PHENOMENAL

My brothers don’t like swimming anymore. Never liked it in the first place. Hate it, in fact; don’t want to train, full stop! This is what Dad’s been getting from my mother in the hallway of our Maroubra duplex this Saturday morning. It’s 1965; I’m going on eleven, my older brother’s turning thirteen, the younger nine. ‘Brad’s the only one who wins and qualifies for the championships you drive him all over Sydney for, the only one who’s always interested,’ she says, ‘so why don’t you stop pestering the others.’ Fair enough, I think to myself.

‘I’ve made a note,’ Dad says back, his made heavy as lead to lodge in her head. And now even he looks heavy, letting himself out the door into the front yard. This is how he cools off after arguments, though they’re usually about money, when he’ll throw his arms up and howl, ‘We’ll all end up in the poorhouse,’ wherever that is. Other times if it’s about Mum’s housekeeping, he’ll do something crazy like take a stiff broom to the hallway carpet and savage its entire length. Then he’ll make us boys wet hundreds of sheets of newspaper and lay them along the hall as some kind of dust magnet, though he never says why the dust has to be rescued from its lost and found in the high rays. Sometimes Mum drags us boys into things by ordering, ‘You’d better not treat your wives like this,’ and I’d feel sorry enough to agree if I knew who was doing today’s treating.

Whoever starts their rows, Mum usually has the last word by screeching, ‘You’ll end up a lonely old man somewhere.’ To see where Dad ends up in our front yard, I follow him out, and he’s bang in the middle, scanning the empty sky with hands on hips. ‘What’s up there?’ I ask, looking up too.

‘Nothing,’ he says with a sharp lung-suck, ‘I’m just taking in this salubrious Maroubra air.’

‘What’s salubrious mean?’

‘Clean and bracing,’ he says, heading for the kerb, where he strokes our new Holden’s duco. ‘They’re definitely making cars more streamlined,’ he tells the duco, and I decide not to interrupt about streamlined, because one new word a day will do. Anyway, he’s acting weird, and I wonder if it’s from last Saturday’s car crash: it was only the two of us heading down Alison Road as the traffic slowed ahead, when I suddenly had to shout because his eyes seemed busy beaming us to something on the horizon. When he slammed the brakes on, I head-butted cars in the rear-vision mirror, smashing glass. (There were still mirror bits in my scalp when we got home, Mum spinning me and inviting everyone to come pick themselves out of my dome.) We clipped the car in front too, but its driver said not to worry, because his bumper only took a nick, while our indicator was totalled. Dad gave him a fiver anyway, and he shook Dad’s hand, saying ‘Good sport’ over and over. We were already a pound down after buying second-hand footy boots in Randwick, from a family from ‘the Old Dart’. The last time the boots had seen action was back in England too, and obviously on a muddy pitch. ‘Thuss real Luncashire mod ’tween them stoods,’ Mr Wilson from ‘Luncashire’ said, as if his old Pommy dirt should have cost extra.

‘Should we phone quarantine?’ Dad asked him.

‘Please y’self, but yer parnd wornt be gorn to quarantine,’ he laughed through half-brown horsey teeth, the wall half-moss behind him.

This is our second place in Sydney; our first six months were in a duplex in Wentworth Street, Randwick. ‘How quaint,’ Mum kept saying as we dragged our belongings in. ‘P & O in white stucco.’ It was only a block from Centennial Park, itself as big as Rocky and heavily defended by sandstone blocks and iron spikes that made me think of England and the Beatles. Rocky had no Beatles, but kids were singing ‘All My Loving’ across the quadrangle on my first day at Randwick Public, where Reg Gasnier was scribbled big on every footy and passed around as the greatest of all time. On my first morning there, cars screeched almost right into me when I followed boys across the road to buy a carton of strawberry milk. Then the shopkeeper came running out to explain that those other boys didn’t almost go under a car themselves because they’d pressed the walk button, allowing them to cross. ‘Walk button?’ I asked.

Our only swimming training in Randwick was in an ocean pool with local boys the Bell twins, because it was too late in the season to join a proper squad. Almost nothing happened in that duplex if you don’t count my older brother pistol-whipping me with the butt of a metal replica Luger, and using my head for archery practice on his birthday. The knock from the Luger had no effect, if you don’t count blood and an inch-long scar across my temple. When he shot the arrow across the room and got me on the cheek, I was glad it still had its rubber stopper on, but not glad enough to resist charging at him: we both got at least ten punches in before he was even halfway out of his chair, and I only stopped when I thought there was too much blood. But then I found every drop of it was mine, from a gash where my knuckle had caught the chipped mantel glass above him. An hour later, I was returning from the doctor with eight stitches.

We were laying into each other again a few weeks later at Clovelly rock pool after he jumped from the edge directly onto my head to give me the shock of my life. And maybe my brother landing on me stunned my brain into action, because this was the day I made myself instantly twice as good at butterfly. All I had to do was pop my backside twice as high whenever my head and shoulders plunged down, making my kick deeper and more powerful without even thinking; and soon I was going up and down, up and down, like the big swimmers you see at carnivals. The only problem with doing butterfly properly was that it was suddenly as hard as running; with the other strokes, I still got to choose whether I ran or walked.

Ever since Dad tossed a book about the great Czech Olympic marathon runner Emil Zatopek onto my bed last weekend, I haven’t stopped reading it. Emil was so dedicated, he invented all these crazy ways to train. Instead of wasting electricity by washing his laundry in a machine, he jogged on it for two hours in the bath. And to increase his lung capacity, he’d take a massive breath in some park to see how far he could sprint on it, eventually checking the mileage of that single tank by lifting his head to look for landmarks wherever he’d blacked out. When he married a promising javelin thrower, they tossed spears at each other in their yard each evening, snatching them mid-air until she ended up with an Olympic gold medal. When Emil’s career ended, he scored a job as a Prague garbage man, and the Czechs loved him so much they waited at their doors to cheer and clap as he shouldered their bins to the lorry. Some even ran beside him for a block or two, patting him on the back. I bet he loved being cheered up and down those streets, and I wish I’d been there too.

Ten minutes after my parents’ hallway spat about my brothers’ swimming, I’m back on the lounge reading about Emil when Dad returns to announce he’s taking my older brother for a try-out with the Botany Harriers running club (he’s been asking to go running for ages). ‘If that’s what he wants, the Harriers is the place to start because it’s the oldest running club in Australia,’ Dad tells us all. This makes sense to me too, because Dad started his swimming with the oldest swimming club, Abbotsford, on the inner reaches of Sydney Harbour.

‘We’ll be back in a few hours,’ he calls. I don’t go with them, because I have no interest in running, despite my admiration for Emil; I run like a penguin anyway, with my short legs and long body. When they return at noon, they’re cheerful enough, though Dad heads to the bedroom for a nap after complaining of tiredness. When he wakes, he asks who’s coming to the beach and gets a loud triple-‘me’ from us boys.

On the sand at Maroubra, towels are dropped as we race in to swim out beyond the waves. There’s a bit of seaweed today, snagging on my fingers as I pull through. Dad’s out first; he loves charging across the shallows like a bull before leaping over the waves we boys get stuck on. Now, at last, we’re all out the back, where I need to tread water but Dad can still stand. Funny, I’m thinking, he hasn’t said anything yet: by now he’s normally challenging us to catch a wave, but today he just keeps pushing his fingers through his greying temple hair and gazing around blankly. He blinks down Malabar way, tosses seaweed into the distance, spins, leans back, and peers towards Coogee, fingers raking his temples even more fiercely. Now he looks at us, just … looks, before asking, ‘And who are you boys?’ After a whole minute of explaining we’re the kidnapped kids of the Gollombollock tribe and other silly rubbish, we suddenly see he’s serious.

Even though he no longer knows us, we convince him to race us back to the beach, making him break all the rules he’s taught us about never going with strangers. ‘He’s lost his memory, that’s all,’ says my older brother as we climb from the surf. That’s all? I wonder, though I’m relieved someone has words for it. We lead our big new friend to the car park, and even though he can’t remember his who, where, and why, his amnesia seems to have totally forgotten to include the how — of driving. Almost magically, his hands seek out the ignition and gear stick, his feet play the pedals, and we’re backing out of the parking bay. Now we point-point-point him all the way up Moverly Road as he continues to operate the car effortlessly.

After navigating him into our driveway, we run inside to Mum, shouting, ‘Dad’s lost his memory.’ Soon we’re all at a table on the front lawn, watching him sip his favourite pineapple juice as if sipping’s a miracle. He hasn’t spoken a word, but seems to know we’re his family, and there’s this goofy smile on his face sometimes. Now Mum goes inside and comes back with the transistor. ‘Music might trigger your memory,’ she chirps, now giggling for some reason: ‘Maybe Acker Bilk’s “Stranger on the Shore” will come on.’ That’s his current favourite.

The next morning, when my younger brother asks Mum why Dad was crying in the night, she changes the subject, but by day’s end he’s calling us by name, and after a week he’s back at work. Simple as that. What a relief! But I guess our big move to Hawaii is off; he’d been tossing up for weeks about a job offer in Honolulu. Mum now puts his amnesia down to a delayed concussion from tackling a bag thief in the city recently. ‘He’s not young anymore,’ she says, ‘pushing sixty.’

A month later, we’re watching The Mavis Bramston Show on TV when the best swimmer for my age in the whole world, Graham Windeatt, is welcomed like a star and given a seat beside the adult panel guests. I can hardly believe this. When Mum puts her fork down hard on the table and says, ‘Oh, that boy’s absolutely phenomenal,’ Dad and I look at each other, both probably thinking: Phenomenal? — she hates swimming! But I’d heard of this Windeatt even back in Rocky when he was supposed to be setting world records for nine-year-olds. He’s meant to be our next John Konrads, and even trains under Konrads’ old coach Don Talbot. Now the show’s regular funny men are trying to make Windeatt say clever things about his coach or parents. ‘And — ah — whose ghastly job is it to wake you for your five a.m. training?’ Gordon Chater asks. ‘I have my own alarm,’ is the reply. Somehow I suspect they won’t get a laugh out of Windeatt tonight, with his deep-in-thought eyes and cresting Menzies eyebrows, mouth set in this strange smile (but not really a smile, more a kind of ‘I find this quite amusing’ look). Still, it’s great to see boys my age can be famous enough to be on a show like Mavis Bramston.

In bed, I wonder why I didn’t ask Mum what phenomenal meant. But that’s easy to work out now: any time I hear anyone say phenomenal from now on, I’ll know they’re talking about something or someone as rare as Graham Windeatt.

Within a week, I get to see Windeatt in person at the NSW championships, where he’s sensationally beaten for gold in the eleven-years boys’ 100-metre freestyle final by a tall boy nobody’s ever heard of from Broken Hill, Lee Ravlich. One of my Maroubra club mates, Jim Findlay, gets the bronze and I take tin, as Dad calls fourth. I said a special prayer before the race, but I’m not sure if fourth proves it worked. At least I think it’s pretty good, with a two-second drop in my best time, even if I was five seconds behind the winner and four behind Windeatt.

By now, Dad’s been back to normal for a month, even remembering to do the same old angry backlashing of his left arm if our heads get in the way of reversing the car. Normal, except for his appearance: his eyelids are less even, their line kind of ropey, making him look really tired.

The season’s last racing is the state primary-school titles at North Sydney Pool in March. I’m halfway down the pool in my 50-metre freestyle final when I pull up breathless with the shock of the diving end’s dark canyon-like depth suddenly below. I breaststroke a few yards to recapture my breath before another go at freestyle but must now flip on my back to keep the deep-end dizziness out of my head, and suck hard on the entire sky before limping into the wall with head-up freestyle after everyone’s already left the water.

I’m still a bit teary and double-sucking after making my way back to the stands, where Jim Findlay says, ‘Ah, come on, Brad, it’s not that bad.’ Sitting now, I try to remember exactly what took my breath away this time. Maybe it really was the surprise of that inky depth jumping up at me. Or was it the cooler water of the end of the season? (I’m sure the cold caused my previous two stops, one in an ocean pool at the start of the season, the next in freezing Canberra.) And those long, scary surnames on the race program didn’t help either: fancy handles like De Greenlaw, van Hamburg, Blumenthal, Ravlich, and, of course, Windeatt. Then there was the absolute grand-daddy of scary names, Marcus Lincoln-Smith, the boy with the — according to my mother — famously webbed toes, though my relieved inspection before the race discovered only the barest of joins between the little toes. Anyway, because all those strange names read like a list of knights in some ancient jousting tourney, I was on edge well before the gun.

Dad doesn’t get around to taking my brother running again, but in winter he enrols us in a weekend basketball comp in Randwick to get Mum off his back about swimming. And one gloomy Saturday soon after we move into a flat in Duncan Street opposite our new Maroubra Bay school, he returns from work and takes us to the school oval to kick a footy around, not even bothering to change from his suit trousers and Florsheims. After he puts up the three towering punts we boys chase down and kick back, we head home. What was the point of that? I wonder, though we don’t ask why we’ve left so soon: I’m sure Dad’s left his amnesia behind, though he’s acting like he’s left a bit of himself behind with it.

But then, I actually like living in Duncan Street and having to walk up and down a three-level stairwell behind amber glass panels giving our skin its daily case of play-hepatitis. And one day on the way home from school, I have no idea why I’ve stopped walking to gaze up and down the street, when every building seems suddenly so still and toy-like. Yep, I decide, I wouldn’t mind if I stayed turning twelve forever.

Yet I also wonder why we’ve had so few visitors in Sydney, the very city my parents grew up in. Where are the old Sydney names they’d chuckle about in Rocky — Dad’s eastern-suburbs knockabouts like Bruck and Betty Wheeler; his best swimming mate, Sep Prosser; and the lifeguards who swam marathon laps of Botany Bay with him? Those laps must have been so much fun. Then there was the rally driver ‘Gelignite Jack’ Murray from his young water-ski days on Manly Dam. And what of June Dally-Watkins and my mother’s old modelling friends? In Rocky, there was a party at our house almost every week, full of laughing anybodies we’d only known a short time, and all those weekends water-skiing with what seemed like half the town. The only night that people have come around in Sydney, we boys waited outside to guess which headlights would pull up at our flat, and there were just two. But tonight, almost as if she’s heard me thinking, Mum’s taken us to visit an old modelling friend, now single and caring for a bedridden daughter with a muscle-wasting disease. Her flat’s tiny, with barely a light turned on, and once we’ve gone in to say hello to the poor little girl on her bunk in the dark, I can’t wait to leave.

In winter when there’s more time to play in the neighbourhood, I become good friends with the boy next door, Rick. I’d vaguely known him through backyard guerrilla wars, when gangs of boys chucked twopenny bungers over fences while hiding in bunkers of white-goods boxes; those skirmishes raged for a week after cracker night until most kids ran out of bungers. After an hour of timing each other to run circuits of his backyard this afternoon, and with neither parent home, Rick invites me inside for a drink. After he opens their fridge, I see more meat than I’d find on my plate in a year, and when I ask about it he lists a ton of different cuts, from run-of-the-mill cow meat like eye fillets and T-bones, to rabbit, tripe, trotters, tongue, and brains. ‘Dad loves his tucker,’ he says. I’ve seen his dad in their driveway, and he’s huge and loud.

When I’m offered a glass of chilled water, it looks clear enough, but I’m sure I can taste all those species of animal blood in the first sip, and leave it gladly on the servery when Rick offers me a guided tour; he says there’s something in his parents’ bedroom I have to see. Above their king-size bed hangs a wooden relief sculpture, jam-packed with people in the nude. ‘Have a closer gawk,’ he chuckles, and now I find men bending over women from behind; below these, couples lying down or sitting on each other, more crouching, some entwined lengthwise. ‘Christ,’ I groan, then ‘Christ’ again, and ‘Double backflip quadruple Christ,’ and Rick can’t stop laughing as he hurries me out in case we’re sprung. When we walk to the beach, it’s now my turn to show him something: a trick I invented, using guerrilla-war surplus bungers to blow up anemones in shallow rock pools. ‘All you do is place the bunger in the anemone’s mouth, and it straightaway clamps the bunger in place for you,’ I tell him.

‘And it still explodes, even if it’s wet?’ he asks, like he’ll explode too.

‘As long as half’s still above water when you light it.’

For the next ten minutes, it’s boom, boom, boom, until the entire pool’s decorated in white spots where anemones once clung to granite.

After the second round of inter-school footy fixtures, I’m dawdling home along the beaches when I strip to my togs for a surf at North Maroubra; my brothers are making their own way home from different fields. I’ve only just noticed it’s stormy, the water’s swirling, and no one’s around. As I slowly wade to thigh depth, I’m wondering if it’s still such a great idea when I find I’ve already taken the plunge, and from my first stroke there’s a scratch of seaweed from face to foot. I’m also on a high-speed conveyor belt out through the surf, the waves themselves sucked pancake-flat by the rip, and I don’t know whether to fight it and sprint for shore, or calmly stroke parallel to the beach until it weakens, as lifesavers advise. But I’m petrified of being dragged even an inch closer to New Zealand, and turn to flail for the beach for a whole minute of getting nowhere, some twenty yards out. Miraculously a wave lifts high enough for a spill to carry me halfway back, and when I stretch my toes down, there’s the planet again. Now I’m doing the special dolphin dives Dad taught us, diving down to push up from the bottom for a snatched breath at the surface before heading back down again, though barely gaining half a yard on each thrust. I keep these up till another wave dumps me where it’s shallow enough to wade again, the undertow still tearing at my hips. On the beach, I lie exhausted until I have the energy to climb back into my footy gear. By the time I’m lacing up my Luncashire stoods it’s raining hard, but walking home soaked is better than drifting the Tasman wet and dead.

One Friday afternoon when we’re all in the car after shopping, Dad pulls over to the pub where an old Pommy cinema friend wants to chew his ear about a business idea. Chew his ear? I ask Mum. ‘Sometimes you have to chew ear to get to brain,’ she says. We’re still waiting half an hour later when Dad comes back stumbling and weaving along the footpath, copying a drunk for fun. Driving off, he tells Mum what a dreamer his friend is: ‘Thinks he’s invented some machine to make home recording of TV shows affordable,’ he laughs. ‘Wants me to buy in and help him find a backer, but it’s all pie-in-the-sky stuff.’

A fortnight later, we’re leaving for Brisbane, where Dad will be the boss of a brand-new drive-in theatre at a place called Keperra.