The Summer of ’82 Page 13

  ‘Oh, I haven’t put them on yet.’

  This was not uncommon either. P-plates attracted police attention, so a lot of us left them off. But it made the policeman even angrier.

  ‘Show me your licence,’ he demanded.

  ‘I don’t have one yet, but I’ve got the receipt.’

  Because nothing was instant in 1982, I had to wait for my licence to be prepared and then sent to me in the mail.

  He stared at the receipt, looking mystified. He kept turning it over, like he was expecting the answer to be written on the back. Then he had a brainwave.

  ‘What about this car? It looks unroadworthy to me.’

  ‘No, I just bought it, and it had a roadworthy.’

  ‘Must have been a dodgy one.’ He walked past me and went to inspect my windscreen. This was a classic arsehole move. You can always find a fault in a windscreen. ‘Look, there’s a small crack here,’ he said. ‘You can’t be driving this.’ And with that he whipped out a large yellow sticker and stuck it on the glass – the dreaded canary. ‘You’ve got to get that fixed, then get a roadworthy and bring it up to the station.’

  ‘How am I supposed to get home?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said as he got in his car.

  ‘But it’s my birthday …’

  ‘Well, happy birthday, son. I’ll put the lights on for you.’

  He sped off with his lights flashing, and I had no choice but to walk home.

  This put a real dampener on our planned birthday celebrations that evening. Glenn and I had finally agreed to go to Denny’s for a family birthday dinner, and we were allowed to bring along our girlfriends. Okay, Cindy and I had never kissed or anything, but I was sure that was going to happen soon. After dinner my plan had been to drive down to the Manhattan Hotel with my mates to see The Models and The Uncanny X-Men, but the policeman had ruined that idea. So I begged Dad to let me borrow his beloved HR station wagon – which would actually be a bonus, as more people could fit in the back bit, where the dog normally sat.

  Dad kept his car in immaculate condition; it was his pride and joy. This generation of fathers, many of whom had been in the military, valued their cars and polished them and maintained them like they were getting ready for a war. Mum and Dad’s parents never owned cars, so they were the first car owners in their families. Cars were a status symbol, and the more your car sparkled, the more status it gave you. So even as I asked to borrow the HR, I knew I was treading on thin ice.

  Dad eventually agreed, but only on the condition that Mark came with us. Bad move, Kev.

  So we had dinner at Denny’s, which was never as good as you thought it was going to be. I’m pretty sure I had pancakes as my main meal. Afterwards, Glenn, his girlfriend, Wookey, Drago, Mark, Cindy and I then drove the HR down to The Manhattan Hotel – or the ‘Stage One Disco’, as it had been rebranded that night.

  I’ve always loved nightclub names, and in particular country nightclub names. Often they were just the function room at the local pub, with a mirror ball and a mobile DJ. Among my favourite names were Chances at Port Hedland (what were the chances something was going to happen?), Chequers in Wollongong (positioned on the top of the Safeway car park) and Cocos in Wagga Wagga (where a young Wayne Carey used to rule the joint).

  The Manhattan Hotel was a classic suburban beer barn, which had been turned into a nightclub. (What do they call them these days? An entertainment complex!) Australian suburbs are full of these places, big brick pubs plonked in the middle of a massive car park, just to make the walk back to the car at night a little bit scarier. These pubs used to have bands almost every night of the week. Just near us there was The Village Green, The Waltzing Matilda, The Burvale, The Middle, The Dorset Gardens, Area at the Croydon Hotel, and who could forget The Donny Inn? Go further north and west and you would find The Sentimental Bloke, Bundys Nightspot, Blazers in Werribee, and Bunnys in Footscray. And then along the bay there was The Sandbelt, Transformers, The Chelsea Heights Hotel and of course The 21st Century Dance Club in Frankston. And that’s not counting the inner-city pubs like The Prospect Hill in Kew or The Bombay Rock in Brunswick, and The Croxton Park Hotel in Thornbury, way before it was hipster destination number one in Melbourne.

  The Manhattan was our local venue, and it was famous for one thing: the revolving dance floor. Well, there were two of them, in fact. These large circles of polished wood (or was it plastic?) would spin around next to each other, a bit like a chicken rotisserie. It was quite frustrating as you’d be talking to some girl and then she would just be whisked away on the rotating dance floor, not to be seen until she came around on the next cycle.

  On this night the revolving dance floors were paused as The Uncanny X-Men did a great opening set for The Models. At this stage The X-Men were not as big as The Models. They had released their debut EP, Salive One, which contained such gems as ‘Pakistan’ and ‘I’m the One’. Everybody loved lead singer Brian Mannix with his mullet and his tights, especially when he sang their song ‘Everybody Wants to Work’. A song about not wanting to work. That I could relate to.

  There was an interval and then The Models came on. They were as good as ever, and it was fun to see them now that I was officially eighteen, so I didn’t have to keep looking over my shoulder for police or bouncers. By this time The Models had a new bass player, James Freud, and were working up to the release of what critics (me) would say is their best album, The Pleasure of Your Company, which featured the big hit ‘I Hear Motion’.

  After the gig Cindy and I wandered out into the lovely Ringwood air. Sure, we had hung around a bit to make full use of the revolving dance floors, which had soon spun back into action. And yeah, we may have had a bit of an ironic boogie to ‘Nutbush City Limits’ or tried to do the Bus Stop; the only good thing about these songs was that the girls would flood the dance floor.

  Anyway, after all that we walked out to where I had parked the car – but it wasn’t there. Were we in the wrong spot? But no, the car park had emptied out, and it was clear that Dad’s prized HR had been stolen. It turned out that Mark and some of his mates had come out at half-time for an ‘Indonesian cigarette’ in the car; maybe they’d left the door unlocked.

  Oh, boy, I felt sick. I think we all did. This was Kev’s beloved HR. We hung around the car park for ages. I don’t know why – were we waiting for the car to be returned? The only good thing was when James Freud walked past us and we said, ‘James, our dad’s car has been stolen!’

  ‘Oh, bummer,’ was all he could muster. He had other things on his mind; well, he had a girl on each arm.

  But he was right: a bummer it was. We walked home, and all the way Mark and I argued over who had to tell Kev. Not only would one of us have to tell him, we would also have to wake him up first.

  ‘You left the door open,’ I said.

  ‘Well, you’re the one who borrowed the car and drove it there,’ he countered.

  But I had the clincher: ‘You were supposed to be the responsible one.’

  We got home and my mates disappeared very quickly, as did our girlfriends. Hey, any chance of a birthday kiss, or … no, Cindy was gone too. No one wanted to be around when the giant that was Kev was awoken. Mark and I had eventually agreed that I would be the one to tell him, but Mark would take some of the blame.

  I crept into Mum and Dad’s bedroom and stood at the side of their bed. He looked so harmless when he was asleep.

  ‘Dad,’ I whispered. ‘Dad.’

  He didn’t move, so I tried again a bit louder.

  ‘Dad! Dad!’

  Now he started to stir. ‘What? What’s going on?’

  ‘Um, your car got stolen.’

  It took him a second to register what I was saying. ‘What?’

  ‘The HR got stolen from The Manhattan car park.’

  He jolted straight up in bed. ‘WHAT THE BLOODY HELL!’ he yelled.

  By now Mum had woken up too. Dad jumped out of bed, and he was angry. ‘Get in the car,’ he ord
ered. ‘We’re going to find it.’

  So we jumped into Mum’s car, which was not as good as Dad’s. And we drove around and around, looking for his car. There was no conversation, just the occasional curse muttered by Dad. ‘Bloody idiots … I knew this would happen … Your mother said it would be all right … Wankers!’

  Eventually we went to the police station and reported the theft. The policeman at the counter calmed Kev down. ‘Ninety-five per cent of cars get returned undamaged,’ he said. ‘And of the other five per cent, half of them have some damage, so that’s only two and a half per cent that are write-offs.’

  Guess where the HR came in? One of the two and a half per cent. It was found the next day at the bottom of a cliff near the Bayswater Boys’ Home. It was a complete write-off. The police wanted to take it straight to the wreckers, but for some reason Dad had it towed to our house, where it sat under the carport with a tarp over it for the next few years. Some nights I saw Dad out there just staring at it. He loved that car. I’m surprised he didn’t make a giant casket and bury it in the backyard.

  I got my Torana fixed up and soon enough it was back on the road. I started driving everywhere; the days of me catching the train were well and truly over. But I used to drive like an idiot. It’s a wonder I’m not dead. One of our favourite games was called ‘Americans’, where we’d drive on the wrong side of the road. I know, idiotic and very dangerous. But the car was my one place of true freedom. At work or school, I’d always had someone watching over me, and at home it was even worse. But once I got in my car, I was king of my own palace.

  And my queen was Cindy. She loved driving around; when you’re dressed like Madonna or whoever, getting on the train in the outer suburbs could be a hassle. But in the Orange Rocket she was safe. I started picking her up every Friday and Saturday night to go to work at the hot dog shop, and then for whatever came afterwards.

  Cindy was spontaneous, to say the least. One night, after working hard in the pork-based snack industry, Cindy decided she wanted to go and see the penguins – and she meant the ‘penguin parade’ at Phillip Island. One of Victoria’s greatest tourist assets, where you sat in bleachers, froze your backside off and waited for forty or so penguins to waddle up the beach. And remember, no flash photography! Well, our timing wasn’t great as it was four a.m. and the penguins didn’t walk up the beach until dusk, but there were lots of things we could do on the way to the island. We could go to see the giant earthworm in Bass, or the wetlands lookout in Koo Wee Rup. So we headed off in the Orange Rocket down the freeway towards Phillip Island.

  At one point we came over a hill and saw that someone had stopped in the middle of the road. It was an old guy in a ute, and there were plastic crates all over the road. My instinct – which was wrong – was to swerve and miss the crates, and as I did I went onto the grass median strip, which divided the four-lane highway. It was just bare grass but it was quite large, and it dipped in the middle. The Orange Rocket skidded on the grass and went into a spin.

  It’s true what everybody says: everything went into slow motion, including the wee that had exited my body. I had taken my foot off the accelerator and was wrestling with the steering wheel, but it was doing no good. I was desperately trying to remember my driving lessons, but all that came to mind was Mike Walsh from the TV. The seconds went by so slowly that it felt like I had time to read a manual on ‘How to Survive a Car Accident’.

  I actually turned to Cindy, put my hand on her shoulder and said, ‘Are you all right?’

  She just said, ‘Woo hoo!’

  The car kept spinning as we veered off the median strip and onto the other side of the highway. We slid across the two-lane road and onto the gravel on the other side, where we finally came to a halt. Thank God there was nothing coming the other way.

  A man came running out of nowhere and slammed his hand on the bonnet. ‘These Toranas are the best cars!’ he yelled. ‘I’m going to buy one today!’ And to be honest, he was right – it would have made a great ad for the car.

  I was in shock. I noticed the old guy with the crates fleeing the scene. It was the closest I had come to a near-death experience. It was awful and exhilarating at the same time. As we sat in silence, my mind went into overdrive. What was I doing with my life? Oh, that’s right – I was waiting for my HSC results, which didn’t really matter because I was going to be a rock star with my mates, even though my best friend had left the band because we were mean to him. And I used to love this girl called Sonia but I didn’t really know her. But one thing was for sure now: I loved Cindy. It was obvious what I had to do. With my eyes closed, I leant across to kiss her on the mouth.

  But Cindy pushed me away. ‘What are you doing? We nearly just died!’

  Suddenly I wished the car was still spinning. ‘But you said, “Woo hoo”?’

  ‘I was being ironic! Now drive me home.’

  ‘What about the penguins?’

  ‘I’m traumatised, you idiot! Drive me home now!’

  So that’s what I did. After I dropped Cindy off, I pulled up out the front of my house. And there was Noddy, sitting on the bonnet of his car. I had heard he’d got his licence and was driving a yellow Datsun 120Y.

  Everything became clear again: at last I could make up with Noddy. I leant my head out of the car window. ‘Noddy, great to see you! I was —’

  I was about to tell him about my adventures in the Orange Rocket but he cut me off mid-speech. He didn’t look happy; in fact, he looked like he’d been crying. A thought flashed through my mind: Don’t ask if someone has played that record to him again. But it was something far worse.

  ‘Zonk’s dead.’

  SINCE YOU’RE GONE

  As a kid, you are usually spared from going to funerals; you might go to one or two but generally your parents keep you away from such things. But after you’ve turned eighteen you have no excuse. I had been to one funeral before, another Scout who was killed in a traffic accident. Zonk’s funeral was particularly sad as his dad was the vicar, so he did the service and had to say goodbye to one of his children.

  Zonk was one of those guys I thought would be around forever. He did crazy things but he always survived. And lately he had settled down – he had a girlfriend and a job and things were going well. But he rode a motorbike, and that’s what killed him. He came off it on a roundabout and was killed instantly. After my own terrifying experience in the Orange Rocket, I could see how easily this could have happened.

  We all thought we were invincible. This attitude was a part of our growing up – that James Dean, Marlon Brando and Yahoo Serious kind of defiance that says, ‘We are bulletproof!’ Once you turned eighteen, you were bound to know somebody who got injured or killed in a road accident. This was partly because we all bought such fast cars and drove them very fast. We had grown up actively pursuing what are now known as ‘risk-based activities’. Mark could have listed his hobbies as ‘burning stuff, stealing stuff and doing really dangerous stuff’.

  We survived so many things. We had diseases like measles and mumps, as well as snake attacks, dog bites and broken limbs – we just had to keep upping the ante! We were obsessed with all things underground (such as drains), anything up high (like those high-voltage electricity pylons) and of course things that went fast (like freight trains). Oh, and anything that might blow up or catch fire.

  When we were kids, playing in the drains was quite normal; sometimes we’d even take a packed lunch. The thought of an underground network beneath our boring suburb intrigued us. We’d get into the drain at an opening near a creek bed and just keep going up the drain until it got smaller and smaller. Did someone say ‘flash flood’? That just made it more exciting!

  The other thing we did was dig tunnels and build underground cubby houses. An underground cubby was basically a huge hole dug in the backyard, which we covered with planks of wood; then we’d cover the wood with the soil. We’d decorate the cubby with an old rug and some cushions Mum didn’t want anymore.
Then we’d just go into our underground cubby and sit in it! Building it was the fun part. In the Kents’ backyard, before we built the BMX track, we had constructed a series of underground cubbies, and then some tunnels to connect them. The Viet Cong would have been proud.

  Of course we all wanted a tree house, but it was often tricky to find the right tree. The Nortons across the road had an excellent tree house, designed so that it hung over the side fence. I remember this tree house vividly because I fell out of it once when Glenn came running over to tell me that Abba’s new album Arrival had arrived in the mail! Dad was a member of the Australian Record Club, which used to send records in the mail every month or so. When I saw Glenn running across the road with the record in his hand, I got so excited I stood up and fell out of the tree house. I didn’t knock myself out but I was dazed, and Glenn held the record right in front of my face, as if it were smelling salts and the sight of Anna, Björn, Benny and Frida would draw me out of the coma I was about to fall into.

  We loved anything that went fast – skateboards, scooters, bicycles, and then later dirtbikes, motorcycles and cars. We lived on top of a hill, so the billycart was very popular. The one thing Dad’s job came in handy for was that he had access to lathes, and so could make axles to order. We’d find some old pram wheels, and Dad would take them to work and bring them back attached to an excellent axle, which we could then attach to a plank of wood. On top of the wood we’d nail plastic chairs (without the legs!) that we would find in bins in the nearby industrial estate. We’d attach some rope to the front bit of wood as a steering wheel, then we were done! These billycarts kept getting bigger and bigger, until Trev built The Twelve-Man Terror. It was such a sensation in our neighbourhood that the local paper turned up and took a photo. Too bad no one got to see the article, as Noddy and I threw most of the local papers down the creek.

  After Zonk’s funeral, we stood around in the church hall having tea, coffee or cordial served up by the Ladies Auxiliary. Everyone told Zonk stories – the one where we put rocks in his pack, the one where he jumped off our roof on his bike into the pool. Noddy was with us but none of us said anything about him returning; we were just happy to have him back. Men – well, boys – don’t tend to do the big apology scene. They just start hanging out again and no one mentions what happened.