We must have been convincing because we managed to crack on to them. After we left the shack we walked through a park. Denis took his girl off into the bushes and I found a nest for my girl. I had to work really hard to encourage her to remove her clothing. I finally succeeded and we were about to make love when bloody Denis and his girl decided to come back. My girl totally freaked and started to dress. In my youthful frustration I tried to convince Denis to go away and my girl to continue. Not a snowflake’s chance in hell. You don’t impose such devastation on a sixteen-year-old. Talk about angry – I yelled at Denis all the way home. He was mightily repentant for his wrongdoing, but he couldn’t hide his ‘look of the nook’ glow. I talked to him through pursed lips for about a fortnight after that. I never got over it. I had a go at Denis about it for the umpteenth time only a week ago. He’ll never stop hearing about it.

School was cool. I was a very busy student. I would have had As for social integration, entertainment, witticism, impersonation, innuendo, double entendre, extracurricular activity (commonly known as wagging school), practical jokery, antagonism, pugilism…if they’d only been part of the curriculum. The list goes on, so you can see I didn’t have time for much else; when you throw in sport on top of that, well, there weren’t enough hours in the day. After school I had parties to organise. I liked to fill the weekend for my friends. I was very altruistic and magnanimous, in a selfish kind of way.

I was six months away from my seventeenth birthday and my driver’s licence. I was impatient to get it, of course, but Townsville was easy to get around. All you needed was a bike. People of all ages rode them, mainly schoolkids and old men for some reason. The old blokes of north Queensland in the 1960s seemed content with that. A front basket, a hessian bag sewn into the triangle centre frame, and a back rack. Amazing what they could carry. These were working-class blokes who would have been in their prime in the twenties and thirties; they’d probably never had a car.

When I was born, there were still plenty of communities that didn’t have electricity. Biros were a major modern advancement. We didn’t have a washing machine, we had to boil water to have a bath, diesel trains were new and there were still plenty of steam trains. Cars didn’t have seatbelts, indicators, aircon, heaters, radios, airbags, the list goes on. Television was absolutely mind-blowing. How did the picture come through the air and get into the TV in our lounge room? I still don’t know.

I feel very privileged to have arrived on the planet when I did. I’ve come from that world to this mind-boggling space-age computer world of today. In the 1980s I saw, for the first time, a piece of paper coming out of a fax machine in Melbourne. It had been sent five minutes earlier from Perth. It blew my mind. What’s going on with iPhones and laptops these days is beyond my comprehension. I’m typing this book on one now; I just clicked ‘save’, it’s amazing. I love the techno age. I do my best, but I’ll always be a techno-peasant. Just when you get onto something, it’s superseded and you have to start again. It takes my kids five minutes to learn; it takes me five months if I’m lucky.

Magnetic Island – it just drags you to it

The most magical thing about Townsville for me is Magnetic Island. When I first went there as a four-year-old, it was like something out of a fantasy land. Maggy Island was formed 275 million years ago out of molten granite pushed to the surface by volcanic eruptions. Over millions of years this granite eroded to form massive, egg-shaped boulders or tors, some as big as houses and some perched precariously on top of others. In between the boulders grow hoop pines. This is what I love about the landscape of the island: it’s unique. Everywhere you look are these wonderful boulders with forests of native hoop pine growing out of them. To stand on an expansive Maggy Island beach, looking past a forest of coconut trees across sparkling coral sands to the headland of giant granite eggs, garnished with hoop pine, is probably the most beautiful natural wonder on the planet to me. Closely followed by Uluru and the Olgas. I like rocks.

The other wonderful thing is it’s the only Australian tropical island for me. It’s not resort-orientated like Hamilton or Dunk. It’s populated by weekenders. The original houses are fishing cottages. The pubs are like pubs. There are a couple of resorts, and Peppers sticks out like a sore thumb at the Nelly Bay wharf. There are a few in this section of the island. The bastards cut into my wonderful granite boulders to build one joint. Ugly as a hat full of arseholes, I reckon, and so do the locals.

A hell of a lot of our weekends were spent there. Nial’s mother, Betty, lived on Maggy full-time at Arcadia, she was a barmaid at the Picnic Bay pub. Nial used to stay with his grandparents in town during the week and spent most weekends on the island. We loved Betty, still do, she’s still with us and there’s plenty of life in the old girl yet. She’d look after us, feed us and have a beer with us in the evening. She’d drink us all under the table and pour us out the door to our sleeping quarters. We stayed in one of two places according to the weather. If it was fine, we’d stay at the Shifting Sands Motel, and if it was raining, we’d stay at Granite Lodge. If the rain was torrential we wouldn’t go to the island. We copped a couple of surprise storms, which meant we got flooded. It added to the adventure.

If we had visitors from the south, like Larry, we’d invite them to the island and tell them about the accommodation. They thought that sounded great. The Shifting Sands was the beach and Granite Lodge was a culvert up near the hills behind Nial’s place. Granite Lodge was built after too many wet nights on the beach. Max was the brains behind the construction. (Funny thing is, he went on to become a draftsman.) We found the culvert, which had concrete walls about 1500 mm high. It was kind of rectangular, with only three walls. The two side walls were about 2 metres long, coming in at a slight V to a narrow cross-wall with a large concrete water pipe in it. The drain worked fine, and there was plenty of sleeping room either side of it.

Herb, Max and I went to Maggy to construct Granite Lodge.

Max brought all these tools in his survival kit, including an axe. The idea was to weave a whole lot of branches together to form a framework for a roof, over which was stretched a canvas sheet. Max was chopping down a heap of nearby saplings. He was the real deal. He spat in both hands, rubbed them together, gripped the axe and sunk it with an almighty swing into the trunk of the sapling. The blow caused the sapling to shake vigorously. A heap of green ants were dislodged from their leafy nest and cascaded over Max’s thick blond hair and all over his shirt. A bite from one of these ants is enough to make Bear Grylls scream. Max was being bitten from arsehole to breakfast. We were about half a kilometre from Arcadia beach. Max started running, and we followed. Max was running, jumping and skipping like Wile E Coyote in a Road Runner cartoon, ripping his clothes off while he ran. Thank Christ he had the decency to at least keep his jocks on until he hit the water. Herb and I couldn’t keep up because we were laughing so much. Max just looked back at us from the water and said one simple word. ‘Cunts.’ The welts on his skin were something to behold.

We took Max to Geoffrey John’s and applied calamine lotion to his ant-bite welts. Geoffrey John Ferguson also lived full-time on Maggy, within yelling distance from Nial. He gets the full title even today, I dunno why. He was our Fonz. He’s no oil painting, but he always got the hot chicks. Even now, his current partner, Karen, is well above his batting average. He was so smooth. One time we were at the Dalrymple Hotel. It had a big nightclub out the back (we called them dance halls). There was a rock band playing. When we went to a dance, we’d wait for the band to go back on stage after their break before we’d ask a girl to dance. You’d pick a girl and you’d ask her something really romantic: ‘You wanna dance?’ If she said no you’d quickly go to the next available girl and repeat the three words in the hope of a yes. Not Geoffrey John. He’d wait for the band to announce they were having a ten-minute break and then go to a girl. His parting words to us were, ‘I’ve just fallen in love.’ He’d go and sit down for ten minutes and actually have a conversation and buy her a drink, just like a movie star. On this particular night the band had taken a break. Geoffrey John walked up to a beautiful blonde.

‘Do you mind if I sit with you?’

‘Piss off!’

Now this is 1969. A good wage was $200 a week. Geoffrey John took two steps back and said in a loud voice for all to hear, ‘What! Twenty dollars!’

That’s why he was our Fonz.

Granite Lodge could comfortably house four. On the odd occasion, that would double. Sometimes you’d be sound asleep and you’d have a mate join you via the roof. Drunks had difficulty finding their way into Granite Lodge. The combo of rugged terrain and pitch black wasn’t well suited to drunkenness.

The main occupants were me, Herbie and Max. The daily routine involved rising from a drunken stupor, staggering down to Alma Bay, falling in the water and staying there until a human being slowly soaked back into your sickened evil soul. Have a shower in the dressing sheds and get a Buddhist chant going: ‘I’ll never drink again’, mumbled over and over. Stagger back to Granite Lodge, where Max would be cooking bacon and eggs over a fire. We couldn’t spend money on food, only beer, even though we’d never drink again. After brekky, we’d go back down for a swim. If there was a cyclone on the way or leaving, Herb and Nial would be beside themselves with joy. Surf at Alma Bay. Herb was out there sitting on his surfboard. Nial was out there sitting, seemingly without the aid of a surfboard as he was so heavy the board was submerged. Herb was a ‘mini me’ Nial. Short, built like a brick shithouse, a fantastic athlete. If you check out the Arcadia Life Saving honour board you’ll read: Junior life saver 1967, Herb Adams. Senior life saver 1969, Herb Adams. Veteran life saver 2014, Herb Adams. Herb and his fab wife, Nell, moved to Maggy Island full-time in 2011.

Maggy Island madness

You couldn’t buy a skateboard in those days, you had to make one. You simply removed the wheels from rollerskates, screwed them onto a shaped piece of marine ply and off you went.

Nial had one of these suicide skateboards and he decided to come down the hill from Horseshoe Bay to Arcadia. (I just Googled it, and it’s about 750 metres, so three-quarters of a kilometre). The hill was steep and quite windy and cars were going up and down it. We suggested to Nial that as he was going to reach incredible speeds he might have trouble manoeuvring his dysfunctional skateboard and crash headlong into an oncoming vehicle and inflict enormous damage to that car and how was he going to pay for it? He usually came back with a profound statement along the lines of, ‘Don’t be bloody silly, get out of the way.’

I honestly can’t remember how we followed him down. In a car, on bikes? I can’t remember. All I remember is him in front of us, going faster and faster and faster. He stayed on that thing with such grace and composure, almost like a dancer. Nial was a great athlete. For a big man he was very supple, quick and coordinated; it was pretty to watch. His great bulk made him go very fast. He hit the bottom of the hill at a tremendous rate and didn’t even look like falling off.

Geoffrey John’s family had a small, nipple-pink Fiat on the island. Geoffrey John drove it to the local cinema (lazy bastard). Nial got the bright idea to put the Fiat on the awning of a nearby shop. So we all got around it and somehow put it on the awning. G J came out of the cinema and wondered what everyone was looking at. I think the phrase he used was, ‘How the fuck…? Nial!’

The main ferry wharf in those days was at Arcadia. We’d often congregate there once the pub was closed. G J drove his Fiat out there one night. He had his gorgeous girlfriend sitting beside him. Nial had had a few, and he leant down and started to have a conversation with the girl, and to her surprise the car started to slowly go up on her side. Nial gripped the underside of the car and lifted it slowly. He gently put the car on its side. The girl slid down to the driver’s side and she was squashing G J. The language! G J couldn’t see the funny side of it. We righted the car, and G J got out and inspected the driver’s side of the car. The language started again. Poor bugger had a bit of explaining to do to his folks about the dents and scratches.

Another drunken evening out at the ferry wharf, Nial thought it’d be funny to throw me into the sea. Low tides in north Queensland are low. I fell about 3 metres and landed on my guts. I was winded from the fall and I immediately sucked salt water into my lungs. The strangest thing happened: I started to drown. I panicked. The fear of dying was terrifying. I struggled like hell and then I surrendered. I just let go and (as I would find out about four years later) it was like tripping. The feeling was euphoric. I was suddenly ecstatic, I felt like I was 20 or 30 feet under. Suddenly a hand grabbed my shirt and a strong arm dragged me up. I erupted to the surface coughing and spitting. Nial had hold of me. He picked me up like a rag doll, carried me up the steps and put me on the jetty deck. He pumped my chest, turned my head to one side and the water spewed out. I’m pretty sure there was no mouth to mouth; if there was, Nial hasn’t said anything and I’d like it to stay that way. The ordeal felt like ten minutes, but apparently it was more like two.

One great day was the old bomb clean-up day. Nial’s step-father, Toombie, gave us the job of taking all the rusted wrecks around the island to the Picnic Bay tip. Most of the cars were already wrecks when they arrived on the island so, as you can imagine, there were plenty to dispose of. We got in the wrecks and Nial towed us to the tip in Toombie’s FJ ute. The tip was a large, flat area of landfill, circular in shape. The garbage was slowly filling what had once been a big hole. The flat area was about 100 metres in circumference. Nial towed the first wreck onto the flat area and drove around and around, almost causing the wreck to flip with about five blokes in it. Finally he stopped. He’d scared the shit out of us, and he was laughing to the point he almost laid an egg. Then we got an idea! With the next wreck, just have one bloke in it and see if you could flip it. With one guy, you had plenty of room to throw yourself on the floor before the car flipped. We did it once and surprise, surprise, the towy got hurt. Not badly, mind you, but the smarter ones among us decided against continuing with that procedure. Instead, we all got out of the wreck and Nial tried to flip the car without a driver. It worked a couple of times, but it almost tore the arse out of Toomie’s FJ. God, that was a good day.

Saturday nights, women and fights

The place to go in Townsville on a Saturday night was The Sound Lounge. You entered down a set of stairs, having downed half a dozen stubbies of amber Dutch courage. It was a large rectangular room, dimly lit. One end had tables and chairs, then there was a dance floor split in two by a walkway through the middle. The came another bunch of tables and chairs, beyond which were the toilets and an office. In this office sat the owner, a big woman of spartan appearance. Against the dance floor walls were thick black curtains. Couples used to get behind these curtains and make out. The big woman had a large metal torch, and at regular intervals she’d go up to the curtains and start striking the unsuspecting couples with the torch. The music was loud top forty. I loved the joint.

The idea was to crack on to a girl, take her to The Golden Room coffee house afterwards, enjoy a few cups of Irish coffee and then head off to Cape Pallarenda in the car for some heavy petting. If you didn’t have a car, you didn’t have much of a chance. So my first six months in Townsville were fairly unproductive, until I got my licence.

If you didn’t get a girl, the next best thing was a fight. I’d reached a ridiculous time in my life of actually liking fights. I usually won and my ego was fed shovelfuls at school on Monday mornings. I had quite a few fights in the Sound Lounge toilets, and left many a victim groaning in the urinal. The big woman would try to grab you, lock you in her office and get the police. She never got me, I was too fast and too cunning. I was banned plenty of times over those two years. It didn’t matter, there was always the Dalrymple or Maggy Island.

I got into quite a few fights. Three were memorable.

Greg Thorne and I were very drunk one Saturday night. Thorny was one hell of a footballer but he wasn’t that big, unlike his best mate Denis Dean, who unfortunately wasn’t with us. Thorny got into an argument and this bloke was going to thump him. I stupidly said that I was more this bloke’s size and we got stuck into it. I was so drunk he beat the crap out of me and dropped me onto my back several times. Backs and bitumen aren’t a good combo. My back was out for weeks.

One night, Denis and I were heading to my car after a big night out. We got to my VW and I said goodnight to Den and off he went. I was about to get in the car and I saw the bloke who beat me up walking past with a couple of mates. I stormed over to him and asked him if he had enough guts to fight me sober. He didn’t so I got stuck in to him. We ended up on the street. I was giving this bloke a hiding, and suddenly his mate jumped in and king-hit me in the right eye. It split open and ruined my new white shirt. I grabbed this bastard by the arm and smashed him into my Vee Dub. Then there were four blokes giving it to me, punching me all over the place. I grabbed the guy I’d thrown against the car, put my head into his chest for protection and pushed him into the front mudguard. I put one arm under his arse and lifted him slightly, and with my right hand free I just punched him in the balls over and over with a short right. The other three were too busy belting me to notice their mate was passing out and slumping onto me. Luckily Denis heard the commotion and came back. With the aid of another bloke he broke it up, and the guy I was punching collapsed on the ground.

As you’ve probably noticed, I got drunk every weekend. It was the beginning of a problem. I was always an outrageous drunk, hanging off chandeliers, dancing on tables, punching people.

One night in 1969 we were bored. We were in the car park at the back of the Sound Lounge and this bloke in a Morris Minor had three girls in his car. We thought that was rather greedy and asked him to share. He wasn’t amused and that just egged us on. He got very stroppy with us, so we started teasing him. I was never a lout or a thug; a larrikin, yes.

This bloke had old-fashioned roof racks. They were stuck to the roof with massive rubber suckers. We prised the suckers off and placed two suckers on the roof and two suckers down on the bonnet. We thought that was hilarious and went on our way, leaving Cassanova in the car with steam coming out of his ears.

One year later, I was in the Sound Lounge having a pleasant evening. This guy comes up to me.

‘You remember me?’

‘Nah.’

‘You and your mates had a go at me and messed with my roof racks.’

‘Aw yeah, I remember you.’

‘I’ve never been so embarrassed in my life. I’ve been doing karate ever since and I’m now a karate expert. I would like to fight you.’

I was puzzled. ‘You’ve been doing karate just to get me?’

‘Yes…’

I kind of shrugged with incredulity. ‘Yeah…sure, let’s go.’

In my day, you brought a mate with you, and if you were giving your opponent a hiding or you were getting one, your mate would drag you away. I took Nial.

We walked out the back and the guy took his karate suit out of his car and showed me. He said I could pull out now and he would honour my gesture and that would be the end of it. I’d heard about these karate experts: they broke peoples necks in James Bond movies. I whispered to Nial, ‘Don’t let this bastard kill me.’ Now, I’m a street fighter, this guy’s not. He struck a karate pose and left his head wide open. I didn’t muck around, I always got in hard and fast. I just started punching this dude in the face.

It caught him by surprise and it took him a moment to compose himself. I gotta admit, he knew how to throw. He got hold of me somehow and threw me with ease. I flew across a dirt road. It was the era of long hair and this guy had plenty of it. As he threw me I grabbed his hair. He came with me, I tore a fistful of hair out of his skull and his face skidded along the dirt. He just lay there crestfallen. He finally rolled over and stared up at the sky. I suggested he take up boxing and left him staring at the stars.

Towards the end of 1969 my parents moved to Townsville. Dad scored a great job overseeing the construction of concrete bridges over the Burdekin on the beef roads inland from Townsville. Dad bought a house out at Cape Pallarenda – paradise. Brian started at Town High in 1970. He was sixteen, weighed the same as me but was five inches shorter, built like Dad. As soon as people found out he was my brother, they wanted to fight him. (I have that effect on people.) Little did they know, he was runner-up in the Golden Gloves.

We had a fair few Torres Strait Islander kids at our school. Many of them were up to two years older than the other kids in their class. This happened because a lot of them started school late and they were behind. The thing about Torres Strait Islanders is that they’re big. For those of you who follow Rugby League, here are a few Islander players: Mal Meninga, Sam Thaiday, Wendell Sailor, Sam Backo, Gorden Tallis. Arguably the biggest, toughest, hardest men to play the game. Usually a sixteen-year-old Islander boy is a big strong lad. We had an Islander in Year 10 who was eighteen and a semi-professional heavyweight. His nickname was Gingles. Everyone used to wonder about who would win in a fight, Nial or Gingles?

My brother got in a fight with another Islander boy. He was big enough, but not as big as Gingles. Brian asked me to come down to the basketball courts with him as back-up. We noticed Gingles joining the crowd, so I asked Nial to come along to keep things tidy. The fight started and Brian’s opponent was way out of his league – Brian was all over him. Next thing, Gingles stepped in and punched Brian in the ear, sending him sprawling. Almost at once I stepped in and punched Gingles in the face as hard as I could. I put him on his arse and prayed he’d stay down. He just looked up at me with the look of a killer.

He got up, shaped up and said, ‘Come on.’ I gingerly brought my hands up and prepared to possibly die. Then the voice of salvation came from behind me.

‘I’m more your size.’ Nial stepped in ready to go. Gingles’s dark face went a little white. Nial had never been in a fight, he didn’t have to – who’d be stupid enough to fight him? Gingles, however, had had his fair share.

Gingles didn’t muck around, he jabbed and got through. Nial was defending, he wasn’t throwing any.

I’m screaming, ‘Hit him, Nial, hit him.’

Gingles connected with a right and hit Nial hard. It pissed Nial off and away he went. As I’ve said, Nial was fast and supple, he loved to spar so he knew how to fight. I’d spar with him and he’d slap the shit out of me. He belted poor Gingles up the basketball court, across the next one and down the other side. Gingles was very brave but outclassed. We stepped in and stopped it. By then the teachers had arrived. Five of us went to the office. Brian and his opponent were caned, and Gingles went to the doctor to get his lip stitched. He had a split in it you could fit a fifty-cent piece into.

Nial and I went into the office. Nial was school captain in 1969 and he repeated senior in 1970, so he had respect.

The headmaster said, ‘Well, Nial, I can’t treat you differently to the other boys. Put out your hand.’ He went to cane Nial. Nial caught the cane, took it out of the headmaster’s hand, snapped it in half, placed it on the desk and walked out. I gave the headmaster an ‘I’m with him’ look and walked out too.

In my two years in Townsville I didn’t have too many girlfriends – I preferred to play the field. I did okay for a young bloke, occasionally I got lucky, especially when I got my car licence. At the beginning of 1970, I went steady with Colleen for a couple of months and at the end of 1970, I went with Fred, real name Jane. They had things in common: they were fun-loving, easygoing and gorgeous. I didn’t take it too seriously, because I was so hurt when my girl from Aramac dumped me that I didn’t want to revisit the pain. As it turned out, Geoffrey John, of course, ended up going out with Colleen.

Having a car made the world of difference. The drive-in was a great place to take a girl; it’s amazing how gymnastic two eighteen-year-olds can be in the confines of a car. My best drive-in night, I didn’t get to see the movie at all. I drove in with my girl, unwound my window and hooked the speaker to it. I turned back and my girl had undone her top and revealed her very ample breasts. I replaced the speaker, wound the window up and drove down to Cape Pallarenda to have my way with her.

I went into a chemist in about March 1970 and discovered a girl who used to live in Aramac working there. She was my age with a beautiful figure and I’d been attracted to her in Aramac, but she hadn’t been interested in me. It was nearly lunchtime so I invited her to share a sandwich, which she accepted. I waited in my car for her. She jumped into the car and suggested we go for a drive. We went down to the weir, found a private place to park and suddenly she was all over me. I drove her back and suggested we go out. She said to just come up every so often and ‘take her to lunch’. I did that for a few months, it was all she wanted and I was very happy to accommodate her.

Licence to liberation

I went back to Aramac for the May 1969 school holidays. I took my friend Max with me. Brian was really snarly with me and I couldn’t understand why. He’d just come runner-up in the Golden Gloves and he was pretty damned proud and it entered his head that he could take me. The hundreds of times he’d come second best were feeding a resentment that was becoming a volcano.

Brian got a hammock for his birthday and he’d hung it up under the house. The Aramac house was a Queenslander on stilts. Under the house were Dad’s workshop/garage and storage space. Brian had his chrome 28-inch push bike upside down, repairing a tyre. I was on his hammock, which he didn’t like. He abused me for swaying on it a few times, and ended up yelling at me about it. So I just lay there and kept still.

A breeze came through and made the hammock sway ever so slightly. That was enough for Brian to lose it. He walked up, unhooked the metal ring from a picket and dropped the hammock. I landed on the concrete. I leapt up and it was on.

Max was witness to it, and just couldn’t believe the violence. Welcome to the Jarratt family, Max. Brian and I were savagely belting each other in the head. Brian was getting through much better than I was, so I grabbed him and jammed his arse into the triangular frame of his upturned bike. He was wedged in there, so I stood back and tried to punch his lights out. Next thing I knew, grizzly hands had hold of my head and Brian’s head. Dad banged our heads together and nearly knocked us out.

Thankfully, that is the last time Brian and I fought each other. Brian was so crestfallen that he didn’t beat me that when he told others about the fight, over the years, that he was the one who shoved me into the bike and belted me. About twelve years ago, he told that story in front of me. He’s told it for so long that he now believes it. I don’t mind and I’ve never corrected him, as I understand why. I know for sure that Brian could beat me easily and could have from about eighteen onwards. He’s built like Dad and can box like Uncle Arthur, so you’d have to be nuts to take him on. So, my darlin’ brother Brian, if you’re reading this and you don’t believe it, give Max a ring before you take me to task.

Back to Aramac for the August holidays. I’d just turned seventeen, so I drove my Prefect down to the cop shop. Sergeant Dudley Ruddle (great name) asked me what I wanted, I told him and he suggested we drive out to the tip. We threw a couple of garbage tins into my boot and off we went. We had a great yarn about everything and anything. We were in the main drag, just about back to the cop shop, when Dud asked me a question.

‘When don’t you make a U-turn, John?’

‘Buggered if I know, Dud.’

‘Well, if you’re ever in a big town, don’t do it at intersections or traffic lights.’

‘Righto, Dud.’

Back at the cop shop, Dud gave me my licence! This was before P plates, that’s how bloody old I am.