The Summer of ’82 Page 7

  This was the guy who had been placed in charge of our house for the week. Sure, he was holding down a job at Telecom. Dad was very pleased that Mark was in a trade, learning to be one of those blokes you see in little tents on the footpath, or looking at that thing that looks like a fire hydrant filled with coloured wires.

  Don’t get me wrong, Mark was a fun guy to hang around with. At school he was the leader of the trouble-makers. He would make all the Year 9 and 10 boys form a line, then he’d lead them into the library, in and out of the shelves, and then back out again. At one point he’d yell out, ‘Egyptian!’ and we would all do a sideways walk, much like the one made famous later by The Bangles. He was Jackass before it existed.

  But being fun didn’t mean Mark would be any good at looking after his two younger brothers. When he got home he announced that it was MYOB night – or ‘Make Your Own Banquet’ – and he was having a card night for his mates.

  Now, I’m no wowser, but I was a working-class man now and I needed my sleep. I believe Jimmy Barnes once wrote a song about me … okay, the song was actually written by the keyboard player from the American soft-rock band Journey, but it still spoke to me. Anyway, how could I get my rest when Mark was playing poker and working his way through a slab of Tooheys Red?

  Actually, I think it was called a ‘block’ – no doubt a weak marketing attempt by Tooheys to try to upstage the ‘slab’ and ingratiate themselves with traditional VB drinkers like my brother and his mates. What sort of idiots would fall for that? My brother and his mates. To quote Mark, ‘You get thirty cans in a block – that’s six extra!’

  Whatever. How the hell was I supposed to sleep when he and his mates were singing along to The Ramones or The Cramps? I was lying in bed and listening to these guys singing all the wrong lyrics – ‘beat up the cat with a baseball hat’ – over and over. I got up at one point and saw one of Mark’s friends vomiting in the toilet. I felt like ringing the police on my own brother.

  As the clock ticked over, I kept counting how many hours sleep I would get. That’s when I asked myself: ‘What would Jimmy do?’ The working-class man himself would probably scull a bottle of vodka and start punching on. I wasn’t going to do that, but I did decide to take some action.

  There was no point trying to reason with them; two blocks of Tooheys Red had taken these guys past that point. I crept out to the fuse box, turned the power off and pulled out some fuses, which I promptly threw into some bushes. Everything ground to a halt. By the time I was back in bed I could hear them swearing and cursing the mystery neighbour who had done this to them.

  In the morning I got up early, found the fuses and put them back in the power box. I was buggered and I hadn’t even started my day. When I saw Drago’s Celica pull up, I put Fischer-Z’s ‘So Long’ on the stereo and turned it up real loud. To this day, whenever I hear that song I think of my brother waking up angry. At least it was a good song.

  We went to work and did another day of drudgery, and over the next few days I fell into a routine: going to work, coming home, eating something like baked beans for tea, going to bed early and then getting up for work again. Thank God Mum and Dad came back from Vanuatu and the regular meals resumed.

  I couldn’t decide whether my life was a Jimmy Barnes song or a Bruce Springsteen number. While I was lying in the tunnel with the jackhammer I would come up with lyrics for songs: ‘Getting my hands dirty, gunna finish at three-thirty, I’m covered in dust, it’s the colour of rust.’ Yes, my lyrics needed some finessing, and technically I finished work at three. But I was pleased I was writing songs and had something to present at band rehearsal.

  Our band now had two emerging songwriters, Terrence and me. We had all been practising hard and had at least eight songs now, a mixture of originals and covers. We had self-penned songs such as ‘Goodbye Girl’, ‘Goodbye Louise’ and ‘Tell Her I’m Blue’. There was a theme developing in that they all seemed to be about girls, which was a little bit odd because none of us except Terrence had ever had a girlfriend. I think we were what you’d call ‘late developers’. Perhaps starting the Dungeons and Dragons club at high school hadn’t been the best idea for meeting girls.

  Word spread about our band and we quickly secured our first gig. Well, when you’ll work for free the bookings tend to pour in. We were scheduled to play the Croydon Girl Guide Hall for the Sunraysia Guides’ city camp. The great news was that the camp was for Ranger Guides, or girls between the ages of fifteen and eighteen. (As I type that now, it sounds a bit creepy … but we were all seventeen! So, not creepy at all.)

  Our rock and roll dreams were all set to come true at a Girl Guides’ hall in Croydon. The only problem was that they didn’t. In fact, our rock and roll dreams almost died that night.

  For a start, Brown Owl, the Guide leader, wouldn’t let us set up on the stage – she had her toadstools up there and would not move them, as the Brownie Guides had to dance around them later – so we had to set up on the floor of the hall. Secondly, the promised PA system did not eventuate, so Glenn had to sing into a mic connected to a guitar amp. And thirdly, some of the Brownies threw grapes at us. I kept gesturing to Drago and Zonk, who had turned up to lend us some moral support, trying to get them to go and tell those kids off. But apart from that, it was a great debut for Captain Cocoa.

  Oh yeah – that was the name of our band. We struggled to come up with a good name but we got hung up on something that involved a soldier’s rank and a hot drink. I swear, the only other idea we had was Major Milo, which sounded too much like a joke band. And we were not a joke band. We were going to be the next big thing. They would soon be putting a plaque at the Guide Hall proclaiming that this was the place where Captain Cocoa played their first gig.

  The good news was that the Ranger Guides loved us. Sure, they’d had an exciting day of sewing on buttons and learning how to treat insect bites, but even so we were the highlight of their city camp. I started talking to a Ranger Guide called Sonia. She was from Mildura, a six-hour drive north-west of Melbourne. She liked similar music to us, her favourite band being Blondie.

  One gig and already my plan was working! The girls were flocking to me … well, one girl. We held hands and went for a walk in the beautiful Croydon night air.

  Now, I had never kissed a girl before. I know, that’s hard to believe, but I was not a ‘party pasher’. You know the people you’d see on the beanbag in the corner with their lips locked together? That definitely wasn’t me. I was the guy who the girls talked to about the boys they liked. Because that’s who you want to get relationship counselling from – a seventeen-year-old virgin.

  Sonia was gorgeous. She looked a little like the girl Annabella Lwin who sang in Bow Wow Wow and had that hit ‘I Want Candy’ – a bit exotic, with black hair and olive skin.

  We stopped behind the Guide Hall and I held her close.

  Sonia looked up at me. ‘I can’t believe you don’t have a girlfriend.’

  ‘Nah, just having a break at the moment.’

  ‘Have you kissed many girls?’

  ‘Yeah, sure.’

  ‘Well, kiss me,’ she said, closing her eyes.

  Sure! But I didn’t know what to do. I put my lips on hers and moved them around frantically, a bit like a fish floundering on a pier.

  She pulled back. ‘Just take it slowly,’ she said.

  I kissed her again and followed her advice. Now I was getting the hang of it, and I was loving it. I couldn’t believe this was happening to me. I was in love with this girl – nothing was more certain.

  ‘David! David!’ I was in such a high state of arousal that I was hearing my own name.

  But it wasn’t Sonia calling me. It was my dad. He was here to pick us up in the station wagon. You see, Kev was not the type of dad who would sit in his car and wait. He was a ‘come into the party’ kind of guy.

  You know those dads. I’d be at a party at Felicity Tope’s house, and it would be going great. She always had the best parties becaus
e her dad was a cop, so you were guaranteed not to get any gate-crashing yobbos from Bayswater. And sometimes he’d put his police uniform on and go get free McDonald’s for everyone. He didn’t even have to say, ‘Two all-beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on a sesame-seed bun,’ to get a free Big Mac. Anyway, I’d be in the kitchen – like in that Jona Lewie song ‘You’ll Always Find Me in the Kitchen at Parties’ – trying to impress girls with lines like, ‘Yeah, I’m in a band … Yeah, I know Richard Pleasance …’ And then someone would say, ‘Dave, I think your dad’s in the lounge room.’ My face would go bright red and I would feel sick in the stomach.

  I’d look through the servery and see Kev standing there in his full Scout uniform – we’re talking shorts, long socks and shirt with a full array of badges. And he’s preaching the benefits of the Scouting organisation to several youths who are sitting around drinking UDLs. So in ten seconds flat I would go from being the guy who was best mates with Richard Pleasance to the kid whose dad was wearing khaki shorts and a scarf with a woggle. (Or was it a toggle? I never could remember.)

  So there I was, mid-embrace, when Kev wandered around the corner. At least this time he wasn’t in his Scout uniform. To this day, I don’t know if he was shocked at what he saw or whether he genuinely didn’t realise what was going on. Whatever the case, he seemed preoccupied with the impressive Croydon Girl Guide Hall.

  You see, Scouts and Guides were always competitors – it was like Coke versus Pepsi. And the Scouts were definitely Coke. Nothing would put a smile on Dad’s face quicker than hearing that the local Brownies had had some dropouts. ‘Heard the Brownie troop are down to single figures,’ he would say with a smirk.

  So Dad came around the corner, looked at me and said, ‘This hall has no access for trailers! There’s no room to back one in.’

  Dad was also obsessed by trailers. They used a lot of them in the Scouting movement, carrying around canoes and other equipment. Dad even had his own trailer, which (apart from his HR station wagon) was his pride and joy. He wouldn’t lend that trailer to anyone. We often said in the family that if Kev had to choose between his trailer and his kids, the trailer would win, hands down.

  I made my excuses and went back to the hall to pack up our band gear. All the time I kept my eye on Sonia. God, life was so cruel! Here I was, a roof-tile factory worker waiting for his HSC results, and finally I had found a glimmer of hope in the form of a Ranger Guide from Mildura, who I had known for at least twenty minutes. And now we had to say goodbye.

  I embraced Sonia and she said, ‘Come up and see me in Mildura sometime.’ She might as well have said, ‘Drop in on me on Mars one day.’

  I joined my band mates and we got in the car. As we drove off, I was staring out the window, trying to hold back my tears.

  Noddy broke the silence. ‘David’s got a girlfriend.’

  ‘Ohhhhhhh,’ everybody said in unison. There was a long pause while each of us thought of his own situation.

  Finally, Dad spoke. ‘That Guide Hall might be all flash, but its trailer access is no good.’

  I spent the next week in my hot and dusty tunnel thinking of Sonia. I even wrote a song about her:

  She lives six hours away,

  I’m gonna get my pay and drive all day,

  To see Sonia from the Mallee,

  More beautiful than someone from the telly …

  Okay, it wasn’t perfect, and I wasn’t certain that Mildura actually was in the Mallee, but rhyming it with ‘telly’ worked for me. Why, oh why, did she live so far away? Could I somehow find her? I realised I didn’t actually know where she lived, or what her last name was. But hey, I knew her mum was a teacher, and she had been in the Mildura Gang Show – yet another thing we had in common.

  I think she was very impressed by my capital city credentials in the world of Scout and Guide theatrical productions. I might have talked my Gang Show credentials up a little … I was essentially just a member of the chorus. While the Scouting movement mostly promoted outdoors macho stuff like kayaking, hiking and lighting fires, the Gang Show was for boys who preferred to stay indoors, wear make-up and sing show tunes. I had joined to meet girls, assuming that some of the other boys wouldn’t be interested in all the Guides who took part. It turned out about a thousand other young men had the same idea.

  The Gang Show was basically a variety show where we would sing funny songs while dressing up as giant babies, for example. But in 1982 the Gang Show also tackled the serious issues of the day. So you’d go from being dressed as a statue while singing a ditty about pigeons pooing on your head, to wearing ripped clothing while you hung off scaffolding and sang about the aftermath of nuclear war.

  The biggest problem, for seventeen-year-old boy-men like me, was the costumes. Too often we had to squeeze into a leotard and bounce around onstage. The opening number of the 1982 Gang Show was a piece called ‘We Are Australia’, and we all had to sing and dance while wearing green-and-gold leotards with Australian flags on the front. Just before I was about to go on, a Ranger Guide called Sue Stanfield came up and gave me a hug. Sue was gorgeous. She looked like a young Stevie Nicks, before all that cocaine, alcohol and assorted medications. Well, the hug had an effect and I went onstage slightly excited. I could hear my Scout troop laughing and jeering as I danced.

  Straight after the number, the director of the Gang Show, a rotund thespian called Ken with an affected accent, pulled me aside. ‘David, tomorrow you are going to a dance shop, and you are going to buy a ballet support.’

  ‘Why?’ I asked, knowing the answer.

  ‘Well, put it this way,’ Ken said, pointing to my Australian leotard. ‘Your flag had its own pole.’

  I definitely didn’t tell Sonia that story. Resolving not to give up my love, I decided there was one thing I could do: I could go to Mildura and see her.

  Before the internet, you actually had to talk to people to find out things like train and bus timetables. Unfortunately, the railway stationmaster was another former Scout of Dad’s and, like the aforementioned Constable Darren Dewey, he seemed to feel some misguided obligation to ‘look out for Kev’s sons’. To us he was just another guy in a uniform.

  His name was John McCallister, and he was Zonk’s brother. Up until his appointment, he was the unusual kid at school who loved trains. Pity anyone who ever picked on him in the schoolyard, though, because he was now the stationmaster of the Mitcham Railway Station, and thought of himself as something between a cop and the mayor. And he wasn’t shy about using his power against anyone who had crossed him.

  People wielding their petty powers seemed quite common on the railways in the ’70s and ’80s. The stationmaster at Heatherdale Station, the one closest to our primary school, was a fearsome-looking rocker, complete with quiff haircut, stovepipe trousers and a constant soundtrack of rockabilly coming from the boom box at his one-man station. He looked like he was straight out of Grease. As you’d approach the gate after getting off the train, he would take your ticket and then, regardless of whether you were eight or eighteen, ask you the same question: ‘Are you a surfie or a rocker?’ The answer seemed obvious, and you would stutter, ‘I’m a-a-a rocker.’ Only brave people like Noddy would say, ‘I’m a surfer – rockers are wankers!’ Then the stationmaster would chase him down the road, yelling, ‘Surfies are scum!’

  Now that I think about it, he was probably just amusing himself in his mundane job, so who can really blame him? If I had a choice of either teasing kids at a railway station or lying in a tunnel with a jackhammer, I know which job I would choose.

  Anyway, John McCallister stood behind his little window and questioned me like a Gestapo commandant. ‘Why are you going to Mildura? Is it for a Scout camp?’

  ‘Yeah, kind of,’ I said. ‘It’s to do with Scouts and Guides.’

  ‘Okay, so there’ll be a few of you going. You can get a group discount – why don’t you get your dad to drop by.’

  ‘Nah, it’s just me. I’m
the only one going.’

  This was too much, and John went into full Fat Controller mode. ‘Hang on a minute, youngster.’

  This annoyed me – he was only three years older than me!

  ‘You’re under eighteen, and you just can’t travel by yourself. You’ll need a parent or a guardian.’

  ‘Bullshit! I travel on trains all the time by myself.’

  ‘Yes,’ said John in his best ‘I’m in charge’ voice. ‘But this is an overnight service, and as a minor you cannot go on it alone.’

  What? I didn’t believe him, but if I told him the truth, he would just be jealous of me finding love. Because I reckoned he belonged to the same sad-loser-virgin club as I did. And he was three years older than me.

  This encounter put me off trains, but there was something else I could do: get my driver’s licence. My birthday was coming up, and I realised I should do the classic suburban boy thing and get my licence on my actual eighteenth birthday. You see, cars were very big in our world. We all wanted a car, and one that went fast. We were surrounded by brothers and friends who drove Cappellas, Falcons, Tempos, Escorts, Valiants, Commodores, Bluebirds, Corollas, Toranas, Cressidas, Datsun 180Bs, Datsun 120Ys.

  My mates and I understood that your first car would most likely be an embarrassing shitbox like a Gemini or a Sigma that you inherited from your nanna, or maybe the Camira your dad no longer wanted. But if you had a bit of money – say, if you were doing your apprenticeship – it would be the fastest, biggest V8 you could afford. Maybe a Chrysler Charger or a Holden Monaro, or if you were a Ford man it might be a Ford XC Falcon Cobra, the white one with the blue stripes. You would get your licence and drive as fast as you could.

  This was in the days before speed humps, speed cameras and speed limits. Okay, there were speed limits but you generally ignored them. Cars meant freedom, and for us in the outer suburbs this was essential. Cars were a one-way ticket out of Dullsville to … well, probably another Dullsville. But still, they were a sign of social status: it was quite common to pick up your mates and drive to the nearest 7-Eleven or Food Plus and just sit in your car out the front. You might get out and grab a Slurpee (or the inferior Food Plus knock-off, the Slushie), but most of the time you would just sit on the bonnet and say things to the girls who walked past.