The Summer of ’82 Page 16

  So while I was playing pinnies down at Timezone, my teacher decided to come and see me doing my work experience. He turned up to Rum Jungle and they sent him down to Timezone, where he found me trying to master a new machine, Tron. At first Mr Hunting was shocked, but then he joined me for a game or two.

  Mr Hunting was one of those old-fashioned teachers – he seemed to genuinely care about my future. He was the year level coordinator, and took an interest in our careers. I had tried to give him false leads on what I was going to do. One time I told him I intended to become a police officer. He just laughed and said, ‘I don’t think so. There’s no BMX squad in the police.’

  Actually, our graphics teacher was officially our careers adviser. She did it as a part-time job on Tuesdays. But all she did was look in this big alphabetical book of careers. ‘And what sort of career are you thinking about, David?’ she would ask. One year I told her I’d like to be a TV cameraman. We lived near Channel 10 in Nunawading, so I knew this was an achievable occupation.

  She looked it up in her careers book. ‘Here we go, C … cabinet-maker, car detailer, car mechanic, carpenter … It’s not here. What about chef? Have you thought about that as a career?’

  These days I would probably say yes, and fast-track my way into a showbiz career via my cooking, à la George Calombaris or Gordon Ramsay. But alas, in 1981 our idea of a celebrity chef was Cookie from A Country Practice. Or maybe Peter Russell-Clarke (‘Where’s the cheese?’), who only got five minutes before the news on the ABC.

  Despite Mr Hunting being onto me, he was one of my favourite teachers. When we got into trouble for kidnapping the pot plants from the library, he started off our dressing-down with, ‘Boys, I agree, there are too many pot plants in the library, but this is not the way to go about it.’

  I had two other favourite teachers, Miss Berthelson and Mr Campbell. Miss Berthelson taught me English Lit in Year 12 and reignited a love of reading in me. I had been a big reader when I was younger but had let it slide when I took up serious BMX riding and going down the pinny parlour. But once she introduced me to Mark Twain and Henry Lawson, I was hooked. She even made Shakespeare interesting. One day she told me that I was very good at analysing situations and scenes in books, and calling them for what they are. She said I should get a job doing that, whatever that was.

  While Miss Berthelson was a hippy, Mr Campbell was anything but. Most kids weren’t keen on him because he was so strict. But I loved him because he taught my favourite subject, Australian History. I loved his passion for the subject and his knowledge about all things ye olde.

  You see, I actually loved going to school, so I was sad to leave it. I loved the learning bit, the social bit, the girls bit (when we got older), and the mucking around bit. I think that’s why I’m such a supporter of public education: I had a great time and it worked well for me. Half of my problem of not knowing what to do next was due to the fact that I didn’t really want to move on from school. Sure, I slagged it off in front of my mates, but now when I drove past Mitcham High I felt a pang of longing for it. Secretly I was hoping I would fail so I could return and do Year 12 a second time.

  That did happen sometimes. The bigger kid would turn up, normally driving a car, and soon he’d have all the girls interested. Kind of like the Fonz. Then again, I didn’t want to be one of those losers who left school and then kept hanging around it. That was tragic.

  Our school was big but it never seemed that nasty or rough. Sure, we had the normal violent games, such as The Wall: someone would yell, ‘Let’s do The Wall!’ and people would line either side of the corridor. Then the more adventurous boys would try to make it through, getting pushed and pummelled as they did.

  The worst day I ever had at school was my very first day. I turned up wearing shorts; big mistake. I was standing there with the few friends I had when three tough-looking older students approached me. School hadn’t even started for the day.

  ‘Are you Mark and Trevor’s brother?’

  Wow, how nice, I thought. A welcoming committee!

  ‘Yes, I am, I’m Da—’

  And then they pushed me into some bushes. ‘Never wear shorts again.’

  God knows where Mark and Trev were – presumably on the other side of school, pushing these guys’ little brothers into another set of bushes. Even to this day, if I’m wearing shorts I check the street before I leave home.

  At lunchtime the same guys picked me up and carried me into the toilets to give me the ‘royal flush’. This was when the bullies held your head over the toilet bowl and flushed the toilet on your head. It was all about to happen when Mark wandered in. Like Tony Soprano, he considered the matter for a few seconds, while the goons – who, it turned out, were his mates – held me suspended over the bowl. ‘Nah, put him down,’ he said eventually, and they dropped me. ‘Mum will give me too much grief.’

  My older brothers’ legacy even had an impact in the classroom. The first teacher in the first class I ever had read out the roll. ‘Okay, Norwood, Jane?’

  ‘Here.’

  ‘Thank you. O’Neil … Oh, no.’ He looked up, clearly distressed. ‘Are you one of those O’Neils?’

  ‘Sorry, sir?’

  ‘Are you Mark and Trevor’s brother?’

  ‘Yeah, I am.’

  Now he looked really worried. ‘Are there any more of you?’

  ‘Um, I have a twin starting today as well.’

  This was too much. ‘Oh, God … I have to get something.’ With this he left the classroom, and we watched through the windows as he had a drink from the taps and then a sneaky cigarette.

  Things evened out, though, when Glenn turned up with his ‘Citizen of the Year’ awards and the rest. All those books he put away in the library at lunchtime had to count for something.

  Our HSC year had been a slightly rebellious one, so the school decided to ban HSC day, which was a real tragedy as we had some big things planned. Muck-up day, as it’s more commonly known, was a chance for the Year 12 students to have a little bit of fun before they sat their exams. Muck-up day used to be awesome at Mitcham High, especially in the ’70s, when they weren’t too fussed about people getting hurt.

  The first muck-up day I went to was when I was in my first year of high school, in 1977. The senior students had constructed scaffolding towers at the four corners of the school hall, a little like watchtowers. They held an assembly, with the four towers manned by HSC students who threw water and flour bombs into the crowd. The lights were off and they shined coloured spotlights around. This was just the sideshow to the main event, which came when a band made up of students and some teachers (hey, it was the ’70s – relax already!) sang outrageous songs about the teachers. For example, there was a teacher whose sexuality was in question; the singer announced, ‘This is for Mr Jackson,’ and the band then played Supernaut’s ‘I Like It Both Ways’. The performance climaxed when they did a number from the musical Hair, and took off all their clothes and bowed. (Again, relax, man – it was the ’70s!)

  But muck-up day got tamer and lamer every succeeding year, until it was our turn and the school just said, ‘No.’ Which was very disappointing.

  We decided to defy the authorities, however, and the night before the cancelled muck-up day we were across the road at Donald Moyle’s house having a cracker of a party. It was muck-up day eve, and only two students from the class of 1982 didn’t turn up; shame on you, Alan Jackson and Charmaine Manton! And why didn’t they turn up? They were both concerned about their academic performance – girly swats, as we’d call them. No one was smarter or more studious than Drago, but he still turned up.

  That was the great thing about our HSC class: there were nerds, jocks, surfers, bogans, stoners (one guy was even known as ‘Drugs’) and people from all sorts of backgrounds, but we all got on really well. And this party was a great place to let off steam.

  A lot of that steam was directed towards the school. It started with a few guys yelling stuff, and then escala
ted to people throwing bottles at the school grounds. It built up to an angry mob. I still don’t know why we were angry, as the school had been very good to us. No, that’s right, they weren’t letting us have muck-up day! So at about one a.m. we decided to march over to Mitcham High and get up to some shenanigans.

  Perhaps unsurprisingly, the school had predicted this and had a police car positioned in the school, parked between the canteen and the quadrangle. We panicked when we saw the car, but this feeling soon left when we realised the police officers inside it were both asleep. So we decided to wake them up by rocking the car … not the best move if you had any further plans for the evening. Nothing seemed to be able to wake them until one rolled into the arms of the other, and suddenly it was on! The police gave chase but we got away. But this ensured we did not return to the school, so HSC day itself was a big letdown.

  Even at our party a lot of us didn’t know what courses we were going to put down on our university admission forms. We had to fill it in by late December, and the teachers were putting a lot of pressure on us. I had looked into it and found there were no courses on how to be a rock star. But I did know one thing: I would rather go to uni than get a job. Surely uni could fit in with a rock and roll career?

  I didn’t know much about university, but I’d been pretty keen since a talk some former Mitcham High students gave us in Year 10. Three turned up and told us about their careers.

  The first guy got up and said, ‘I work as a fireman. I get up most days at six a.m. and I start work at seven.’

  I tuned out right there. ‘I ain’t doing that,’ I said to Noddy.

  When the fireman finished talking, the next guy got up. ‘I work as a plumber. I get up most days at five a.m., to start at six.’

  I tuned out again. Then the next guy got to his feet. ‘I go to uni,’ he said. ‘Most days I get up at nine or so, and I go to uni at ten a.m. I spend most of my days sitting around on the lawn talking to girls.’

  ‘I don’t even know what uni is,’ I said to Noddy, ‘but I’m doing that.’ Well, that along with being a rock star.

  People going to university weren’t that common in Mitcham in 1982. Neither of my parents had been to uni. After leaving the air force Dad had gone to night school to get his teaching certificate, and at the time this was the only way a working-class man could get a tertiary qualification. Trevor was actually the first person in the O’Neil family to go to university, but then he dropped out to join his rock band.

  My parents were what was known as ‘self-educated’: they got both newspapers delivered every day (the working man’s tabloid, with lots of pictures, plus the snootier broadsheet that helped educate us boys) and they put a lot of value on reading and knowing stuff. Mum was also a voracious magazine reader, and we boys would read her Women’s Weekly for the Mandrake the Magician comic. Grandad used to pass us his Truth newspaper, which he always said he bought for the racing form guide. This paper was a shabby affair with topless girls, and our favourite section ‘Heart Balm’, in which confused readers (some old journo) would write in with their sexual problems, and a sex expert (the same old journo) would answer their problems.

  A door-to-door salesman had the easiest sell of his career when he knocked on our door with his World Book encyclopaedias; Dad signed up straight away to get those twenty-two books filled with useful and useless information. Mum announced she was going to read every volume; she got through Aardvark and Aboriginal but gave up around Antarctica. Encyclopaedias back then didn’t have an entry for Internet or, more specifically, Wikipedia, which would go on to make all other encyclopaedias redundant.

  I had no idea what course to put down. My natural inclination was towards Arts, partly due to my interest in music and literature (comics), but also because I’d heard this was the slackest course. I was pretty sure the guy who said he spent most of the day sitting on the lawn talking to girls did Arts. And a lot of my heroes – Bowie, The Clash, Mental As Anything – had too. Okay, they all actually went to art school but it sounded similar. And anyway, my HSC subjects were in the humanities, so Engineering, Science and so on were all out.

  I ended up asking my parents for advice. Wasn’t that what they were there for? Dad was upset I wasn’t going to do a trade; he even said that if I failed, it wouldn’t be too late. Being an older apprentice was nothing to be ashamed of, he told me sternly. Mum thought I should do teaching. She had always wanted to be a teacher, and she said that I seemed to get on well with younger children. That was true – I was the king of the kids in the local street – but that was mainly because I was very immature.

  When most boys my age would have been trying to find an old Playboy to look at, I still preferred Archie or Richie Rich comics like the younger kids. I was also a big Casper the Friendly Ghost fan, although I got very disturbed when Mark told me Casper used to be a little boy but died of pneumonia! And Archie wasn’t without titillation; both Betty and Veronica were very hot, even if they were comic characters.

  As a young man without the internet, you looked for a glimpse of the female body wherever you could get it. Grandad’s Truth newspaper was handy, but so was Gilligan’s Island when Mary Ann wore her gingham bikini. I Dream of Jeannie was also excellent, but nothing came close to the Channel 10 soap Number 96, which made its name with controversial nude scenes. They even used to show compilations of all the best nude bits featuring the beautiful Abigail. Number 96 finished in the late ’70s but Channel 10 used to repeat the whole series at midnight in the ’80s. So it wasn’t an uncommon sight in our household to hear the TV being turned on at midnight by one of the O’Neil boys who ‘couldn’t sleep’.

  So I put down Teaching on my form. And bearing in mind what Mum said, I decided to make it Primary Teaching. Even though I loved high school, the thought of teaching kids like my brothers and me filled me with dread. Anyway, I was never actually going to be teaching anyone, because before my three years of tertiary education were up I would be whisked away on some rock and roll adventure. A lot of rock and rollers were former teachers – there was Sting, and that bald bloke from Dire Straits.

  But what if I failed HSC? And this was the most likely outcome. My academic record had been in decline for a while. I was pretty much a straight-C type of student. The comments on my reports included, ‘David speaks up a lot in class but doesn’t really say anything of value,’ and ‘He virtually gave up towards the end.’ But my favourite was: ‘More recorder practice is essential.’

  My HSC year had started so badly that I thought of dropping out. I also considered giving up one of my five subjects so I could concentrate on the other four. The five I was doing were English, English Lit, Australian History, Geography and Legal Studies. This last one I was really floundering in. I couldn’t even remember what the highest court in Australia was. I always felt contempt for the law; I probably got that from Grandad.

  The half-year report I got was bad: I had failed Legal Studies and got a D in Geography. These marks would have no effect on my final score but were an indication of how I was travelling. I figured that my best possible outcome would be a C in Australian History, a few Ds and probably some Es. But I was expecting the worst.

  My parents were concerned, but in 1982 your folks really didn’t get involved like they do now. This made for some good opportunities to bamboozle them – like when I told them I was building a ramp to jump over the car with my BMX as part of a Physics elective. Mum and Dad’s only experience of HSC until then was through Trevor, and he’d been a star student. Trev had been very motivated, whereas I was decidedly not. I should go and study, I’d think. What’s that? The Goodies is on TV? Well, I think it’s time to check in with Tim, Bill and Graeme.

  So what if I failed? I could get a job. Okay, I didn’t want to work in a factory, I knew that much. And shops were no good either: the hot dog shop had shown me that retail was low-paid, hard work where you had to stay on your feet for long periods of time. Bugger that! I wanted a cushy job that wouldn�
�t affect my rock and roll career.

  Occasionally I had thought of joining the military, like Dad. In fact Trev had sat the pilots’ exam for the air force, and they’d told him he wasn’t coordinated enough to be flying planes! I remember him coming home and slamming his bedroom door – well, he tried to slam the door, but his clumsiness meant the handle came off and the door just banged back and forth. Brutal! They said he would be an excellent navigator, if he wanted to do that. Stuff that, Trev said; he didn’t want to be the mum sitting in the passenger seat with the Melways, he wanted to be the dad driving the car.

  I was thinking about something more extreme, like this bad kid from school who joined the French Foreign Legion. Seriously, one day he was outside selling newspapers at Coles, the next day he was gone and the rumour was he had joined the Foreign Legion. This was confirmed when he sent Mark a postcard from Algiers, where he was serving. We saw him about a year later, again outside Coles, where he was sporting a shaved head and tattoos. And these weren’t Celtic armbands or Chinese symbols – we’re talking tough tattoos like anchors and skulls.

  Anyway, the tough guy told us that being in the Foreign Legion was bloody hard work (surprise, surprise!) and that he’d gone AWOL and jumped on a ship in a port somewhere in Africa. He added that Interpol was now after him. Well, it was good to see he wasn’t frequenting old haunts that Interpol might check. They’d never think to look at his mum and dad’s house.

  For a little while I considered a life at sea, because I saw an ad in the paper for a ‘cabin boy’. Maybe I had seen too many episodes of Captain Pugwash, but life on a merchant ship appealed to me. This was in the middle of the year, when I was considering dropping out of school. I actually applied and went for an interview. The man – sorry, captain – was nice but he seemed concerned that I was too young and would not do well out at sea for months at a time. ‘These jobs are usually filled by someone with shipping in their family,’ he said. ‘Do you have any connection to boats?’