

FISH OUT OF WATER

By Peter Miles

Copyright 2020 Peter Miles

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

Thank you for downloading this ebook. This book remains the copyright property of

the author, but may be reproduced, copied and distributed for non-commercial purposes,

provided the book remains in its complete original form

Other works by this author:

A CONTEMPORARY CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT MANUAL

A ROLINGTON RATS TALE

MARY HAD A TRENDY LAMB

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE A NEW BEGINNING THE END OF THE WORLD

CHAPTER TWO A TOWN WITH NO SURF

CHAPTER THREE HOME IS WHERE THE CARAVAN'S PARKED

CHAPTER FOUR SMOKE GETS IN YOUR EYES

CHAPTER FIVE DRESSED IN GREY, FEELING BLUE

CHAPTER SIX THE DAZE IN THE OLD SCHOOL YARD

CHAPTER SEVEN GETTING TO KNOW YOU...

CHAPTER EIGHT LOVE WILL WOUND ALL HEELS

CHAPTER NINE THE SHOW MUST GO ON

CHAPTER TEN THE RISE AND FALL OF SPORTING LEGENDS

CHAPTER ELEVEN THERE'S NO PLACE LIKE HOME

CHAPTER TWELVE GETTING AHEAD IN LEAPS AND BOUNDS

CHAPTER THIRTEEN ALL THE WORLD'S A STAGE

CHAPTER FOURTEEN YOUR FUTURE LIES BEHIND YOU

CHAPTER FIFTEEN AND NOW, THE END IS NEAR...... I THINK

EPILOGUE

AUTHOR'S NOTE
PROLOGUE

My name is Phillip John Fisher. My friends call me "Fish", my mother "PJ", my father "Phil my boy" and my enemies call me a whole mixture of obscenities. This book traces significant events in one year of my life, back in the 1980s, a year that seemed to have a major impact on me, and on the course of my future. At the time I was young, inexperienced and a little self-centred, but mostly, I was young. I can't vouch for the complete accuracy of the events I've recounted, because time and a teenage imagination may well have altered a few of the facts, but I've done my best to record things as I saw them when they happened. Cross my heart!

CHAPTER ONE

A NEW BEGINNING THE END OF THE WORLD

One thousand and fifty six, one thousand and fifty-seven, one thousand–and fifty eight. I was sitting glumly in the back seat of our yellow 1976 Toyota Corolla, counting the telephone poles as they raced past the car, each one another nail being driven into my coffin. Each passing pole symbolised a further 50 metres between me and the ocean, and 50 metres less between me and a drab future in the bush. Beside me, Sarah "The Brain", my 10 year old blonde haired, chubby cheeked sister, was busy reading a copy of "Man on the Land", a rural affairs magazine, hoping to pick up a few vital tips on how best to relate to the native species of humankind we were about to encounter at our new home.

Home. The mere mention of the word brought tears to my eyes. Home had been the sunny Gold Coast, with beaches, surf, surfshops, video game parlours and plenty of well tanned bikini girls everything that a growing 14-year-old boy needs for his physical and mental development. I was happy there and had already planned for a very successful career as a professional surfer and Beauty Contest judge. My hair was just getting that tousled, bleached look that the girls loved, my skin was looking tanned, and I was on the verge of being accepted at school as a true surfer-of-note. Then the worst happened. My father decided to take an interest in my future.

My father was an English and Geography teacher who had taught at the same Gold Coast school for the past eight years. He was a dark-haired, basically ordinary looking middle-aged man, of average height and fair complexion. He did, however, have one unusual feature – some of the students in his classes had nicknamed him "Mullet Head". He had this strange open-mouthed look he adopted when silently reading or watching his students work. I suppose, as his son, I should have defended him, but I kept my mouth shut. Don't get me wrong, I loved my dad I just didn't like him very much at times. His favourite hobby at home, apart from matchstick architecture, was to correct my grammar at every possible opportunity. It was an irritating habit that tended to destroy the atmosphere a little whenever I tried to have any deep and meaningful "Father and Son" talks with him. In the end I'd given up trying, and turned to my friends for more worldly, if grammatically-incorrect, advice instead.

My feelings towards my father turned to genuine dislike the day he came home to announce that he had applied for a transfer to a country school. He had decided that Sarah and I needed to experience more of life, needed to develop emotionally, spiritually and culturally, and that the Great Australian Outback was the place to go in search of this development. He wanted to help us make our mark in life, to go where no one had gone before. I felt that the only mark we'd make in the country, away from the sand and surf and everything I loved, was a skid mark. I even started to hum the "Star Trek" theme, but Dad wasn't impressed, telling me I needed a more sensible approach to life. I was going to point out that seeking culture and life's adventures in some tinpot country dusthole didn't sound too sensible in my book, but I changed my mind. 14-year-old boys who want to see 15 know how far to push their fathers, and I felt that mine was already well advanced around the bend.

I'll say one thing positive about my dad, and it's that he's a man of action, on those rare occasions when he actually decides to do something. Once he had determined that the country was the place for the Fishers, the wheels of change began to move incredibly quickly. Our beautiful brick, ocean front home, with easy access to the best waves on the Coast, went on the market. Shelves of books disappeared into large cardboard boxes, and matchstick Eiffel Towers and Sydney Harbour Bridges were swallowed up in tissue paper mounds. Dad gave up whistling bars of old Beach Boys songs and instead began to hum Slim Dusty tunes about long country roads and hotels without beer.

During these days of upheaval, I tried my best to demonstrate my disapproval, but everybody was too busy packing to notice. All I could do was sit on my bed in my room, mournfully gazing at the myriad of surf posters on the walls, and at my soon to be useless surfboard standing in the corner. I felt the victim of some hideous crime, and in more desperate moments I contemplated running away. I quickly realized, however, that there was no sense in such an action. For the first time in my life, I began to regret the careless way I had squandered my $5.00 weekly allowance on surfboard wax, surf magazines and the occasional chocolate bar. I had no funds, I had nowhere to "hole up" when they sent the tracker dogs after me, and I couldn't fit a surfboard, skateboard, cassette player, surf magazine collection, 12 pairs of board shorts, 15 T shirts, 3 pairs of sandshoes and my pillow all on the handlebars of my BMX. I decided that if I couldn't take the essentials with me when I ran, it just wasn't worth going at all.

So, there I was, sitting in the car on the way to oblivion. In front, "Mullet Head" was mumbling away about pubs with no beer again, for the millionth time in the last two months. Beside him sat "The Ice Queen", serenely reading her Mills and Boon. For the uninitiated, "The Ice Queen" was my mother, a lady not unlike many other mothers apart from one or two peculiarities. She looked like most mothers, just over 160cm tall, a little bit plump, with blow waved sandy hair and a wrinkle or two that make up couldn't hide. Despite her nickname, she wasn't a cold and hard woman – in fact, she was actually quite gentle. She did, however, have the unusual habit of freezing everything, be it food, drink or even the odd piece of clothing which drifted too close to the freezer door. She had picked up the idea from an article in some women's magazine, and then blown it out of all proportion, like mothers often seem to do. The meals we ate today were prepared long ago, stored and frozen in plastic bags and containers, and simply defrosted after months in suspended animation. My school lunches were usually blocks of frozen bread and vegemite, a frozen juice, and a frozen apple or banana, all of which generally thawed out by lunchtime, except on cold days. I never had the heart to tell Mum that most fruit didn't survive the freezing and thawing process well, being content to make my daily donation of mushy fruit puree to the school bins.

Mum had taken the news of the country move very well. She had made enough tangles of string in her Macramé classes to satisfy her needs for the moment. The house had a lifetime supply of shapeless, unrecognisable ashtrays from her weekly Pottery classes, and our cupboards and freezers were full of Tupperware from her frequent visits to parties. She'd already given up her mid week Ladies' Squash after downing all challengers (literally, with blows to the head or body) and had been warned away from Aerobics classes after injuring classmates whilst performing star-jumps, leg kicks and other vigorous exercises. In short, she had achieved all the reasonable aims of the average fulltime housewife, and was ready for a change of horizon. The good wife, she was willing to place her future in her husband's hands. My constant urgings that macramé hadn't been discovered out west couldn't shake her faith, though I did raise a brief look of shock when I mentioned that "New Idea" magazine might not be available. But in the end, my efforts were in vain. She was going to the country with Dad, and they were dragging me with them.

CHAPTER TWO

A TOWN WITH NO SURF

Most of the journey west was relatively uneventful. I mean, how much trouble can you get into when your father never drives faster than 60 kilometres an hour, even in a 100 zone? After the first 50 or so kilometres I grew tired of mouthing apologies out the rear window to the luckless drivers who formed a convoy behind our car. They didn't seem to like me staring at them, and from the unusual and rather obscene responses I got back, I think many didn't know how to lip read anyway.

Perhaps the highlight of the trip was our crawl up the Toowoomba Range, part of the Great Dividing Range beyond which the inland plains stretched to infinity. We attacked it at 60, and quickly slowed to a steady 40, being passed by everything and everyone, including a cyclist on a racing bike. I ducked down in my seat so no one would recognise my embarrassed face.

As we climbed the steep ascent, Mum passed "The Brain'' and I a Mintie each to chew on, explaining that an article in "Woman's Day" said it would stop our ears from blocking. Sarah pointed out that "the pressure differential could be countered by simply blocking one's nose and puffing one's cheeks". Being a little scientific myself, I grabbed her Mintie and proceeded to push a lolly up each of my nostrils. She wasn't impressed at all and burst into tears, demanding a fresh Mintie and a sound thrashing for me. Mum wasn't impressed either, despite my explanation that all I was doing was combining her theory and Sarah's in a controlled experiment. Dad pitched in with another comment about my lack of sense, so I shut up and went back to counting telephone poles for the rest of the journey. Inside, however, I felt I had won a major victory. I had two Minties, and Sarah had only one.

The sun was low on the horizon when we finally reached the end of our epic journey. After seven hours and five toilet stops, we had arrived as weary travellers in our new home Wingindi, Queensland. Back on the Gold Coast, there had been considerable family argument over the correct pronunciation of the town name. Dad insisted it was "Win Jin Dee", Mum and Sarah thought it was "Win Gin Dye" and I said it had to be "Whinge and Die". I certainly felt that way when I thought of moving to the country town. In the end, however, Dad, forever the English teacher, was right.

Our initial introduction to the town was an old sign about a kilometre out, which looked to have been painted and erected in the 1960's and boldly stated in faded lettering:

"Welcome to Wingindi. Pop. 790. Elev. 200 ft.

Home of Red King. Tidy Towns Runner up 1974.

Enjoy Your Stay"

"Isn't that nice, dear, wishing us an enjoyable stay. I think I'm going to like living here", gushed Mum, who was very big on first impressions since reading an article in "The Australian Woman's Weekly" which said that first impressions were the best guide, especially in choosing a marriage partner. My first impression was that the entire population of the town was less than the student population at my last high school, and therefore I'd be having a hard time trying to find new friends or available females. It therefore was a poor impression indeed.

"What or who is this Red King?" continued Mum, vocal cords beginning to warm up after several hours of silence following the Mintie incident.

"I'm not really sure, my love", replied Dad in word-perfect English, with emphasis on the pauses, and speech marks almost audible. "What do you think, Phil my boy?"

Before I could bless them with my infinite wisdom, "The Brain" came to my rescue.

"I think I can answer that, Dad. From my reading of numerous rural publications, I've discovered that many cattle stud farms give their top stud bulls official registered names. Red King may be one such bull". I could see her little head beginning to swell with her own importance, so I sought something to deflate her ego and thus prevent a nasty explosion.

"Actually, Dad, Red King is a famous Country and-Western singer," I lied in my most convincing voice. "I'm surprised you haven't heard any of his classic songs. He's about as big as old Slim in these parts". I knew I had them hook, line and sinker, but had to be careful not to break the line.

"What are some of his songs, Phil my boy?" asked Dad with genuine interest. Beside me, "The Brain" wasn't sure if I was lying or not, and was staring at me in the hope of detecting any telltale signs of deceit, such as my nose growing longer.

"Well, Dad" I replied hesitantly, racking my brain for every possible country title I'd ever heard of, "There was 'I Still Call Australia True Blue', 'Put Another Dog On The Dingo', 'Tenderfoot Saddlebuff', 'My Tuckerbox Won't Come Back' and 'A Town With No Surf', to name but a few. Are you sure you haven't heard of any of them?"

"Now you come to mention them, Phil my boy, I think I have," he replied, very uncertain but not about to admit it.

"You know, PJ," gushed Mum, "when you take things a little more seriously you can be quite an intelligent young man. I hope to see more of this behaviour from you in future."

"Thanks, Mum," I replied, hiding a well deserved smirk beneath an angelic look of humble appreciation. "I guarantee there will be lots more where that came from." I turned to my sister and gave her a wink. She was totally confused by it – major victory number 2 was chalked up.

I was feeling pretty pleased with myself as we drove into Wingindi, but one look at our future hometown was enough to wipe the smile off my smug face. We encountered several old weatherboard, iron roofed houses on the outskirts, only to realise that the town was too small to have outskirts. The highway through the town was also the main street, with almost every major amenity located beside it. When I talk of major amenities, I am greatly exaggerating. I saw 4 shops, a small cafe, a service station with an ancient "Shell" sign, two hotels, a church and a TAB. No sign of a school, a movie theatre, video games parlour, K Mart or McDonald's. All the houses appeared to be weatherboard and corrugated iron, and all looked in need of a coat of paint. The only problem was that there seemed to be no one around to paint them. The main street was empty except for one ancient Golden Labrador, lying lifeless in the middle of the road, around which we had to swerve on our passage through the town.

"What a quaint little town" murmured Mum, though I don't think 'quaint' was the word she was thinking of. Dad was very silent in the front, pretending to concentrate on negotiating the non existent traffic. Even "The Brain" seemed lost for words, unable to find any scientific theory to account for the lack of inhabitants or the state of the town. I would have suggested nuclear holocaust had I been asked, but I wasn't. Finally, Dad spoke.

"Well, it's getting pretty late and we're all tired and hungry, so it's probably not a good time to truly appreciate our surroundings. I think we should check in at the hotel, have a nice meal and get a good night's sleep. Then tomorrow we can set out, explore the town properly and move into our new house."

Whenever I think of the word 'explore' I picture barren wastes or ancient ruins, so I thought Dad's choice of words was quite appropriate given our current situation. I didn't think our exploration would last more than 5 minutes, however, given the size of the town, and the only ancient artifacts we'd dig up would be the residents, past and present.

We parked outside the first of the two hotels in the town, this one bearing the title "The Royal". It was an old two storey building with large open verandahs top and bottom, painted in the colours of one of the major breweries, and looking in quite reasonable condition compared with the other buildings we had seen on our way into town. There were several cars and bicycles parked outside, a sign that in fact the town was inhabited. It was a relief to all of us.

Dad went into the public bar to find the manager, and came back after 5 minutes, signalling for us to follow. Mum was a little nervous, as the closest she'd ever come to a public bar was the reception room of the major metropolitan hotel where her wedding breakfast was held. According to her 1960's "Good Housekeeping" manual, public bars were no place for a lady. This occasion was an exception.

We followed Dad through the bar, seeing our first examples of Wingindi inhabitants. I tried my hardest to look as if I walked through bars every day of my life, but I couldn't help but be impressed by the number of empty glasses on the bar, the blue veil of smoke hanging from the high ceiling and cloaking the "No Smoking" signs, and the men, some big stomached, others lean and tanned, some in singlets and shorts, others in long-sleeved shirts and moleskins, some animated, others silent with eyes at half-mast, their wallets open in front of them on the bar. So, this was the culture and spiritual development that Dad had talked about. Well, the spirit certainly was flowing, but I was sure there was more culture in a bowl of yoghurt than there was in this entire hotel. I walked on, anxious to see what other educational experiences lay ahead.

To be fair, the rest of the hotel wasn't too bad. The next room was a private lounge, with a few Formica tables and vinyl covered chairs, where we sat and ate dinner in relative silence, each of us pondering our futures and the brief glimpses we had already had of Wingindi. The food could have been bad and it wouldn't really have mattered, but it turned out to be very good, both in quality and quantity. No one cooks a better steak or mixed grill than an Australian country hotel. However, if you're 400 or more kilometres from the ocean, I'd steer clear of the Fisherman's Basket. Though my spirits were low, I still tried to convince Dad that I was ready for the educational experience of drinking a real pub poured beer, but he preferred to stunt my education for 3 or 4 more years in this department.

We finished our meals, retrieved our bags from the car and headed upstairs to our rooms, with Mum and Dad in one, and "The Brain" and me in the other. The furnishings were sparse, the beds brass, the white sheets and pillow cases starched and crisp beneath the terry-towelling bedspreads, which were a little on the musty side. It reminded me very much of a hospital scene in an old war movie I'd once watched, but I didn't stay awake long enough to remember the title. Something to do with Hell, I think.

CHAPTER THREE

HOME IS WHERE THE CARAVAN'S PARKED

The first day in Wingindi began fairly routinely, with a hearty hotel breakfast served on chipped crockery in an atmosphere lightly perfumed with the aroma of stale smoke and beer. I informed Dad that real bushies had beer on their cornflakes, but obviously he had slept well last night and wasn't about to be fooled by that one. He said I could try cigarette butts on toast instead if I liked, rather witty for him, but I declined the offer, stating that I only ate the low cholesterol variety. After such an intelligent conversation we readied ourselves for the day ahead, and our assault on the town and its abundant offerings. In other words, we cleaned our teeth, combed our hair, hopped into the car and prepared to be disappointed.

As we circumnavigated the town, we began to realise that there was much more to it than was first evident. An overgrown paddock with lots of rusty farm machinery, which we'd passed in the dusk on our way into town, turned out to be a park, established by one of the local service clubs – Lions, Apex or Rotary. The rusty equipment was actually the adventure playground, though the only possible adventure I could imagine would be dodging the snakes and killer spiders that lived in the long grass or on the machinery. On the bright side, however, it did look the ideal spot to shoot a Vietnam War movie, with luckless G.I.s impaling themselves on rusty plough blades or tractor gear sticks. I made a mental note of this, in case I ever became a famous movie producer.

We moved on from the park and about 50 metres down the road we found another service club park/barbecue area, this one recently mowed. Obviously, the service clubs had little else to do in the town than build parks. This park boasted one large wood heated barbecue, beside which was kindly placed a large woodpile for the convenience of the user. Closer inspection of the barbecue revealed that the last user had graciously left behind a quantity of meat stuck to the plate, though I couldn't discern the type of meat due to the overpowering smell and the healthy covering of blue green flies resting their weary wings and enjoying a good meal. Needless to say, we didn't plan on having any barbecues in the very near future.

Having ceased our park investigations, we cruised down the main street of town, surveying the houses and the few shop fronts. In the morning sunlight, the general appearance of the buildings seemed less dismal, though I still felt that a painter could make a real killing if he was game enough to travel this far to find work. Some of the houses had very well kept gardens, and all had large corrugated iron tanks beside them, linked to gutters and downpipes by a myriad of odd shaped and multi coloured pipes. Each house was raised about two feet off the ground on stumps, which Dad suggested was for cooling purposes or to keep rodents out. When I pointed out that Sarah was taller than two feet and would still get in, no one was really amused except me. Sarah pretended to ignore me and suggested that the houses might be on stumps due to the instability of the black soil. It sounded very sensible, but after looking closely at several we encountered, I concluded that most were probably on stumps so the occupants had somewhere to throw all the empty beer bottles, old car parts, rusty bikes and dead cats.

Our travels quickly revealed that Wingindi had 5 churches, three halls, and thankfully more than just the main street. In fact, the town occupied about four blocks, bounded largely by partially sealed streets bearing the names of obscure pioneers whose only claims to fame were dying of thirst and hunger on obscure explorations, or having boomerangs wrapped around their skulls whilst trespassing on indigenous territory. One such street led us to a major goal of our exploration Wingindi State School.

Wingindi State School was a High Top, a school catering for students from pre-school up to and including Year 10, which was the year level I was going into. As schools go, it was not an imposing establishment, though I couldn't claim to be an expert on schools as I had spent the last 10 years trying to ignore their presence in the vain hope they'd go away. In keeping with the town's other architectural masterpieces, it was built from weatherboard and corrugated iron, was adorned with numerous water tanks, and needed a coat of paint, though was the regulation Education Department cream with maroon roof. A painted wooden sign over the front gate declared its identity and motto ("Onward to Excellence"), and beyond the gate was a small adventure playground of hanging frames, swings and a rusty slippery slide. There were four buildings, one at ground level and the other three raised about ten feet on large cement stumps, with each building bordering an open ended quadrangle cum basketball court cum tennis court. Looking with interest at the large cracks in the quadrangle, I began to suspect that "The Brain" had been correct in her assessment of the soil stability. I wondered, for a moment, how many students had been swallowed up by the earth while going for a slam dunk or an overhead smash.

The school buildings were set at one corner of a relatively large expanse of mown paddock, bounded on one side by open farmland and on the other sides by the narrow town streets. The entire school complex was enclosed by a wire fence, the sturdiness and condition of which diminished the further from the main school buildings one travelled. Diagonally opposite the school buildings, on the edge of the farmland, was an old tin shed, the purpose of which I wasn't quite sure. It was either the groundman's tractor and toolshed, or the machine gun post from which students were mowed down as they made their desperate bids for freedom across the open farmland. Between the school buildings and the tin shed, the paddock took the form of a sports oval, with a cement cricket pitch in the middle and football posts leaning lopsidedly at each end. A 25 metre swimming pool completed the picture, located close to the fenceline about 50 metres from the main buildings and fronting the street. It was obviously situated for both school and public access, as I could see and hear children playing within its separate fenced surrounds. My first signs of youthful occupation in the town.

Dad was anxious to investigate his new staffroom and classroom, but Mum objected, wanting instead to see the house we had rented as our new home. I supported her, though my motive was different, being that I hated hanging around schools, especially during school holidays. With the new school year beginning next week, I wasn't about to waste my last days of freedom in any classroom. Sarah was also on our side, keen to find out where she could set up her early-model Apple computer and chemistry set in order to continue her research into carbohydrate depletion in hydroponic vegetables, or whatever her pet project was at the time. Dad was forced to concede, and we returned to the car, heading in search of our new home.

We didn't have far to travel. In fact, Dad hadn't changed out of first gear and we were outside the house we had rented. I couldn't believe it. It was bad enough when your father was a teacher, but when your home was directly opposite the school, it was a major tragedy.

Reluctantly, I joined the others in leaving the car to survey our new residence. The house itself looked sound on the outside, its weatherboard walls painted a mustard colour and its iron roof a faded olive green. There were no dead animals hidden behind the stumps, which was a very promising sign, though I couldn't see what might have been floating inside the large water tank. The yard looked quite large, with space for a good backyard cricket pitch, and plenty of trees in close in and outfield catching positions. The grass lawn was fairly sparse and dry, but I was sure my groundswoman/mother would soon have the sprinklers out, as suggested in her last edition of "Better Homes and Gardens". I wasn't too sure the weatherboard walls would stand up to tennis practice or a well struck soccer ball though, unlike our beautiful Gold Coast brick home. At this thought, the tears began to well in my eyes and, not one for open displays of emotion, I decided to venture inside.

Going indoors did little to improve my spirits. I climbed the few front steps, passed through the doorway and fell flat on my face, having caught my foot on a large split in the loose laid vinyl floor covering. I found myself rubbing my nose with a ghastly lime green and yellow flower pattern and, looking up, discovered I was in the kitchen, a fact made obvious by tomato sauce and other food stains on the walls, the sink with dripping taps and a large, blackened iron structure in one corner which was apparently designed for cooking. It was my first encounter with a wood stove, but not my last. Mum was busy lifting up hatches on the stove, with a fearful look on her face and a handkerchief protecting her hand. Every new hatch or door she opened brought forth a puff of black soot that hung suspended briefly before drifting to the floor. From my position on the floor, there seemed something very dramatic about the scene in front of me. But, then again, I also thought that "Rambo" was a major motion picture achievement, such was my dramatic taste at the time.

I could hear the muffled voices of my father and sister coming from other rooms in the house, and got to my feet to follow them. For the first time, I noticed that the kitchen floor had a major slope in it, and made a mental note to get my skateboard out of its packing case as soon as possible. I walked uphill to the next room, the dining room, which had its own unique ripped vinyl floor in an obscure shade of orange, and about 5 layers of wallpaper plastered on the walls, torn by house movements or probing child size fingers of days gone by. The slope in the floor was gentler, and I had an easy downhill run into the next room, the lounge, which also had a vinyl floor, thankfully unripped and in the same orange as the dining room. There seemed to be some decorative continuity after all, though I was disappointed that the tears in the wallpaper here were in different places to those in the dining room.

The lounge appeared to be the hub of the house, from which every other room radiated. To the left, a doorway led to the laundry, if you call a sink and a scrubbing board a laundry, beyond which was the toilet. In front was the bathroom, consisting of a chipped and stained enamel basin and an old free standing iron bath with brass taps, currently occupied by a dried up dead toad and a cockroach in similar condition. To me, it looked like a case of murder suicide.

A doorway next to the bathroom led to a sleepout, which had once been a verandah and still sported a water stained wooden floor, a weatherboard internal wall, and windows looking out not only on the yard but also into the lounge itself. To the right was the main bedroom, which had the same vinyl as the kitchen, and looked to be the best kept room in the house. Its walls were freshly painted, though I suspected they'd used a toothbrush to do it, and the windows bore no cracks and could actually open. For, the first time in my life, I think I envied my parents.

Having surveyed the house, I stood alone in the lounge. In the back of my mind, something was bothering me. Naturally, there was my usual concern over the environmental state of the planet, and my worry over the possibility of thermo-nuclear warfare at any moment, but this was something far more serious. Suddenly it came to me. There were only two bedrooms in the house, and four people to share them. My unpleasant conclusion was that, unless Mum and Dad were to live permanently at the hotel, my sister and I were to share a room.

For the past eight years, prior to my sudden and unhappy departure from the Coast, I'd had my own room. I had lived with privacy, able to shut my door to the world and let my imagination wander (or my eyes wander, in the case of certain magazines). Now I was going to be asked to share my domain with a 10-year-old girl, who had no understanding of the complexities of the nearly-15-year-old male mind and who undoubtedly wouldn't appreciate my taste in music, reading material or my occasional desire to lounge in my underpants. This seemed to be positively the last straw in the whole 'move to the country' fiasco, and I decided it was time for action. No more Mr. Nice Guy.

I carefully formulated my plan of attack. It was to be mature, sensible, unselfish, based on sound reasoning and to be delivered in a rational manner. There were a number of reasonable options they could choose from. 1) Sarah could sleep in the car. 2) Sarah could sleep in Mum and Dad's room. 3) Sarah could move into the hotel. 4) Mum and Dad could sleep in the car. 5) Mum and Dad could move into the hotel. I was going to be flexible and let them choose any one of these. And if they didn't see the commonsense in my options, I was going to have a tantrum.

My plan seemed foolproof, until my father came along and destroyed it.

"Phil my boy," he said, walking in behind me as I stood there in the lounge, "we seem to have a slight problem."

"Gee, Dad," I replied, readying myself for action, "what problem is that?"

"G, Phil my boy, is a letter of the alphabet, not a good form of exclamation. Anyway, what I was going to say was that it seems we only have two bedrooms in the house."

He was falling into my trap like a fly into a spider web.

"Now, I know you wouldn't want to share with your sister,"(I nodded agreement), "so the next time we go down to the Coast, I'm going to borrow your Granddad's old caravan. We'll park it out the back, and you can move into it. Won't that be great? Your very own room again. Until then, you can sleep in your sister's room."

With that he left to crush somebody else's life. I stood there, dumbfounded. A caravan? At 14 years of age, I was being pushed out of home for the life of a gypsy, all my possessions stashed in an aluminium caravan. I couldn't believe how selfish Dad was. Why couldn't Sarah go in the caravan? My thoughts began to cloud, and the tears began to surge, but I quickly gained a hold on reality again. This was not a major defeat, I decided, just a tactical surrender.

I stormed out of the house and into the country air, fighting back a combination of anger and disappointment.

"I'll be back," I grumbled at the ominous school buildings glaring at me from across the street. "They're not going to keep this Fish in a can."
CHAPTER FOUR

SMOKE GETS IN YOUR EYES

The days following our arrival in Wingindi, and preceding the bleakness of the new school year, were occupied with settling into the new home well, their new home. We spent a second smoke veiled night in the Royal Hotel after the removalists failed to make an appearance with our furniture and personal possessions. Dad was quite upset by their tardiness, and even hinted that perhaps there was some kind of criminal activity involved. I calmly assured him that they would probably arrive tomorrow, and that the black market in matchstick White Houses and Eiffel Towers was not that great, nor were shapeless ashtrays and macramé tangles easy to fence. He seemed reassured by that, though I'm sure in his mind he could see his matchstick monuments being peddled on street corners or in dark alleys.

Sure enough, the removalists arrived the next day, very apologetic about mechanical problems they encountered on the way out, which had forced them to stay overnight in Toowoomba. Dad tried to put on his best "No worries, happens all the time" facade, though I could see he was just itching to get the truck unloaded to check on his family heirlooms. We spent a good hour doing just that, piling crates and furniture on the lawn, then shuttling in and out of the house, dumping everything where it was most in the way or furthest from its eventual endpoint. Mum spent most of her time as a sort of crazed conductor, waving her arms vigorously and pointing here and there while everyone else ignored her or misread her signals.

Once the removalists had departed, everyone set about finding their most precious possessions amongst the ambiguously marked packing cases spread around the house. Dad, naturally enough, sought out his matchstick models, and with glue in hand, prepared himself for any reconstruction that might be required. His preparations for damage repair were well founded. As he unwrapped his tissue parcels, it appeared to me that the removalists must have used that particular box as a football. Every model seemed to have been crushed by some amazing force. The great buildings of the world were now great handfuls of matches, with only small unbroken sections hinting at their former glory. My heart went out to my father as I watched him sitting there on the floor, trying in vain to revive past triumphs with each desperate squeeze of the glue bottle. Staring at such a scene, I decided it was only right that I leave him alone in his hour of grief, and went to see what the rest of the family was up to.

I found my mother standing in the centre of the lounge, magazine in hand. She had found the box with all her "Better Homes and Gardens" magazines, and was searching through the issues, looking desperately for helpful hints on re decorating the new home. The floor was covered with magazines, opened at pages displaying various kitchens, bathrooms, dining rooms, bedrooms and lounges, but from what I could gather, none of the examples displayed seemed to match the features of our new house, either in the 'before' or 'after' pictures. We didn't have exposed beams, picture windows, slate floors or cosy alcoves. The article that applied most was in the magazine that Mum was currently holding, which was entitled "How To Revamp Your Woodshed". I realised that Mum too was going to be experiencing a degree of discomfort and confusion, and thus moved on to see what Sarah was up to.

I found "The Brain" sitting on the floor of "her" room, her head buried in a large cardboard box as she scrabbled around inside. I was quite surprised when she pulled out a Barbie doll, something that seemed out of place among the scientific instruments and journals that normally cluttered her life, and I began to see her again as a cute 10 year old girl. Then she pulled out Barbie's lab. coat, stethoscope and electron microscope, and the two of them began to sort through the myriad specimen bottles that also emerged from the box, containing pickled frogs, snakes, goldfish and other luckless creatures that had wandered into our yard or past Sarah's nose. Barbie's legs were used as crude forceps, squeezed together to clutch the object in each jar for closer inspection. My visions of a child at play were smothered by the stench of formaldehyde and the shock of Barbie's exploitation at the hands of Science, and I realised that it was time to seek my own particular brand of entertainment,

With my impending move into a caravan some time in the near future, it seemed pointless unpacking my gear from the storage boxes. I decided instead to investigate the features of the house. I walked around the kitchen, opening every cupboard, looking for rusty tins of food and other leftover items that would hint at the nature of those who had been before us. This task proved fruitless, so instead I went and checked on the standard of plumbing in the house, turning on all the taps in the laundry, kitchen and bathroom, flushing the toilet, trying the outside taps and so forth. Apart from a few leaks, everything seemed to be working, except that I couldn't get hot water to come out of any of the taps. I went out to the meter box to turn on the hot water system, and found there wasn't a switch for it. Puzzled, I went looking for the hot water system, and found it attached to the house, on the wall outside the kitchen. A mysterious pipe went from the top of the system up to the roof, where it bent and overhung the guttering. Other pipes led into the kitchen and under the house, but I couldn't see where the electric wiring went into the hot water system itself. Something was amiss.

I took my findings inside to Dad, still busy with his reconstructive surgery. He listened with interest, and we both went outside to re investigate, before returning to the kitchen. We had traced the outside pipes to the wood stove, and came to a startling conclusion the water was heated by the stove, not electricity. If we wanted hot baths, it seemed we were going to have to burn something every night to get them. And someone was going to have to learn to light the stove. Always a closet pyromaniac at heart, I volunteered, claiming my Scouting background would prove useful. In reality, I only attended one Scout meeting and hated it, but I wasn't about to bring up such damaging details when a real challenge was at hand.

Adventurer and thrill seeker that I was, I went in search of fuel. Briefly, and rather sadistically, I contemplated the combustibility of matchstick monuments, but I realised that the heat generated in the stove would be miniscule in comparison to the heat generated by my father when he found out. I decided that the backyard was a more sensible place to investigate fuel sources and, with an empty packing case in hand, headed outside to gather wood.

Ideally, I would like to talk about the great toil and hardship I faced in my epic search, but in fact I found a small woodpile in one corner of the yard almost the instant I walked out the back door. The previous residents had probably brought in trailer loads of wood to meet their needs, and then moved on to the luxury of oil heaters or electric radiators, thus leaving us with a small inheritance of off cuts and stumps. Some of the pieces of wood looked too large to fit in the small firebox of the wood stove, and would require the attention of an axe, which I knew Dad didn't have. He had a small hatchet for breaking down kindling for barbecues but, looking at the size of some of the stumps on the woodpile, it would be as effective as a paper towel in a flood. There were smaller pieces of wood on the pile, however, and I set about gathering some of these to meet our immediate needs.

At heart, I'm a bit of a romantic, and as I gathered the wood in my arms, visions of pioneering folk came to mind, as depicted in those old Disney movies. I was just beginning to picture myself clad in rough woollen clothes and a furry beaver skin hat when a less imaginary furry object grabbed my attention and abruptly ended my daydreaming. A large spider had crawled off one of the offcuts in my arms, and was lazily making its way up my forearm. Disneyland never mentioned this side of the tale. Instantly I assumed the guise of a break-dancer, dropping my pile of wood and waving my arms wildly whilst jumping and moving rapidly backwards. This effectively dislodged the spider, sending it flying to some corner of the yard in search of a new home, whilst I was left standing amongst my strewn firewood, shivering uncontrollably. I decided at this point that I'd grown a little tired of collecting wood, and casually headed back to the house. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't scared. I just wanted to see what the rest of my family was up to, and perhaps change my underwear in the process.

Later that afternoon, when the need to light the stove became more immediate, I once again ventured out to the woodpile. This time I was wearing a jumper, jeans, Dad's gardening boots and Mum's gardening gloves, and felt more like a spaceman than a pioneer. I went about the task of picking up the wood with the care of an archaeologist examining ancient relics. Each piece was picked up in thumb and forefinger, then rotated carefully to ensure no wildlife was in residence. Once cleared, the piece was callously thrown into the empty packing case. It was a slow process to fill the box, but eventually my mission was over and I was able to relax.

"Well, that's the hard part over", I muttered thankfully to myself. "Now comes the fun part".

Full of excited anticipation, I headed indoors with my firewood cargo, carrying it to its destruction. Well, that's what I thought.

I placed my firewood box in front of the wood stove, and stood motionless, casting a discerning eye over the iron-and-enamel monstrosity. I knew where the wood went in, and I knew where the smoke went out, but the trick was in getting the wood into the form of smoke and flame. Though a Boy Scout drop out, I knew a few things about fires, having watched Dad light the barbecue several times. Newspaper was essential in the initial stages of lighting, and I gathered pieces of this from the rapidly emptying packing cases located throughout the house. This accomplished, I opened the firebox of the stove and crushed masses of the paper inside and, feeling very confident, pushed a few bits of wood in on top, though there wasn't much room for it. Then I struck a match, borrowed from Dad's huge stockpile of matchboxes, and lit the newspaper. The result was instantaneous, with flames quickly engulfing the paper as expected.

What I hadn't expected was the volume of smoke that poured from the firebox. It was as if a Heavy Metal band was playing in the kitchen. I hurriedly closed the firebox door to stem the flow, but smoke instead began to stream through cracks in the top of the stove, rising to the kitchen ceiling. Eventually it stopped, but on opening the firebox I found that so too had the fire, and the wood had not even ignited.

Slightly annoyed, I stuffed more newspaper into the firebox, lit it with another match and closed the door. Once again, smoke streamed from the stove top, despite my efforts to block the cracks with spare pieces of firewood and newspaper, and the kitchen began to look very much like the bar of "The Royal", with its veil of smoke hanging from the ceiling. When the smoking stopped, I once again found that the fire was out and that the firewood was only blackened on the outside.

I was beginning to lose my patience by that time, and angrily stuffed more and more newspaper into the firebox, to the point where I could only just close the door. I took the box of firewood and sat it on the stove top to block as many of the cracks as possible, then lit the paper and waited. A few small streams of smoke rose upward, but not for long and I began to feel a sense of triumph. I'd done it. My feeling of triumph was short-lived, however, for when I opened the firebox to confirm my victory I found that most of the newspaper hadn't even burnt this time. Something was definitely wrong. It was a very disheartening turn of events, and I let out a scream of frustration.

My scream was misinterpreted by the rest of my family as a call for help, and they came rushing quickly to my aid. I grimaced as their forms took shape amidst the smoky haze of the kitchen, realising that I now had an audience to witness my failure as a firestarter.

"What's the matter, PJ?" coughed my concerned mother. "Have you burnt yourself on the stove?"

"I should be so lucky," I thought to myself.

"I tried to tell you, John, he's too young to be playing with fire, " she chastised my father, and started to leave the room, obviously to find out what burn treatments were recommended by "Good Housekeeping" or "The Weekly's Guide To Home Medicine". I had to respond quickly if I wasn't to end up bathing in Tea tree oil or covered with Gum leaf poultices.

"No, Mum, I haven't burnt myself. I can't even get the stupid fire to burn long enough to burn myself."

"Goodness, Phil my boy," quipped Dad, "with the amount of smoke you've generated in here, I would have thought you'd just burnt an entire rainforest." Impressed by his own wit, he broke into his peculiar form of laughter, which to the trained listener sounded very similar to a Walrus choking on a fishbone.

"That's good, Dad," I replied sarcastically, bravery fueled by my growing annoyance. "I hope your sense of humour keeps you warm while you're having a cold bath tonight."

During the few minutes of conversation between Mum, Dad and myself, Sarah had been closely examining the wood stove and taking sample breaths of the smoke. After prodding around in the firebox with a poker, she stepped back and cleared her throat, a signal for the mere mortals in the room to pay attention. Some amazing revelation was about to come to light.

"PJ hasn't burnt a rainforest, Dad. All he's burnt is newspaper, and even then he hasn't done a good job. There's still plenty of unburnt pieces of paper in the firebox."

I was filled with mixed emotion. I was embarrassed at being a failure in the fire lighting business, but I was also disappointed at the poor standard of "The Brain's" announcement. Even I could have made the same discovery, or worse, Dad. I wasn't so sure about Mum. Anyway, it was far below Sarah's normal standard, and I began to wonder whether the country environment was already beginning to slow her mental development. My fears, however, were silenced, and my embarrassment also eased a little, by her next statement.

"The fault doesn't just tie with PJ though. He did use too much paper, and the pieces of wood he used were too large to support rapid combustion, but the real problem was suffocation." She paused, allowing this to be absorbed, as if our minds couldn't be bombarded with too much information at once. I decided to test her theory.

"I did find it hard to breathe with all that smoke, but what's that got to do with the fire going out'?" I was impressed that I could come up with such a deep and probing question.

"I think, Phil my boy," cut in Dad, "that Sarah is talking about the fire suffocating, not you."

"Oh, well, um, ah, I knew that, Dad," I hastily replied. "Can't you tell when I'm joking?" I faked a chuckle, at the same time wanting to hide under one of those torn pieces of vinyl on the floor.

"If I may finish," intervened Sarah, obviously annoyed at our frivolous banter, "I was going to say that the fire was suffocated because the smoke is not escaping up the chimney. You can tell that by looking at all the smoke here in the kitchen." All eyes gazed about at the veil that was slowly dispersing with the breeze passing through the house. "The logical conclusion is that...."

"The chimney's blocked," I blurted excitedly, robbing Sarah of her final moment of glory. "Something is stuck in the chimney and it's stopping the smoke from getting out."

The mystery was solved, at least partially. It was too late in the day to climb up on the roof to investigate the cause of the blockage, so the fire went unlit that night. Instead of hot baths, we had to satisfy our cleansing needs using a facecloth and a basin full of hot water, boiled up in the electric jug. The next day, using a ladder borrowed from a next door neighbour, I scaled the roof and found a bird's nest lodged in the top of the chimney. The case was closed, and the offending nest removed. With a bit of unwanted but necessary advice from "The Brain", I was able to light the stove, salvage some of my lost pride, and soak in a bath at the end of the day. For once I was glad to find myself in hot water.
CHAPTER FIVE

DRESSED IN GREY, FEELING BLUE

The last few days of school holidays rushed by at alarming speed If "Time flies when you're having fun" is true, then "Time hits light speed when it's school holidays" is also a worthy proverb. Having conquered the quest for fire, my last few days of freedom were spent helping my slave driving parents to transform a house into a home, with endless moving of furniture, tacking down of wayward vinyl pieces on the floors, and general dusting, scrubbing and draw-and-shelf filling. Mum's collection of paintings, portraits and landscapes, which appeared to be more at home on chocolate boxes and biscuit tins than in frames, were suspended strategically around the walls, hiding many of the wallpaper tears. Hooks were screwed into the ceiling to hang tangled, string pot plant prisons (Mum's macramé), and baked clay blobs were placed on top of every available horizontal surface, which meant you didn't lie down for a snooze while Mum and her pottery were on the prowl.

Busy and tiring as my days were, I should have rested soundly at night, but this was unfortunately not the case. As a special guest in Sarah's room, I was privy to all her eccentricities. I gradually grew accustomed to the stench of formaldehyde that seeped from her specimen bottles, and stopped worrying whether Barbie's plastic legs would melt from chemical exposure. I found it hard to sleep, however, when "The Brain" ran through her mathematical prayers each night, whispering the times tables from 13 to 100. She left out the first 12 tables because they were too easy.

I also found my sleep disturbed by Sarah's late night computer activities. Dreams of huge, perfectly formed waves, and small perfectly formed women were abruptly ended by the tap tap tap of the computer keys and the grinding sound of the floppy disk drive, as Sarah recorded on disk some obscure scientific theory or fact that had come to her in her sleep. At these times, I would lift my weary head from my pillow, crack open a reluctant eyelid, and gaze with mystified awe at the strange vision in front of me a tiny figure crouched at a desk in the darkness, face lit eerily by the glow of the computer screen, tiny fingers working feverishly on the keyboard. There seemed something slightly evil about this whole scene, and in my sleepy brain I began to ponder whether she was tapping out some secret scheme for the destruction of the world, or perhaps just her family. I could see the headlines "Three Bodies Found Preserved In Formaldehyde Ten Year Old Held For Questioning." Thankfully I would drift off to sleep again before my imagination ran away too far.

Suddenly, like a bolt of lightning out of the blue, it was the eve of the new school year. I was determined to stretch out every last minute of that last night of the holidays, but Mum was against me. She had me standing with arms outstretched in the lounge, measuring up and fitting my new school shirt. It was partly my fault, I suppose. When we bought the shirt, she had asked me for my size, and I naturally replied "Small Men's". Well, I thought I was a small man. Unfortunately my body didn't quite live up to my expectations, and Mum, unable to return the shirt in time for the first day of school, was forced to make her own alterations.

Having fitted me into the shirt, Mum then decided that Sarah and I could give a little fashion parade to show off all of our new outfits. I felt like a real idiot, in a grey shirt with brown sleeve trims, grey shorts, brown socks and shiny new black leather shoes. Grey and brown just weren't my choice of fashion colours, and I was too young to be excited by leather goods. It was little consolation that Sarah looked even worse in a brown-checked pinafore that had all that shape and none of the character of a hessian sack, set off nicely by brown socks and black leather shoes. Standing side by side, we looked like a classic 'back to school' advertisement, or perhaps an advertisement for 'Dial a Nerd.'

Once the parade was over, I threw off the foul garments and flopped onto the sofa to watch the Sunday night movie. Unfortunately, "The Ice Queen" had other ideas. First, I was instructed to pick up my uniform from its resting place on the floor and hang it in the wardrobe. I then had to sit down with Sarah and ensure my brand new pencil case contained a brand new sharpened HB pencil, a new blue Biro, a new red Biro, a new eraser, and a new compass and protractor set, all with names either written or engraved on them. This was followed by the covering of all exercise books, as required by the school prospectus, which Mum had memorised, and finally the sticking on of the pictorial book labels, so graciously supplied by one of Mum's magazines. I tried to tell her that I didn't want pictures of pop stars or cute animals on my books, but my efforts were in vain.

Menial tasks complete, I once more prepared to escape the impending doom of school by vegetating in front of the TV, but "The Ice Queen" had one more ace up her sleeve. She had decided that Sarah and I should both have an early night, so we could get plenty of sleep and wake up bright as buttons for the first day of the new school year. If I hadn't been so angry I would have laughed. You could have coated me with chrome and polished me for hours and I still wouldn't have shined on any school day, let alone Day One. I knew, however, that protesting was fruitless, and reluctantly retired. I hadn't really given in, of course. You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink, and you can lead a boy to bed but you can't make him sleep. After the goodnight kisses and the extinguishing of lights, I spent several hours with my head stuck under the sheets, reading old surf magazines by the light of my trusty torch. Another major victory had been won.

Inevitably, Monday morning arrived. I awoke with a headache – no, truly I had a real honest-to-goodness headache, probably a result of eye strain from my undercover literary activities. I decided that keeping my eyes closed was the best remedy, and was in the process of going back to sleep when "The Ice Queen" poked her head into the room.

"Wakey, wakey, rise and shine! It's the dawn of a whole new, exciting school year for you two. Who knows what adventures lie ahead."

Just for a second, a vivid picture of Mum suspended by the neck in one of her string creations entered my mind, and I couldn't suppress a slightly devilish grin. Unfortunately, Mum misread it as a smile of eagerness.

"Well, PJ, it's good to see you're enthusiastic about the whole new school year. The country air must be doing you some good. But hurry up, slow coach. Your sister is already out of bed and almost ready. Do you want her to beat you to school?"

"No," I thought, "but someone needs to be beaten severely." Okay I know, it was a malicious thing to think, especially about my mother, but when you're on the brink of losing your freedom, you have to fight back. Besides, last night she couldn't wait to get us into bed, and now she couldn't wait to get us out. I wished she would make up her mind.

"Mum, the race to school is the one race I always love to lose. Anyway, I've got a headache. I think it must have been caused by going to bed too early. I think I read somewhere that too much sleep can be harmful, especially in growing boys."

"That," cut in Sarah, already fully clothed in her sack and busy making her bed, "must be the same journal that says that reading under the bed covers late at night strengthens your eye muscles."

I shot her a menacing look. If looks could kill, pieces of her body would have been scattered throughout the room. Mum, however, was blissfully unaware of the true meaning of the exchange of words and body language.

"Goodness me, that sounds like a very interesting journal. I'll have to read it sometime. I wonder if any of my magazines mention those points on sleep. I'll have to check. Now come on, PJ, get up." With that she pulled the covers off me and headed into the kitchen to make breakfast.

I started to pull the covers back up again as soon as the coast was clear, but my plans were destroyed by the presence of a snitch in the room.

"Mum, PJ's not getting up." For a scientific brain, my little sister could be so childish.

"Yes I am," I shouted, jumping out of bed and reaching for the hanger on which my uniform hung. I was just in time, for Dad poked his head through the door a split second later.

"I hope you're not giving your mother any trouble, Phil-my-boy."

"Who me, Dad?" I asked plaintively, putting on my best innocent victim expression. To reinforce my words, I began to hurriedly dress. Sarah, meanwhile, was standing in the background, her eyes shifting between both Dad and myself, trying to understand how a grown man could possibly be fooled so easily by a no-hoper like me. I sensed the chance for another victory.

"Come on, Sarah, don't just stand there," I said accusingly. "Didn't Mum asked you to help her with breakfast as soon as you were dressed?"

Sarah started to protest, but was cut short by Dad.

"Yes, Sarah, go and help your mother. We all have to pitch in around here, and your presence in the room is probably stopping your brother from dressing. Off you go."

I watched Sarah's bottom lip drop in indignation, and she sulkily stormed from the room, glaring at me as she passed. I gave her a wink, the action signifying another notch on the rifle butt. I loved success in battle.

Dad was still standing in the doorway and, after Sarah had passed him but was still within earshot, I looked at him and smiled knowingly.

"Women. They sure can be moody." It was my opening line for a good heart-to-heart, father and son conversation, and as usual he missed the significance, or deliberately sidestepped the opportunity.

"' Sure can' is not a very good combination of words, Phil-my-boy. Now come on, get dressed. School waits for no man." And with that piece of wisdom he left.

I continue dressing, but without any enthusiasm. I was facing a new school and a new school year, two of my most hated enemies. To support me through the trauma, I had a 10 year old girl who desecrated Barbie dolls and related mainly to a computer, a woman who defined tragedy as nappy rash on one of the Royal babies, and a man who had a closer bond with matchsticks than with his son. I was going into battle without any backup.

CHAPTER SIX

THE DAZE IN THE OLD SCHOOL YARD

Toting a school bag filled with new stationery and a frozen lunch, I crossed the road and walked reluctantly and a little nervously through the front gates of Wingindi State School. It was 8.30 am, which for me was about 30 minutes earlier than I normally went to school, and the adventure playground was a hive of activity as young Primary schoolers renewed friendships and re-opened old scars on the playground equipment. I had never been a student in a High-Top before, and felt it would take some time to get used to the little kids running around amid the older Secondary students. It annoyed me to a degree, not so much because I disliked little kids, but rather that my sister was now in the same school as me, and a spy to my every action. I could imagine her going home each afternoon, updating a computer dossier on me which she would one day present to my parents, resulting in my expulsion from the family or the wiping of my name from the will. I would have to watch my every step.

I walked under the first of the school buildings which, judging by the number of young children sitting under it, housed some of the Primary classes. I noticed several young and nervous looking boys and girls sitting in one corner, surrounded by doting mothers, and guessed they must have been the Year Ones, starting their first day at school.

"You poor suckers," I thought. "All those years of school ahead." Knowing I had three years until the end of senior, as opposed to their twelve, made me feel a bit better about starting another first day.

Having passed under the building, I found myself on the quadrangle, where a decidedly rough game of Aussie Rules basketball was in progress. The participants were all boys, some about my age, others younger. The most violent participant was a thickset red-headed boy, who seemed to take great pleasure in hitting other players over the head with a black leather cowboy hat that he clutched in one of his beefy hands. Surprisingly, his victims didn't seem to retaliate, leaving me to believe that they were either very thick skinned or too scared. I suspected the latter, and made a mental note to give the redhead and his black hat a wide berth.

My mental note was torn up in the next few seconds. The basketball flew out of one of the scrum-like skirmishes and landed neatly at my feet, bringing with it the attention of every boy in the game, including the black-hatted bully. He smiled at me, more in amusement than friendship.

"You're the new kid, aren't you?" He spoke in a deep voiced drawl, running words into each other to form one long, almost indecipherable word. If not for this, he could have been a very good ventriloquist, for his lips barely moved as he spoke, fixed as they were in a sneer.

"No," I felt like saying, when I worked out what he had said. "I was here last year and had a facelift over Christmas." Considering that we'd never met before, he obviously knew everybody else, and that my new clothes made me stand out like a sore thumb, it was a pretty dumb question. But I held my tongue, not wanting to alienate myself any further than I already was, nor develop an intimate relationship with the leather hat. Instead I responded very civilly.

"Yes, I'm new." I sought to establish myself as a man of few words.

"Your dad's the new English teacher, ain't he? Bet you reckon you're pretty smart having your dad at school. Like you're better than us or something." He turned to his little band of followers, waiting for them to nod or mumble their agreement. The response came, but only because he chased after it.

I stood there dumbfounded. Actually, I felt like running to find Sarah. Here in front of me was the missing link that scientists spoke of in those boring "history of mankind" shows, the step between the apes and modern men. Ugly, aggressive, barely able to speak intelligibly, tribal. If this was a typical specimen of country humankind, I was in for a terrible time over the next year. I tried to think of some type of response that couldn't be misread and was simple enough for the redhead to understand, but was saved the effort by an outsider who came to my rescue.

"Leave him alone, Darryl. Pick on someone your own intelligence. There are a few new Year Ones this year."

My rescuer was a lanky boy about my age, who looked like he'd come straight off the farm. Most of his mousy brown hair was tucked under a battered brown Akubra, his shirt hung out on one side, and on his feet he wore faded, dirty black elastic-sided boots, a stark contrast to my shiny new leather school shoes. Instead of grey shorts, he wore long grey moleskin jeans, well-worn and slightly long for his spindly, bowed legs. All that was missing was a piece of straw hanging out the side of his mouth, though he probably had one in his lunch box.

"Found yourself another pansy for your group, McDowell?" responded Darryl, the red headed bully. "Need a teacher's kid to protect you, eh?" He laughed, gradually joined by some of the boys behind him. "You guys couldn't fight your way out of a paper bag."

"Not everyone has to beat up little kids to prove himself, Darryl." The boy called McDowell grabbed my arm and gestured to another group of boys leaning against a railing under the furthest building.

"Come on, I'll introduce you to some of the real people. My name's David McDowell, by the way, but everyone calls me "Cowboy". The bully back there is Darryl Brown. He's not half as tough as he makes out he is."

He didn't ask me my name, but I gave it anyway, and presently I was being introduced as "Fish" to the boys at the railing. They didn't look like pansies, which made me feel better. They included Roger Guffrey, a short, stocky farm boy nicknamed "Rambo" because he wore a camouflaged hat, carried a pocket knife in his pencil case and rarely talked about anything except guns; Allan Wilson, described as the class clown, a blond haired boy of about average height and build for a 15 year old, whose favourite pastimes were practical jokes and reading car magazines; and Stephen Douglas, tall, freckle-faced and fair-skinned, also known as "Max" after "Mad Max", because of his daredevil antics on his trail bike. Stephen was also the brains of the group, dividing his time between stunts and study.

I had just begun to divulge some of my own life secrets when the bell sounded. Unlike the electronic buzzer at my last school, this one actually was a bell, handheld, producing a loud clanging. Its effect, however, was basically the same, bringing children out of the woodwork from all directions. They begin to assemble in lines at predetermined positions, obviously for a parade, and I begin to get that terrible feeling of the lost child in a shopping centre, not knowing where to go and among complete strangers.

Cowboy grabbed my arm and towed me towards the back of the gathering mass of children. When I say a mass, I'm talking about 200 or so bodies, not much in terms of my last school or the average city school population, but surprisingly large for a town boasting about 790 residents.

"Where does everyone come from?" I asked my self-appointed host. "I've being in town almost a week and hardly seen any kids around at all".

"Farms," he replied, probably amused at the ignorance of "city slickers". "Most kids at the school live outside of town, and come in on buses."

I noticed, as I listened to his explanation, that my presence was drawing a few curious glances from boys and girls around me. I heard the tail ends of a few snide remarks, an odd suppressed giggle, and checked quickly to ensure the fly of my shorts was up. It was, and I breathed a sigh of relief. I wiped my nose to ensure nothing was hanging from it. I was clear in this regard too, and decided that the peasants apparently weren't used to having red-blooded surfers in their midst. I noticed Darryl Brown sneering at me from his position further down the line, but successfully fought the urge to stick out my tongue.

A second bell sounded and the murmuring and scuffling of the parade ceased almost immediately. From one of the rooms in the building we were all facing, the staff of the school begin to emerge, among them my father. I hoped he was feeling as lonely and nervous as I was. The teachers spread out along the verandah, leaving a space in the middle, at the top of the stairs, for the last person who emerged. He was a short, balding man, who reminded me of a thin Winston Churchill.

"That's Mr. Cardwell, the Principal," whispered Cowboy. "Though we all call him Mr. Cane-well. You'll find out why."

A voice boomed down from the verandah.

"Mr. McDowell! You weren't talking on my parade after second bell, were you?"

Cowboy's head jerked back to face the speaker, and his hands began to clench and unclench, the common action of many caning victims. Mr. Cardwell's nickname was clearly well earned.

"No, Mr. Cardwell, Sir, I wasn't talking. I just had a fly in my mouth and was trying to get rid of it." It was a lie that I would have been proud of, and instantly I decided that David "Cowboy" McDowell was the kind of friend I wanted to have.

"Well in future, Mr McDowell, keep your mouth closed and the flies won't get in." This brought a giggle from the masses, which was quickly stifled by an angry glare.

"Now, if I may get on with the parade, good morning students."

"Go-o-o-d mo-o-o-r-r-r-ning Mi-i-i-s-ster Ca-a-r-rd-well."

The rest of the parade was typical of first day parades that were going on in schools throughout the state that morning. Welcome backs, introductions to new staff, pep talks about studiousness in the coming year and the expected standard of uniforms, and finally, the allocation of form classes and teachers. It was in these classes that we would start the day, sorting out timetables and procedures for the coming week of the year. The Primary classes were dismissed at this point, as they already had allocated class teachers. As they marched away to the classrooms, I saw my sister amongst her classmates. She looked physically similar to them, young and innocent, and for a second I felt for her, wondering how lonely and scared she was. Then she turned her head, saw me watching, and gave a big, confident "Isn't this great" smile. I remembered just how strange my sister was, too far gone to waste time worrying about.

The names of the form classes and teachers were read out, starting with the Year 8s. Each grade was divided into two form classes of about 10 students, which seemed ridiculous to me when form classes at my old school had contained about 30 students. I suppose they didn't want any of the teachers here to feel left out. My biggest fear was having my father as a form teacher, but the gods smiled on me and gave him a Year 9 class.

My name was read out in the 10A list, which included Cowboy and, unfortunately, Darryl Brown. We were obviously destined to clash. Our form teacher was Mrs. Tucker, which brought a chorus of stifled moans from several Year 10s, and a subsequent "Be quiet!" from Mr. Cardwell. I was to find out soon enough the reason for the moans.

Following parade we headed off to our form rooms. I simply tagged along with Cowboy, at the same time trying to get a good look at the others who made up my form class. A couple of them were Brown's henchmen, and there was also Stephen Douglas, which made it three for their side and three for ours. There were four girls, one of whom immediately caught my attention. She had long brown hair, warm brown eyes, a cute button nose and what people describe as a full figure, which to my eyes means curves in all the right places. With this sort of view at school every day, I began to think that perhaps life in the country wasn't going to be so hard to take. I started to set myself some worthwhile goals.

Cowboy had noticed the object of my attention and gave me a nudge to bring me back to reality.

"That's Wendy Thompson, the most popular girl in the school, and the district for that matter. She's pretty smart too. I've been in her classes since preschool, along with just about every other boy and girl in Year 10."

"Who's her boyfriend?" I asked hopefully, praying that the response would be that she had stayed unattached in the hope of meeting a tanned surfer. No such luck.

"Nobody here," he laughed, though I think I detected some disappointment in his voice. It seemed I wasn't the only one with aspirations for Wendy. "She's been going out with Mitchell Freeman for over a year. He's a Year 12 at Bindeena State High." Bindeena was the closest major town to Wingindi, 40 kilometres away and with a population of about 10,000. Students going on to Year 11 from Wingindi either went to boarding schools or Bindeena State High, catching a bus every day.

"Well, while the cat's away, the Fish will play," I thought devilishly, determined not to let a minor setback such as a boyfriend destroy my aspirations. Strategies would have to be planned, and plans then set in motion. I had Wendy Thompson fixed in my sights, and would keep on firing until the target was hit. Heck, I had a whole year to play with.

What follows is a brief description of the teachers I was to meet in that first, unsettled day and week of school, when timetables were handed out, changed and rearranged, when assignment dates were set and recorded for every subject, when standards were outlined for all bookwork and homework, each teacher having his or her own peculiar requirements. Obviously the detail I go into here could not have been gathered in such a short period of time, but rather is pieced together from the accounts of friends and my own experiences throughout the year.

The first teacher I encountered was my form teacher and English teacher, Mrs. Tucker, or Eunice to her teaching colleagues. She also taught History, which I thankfully didn't take, and appeared old enough to have participated in quite a bit of it. The word "battle-axe" was invented to describe her – large of girth, standing just over 5 feet high, grey haired, her face wrinkled by time and anger and covered in "polyfilla" make up. She dominated her students as a sergeant major dominates new recruits. Her standards of work were impossible for mere mortals such as myself to meet. My left-handed scrawl, often smudged and sloping the wrong way, was far from the calligraphy she wanted, and thus I, along with fellow classmates, spent many fun- filled lunch hours repeating note-taking tasks. She loved to give surprise spelling tests, simply turning to a page of a dictionary at random and selecting the 10 hardest words she could find. Incorrectly spelled words were written out 10 times each in the back of one's English book, with the result that I went through about 15 books in the year. She also had a great love for the works of Shakespeare, using pieces for comprehension tests or dictation, despite the fact that most in the class couldn't understand a word old Bill was saying. I still feel that perhaps he was drunk or on drugs at the time he composed his words. Portraits of him show that he wore tights, which proves he must have been a bit strange. I never had the guts to mention this to Mrs. Tucker though. I don't think she would have understood.

My Maths teacher was Mr. Reynolds, a man vastly different in personality to Mrs. Tucker. A semi-giant redhead, he was a storyteller, who loved nothing better than to entertain us with tales of his past careers, for Maths teaching was only the last in an apparently long list of occupations he had filled. He would stop us in the middle of the lesson to tell us about his experiences prospecting for gold in the New Guinea Highlands, or installing nets in the shark-infested waters off Townsville, or taking on the Vietcong in the jungles of Vietnam, all the while tugging away at his thick, red beard. Most of us doubted the veracity of his stories, for he looked far too young to have done anything he said, but we still enjoyed ourselves and didn't mind missing out on a bit of Maths. In the course of the year, my understanding of Advanced Mathematics may not have developed much, but my imagination certainly grew more active, and for once I didn't mind going to Maths lessons.

Mr. Miller was my Science teacher and was, in appearance and action, the classic mad scientist. He suffered from a receding hairline, which pushed his remaining hair well up his forehead. Always untidy, it stuck up in the air as if he had just received an electric shock, an impression reinforced by large protruding bug eyes and ears that stuck out almost at right angles from the sides of his head. A 'dying caterpillar' moustache crawled across his top lip. He always wore a laboratory coat in class and even in the playground whilst on duty, and rumours were that he slept in it, though I don't think it was wrinkled enough to justify such a rumour. Besides, how could anyone sleep on top of all the assorted scientific paraphernalia that he kept in its pockets?

Mr Miller obviously loved science. He heated his morning coffee in a beaker over a Bunsen burner, and took great delight in scaring the life out of students by creating small chemical explosions, or converting a Bunsen burner into a flame thrower. Little wonder that no one sat in the first row of desks during his lessons. Unfortunately, like so many great scientists, scholars and sportspeople, Mr. Miller could not transfer his love of the subject to the majority of students. He assumed he did, but in reality we didn't understand a lot of what he said and relied heavily on the textbook to get us through exams. He also had a monotone voice that could put even the most attentive student to sleep within minutes.

Every school seems to have one trendy teacher, who dresses to impress in the latest trends of fashion. From previous experience, the perpetrator was always female, and usually an Art or Drama teacher, but Wingindi was to prove the exception. The leader of the fashion stakes at Wingindi State School was Mr. King, the Physical Education teacher. Every day he arrived at school in his late model soft-top sports car, resplendent in a Jag shirt, or a polo shirt with a cute little alligator on the left breast. His lower half was either dressed by Adidas, Puma or some other leading running shoe and tracksuit manufacturer, and his footwear usually averaged out at about $20 a toe. His gelled dark-brown hair was always impeccably combed, unless it was hidden under a spotless baseball cap. A whistle hanging around his neck might have detracted from the overall look, but he had avoided this by buying a small version on a silver chain, which could be neatly tucked away against his gym-developed chest when not needed.

If Mr. King was supposed to be a lady killer in looks, in action he was a child killer, and had earned the nickname "Killer King". Perhaps he was a man who believed that actions spoke louder than words, or perhaps he felt that too much actual teaching would negatively affect his looks, but whatever the reason, he worked us hard without ever giving much advice on the correct way of doing anything. I begin to understand why the basketball games on the quadrangle looked more like football. In his lessons, he would have students bring out the necessary equipment, introduce it briefly – "This is a javelin"; "This is a discus"; "This is a vaulting box" – and then send us off to use it while he sat back in a student-provided chair and observed. If we happened to do something right, he would say:

"That's what I want you to do."

And if we did something wrong, such as impaling a classmate with the javelin or landing on our heads after a vault, he would comment:

"Don't do that. It's wrong."

The injury rates in his classes were extremely high, as was the number of excuse notes to explain non-participation. I'm sure someone was running a black market operation in these notes, but never found the source and never dared to forge my own notes, largely because of the presence of my father in the staffroom where Mr. King read his notes.

Having chosen Manual Arts subjects in Year 9 at my previous school, I was obliged to continue with them at Wingindi. The Manual Arts teacher was Mr. Finch. He had started life as a Fitter and Turner, and his habit of shouting over the top of working machinery had carried over to the teaching profession. His voice was like a booming fog horn, and even his rare attempts at whispering would have violated most noise pollution regulations. Students in his classes worked extremely hard to ensure they did the right thing, in order to avoid a verbal barrage from Mr. Finch that would leave ear drums shattered. We tried to avoid seeking his advice wherever possible, because having him standing close beside you giving instructions was equivalent to sitting in front of a speaker at a heavy metal concert. He was, however, generally a very friendly person, keen to help, dedicated to his students, and wonderful to have as a sideline barracker when playing competitive sport.

I had little to do with the other Secondary teachers in the school, largely because I did not take the subjects they taught. There was my father, who taught English and Geography. Miss Jefferies was the Home Economics teacher, who also taught Year 8 Maths. She was the youngest of the staff, in her second year of teaching, who clothed herself in pinafore dresses and always looked to me to be too delicate and refined to be a teacher. She tended, from what I'd heard, to break into tears easily, including the times when her demonstration cakes didn't rise, or she broke a needle on one of the sewing machines. Whenever things like this happened, she ran to Mrs. Simpson for advice and solace. Mrs. Simpson was the commercial teacher, a kindly, old fashioned lady of great unknown age, who had taught in Wingindi State School since the early 1960s. Some unkind rumour indicated that she had some part in the invention of the typewriter, but I thought this was an exaggeration. Perhaps the birth of flight was more accurate.

The school had other teachers with whom I had no formal contact. These were the Primary teachers, who tended to be a little shy of Secondary students in the playground, perhaps because they felt we were out of their jurisdiction or because many of us were taller than them. Some I met through my father, at the dreaded staff barbecues, and others I ran foul of in the playground, earning a brief reprimand for an untucked shirt or for running on the cement or something equally serious. Yet whether we students knew them or not, and whether they were kind, unkind, liked or disliked, they were all part of the staff, the ruling body of the school. Collectively, we referred to them as "They". "They" didn't understand us, "They" didn't know how to have fun, "They" loved to give us homework. Looking back now, it was grossly unfair to group them all as one, for their personalities and teaching styles were many and varied, but, at the time, "They" asked for it. Anyone who wanted to spend their whole life hanging around a school obviously had something wrong with them.

CHAPTER SEVEN

GETTING TO KNOW YOU...

The first two weeks of school constituted a major settling-in period for me, in more ways than one. Firstly, I had to familiarise myself with the peculiarities of my new school; secondly, I had to acquaint myself with a new batch of friends; and thirdly I had to settle into new accommodation. My poor adolescent brain was bombarded with major crises, which would have left any normal child reeling in confusion. Luckily I was of tougher mettle. Nothing could defeat the boy-man who had faced 10 foot cyclonic swells, armed only with a rubber leg-rope and fibreglass-covered foam.

Settling into the routine of school was probably the least of my challenges. The timetable was fairly similar to that of my last school, though there were eight periods per day instead of the normal six. This meant that lessons were a few minutes shorter, but you had more lessons with each teacher. In the case of the story-telling Mr. Reynolds or big voiced but well-meaning Mr. Finch, this was not a problem, but in the cases of Mrs. Tucker, Mr. King and Mr. Miller, it was a major catastrophe. More spelling tests, more laps of the oval or pool, more scientific formulae and exploding objects. Perhaps what made it even worse was that, in this small compact school, it didn't take long to move between lessons, and less time was wasted. In my previous school one could almost take 10 minutes to move from one side of the school, where a Maths lesson was held, to the other side of the school for an English lesson. There had been time to have a good chat, catch up on the latest gossip, or even do last minute homework. But at Wingindi, all these pleasures were lost.

Once accustomed to the running of the school, I set about trying to come to terms with the new batch of friends I had met, and on whom I would rely to get me through the year ahead. Physically, they were not unlike the friends I had left behind, but they lacked a decent tan and bleach-blonde head. The code of dress was a little different, with more of a "farm boy" than "surfer" look. While I was most comfortable in an oversized white T-shirt and brand-name board shorts, with a pair of dirty white Dunlop Volleys thrown in for good measure, they tended to gravitate towards long sleeved flannelette shirts and thick denim trousers, with elastic-sided boots on their feet. Looking back at my woodpile spider incident, I could see some sound reasoning behind their tastes, though not when walking in the main street of town.

If the clothes seemed different, the lunchtime conversations were downright peculiar. On the Coast, we had spent lunch times talking about important issues, such as the best beach breaks on the weekend just gone, the potential for surf on the coming weekend, the girls we'd seen at the beach, and the waves we had caught and ripped apart. Occasionally we'd even venture to the school library, in search of the latest copies of the surf magazines, if they hadn't been stolen already, or read the weather report in the newspaper, to see if the wind was trending onshore or offshore. My new friends, however, were in a strange world of their own. They talked of shooting kangaroos and birdlife, of rifles and shotguns. They raved about new farm equipment, with names like "Header", "Trasher", and "Air Seeder", and how their parents had planted or harvested so many acres of wheat, barley, sorghum or cotton. They were excited to be given a weaned calf as a birthday present, or new knobbly tyres for their farmbike. And if they went to the library, it was to read the latest issue of "Graingrower", or "Country Life", or to scan the weather report to note how many points of a rain had fallen in the past day, week or month.

Rain. I have never met so many people obsessed with precipitation as I did that year. I mean, on the Gold Coast we talked about rain a little bit – how it spoiled the tourist industry if it came in peak holiday periods, or how it produced good, glassy surf at times by killing the breeze. But we didn't memorise the annual rainfall for the past century, or greet our friends with "Hi, Bill, how many points did you get last night?" I learnt fairly quickly that in the country, points are not what you score in games, nor issues in an argument, but rather hundredths of an inch of rainfall. The decimal system, along with daylight saving, wasn't a welcome innovation out west.

With little knowledge of guns and farming techniques, and minimal interest in rainfall, I initially found it difficult to converse at any length with my new friends. Gradually, however, I begin to discover some common ground on which to stand. Cowboy, for example, had long carried a thing for Wendy Thompson, and was a valuable source of information on her. I could bleed him of facts and past experiences in this regard for whole lunch hours. Of course, I also gave up information, relating my extensive understanding of the female species, gained largely from having a younger sister or from 'window-shopping' bikini girls on the Coast. Though Cowboy wasn't a surfer, we gelled as best friends almost instantly.

Roger "Rambo" Guffrey was a war freak, and had seen almost every war movie ever made. I could boast viewing a few myself, and we would spend time discussing and re-enacting some great moments in various war films, or lamenting the unnecessary presence of women in war movies. Allan Wilson, being a practical joker, had numerous interesting stories to tell, and we often discussed new and more daring plans to ridicule our mutual enemies, including some of the teaching staff. Most plans, of course, never left the drawing board, due to the lack of materials or courage. Allan, unlike the others, also lived in town and I got to see him regularly outside of school, when he didn't have his head buried in the engine of a car he and his dad were fixing up. Stephen Douglas was the hardest to get to know, largely because he only had two interests, none of which I shared – study and motorcycles. His studiousness left us all a little in awe of him, but his crazy motorbike antics seemed to humanise him in our eyes, and I was to call on his brain many a time to get me through exams.

Having gradually and reluctantly settled into the daily routine of school life, there was one other form of familiarisation I had to undergo –moving into my caravan home. In the first week of school, Dad had decided it was time he went and picked up the caravan from the Gold Coast. He may have been influenced by my complaints about the "The Brain's" nocturnal computer habits, or her protests when I hid her box of computer floppy discs and taped Barbie's legs together for her own safety. Whatever the reason, Dad headed off alone on Saturday morning for the long drive to the Coast and back. Initially I volunteered to go with him and he agreed, but when I started to load my surfboard into the back seat, along with a large bag full of clothing, he seemed to get suspicious about my intentions and decided it was to be a solo journey. I just shrugged my shoulders. It's terrible when your parents don't trust you.

Dad returned on Sunday afternoon, towing the aluminium box. Modern caravans are generally very attractive, with picture windows, flashy paint jobs and luxurious interiors. Unfortunately, Grandad's caravan was not modern, being hand built by him in the 1950s. Its exterior was all unpainted aluminium and rivets, and its interior boasted of an age long ago when Formica, linoleum and chipboard were the height of fashion, and bolds and checks rather than pastel colours were all the rage. Funnily enough, it was not dissimilar to the interior of the house, and I begin to feel that canned life might not be as bad as I thought.

Moving into the caravan meant emptying the contents of the packing cases holding my worldly treasures into the tiny chipboard cupboards, which 1950s reasoning had situated almost at ceiling height around the entire living area of the van. The cupboards were generally quite deep, but had openings which were only about 6 inches wide. There was thus a lot of huffing, puffing and gentle hammer persuasion required before my possessions were stowed away. Those items too big to store were placed on one of the unused bunks. The bunk I was to sleep on was typical of old caravans, about 1½ feet wide and designed for very tiny people who sleep on their sides and never move in their sleep. It did, however, have a reading light on the wall above it, so that when Dad connected the power from the house, I could read my magazines without suffocating under the sheets with a torch.

With a few surf posters plastered on the walls, and a few items of dirty clothing strewn about strategically, an aluminium can became a home. I stood back and surveyed my kingdom, and suddenly begin to feel a bit stupid about the fuss I had made in the past. I made a mental note to go and thank Dad for the trouble he had gone too, and for his great idea. I began to feel that perhaps he did have my best interests at heart, at least some of the time anyway. Maybe Mum had the same feelings too. At that thought, as if by magic, "The Ice Queen" poked her head through the caravan door.

"Knock, knock. It's only me, P.J. I've brought you over a few macramé plant hangers to decorate your room."

"Oh well", I thought, "at least Dad likes me."

CHAPTER EIGHT

LOVE WILL WOUND ALL HEELS

The month of February contained two highlights, or perhaps lowlights is a better word, of my tenth year of schooling. Each of the incidents centred on my strategies to woo the fair maiden Wendy, yet I initiated none of them, so the blame doesn't lie wholly with me. I was merely a poor victim of circumstances.

The first of these incidents involved a public speaking assessment in English. Mrs. Tucker had set us a speech to present to the rest of the class, relating the strengths and weaknesses of one particular hobby or interest we had. Normally such an activity scared the life out of me, but on this occasion it seemed to fit perfectly into the scheme of things; or rather, the scheme to win the heart of Wendy. What better way to win her admiration than to excite her with tales of my surfing prowess and daredevilry. At the same time, I could also impress my less desirable but equally impressionable classmates. It seemed like a perfect opportunity at that time, and my apparent enthusiasm towards the task left my poor friends somewhat bemused.

With great literary skill I set about putting pen to paper, recording every possible detail of my illustrious surfing history. I tried hard to capture the excitement of riding the wave, of the dramatic board movements, of the thrill when looking out on the perfect beach break or tucking into the tube. I went as far as borrowing Sarah's computer and its word processor function, which allowed me to frequently change the wording of my speech to get the best effect. Sarah, and my parents, were stunned to see my sudden burst of studiousness and I'm sure that my parents sat up at night, talking about the positive effects of the country move. Little did they know that my fervour was fuelled by adolescent male hormones, and not the country air.

The finished product was, in my eyes at least, a masterpiece. But my work was not over, for I then set about memorising and practicing my speech. I was determined that I wasn't going to stand at the front of the room like an idiot and read straight off the page. No, that had been the Fish of old. The new Fish would be eloquent, dramatic, and generally impressive. Like Hamlet walking his castle towers –we had a comprehension test last week involving that particular section of the play – I walked the narrow confines of my caravan, rehearsing my speech over and over again, until I was totally satisfied that I was ready.

On the day that speeches would begin, I did the previously unthinkable and volunteered to go first. The shock of this action registered on the faces of my friends, and I could almost see the cogs of their minds moving as they began to reassess their initial impressions of me. I wanted to tell them that everything was okay, but to do so could endanger the secrecy of my plan. So I left them ignorant, at least until my plan came to fruition.

Boldly I strode to the front of the class, casually swinging my arms in an effort to emphasise the lack of any pages of speech or palm cards. My gesture had the desired effect, and not just on classmates.

"Phillip, you do have a speech prepared, I hope." Mrs Tucker was frowning sceptically at me from her seat at the back of the room.

"Yes, Mrs. Tucker," I replied confidently. "It's very well prepared."

"Well, shouldn't you have something to refer to, in case you get lost? This talk is for assessment, you know." Her frown was deepening.

"Yes, Mrs. Tucker, I know it's for assessment, but no, I won't need any backup." These teachers had so little faith in their students.

"Very well," she said, "you may start."

I took up my starting position, having carefully ensured I had sufficient room to move as I demonstrated the various surfing manoeuvres. I began my speech.

"Mrs. Tucker, fellow classmates, my talk today is on the sport of surfing." Okay, the start wasn't too flashy, but you had to begin that way, otherwise you lost marks.

"What I would like to do is to describe for you an actual morning of surfing, starting and finishing on the beach." I saw Mrs. Tucker nod her head approvingly and jot something in her book. There were also expressions of interest on the faces of my classmates, including Wendy Thompson. Things were looking very promising, and with confidence soaring I launched into the body of my speech.

"Picture this. You are standing on the beach, eyes cast out to sea." I showed this dramatically. "The swells are rolling in and the break is absolutely filthy!"

There was an interruption from the back of the room.

"Is there a lot of pollution where you live, Phillip?"

"No, Mrs. Tucker. Filthy means really good."

"Not in my dictionary it doesn't. If you mean "really good", then say "really good"."

"Yes, Mrs. Tucker." I was annoyed at the interruption and tried to regain my train of thought.

"Anyway, you see that the surf is .......really good......with these big pumping sets rolling through and....."

"Phillip, could you please explain what a "pumping set" means?"

"Well, Mrs. Tucker, a "set" is a group of waves and "pumping" means, well, really good." I could see I was going to have problems with the delivery of my speech with all the unnecessary interruptions.

"I thought you said that "filthy" meant really good, and now you're saying "pumping" does. Please make up your mind."

"Yes, Mrs. Tucker," I said, getting a little irritated. "Now, if I may continue, you've seen the surf and it's good, very glassy and hollow and....."

"Phillip, how can water be hollow?"

"When it barrels, Mrs. Tucker."

"What do you mean by "barrels", boy?" She was starting to get annoyed, but I was long past that stage.

"When it forms a tube. Look, can I get on with my talk? It's hard to think with all these interruptions."

"You watch your tongue, young man," she snapped. "Before you go on, I want to see your written copy."

I realized at that moment that my plan had been effectively destroyed, for the class was breaking into sniggers and murmuring, each person happy not to be on the receiving end of Mrs. Tucker's wrath. I walked dejectedly to my desk, avoiding the eyes of my classmates, took my beautifully written speech and handed it to Mrs. Tucker. She cast her eyes critically over it, grunted a few times and handed it back.

"Just as I suspected. In future, Mr. Fisher, you will write in English, and not in this gobbledygook slang that you've used here. How is any intelligent person supposed to understand this? I want you to take it home tonight and rewrite it, and we will hear from you again tomorrow. Right, now who's next?"

Volunteers were scarce as I returned to my desk, a broken and embarrassed young man. I felt the eyes of every classmate upon me, but turned to look at the only person who really mattered – Wendy. She had, like the others, been staring at me, and gave me a smile of sympathy. I smiled weakly back. Well, I hadn't won her admiration, but certainly got her sympathy. A small consolation, I suppose.

That night I rewrote my speech in boring, dictionary-correct English, in my scrawly handwriting, and the next day presented it, straight from the page, word for unexciting word. My marks were equally unexciting, but I didn't care. My studious streak had gone with my pride.

Towards the middle of February was the school's Interhouse Swimming Carnival, involving students from Year 4 to Year 10. The Year 1-3 students were unable to participate because they hadn't learnt to swim yet, and with Mr. King to teach them I doubted they ever would. In the PE lessons we'd had so far in the year, all at the swimming pool, "Killer King" had turned up, said "Get in your togs and swim 40 laps freestyle," then sat down to read a magazine. I think it was probably Vogue. A few minutes from the end of the lesson he would then shout, "Stop. Out and dressed."

And that was the extent of his teaching input. For those of us who could swim, it was just a matter of plodding back and forth, up and down the swimming pool for 25 minutes, with a bit of free time at the end. For the poor unfortunates who couldn't swim, the lesson was taken up with 25 minutes of wading, with short, semi drowning swimming bursts every time Mr. King lifted his well-groomed head from the magazine, which wasn't often.

The Wingindi School Swimming Carnival, as it was officially known, was an interhouse carnival. All the students in the school had been randomly distributed into two houses. At my last school we had four houses, named after once powerful civilisations –Vikings, Romans, Spartans, and Athenians. At Wingindi State School, the houses were "Burke" and "Wills". In my mind it didn't seem very inspirational having a house named after an explorer who didn't quite achieve success and died doing it, but maybe we were supposed to be motivated to give our all on the sporting field, even if it meant dying in the end. Whatever the case, the houses were a tradition in the school and beyond the reach of the winds of change. I was just thankful that I was put into "Wills", for I didn't relish the thought of being called a stupid "Burke" for the rest of the year.

Coming only a week after my ill-fated English speech, the swimming carnival represented a chance to salvage some of my lost pride and launch a new strategy in the "Win over Wendy" campaign. If I couldn't dazzle her with my oratory eloquence, I'd captivate her with my physical prowess. With five years of surfing behind me, I had well-developed swimming skills and a reasonable amount of strength and stamina. All I needed to do was live up to my nickname, "Fish", on the day of the carnival and make those country kids look like they were swimming backwards. Who wouldn't be impressed by such a display? I know I was, even when it was still in my imagination.

When the day of the carnival arrived, I was feeling pretty fit. I had undergone a secret training programme of push-ups and sit-ups in my caravan gym over the last week or so, toning my muscles for peak efficiency. I had on my lucky pair of board shorts, and I slicked back my hair with extra gel to gain the advantage of streamlining. I even spent 15 minutes in the morning meditating, repeating the mantra "Go for gold" over and over, to gain that mental edge winners need. Physically and mentally, I was ready.

The carnival itself was not a big affair. With only 140 kids involved, a handful of teachers to officiate and a surprising number of parents to spectate, it wasn't exactly the Olympic Games. The swimmers were all assembled in their houses under multi-coloured tents and tarpaulins, whilst parents sat in plastic school chairs on the opposite side of the swimming pool. The area outside the dressing sheds served as the marshalling area for the various events, and at the opposite end of the pool a small stall had been set up by the Ladies Auxiliary, selling pies, sandwiches and assorted home baked goodies to energy-drained competitors and sunburnt spectators.

The pool had no loud speaker system but it didn't need one, for Mr. Finch was the carnival's announcer and marshall. Mr. Miller, with his love of explosions, was a natural as the starter, with a big cap gun in hand and a battered straw hat sitting high on his expansive forehead. Mr. King was supposed to be the lifeguard, though I felt sure that if any of us got into trouble, he would not have risked fading his expensive shirt, pants or shoes, nor messing up his hair by actually getting in the water. I could imagine Mr. King standing at the poolside shouting "Don't drown. It's wrong."

Mr. Cardwell, Mr. Reynolds and my father sat in chairs at the finishing end of the pool and were the place judges for the day, handing out little numbered tags to the placegetters. These tags were then taken to the nearby recording desk, where the recorders, Mrs. Simpson and Miss Jefferies, wrote down the names and winning times, gained from the parents who were timekeepers, and handed out place ribbons. The remaining teachers, including Mrs. Tucker, were assigned to look after the houses, keeping the overly-excited children under control and in the shade.

The first events of the day with the Backstroke events, over 50 metres. The pool was a 25 metre pool, with a 1.6 metre depth of the starting end and an 80 centimetre depth at the other, so swimming 50 metres entailed a turn at the shallow end. Backstroke events started in the water, with the competitors facing the wall, clutching a short horizontal bar set just above the waterline, with their feet planted firmly against the wall just below the water. The start of the backstroke event was like an explosion, with arms and bodies flying backwards out of the water, followed by a flurry of kicking and paddle-steaming arms.

When my backstroke event was announced, I strode confidently to the marshalling area, shaking my arms and legs the way swimmers do at the Olympics. When told to enter the water, I did a flawless swan dive off the blocks, glided halfway down the pool, then slowly, precisely, backstroked my way to the wall. The others were already nervously clutching their starting bars, ready to go. As I took up my position, I cast a discerning eye over my opposition –Stephen to my immediate right, Allan further down, Des Harris beyond him, Darryl to my left (sneering as usual), and Raymond Jones beyond.

"A pushover," I thought.

"Take your marks," came the command from Mr. Miller, and arms and legs were tensed, bodies pulled almost out of the water. Muscles quivered, hearts pounded. I pulled backwards on that bar with all the energy I had, determined to explode into action on the gun's report. It finally came.

"Bang," and six bodies lunged backwards, hands over head, seeking out water to create propulsion. Except for one set of hands, which was still clutching the starting bar, now pulled out of the tiles of the pool wall. My hands. A combination of an over eager, early leg thrust, a late hand release and ageing, weakened tile glue had resulted in the backstroke bar pulling away at the start. I was temporarily stunned with shock, and paused to look at the bar in my hands and then the receding figures of the other competitors. Then the laughter of the spectators caught my ears and I regained my senses, dropping the stupid bar and setting off again to pursue the opposition. My arms thrashed wildly through the water, my legs kicked furiously and a bow wave surged around me as I flew down the pool, trying desperately to take back the eight or so metres of head start I had given them.

At the 25 metre turn I had caught the stragglers, but was still about three metres behind Darryl Brown and Stephen Douglas. My lungs were screaming for air and my arms wanted to drop off, but I screwed up my face and kept on going. I drew level with their feet, then their knees and then – the end of the pool rushed up and put an end to my efforts. Darryl had won, Stephen was second, and I was a very creditable third, though it was a disappointment under the circumstances. My reception at the finish was a combination of laughter and applause, so my disappointment was mingled with both embarrassment and pride.

Coming third represented a minor setback in my plans to dazzle Wendy. My gutsy determination in the backstroke had hopefully impressed her a little, but I felt a resounding victory would have had more impact. The next race for me was the 50 metres Freestyle, the blue ribbon event of the carnival, and I knew an all-out, muscle-blowing effort was required. My opposition was better than I had initially thought and I was going to have to pull out all stops to be victorious.

With all the younger age group races coming first, my race was 30 minutes after the backstroke, time enough to recharge my depleted batteries. Unlike Darryl and a few others, I didn't use the time to fill myself with cakes and biscuits but instead channelled my thoughts entirely on the upcoming race, other than the "brief" moments when I watched Wendy walking around the pool in her high-cut, one-piece red bathing suit.

"To the victor comes the spoils," I murmured once, thinking out aloud.

"What?" asked Cowboy, sitting beside me reading a catalogue entitled "Farm Machinery Trading Post." He wasn't in any events at all, reasoning that competition was against his religion. In actuality, he could barely swim, only well enough to save himself if he fell in a farm dam.

"Nothing," I answered. "Just rehearsing my next speech for English." He gave me a confused look, then went back to reading about tractors and headers.

When my Freestyle event was called, I moved to the marshalling area less confidently but more determined than in the previous event. The success of my plans hinged on this win, for I couldn't hope to blaze my way to glory with two defeats under my belt. The last two events of the day were Breaststroke and Butterfly, and they weren't my best. It was now or never.

We were ordered on to the starting blocks. I quickly scanned my opposition, but with one or two exceptions, they were the same as in my backstroke event. At "Take your marks", I reached for my toes and stared blindly at the water, concentrating my attention on the impending sound of the gun. With its nerve-jangling crack I soared from the block, and was into my stroke before I had even touched the water. I kept my head down, resisting the desire to turn for a breath, for each breathing action would constitute a temporary interruption in the stroke and lose fractions of seconds. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the shape of Darryl Brown on my left, keeping pace with me. There was the splash of hand entry somewhere to my right, but its owner was too far back to be of concern. It was going to be a race in two.

The blurred shadow of the end of the pool loomed ahead and I prepared for the 25 metre turn. We were setting a staggering pace which could not last forever and I knew that whoever came out of the turn first would undoubtedly be the first to the wall at the other end. In those brief moments before the turn, I made the decision to do a tumble turn. It was a move used by all trained swimmers, a rapid forward somersault, twist and thrust, and I had done a few in the 50 metre pool at my last school. I wasn't overly competent at it, but the decision was made in a split second, with no time for revision.

We approach the wall at speed, neck and neck. Darryl went for the slower, basic hand-touch turn and I went for the faster tumble turn. Over I went, knees tucked, head passing under one armpit to start the body twist. My feet hit the wall and I pushed off with all of my strength.

My eyes opened just in time to see the swimming pool bottom rushing up to meet me and –THUD – I hit it with my head. I have rolled too close to the wall and pushed off before the roll was complete. The Wingindi shallow end was shallower than that of a standard Olympic swimming pool, to cater for the young children in the absence of a wading pool, which contributed to my downfall. At that point I lost the race and my senses, but vaguely remember being lifted from the water by a strong set of hands, associated with the odour of aftershave. I have some memory of a car trip too and a man shining a bright light into my eyes. But things didn't really become clear again until later that night, when I found myself covered in blankets on the couch at home, surrounded by concerned family members. I smiled weakly.

"You've got yourself quite a bump there, Phil-my-boy." Dad had a habit of speaking the obvious. The throbbing headache had already informed me of my new body feature.

"How are you feeling, P.J.?" asked my worried mother, medical journals in hand. "Some of your friends called this afternoon to see how you were. Isn't that nice?"

The question was on my lips – had Wendy been one of the callers – but I decided not to ask. She had caused me enough trouble for one day.

CHAPTER NINE

THE SHOW MUST GO ON

March was a pretty ordinary month for me. Everything seemed very routine, with no major accidents to my person, nor any great highlights. School was school, home was home, and Wendy remained Mitchell Freeman's girlfriend. The Easter holidays came and went uneventfully, for the family spent the whole week in Wingindi, working on the house and generally doing nothing, which was easy to do in such a small town. Wingindi became more and more familiar to me, until it suddenly stopped looking so small and old. Perhaps I had resigned myself to the inevitability of living there for at least the next year, or maybe I was actually coming to like its character. I don't honestly know. I still missed the surf, and frequently waxed and re-waxed my surfboard in order to revive the old memories, but I didn't seem to miss many of the aspects of Gold Coast life. The traffic there was a pain, the tourists were a nuisance, and the high-rise buildings were ugly. The social scene, however, was something I did miss – the dances, the movies, hanging around the shopping centres – and I began to question if I would ever have a social life in Wingindi.

April brought with it the answer to my question. It started when Dad was flicking through a small booklet he had brought home from school, listing some of the attractions and facilities of the region Wingindi was set in.

"My goodness, dear," he suddenly exclaimed, "it says here that there is a model building club in Bindeena, and a pottery club, and a macramé club." This instantly brought my mother running from her roost in the kitchen

"Did you say macramé?" She grabbed the book. "Well, so there is. And you said they wouldn't have macramé in the country, PJ. Tsk,tsk."

"Well," I thought, "that's one lie come back to haunt me." Out aloud, I asked with tongue in cheek,

"Does it say in whether they have a surfboard riders' club in Bindeena, Mum?" This set her feverishly searching, under "B" for board riders, then "S" for surfing, then "W" for waves. If I told her that they made surfboards in Alice Springs, I'm sure she would have believed me.

"No, I'm sorry, PJ," she finally said. "I can't find one anywhere. Maybe this book's out of date." She checked the front cover. "No, it's this year's copy. Oh well. But I did find something else exciting." She paused, drawing out the surprise.

"Oh, please, Mum, tell us. I can't stand the suspense," I responded sarcastically, knowing full well that she'd take me seriously. She'd probably just found an embroidery club or something similar.

"Okay, I give in. It says that Bindeena has a drive-in theatre. I haven't been to one of those in the years."

Nor had I. The last time I could remember going was when Dad took us all to one of those dusk-to-dawn holiday specials, when they put on the B-grade movies first and you fall asleep before the good ones come on. I was about seven or eight years old, and I'm sure Sarah was still sleeping in a cot. What I remember most about the occasion was that Sarah got to sit in Mum's lap in the front so she could see, and I had to sit alone in the back, staring through the head rests and the rear vision mirror as the mosquitoes buzzed around my ears. Happy memories indeed.

A drive-in at Bindeena, however, meant the chance of catching up on some of the movies that we had missed out on in the last couple of months. I preferred the comfort of a cinema, but beggars can't be choosers.

"Hey, Dad," I said, "let's go to the drive-in this weekend. It'd be just like the good old days. D'you remember that fun dusk-to-dawn we went to ages ago?"

"Hay, Phil-my-boy," he corrected, "is dried grass, and dew is moisture that falls on it. But yes, going to the drive-in sounds like a good idea. What do you think, dear?"

"It sounds good to me, darling. Maybe we could go into Bindeena early, and look up some of these clubs while we're there. Let's ask Sarah what she thinks."

This was ridiculous. I raised an idea that needed a simple "okay" as a response, and suddenly it was becoming a Bill being passed through parliament. Luckily Sarah gave her permission, willing to sacrifice valuable computer time for the sake of her family, provided we also investigated the presence of a "Young Scientists" club in Bindeena. It looked like going to the drive-in was to be a full day affair.

The weekend came and the trip to Bindeena was on. We bought our first copy of the "Bindeena Gazette", published every Friday, to find out what was playing and decided that the double bill was worth seeing. One of the movies was entitled "Love Has No Borders" and sounded like a real girlie movie, but the other was called "Fists of Fire" and I had heard it was full of blood, violence, shooting and other elements that make up top class cinema. We set off in the early afternoon, spent hours circling the streets of Bindeena to find club secretarys, sat bored whilst either Mum or Dad chatted to complete strangers about matches, string or mud sculpture, and had semi-frozen sandwiches for dinner in a park. Then, finally, it was off to the drive-in.

Bindeena Drive-in was tucked away in one corner of the town, shielded from the road by a line of trees that effectively prevented anyone from watching free, silent movies. Far from the 10 or 15 row drive-ins one found in the city, this one only had three rows, and although we arrived almost on starting time, there were only five or so other cars to keep us company. Around the small kiosk there seemed to be gathered groups of teenagers, most of whom had apparently walked to the drive-in. I wondered briefly whether Mitchell Freeman ever brought Wendy here.

The screen began to flicker and the pre-movie 'ads' came on. There were only two, one an ageing slide depicting the wares of the kiosk, offering very faded chips and an almost pink Coke can and the other featured a hand-drawn poster of "Brian Smith Tractors and Machinery – Where we make your farm dollar go further". Our attention now fully-captured, the first movie started. As the opening credits began to roll, we saw that all the words were backwards. Well, we noticed it and several other people noticed it but the projectionist hadn't, because the movie kept on playing, now with garbled sound. Adjoining cars began to honk their horns and flash their lights and I urged Dad to join in, but he refused. Finally the film was stopped, and we sat and stared at a black screen for the 5 minutes it took to correct the fault. I can assure you, it is hard to keep a game of "I spy with my little eye" going for that long in a darkened car at night.

Once the movie restarted, and after about 3 minutes of focusing and refocusing the projector lens, it continued on without further problem. That is, until the second reel was loaded. We saw "end of reel" flash up on the screen, followed by a blur of strange light effects, then the second projector kicked in with reel two, and we were off and running again. Unfortunately, projector two had to be focused and aligned on the screen, as its projections started halfway up the screen. Even when these faults were corrected, we found it hard to enjoy the movie because the bulb in the second projector seemed weaker than that in the first, making it appear as if the movie had been filmed in the late afternoon.

The comedy of errors continued throughout the two movies shown, with transitions between light and dark every time reels came to an end, and constant refocusing and realignment of the picture. The dearth of drive-in patrons became very understandable and when we finally drove away that night, suffering from eye strain and remembering very little of the movies we'd seen, a mutual pact was made never to venture back to Bindeena Drive-in.

Towards the end of April, Wingindi staged its annual Agricultural Show in the local show grounds, a large paddock with a few animal pens and a very small hall. I thought my friends were joking when they initially started discussing it but, sure enough, notices began appearing in the shop windows of the town and much of our lesson time at school became devoted to the production of items to enter into various categories of competition in the show. There were prizes for the best piece of woodwork, the best piece of metalwork, the best sponge cake, the best essay on a country theme, the best piece of typing, the neatest exercise book, the best painting or pencil sketch, the best needlework and so on and so on. Anybody who did anything had a chance to enter an item and win a prize. The prizes, naturally enough, matched the scale of the Show itself, with 20¢ for first in the Primary grades, 40¢ in the Secondary grades, and variations of $2.00, $4.00 or book prizes at adult level, depending on the category. Show entries were not restricted to school students, for there were categories including "Best Head Of Sorghum", "Best Sunflower", "Best Quality Barley" and other grain and primary produce areas, as well as numerous handicraft, gardening and cooking categories.

The Wingindi Show was, for me, a major educational experience. I'd always pictured shows as consisting mainly of Ferris wheels, Dodgem cars, Fairy Floss and Dagwood Dogs, but now I realised that there was much more to them, and that Sideshow Alley was of minimal, if any, importance to most of the country folk. Actually, when I saw the Sideshow Alley at the Wingindi Show, it didn't exactly excite me either. One 'Chair-o-plane', which was basically seats hanging on chains from a motorised clothesline; a mini bike ring, where you just rode around and around in circles with your knees up near your chin on a tiny motorcycle; and one 'Coconut' stand, where you threw three balls to try and knock over objects that appeared to be glued to the table, in order to win a fluffy stuffed banana or animal. And of course there were the obligatory "open mouthed clowns", down whose throats you shoved ping pong balls to try and win minor prizes. Naturally enough, I did not spend much of my time or money at Sideshow Alley during my day at the Wingindi Show.

The day the Show was held was a typical Queensland country autumn day – moderately warm, clear blue skies, little wind. I put on my best board shorts, best T-shirt and white sand shoes and headed off, with the $5.00 note Dad had so generously provided clutched tightly in my hand. I returned home about 5 minutes later, having noted that everyone going into the showdowns wore jeans and long sleeved shirts, and that the entry fee was $3.00. I decide it was time to look a bit more local, and changed into jeans and an old army shirt I'd picked up at a disposal store on the Gold Coast. I then begged a few more dollars from my father and headed off again.

As I mentioned earlier, I didn't spend much time at Sideshow Alley. At $1.50 per ride I couldn't afford to, even if the rides had been good. I met up with a few of my friends, all of whom were dressed like cowboys, and we wandered around the showgrounds, taking in all the sights. Unfortunately, there weren't that many girls around, so we looked at the exhibits instead. I'd never seen a head of sorghum or run my fingers through bags of barley and wheat, so it was quite a cultural experience. I was pleased to note that some of my Manual Arts work had won placings, and began to ponder how I would invest my extensive winnings. The cooking exhibits made me hungry and I spent some of my hard-scrounged money on tomato sauce-covered hot chips and a cheesy hot dog. I was far too health-conscious to buy fairy floss.

There was one of the exhibits that really grabbed my attention, and that was the Bull Judging. The only thing I knew about bulls was that they didn't seem to like the colour red, though I'd heard other reports that they were colour-blind, which confused me a little. I'd never been very close to a real bull before and was amazed at the bulk of some of them as they were paraded around the judging area, led by rings in their noses. It made my eyes water just thinking about being dragged around by the nose. Not only was their body size impressive, but I couldn't help noticing that a certain part of their anatomy was also of giant proportions.

"No wonder they call them "stud" bulls," I thought about aloud, which brought chuckles of laughter from my country friends.

"That's what the country air does for you," joked Allan Wilson.

"Well, I guess I'll be spending a lot of time out here then," I concluded, though it was a blatant lie. A nearby bull must have realised this, for it chose that moment to void itself of bodily wastes, dropping a large, smelly, wet mass in a long stream from its rear end.

"I know," I thought, communicating mentally with the bull. "More of that comes out of my mouth than out of your backside." As I stared at him, and at those other bulls around him, a thought came playfully to mind –was any of these bulls called Red King?

Eventually, having spent my money and seen every exhibit, the excitement of the Show became too much for me and I headed home for nourishment and relaxation. I didn't want to be too tired for the Show Dance that night, which was the culmination of all Show activities and the social event of the year, from what I had gathered. I wanted to be in top dancing form that night, for the odds were high that Wendy Thompson would be there, and I might be able to sweep her off her feet on the dancefloor. It was an opportunity I couldn't miss.

The wood stove was lit early that day, to ensure I could have a hot bath before the dance. I mean, you've got to feel fresh if you are going to get fresh – that's "Fish's First Law of Amorous Activity." Bathed and beautiful, I moussed and blow-dried my hair, slapped on the aftershave which I borrowed from Dad's drawer, and dressed in my best dancing clothes –black jeans, black shirt and black suede shoes. Looking in the mirror, I saw myself as a blonde-haired Elvis, in his younger days of course, ready to shake my hips, swing my arms and drag around the dance floor all those helpless, pretty girls who had thrown themselves at my feet. I smiled at my reflection, amused by the images my fantasy brought to mind.

"You handsome devil. Go get them."

The dance was nothing like my fantasies. For a start, the dance floor of the hall was not a smooth, glassy surface with embedded lights, but rather varnished, scuffed wood with powder scattered on it. The girls would get their dresses dirty if I dragged them across it, I realized, as well as picking up a few splinters. The music was also wrong, with no throbbing, pulsating beat that swept one into a frenzy of shaking and gyrating. Instead, it was slow, old-time dance music, played by an ageing couple with an organ, a steel guitar, and a drum machine. Couples moved smoothly and slowly around the dance floor, faces expressionless, bodies in harmony as they performed dances they knew by heart and had been dancing all their lives. There didn't seem any place for a blonde-haired Elvis.

Severely disheartened, I moved to one side of the hall, sitting at a vacant table bearing a paper tablecloth and a half-eaten cheese ball, with a few dry crackers littered around the base. Dejectedly I took a cracker and dug it into the cheese ball, determined that if I couldn't get my money's worth dancing, I'd get it eating. When I tried to remove the cracker with a portion of cheese ball, it broke. It was just another hurdle to my happiness, but I refused to be beaten and, using my fingers, broke off a large chunk of the cheese ball and shovelled it into my mouth. It was a minor victory, but important nonetheless.

Suddenly there was a tap on my shoulder. I spun around in my seat, mouth still stuffed full of cheese ball, expecting to find Cowboy or one of my other friends standing behind me. Instead there was a vision in a long, white, flowing gown, her radiant face framed by her mane of auburn hair – Wendy Thompson. I would have choked if not for the fact that the piece of cheese ball was too large to fit into my throat, and simply filled my mouth.

"Hello, Fish," she said. "It's nice to see you joining in the country spirit. I don't suppose you had these sort of dances where you came from."

In the three or so months that I had been at Wingindi State School, I hadn't really spoken at any length to Wendy. When I had tried, it was usually only two or three nervous words of greeting and farewell, or in brief response to her conversational advances, and almost everything she had said to me was an expression of sympathy for some misfortune I had undergone. Now I had my first chance for a real, in-depth discussion and my mouth was clogged with cheese. It was a cruel twist of fate, planned by a god with a wicked sense of humour.

In desperation, I grunted and nodded in affirmative response, whilst at the same time trying to swallow the cheese ball as inconspicuously as possible, grinding my teeth and working my tongue vigorously inside my closed mouth to disintegrate the hard lump and send it on its way.

"I like dances like this," Wendy continued, thankfully unaware of my plight. "It gives you a chance to dress up, and meet all those people that you hardly see all year. Do you like dancing, Fish?"

My digestive efforts were still in the infant stages of effectiveness, and once again I could only grunt a response and force a smile, hopefully of interest if the cheese ball hadn't distorted my face too much. This time, however, Wendy seemed to notice that something was amiss.

"What's wrong, Phillip?" I could tell she was serious because she used my real name. "Don't you like me? You hardly ever talk to me at school, and I sometimes think you deliberately avoid me."

The situation was bad and called for desperate measures. Without warning I broke into a fake coughing fit, turned away from Wendy and brought my hands to my mouth. I dropped the soggy mass of cheese into one hand and then turned around, miraculously recovered, my hand shoved deep into the pocket of my trousers.

"Gee, I'm sorry about that, Wendy," I stammered nervously. "A bit of cracker went down the wrong way." It was only a small lie. It was a bit of cheese ball that went down the wrong way, bypassing my stomach and entering my pocket instead.

"Whatever gave you the idea that I didn't like you? No, I think you're.... a very nice person." I didn't want to come on too strong at first, so I left out certain details, like my total infatuation and the fact I thought she was the most beautiful girl in the world. She might have read too much into it.

"Well, I'm glad of that," she continued. "Then how about a dance?"

Had she asked me to throw myself at her feet I would have done it gladly, but dancing with her was another matter. Here she was, a country girl brought up around country dances, and here I was, a city kid who could breakdance, worm out, and basically "get down", but didn't have a clue how to "gypsy tap" or "barn dance". I was being pushed into making a fool of myself by the very person I wanted to impress. It was another bad situation, requiring an even more desperate situation – telling the truth.

"I don't know how to do these dances, Wendy. I'll just make a fool of myself and step on your feet."

"Don't worry, Fish," she laughed. "I'll teach you. Anyway, I thought you liked making a fool of yourself, with all the crazy things you do."

It came as a crushing blow to my ego, and I wanted desperately to melt away into a crack in the floor. She thought I was a fool and, even worse, liked being one. All my efforts to win her over through a show of skill and courage had failed. The campaign was over and I had been soundly defeated, or so I thought.

"That's why I came over to talk with you," she continued. "The things you do make me want to laugh and cry at the same time. You're like a clown, funny yet sad. I like clowns and I like you."

Okay, being called a clown is not one of life's great compliments, but at that moment I didn't care. She liked me. Wendy Thompson actually liked me and that was all that mattered, and if I needed to put on white make-up and a red nose to be liked by her, I would. But I didn't have to, because she liked me as I was.

The rest of the evening I spent stepping on Wendy's feet, slipping on the powdery floor and looking like Fred Astaire's worst nightmare. Oh, don't worry, I washed the cheese ball off my hands before I went dancing, though the interior of my pocket was an absolute mess. I had a really great time, especially with the knowledge that Mitchell Freeman was away at a Rugby League training camp and couldn't cut in when he saw me with his girl. And that was something else I learnt that night – Wendy was a girl. For three months she had been an idol, someone to admire from afar, stare at in awe, fantasise about and avoid out of reverent fear. Tonight, however, the idol had been destroyed and the truth revealed. She was flesh and blood, warm and caring, full of laughter and gossip. In many ways she was no different from me, whilst in other ways we were worlds apart, but it didn't really matter. I liked the human Wendy a lot more than the idol and was on a high all evening. My feet may have stumbled but I felt like I was soaring. It was a flying "Fish" that left the dance that night, still swaying to the organ and guitar music of Red and Norma King.

CHAPTER TEN

THE RISE AND FALL OF SPORTING LEGENDS

Most of the month of May passed by with little excitement. It would have been nice to say that Wendy left her relationship with Mitchell Freeman to be with her favourite clown, but such things only happen in fairy tales and romantic comedies. In reality, we struck up a very good friendship, of the type where we could sit unselfconsciously and talk about nearly anything. I made it clear to Wendy early on that I didn't want to hear about her love life, reasoning to her that it wouldn't be fair on Mitchell having a fellow male hear his secrets. In actuality, I didn't think it would be fair on me, especially when I still harboured aspirations of being her love life.

Late May and early June proved to be a time of competition, bringing more excitement to school life. First up was the Interhouse Cross Country, run through some of the paddocks on the outside of town. A major element missing from this event was the presence of challenging hills. Wingindi was situated in the middle of hundreds of square kilometres of virtually flat plainland, with only the occasional bump where a man-made dam had been built or a small hillock had been dropped by mistake during Creation. The town of Wingindi had absolutely no hills at all, which presented a problem for the police when testing drivers on hill starts for their licences. This problem had been solved by using the loading ramp at one of the nearby grain storage silos. But if you ever pull up behind a car with a "We Love Wingindi" sticker in the window, and you're on a hill, I recommend you change lanes if you can.

In the absence of hills, the cross country race would have been a fast affair, had it not rained heavily the day before the event and drizzled on the day itself. "Killer King" was not about to postpone the event, partly because he had worn his special outfit that day – an almost transparent running singlet that showed off his chest, high cut running shorts, and an especially-expensive pair of cross country shoes, complete with retractable spikes for traction. He hadn't planned on running himself, of course, for this would have dirtied all his gear but he liked to get into the spirit of things.

The race went ahead in sloppy conditions, with the older Primary students leading off in their two kilometre event, followed by the Secondary girls over three kilometres, and finally the Secondary boys over four kilometres. By the time the earlier competitors had run their events, the track was a boggy mudbath. I still have vivid memories of splashing along the foot-flattened grass and mud track, slipping and sliding while my legs struggled to lift sodden sand shoes, my shorts and T-shirt mud-splattered and soaked from repeated falls. It didn't help when Darryl Brown sprinted up behind me and gave me a surprise push in the back either. He and his henchmen spent most of the time walking, occasionally sticking out a foot to trip a more serious competitor who attempted to lap them.

The eventual winner of the Senior boys' event was Cowboy, which didn't surprise me given the great length of his legs. Roger "Rambo" Guffrey didn't finish the race at all, going to ground somewhere out on the course early in the race and sliding out of the grass fields on his stomach, just like they did in the war movies. His escape went totally unnoticed. My race, at least the competitive part, came to an end when I finally caught up to Wendy, walking exhausted with some of her friends. Cross country was not her event, but that didn't damage my impression of her. She looked so cute, with her muddy shoes, wet clinging shirt and the dark tresses of hair plastered to her face, and I had to stop. A man has to make sacrifices for the woman he loves. I didn't come last in the end but I wasn't exactly up in the notable placings.

Early June brought with it interschool competition, both academic and sporting. I decided not to go in the debating competition against Bindeena High School, mainly for health reasons – the thought of having Mrs. Tucker as team coach made me sick. Instead I put my name down for the rugby league team. I had not grown up with rugby league as a child, though the opportunity had been there. When asked to choose between a new pair of football boots and a winter wet suit, there had been no real choice in my mind. At that time, I found fibreglass more interesting than pigskin. Now, however, the situation was different and I became quite excited by the thought of running around a field with 25 other guys, chasing an oval ball and jumping on any one who grabbed it. The fact that we got the day off school to travel to Bindeena for the game did have something to do with my enthusiasm.

In a school that boasts only 30 boys in its Secondary department, it's not an easy task getting together a highly competitive and skilled rugby league team, so nobody tried. They asked, instead, for any volunteers, whether skilled or unskilled, experienced or inexperienced. The promise of a day off brought enough boys to form the team, though only four or five of them had actually ever played competitive football. What we lacked in skill, however, we made up for in enthusiasm and bravery, though we lost a bit of the latter when we found out that Mr. Cardwell, the Principal, was to be our coach. A day off was a day off however, and we all turned up religiously to the lunchtime training sessions, tolerating the bellowed verbal attacks on our manhood and the occasional whack with the cane on various parts of our body when we dropped the ball or missed a tackle.

When the day of the big match came, we looked like a rugby league team, acted like a rugby league team, but unfortunately played more like a preschool netball team. Nevertheless, we boarded the bus in high spirits, and headed off to do battle with Bindeena. Bindeena High had about 300 Year 8 to 10 boys to choose from and had assembled and trained a team of skilled players, most of whom played together in the weekend competition. Every year they had challenged Wingindi simply to give their boys a training run, a fact that everyone on both teams knew. The honour of both schools was at stake, hinging on just how many points we lost by. To the boys of Wingindi, scoring just one try would have been a major triumph.

We arrived at Bindeena High at about 10.00am, though our match was not scheduled to start until 11.00am. Our early arrival was on account of the girls' Netball team, also taking on the might of Bindeena, whose match started at 10.15am. Rather than waste time throwing a ball around or doing physical warm up exercises, we boys thought it would be good psychological training if we went and watched the girls play. I assure you, with deep sincerity, we weren't simply interested in checking out the female talent of Bindeena, nor were we excited by the short netball skirts they wore. We were being liberated males, showing an active interest in women's sport.

I was a little worried at first that I might bump into the infamous Mitchell Freeman, Wendy's boyfriend, whilst at Bindeena. Thankfully he was in Year 12 and would not be playing in the junior rugby league team. He also didn't seem to be around to watch Wendy play netball, and that to me was a good thing. Out of sight, out of mind.

Mr. Cardwell was obviously not a supporter of women's sport, for he had other ideas about our pre-match preparation. He gathered the team together and led us to the other side of the oval, far from the distractions of netball. He huddled us together on the ground and began a long speech about sportsmanship, honour, the value of participation as opposed to winning, and a few tips on how to take some of their better players out of the game without drawing the referee's attention. There was apparently some degree of ill feeling between him and the Principal of Bindeena High, stemming from the larger school's dominance in sport, academic success and formulation of educational policy in the region. Through us, he wanted to knock his Bindeena counterpart down a notch or two in the ego stakes. We, on the other hand, were more concerned about survival.

Following the pep talk, we were sent off on a few warm up laps of the oval. In our travels we had to pass the Bindeena team's assembly point, where they were busy doing a few ball-skill drills. At our passing, they ceased their activity and called out a few derogatory remarks, laughing at their own wit. I was shocked at the size of most of them, huge muscular apes who seem to have missed out on necks when being formed in the womb. I was even more shocked when some of my teammates returned their abuse.

"Guys," I hissed, trying not to be heard by the opposition, "do you have to stir them up? Those apes look mean enough already." It was a serious rebuke from a scared individual who valued life, but it was misunderstood by several of my colleagues as a joke.

"Hey fellas," Darryl called out to the opposition while pointing at me, "Fish here reckons you look like apes." He followed that up with a few monkey-like noises that sounded very natural coming from him. I tried to hide behind a teammate running beside me, hoping they wouldn't be able to get a good look at my face. It was too late.

"Yeah, well Fish is gonna find himself flattened like a sardine when he gets on the field."

I didn't see the speaker as I ran along with my head turned the other way, but it didn't matter. It was a deep, strong, angry voice that sounded like it hadn't encountered a neck on its way out of the body, and it probably carried the feelings of every player in the Bindeena team. I was dead meat. At that moment, I thought seriously about feigning an ankle injury or a torn hamstring, but loyalty to team and school was too strong. Besides, the netball girls were going to be watching the match and it was hard to play hero when you were sitting on the sidelines. If I was going to die, it might as well have been in glory, with plenty of mourners to watch as they carried my crushed body from the field.

Following the warm up run, Mr. Cardwell had us working through a few more skill drills, involving passing, catching bombs, tackling and so forth. I was a little preoccupied, trying to savour my last moments of life and thus didn't seem to handle the ball with much skill or conviction. Mr. Cardwell must have noticed this, for when he gathered us together again several minutes before the kick off, my name was not read out in the starting line-up. Instead I was handed a bottle of water and a small bucket of sand, to become official waterboy. I didn't know whether to feel humiliated or relieved.

From my sideline position, I watched the first half with a mixture of interest, disappointment and shock. From the starting whistle, my team was under attack and faltering. Bindeena kicked off, the ball soared to Des Harris in the backs, he knocked on, they won the scrum and scored a try under the posts, which was easily converted. Score 6-0. Then we kicked off to restart, their fullback caught the ball and ploughed straight through our weak defences, scoring again under the posts. At this point I was brought into action, but only as waterboy, for the Bindeena back had left a trail of fallen Wingindi bodies on the ground behind him, all in need of a life-giving drink of water. Whilst I tended to the wounded, they converted the try and it was 12-0, 5 minutes into the game.

The remainder of the first half followed a similar pattern, though our team defences began to strengthen a little. Perhaps the players had become so punch drunk from all the hard knocks that they had lost their fear of tackling and being flattened. As for me, I was totally exhausted when the half-time whistle went, for I had run on and off the field hundreds of times with my magic water bottle. Unfortunately the sand bucket, used when we took a conversion kick, was still full, for no conversion opportunities had appeared for us. We had entered their half in attack on only a handful of occasions, just to be driven rapidly backwards to our own try-line. The halftime score was 36-0.

A dejected Mr. Cardwell tried hard to re-inspire his players in the half-time break, but he was flogging a dead horse. Almost every boy was nursing some kind of injury, and I saw pain on many faces as they tried to suck on orange segments with split lips and bleeding gums. Their jerseys were stained by grass and dirt, knees and hands were blackened, and socks were down around ankles. I stood by in my spotlessly clean jersey and body, socks pulled up to my knees. In a reverent gesture of respect, I pushed my socks down. It was the least I could do.

The end-of-break whistle sounded, greeted by little movement from the Wingindi team, whilst the Bindeena boys' jogged energetically and enthusiastically back onto the field. Brendan Jones was unable to get to his feet, his ankle badly-sprained.

"Fisher, you're on, Jones, you're off," sighed Mr. Cardwell. "One try, boys, just one try," he pleaded as we wandered onto the field.

I nervously took up my position wide out on the wing, which seemed a pretty safe place to be because all of their first-half attacks were down the centre of the field. With luck, I wouldn't see the ball. We kicked off to get the second half underway, and instantly I realised that they had changed their tactics. The Bindeena wingers must have complained about the lack of ball contact in the first half, for suddenly the ball was being passed wide, to the winger on my side. As he raced towards me, I braced myself for the tackle. I crouched low to take him at hip level, as Mr. Cardwell had instructed, put my arms out wide to hug his speeding body, turned my head to one side to avoid breaking my neck, and closed my eyes. I think the last action was wrong, for he suddenly sidestepped around me and continued on his way to score. I didn't realise this for a few seconds, holding my position in wait for the sickening impact that never came.

"Brilliant, Fisher," cheered Darryl Brown sarcastically from the in-field. "Maybe they'll laugh themselves to death."

I tried hard not to be affected by his comments, considering his opinion was never one I had valued in the past, but unfortunately I knew he was right to be annoyed with me. I vowed to keep my eyes open from then on and did, with the result that I soon began to feel as battered and bruised as the rest of my team. I collected knees to the stomach, elbows to the face, boots to the chin and numerous other forms of legalised assault. Even then, I didn't prevent the score from climbing to 58-0, with only 5 minutes remaining.

Then it happened. We had just kicked off again after their last try. As was the pattern of play for this half, they sent the ball wing-wards, and once again I was faced with their big winger storming down the sideline towards me. I took up my customary tackling position, thinking that I had hugged this guy so many times I'd probably take him home to meet my parents after the match. At the last minute, I decided to try taking him a little higher up on the body and caught him by surprise across the arms and chest. The football was dislodged from his grasp, popped up in the air and then landed in my arms as I rebounded backwards off his body. It was a major shock to actually be touching the ball but, even in those stunned few seconds, blind instinct had my legs driving me towards their try-line.

I was not the only player on the field who was taken by surprise. The rest of my team had already dropped back in defence, ready to take over when I failed to make the tackle on the Bindeena winger. Most were now too far back to support me in my offensive on the Bindeena line. Similarly, most of the Bindeena backs had moved up the field, anticipating no threat to their try-line because none had come in the entire game so far. Now most of them were of no threat to me. The path to the try-line was almost clear.

There was one possible hurdle. The Bindeena fullback had not moved as far up in offence as his teammates and when he saw my unexpected possession of the ball, and my intentions afterwards, he began to sprint for the point on the try-line where my current path would take me. He had obviously judged that I was too inexperienced to think of swerving or sidestepping or doing any standard football manoeuvre for deviating one's course, and he was right. I was simply clutching the ball to my chest and sprinting straight down the sideline. The success of the try attempt now depended, it seemed, on who had the greater speed.

Ordinarily I am a pretty fast sprinter. Now, however, after a busy first half as waterboy and a strength-sapping, injury-laden second half, I was far from top form. The Bindeena fullback, on the other hand, had enjoyed a busy try-scoring first half and a relatively easy second half, letting the wingers do all of the running. His sprinting form was thus close to peak level and it soon became obvious to me that he was going to beat me to the line, and present a major barrier. Even worse, I could see none of my team up with me in support and could hear the sound of pounding feet close behind me and gaining steadily. I was going to be brought down before I reached the line.

Five metres from the line, with the fullback in front of me now and preparing for the tackle, I felt a pair of hands grab hold of my jersey from behind. My legs started to slow involuntarily.

"This is it," I thought. "So close and yet so far."

Then Darryl's voice boomed "Move!" in my ear and I felt the hands propelling me forward, straight into the Bindeena fullback. We collided, me with the momentum of two bodies, sending the fullback flying backwards and me tumbling forwards. I fell across the try-line, ball still clutched to my chest, with Darryl Brown on top. The ball was driven into my stomach, pushing all of the air out of my lungs, my right arm was crushed under my body and my face was rubbed into the dirt. It was a moment of intense pain and yet despite that, I sensed a sudden feeling of triumph. I had scored a try.

I was still winded when Darryl pulled me to my feet by the jersey and slapped me on the back in congratulation. As I tried to suck in a breath of air, more teammates were rushing up and slapping my back, ecstatic that we got one back against Bindeena. Backslapping is not the treatment recommended by medical experts for winding, and thus it took a good 45 or so seconds before I could breathe again. But the smiles and excitement of my teammates and the sense of fulfilment I felt made it all worthwhile. From our antics at the Bindeena try-line, you would have thought we'd won the grand final, or at least the match, rather than having scored one try in response to their 10. But points on the board were not important. Psychologically, we had won a major victory.

Somebody once said that everyone will be famous for at least 15 minutes in their lives. Thankfully my fame lasted a bit longer, lasting all of that day and the rest of the week. The bus trip back to Wingindi was one of the highlights of my life. Everyone was happy, even the Netball girls who had been defeated 39 – 5, which wasn't bad compared to our 58 - 4 drubbing. Wendy even gave me a kiss on the mouth, which left me more dazed than scoring the try. We relived that try over and over again and whilst I received most of the glory and praise, I knew that Darryl Brown was literally the driving force behind my effort. He played down his role, however, which was a major surprise and I began to suspect that he wasn't as bad as he made out. It didn't matter at that point in time anyway, because we were all comrades-in-arms, sharing a fleeting moment of triumph and some more enduring injuries.

For the remainder of the week at school, the football match was the main topic of conversation, and my role in it was blown out of all proportion, to the point where I was portrayed as a great player of the future. Little Primary kids would walk past me and stare in awe, whispering secrets about how they lived just down the road from me, or how I once helped them to get a ball out of a tree. In actuality, I had no playing future. My mother was shocked when she saw the injuries I had sustained and forbid me from ever playing rugby league again. To support her case, she sat me down to read countless magazine articles on sports injuries and the tragic victims of sporting accidents. She needn't have bothered. I had already decided to retire whilst I was on top.

A week after the match, it was all but forgotten. It was an exam week and everybody was too busy fighting for academic survival to think about a silly game. Personally, I wasn't that busy and, in those brief moments during exams when my mind suddenly drew a blank and I stared vacantly out the window, my mind would wander back to that great day. It was a shame I never got the same taste of victory from exams but, well, we all have our own particular strengths and weaknesses. I managed to continue my string of the average performances in all subjects except Manual Arts, where I excelled and was top of the class. Not too bad an effort from a retired football star.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

THERE'S NO PLACE LIKE HOME

The end of June brought two weeks of holidays, something I had been looking forward to with great anticipation. We had a week of school holidays in March, thanks to Easter, but a week is much too short to really wind down after the hard slog of school. Two weeks gave you a week to wind down, then another week to almost forget what school was. I could see myself lying on a Gold Coast beach, soaking up the winter sun, perhaps venturing out into the surf, clad in my full length steamer wetsuit to protect me from the cold. Maybe I'd catch a movie or two and look up all my old friends. It sounded like a dream.

It was a dream. Dad, who as a teacher always had holidays at the same time as me, decided we should all go on a family safari. This would have been a nice idea if he was considering a surfing safari or a discovery tour of the Whitsunday Islands, or at least a trip to some form of water. But no, my dad decided we should ventured into the Great Australian Outback. I thought he was joking at first. I mean, I thought we were already there. He insisted, however, that the real Outback was in places like Charleville, Longreach, Augathella, Quilpie and numerous other small centres I had no idea existed. To visit such places, he said, was to taste the true essence of rural Australian life.

Despite the boredom of driving through the largely uninspiring countryside (the wide brown land is truly wide and brown), I did see some great sights on our Outback safari. There was a giant ant-hill, standing over three metres tall, beneath which we stood for a photograph. There were acres and acres of paddocks filled with kangaroos, grazing on the sparse grass covering, and giant Wedge-tailed eagles soaring overhead, looking for an easy meal. There was Dad, crying as he surveyed the dent in the car, caused by a kangaroo that had decided to graze somewhere else and crossed our path. There was Dad again, as he cursed while changing his third flat tyre, vowing never to buy cheap tyres again. There was Dad yet again, protesting at having to pay twice the Brisbane price for a litre of petrol. And there was Mum, surveying for the 20th time the contents of her meat pie, trying to confirm whether consumer magazine reports linking meat pies with kangaroo meat, cockroaches, and human hair were true. All of these are lasting memories of a wonderful holiday. Oh, and we did see some far-flung country towns, though they were not dissimilar to Wingindi in composition and exciting features, including boarded-up shopfronts that spoke of former glory and an abundance of weatherboard and corrugated iron. As a teenage boy with his head firmly fixed on the surf, I was probably not the best judge of their rural charms.

Our return to Wingindi on the last Friday of the holidays was a great moment. As we passed the "Welcome" sign on the road in, everyone in the car let out a silent cheer and gained a new appreciation for this peculiar little town where we lived and worked. We looked forward to settling once again into the slow pace of Wingindi life, where you could park your car in the middle of the road to have a chat with a passer-by, or have someone to fill your fuel tank and wash your windscreen, or where every store in the town had videos for hire. For every city amenity you lacked, there seemed to be another aspect of life from which you gained.

Wingindi only had one main street of shops. At either end of the 'shopping centre' of town was a hotel. For food supplies unrelated to the sale of alcohol, there was a general grocery store, which was also the newsagent, and a café, from which the town's only non-instant coffee could be purchased, along with baked and fried goods, including fish and chips. The town also sported a post office, a hardware-farm supplies warehouse, a pharmacy-gift shop and a clothing-sports store, which specialised in anything from school uniforms to evening wear and show jumping outfits, as well as the shoes and sporting equipment to go with them. Being a small town, everyone knew everyone, and the stores were generally referred to by the name of the owner rather than the registered business name. So the "Dewdrop Inn" café was actually referred to by everyone as "Alison's", because Alison McCready ran it. And everyone went to "Bob's" for their hardware and farm supplies, not "Wingindi Farms and Hardware".

The exception to the naming rule was related to the reputation of the business or business person. The owner of the clothing-sports store, David Simpson, was known for marking up his prices in comparison to similar stores in Bindeena or Toowoomba, and so his shop was collectively referred to as "Dodgy Dave's". The previous owner of the "Dewdrop Inn", a short term resident of Wingindi by the name of Stewart Williams, had apparently served up a hotdog that had given its unlucky purchaser a case of food poisoning. So until the time he sold the business to Alison McCready, his café was referred to as "Spew-its".

I'm not sure whether Wingindi and its occupants were typical of Queensland country folk, but I suspect they may have been. The majority of people I met, either personally or through my parents, where a strange combination of friendliness and reserve. They welcomed the newcomer into the town, into church and community groups, yet even after months and years, still treated him or her as that – a newcomer. It was strange to feel both a part of things and yet an outsider at the same time. You also had to watch what you said in conversation, especially about other people, because everyone in the town seemed to be closely or remotely related to someone else, through long lines of marriage over the generations since settlement of the area. That didn't mean everyone liked everyone else, however, and gossip was rampant, meaning few skeletons remained in family closets.

When you drive in a large town or city and somebody waves at you, it is generally a sign that they know you and you know them. In our early days in Wingindi, Dad and Mum, Sarah and I were astonished at how many people waved at us as they passed us on the road or in the street. They appeared to know us when we didn't know them, which seemed a bit rude on our part. Eventually we came to realise that waving was just another form of country friendliness, given not just to the friend but the complete stranger as well. We also learned the correct technique for country town waving – it is a cursory wave, with minimal effort and little-to-no eye contact. For a driver, it often amounted to lifting only 1 or 2 fingers off the steering wheel. We soon got into the habit of raising our hands at every passing car or pedestrian, which must have caused real confusion when we spent weekends on the Gold Coast. I'm sure that we left behind hundreds of Gold Coasters wondering who they knew who drove a yellow 1976 Toyota Corolla.

Wingindi was a small community, yet within its population it still possessed most of the necessary tradespeople and professionals. There were, however, numerous double-ups of roles. Farmers, naturally enough, were also backyard mechanics, electricians, plumbers and general handymen. The local policeman, Sergeant Peters, was also a pastor at one of the local churches and would be a little lenient on some of the speeding offenders or town drunkards if they had promised to appear in church on Sunday, or had appeared in church the previous Sunday. The local grocery store owner, Mr. Milton, was a qualified carpenter, often doing renovations for the town's citizens. And Allan Wilson's dad, the man who ran the TAB attached to the Royal Hotel, also detailed and sold a few cars from his front yard, making him the local used car dealer. These were just a few examples of a practice developed mainly to save people the 40 kilometre drive to Bindeena for simple services. Thus it was possible for Wingindi residents to get both legal and spiritual advice with the one phone call, to order groceries and get a quote on a new pantry to store them in at the same time, or place a bet on the Melbourne Cup whilst test driving a used Hilux ute.

So, as we cruised slowly through Wingindi to end our Outback safari holiday, we waved gaily to everyone we passed, had a chat to Allan's dad in the middle of the main street, stopped briefly to pick up a carton of milk and some bread from the carpenter, and finally headed to our weatherboard and aluminium homes. It was a wonderful feeling to be back.

Thoughts of hot baths, thawed home-cooked meals and cosy, personally-scented beds filled our heads as we pulled into the driveway, and as we hopped out of the car, I drew in a deep breath of country air. I was feeling pretty good about life in Wingindi, until I turned and caught a glimpse of the school across the road. Like a strange magnetic force, it began sucking the holiday spirit out of me and I quickly turned away.

"Dad," I said earnestly as we began to unload the car, "this house really needs a tall wooden fence built out the front. It just doesn't feel like a home without one."
CHAPTER TWELVE

GETTING AHEAD IN LEAPS AND BOUNDS

Third term at Wingindi State School brought with it Athletics season. For such a small country school, there was a very large emphasis on sport, and success in the sporting arena seemed more important to many students and parents than success in the classroom. The school Athletics Carnival was scheduled for the fourth week of term, and the weeks leading up to this saw the school oval a hive of athletic activity before, during and after school. Long jump pits were raked, high jump mats dragged out, the circular running track marked and tested. Physical Education lessons became devoted to running endless laps, or jumping hundreds of times into the sawdust-filled long jump pit. We even risked our necks trying to master the Flop technique in high jump, guided skilfully by Mr. King of course. "No, that's not the flop. You are just going to break your neck." I was thankful to have survived when the day of the carnival finally came.

The athletics carnival at my previous school had been a large affair, with hundreds of competitors, many highly trained, numerous events, and a very high standard of competition. One had to qualify to get into an event on the day, which in itself was a great achievement. If you did qualify, it was usually in only one, two, or maybe three events in which you specialized, spaced evenly over the full day of competition. Wingindi's athletics carnival was a completely different affair. Unlike the swimming carnival, it involved students from every year level, nearly 200 children in total. With very few students per house per age group, everyone volunteered for every event, with no qualifying standards set. I didn't want to stand out as a wimp, so I followed the examples of my classmates and put my hand up for everything. There was still almost the same number of events as at my last school, which meant I was nominated for the 100, 200, 400, 800 and 1500 metre running events, and the high jump, long jump, discus, javelin and shot put events. I was just thankful that pole vault, hurdles, race walking and the 5000 metres had never been a part of the athletics programme in Wingindi. I was going to be tired enough as it was.

As the day of the carnival dawned, I was looking at it as a test of stamina, not another chance to prove myself to others, as the swimming carnival had been. I was out to survive a heavy workload and if I took home a ribbon or two, then that was an added bonus. The fact that Wendy liked me for my clown-like qualities rather than my physical skills helped lessen the pressure to win, I must admit. I just hoped I wasn't going to continue my run of clown performances forever.

The carnival started at 9.00am, following a lecture on parade from Mr. Cardwell, informing us of the importance of participation, of setting an example for the spectating parents and of the caning we would get if we tried to escape from the school grounds during the event. Roger "Rambo" Guffrey had stayed away from school that day, obviously in the know. Suitably inspired, we headed out onto the oval, ready to begin competition.

The first event of the school day was the house march past, an enthralling activity where we formed ranks in our houses according to height and marched once around the oval to the canned sounds of a recorded marching band, emitted from two loud speakers set up at the recording tent. Most of the younger children had no sense of beat at all and swung arms and legs in a random, ever changing pattern. The marching was supposed to stop when the recording ended, with both houses marking time at the finish line of the track until this moment. Unfortunately, the vinyl LP record being used had a crack in it and we went on marking time for quite a while before anyone realized. Everyone was exhausted by the time we stopped and things looked grim for the 800 metre events to follow.

I once read that the 800 metres is really just an extended sprint and I carried that piece of knowledge into the event. At the gun, I set off at 100 metre sprint pace, and took quite a few fellow competitors with me. For the first 100 metres we looked very impressive, way out in front of the field. Then we started to falter, but I was still leading at the 300 metre mark. My legs were going to jelly and I began to see things as if looking through a tunnel. The runners who had followed me so ambitiously at the start began to drop out of the race and I watched helplessly as the slower starters surge confidently past. I tried to surge with them and realized I couldn't even feel my legs anymore. The rest of the race was just an extended stumble and I finished far behind the triumphant victors. As I crossed the line, I made a mental note not to remember anything else I'd ever read or heard about athletics.

My second event was discus, which luckily required very little leg effort. I had limited experience with this particular event, having no talent at my previous school, but I watched those who had attempts before me and it didn't appear to be too hard. Just a couple of swings of the arm and then you let the disk is go. This is exactly what I did, though after my first throw I realised there was a trick in letting go at the right time, for my throw went outside the legal throw lines and nearly took out a few spectators. My second attempt was more satisfying, flying wobbly but straight. The distance it travelled was far from impressive, however, and I saved myself the embarrassment of a third throw by heading off to watch Wendy at the long jump.

The boys' long jump was immediately after the girls' event, but I never stood a chance of victory. Cowboy McDowell, with his long lanky legs, was a natural at this event. He probably only had the same speed as me in the run-up, but his height gave him an advantage at the take off and when he stuck his long legs out in front for the landing, he consistently landed a good 30 centimetres ahead of me. I put everything into my last effort, starting about 30 metres back from the pit, sprinting in like a stampeding bull and driving skyward from the take-off board. My landing was good and I leapt confidently to my feet, in time to hear Mr. Miller, the official, call out "foul jump". I had overstepped the board on take-off. I still came a creditable third, enough to win me a congratulatory hug from Wendy, which I thought was better than a lousy blue ribbon any day.

My performance in the remainder of events during the day followed a similar pattern to the earlier ones. If I wasn't being out-distanced or out-jumped by taller, long-legged opponents, I was being out-sprinted by a shorter, stocky opponents, or out-thrown by muscular farm boys. I began to feel a little victimised. It wasn't my fault that I was only of average height, that I had been born with a neck, that I didn't carry hay bales or farm machinery around every afternoon. It was my parents' fault. Despite my physical disadvantages, I finished the day with a few third place ribbons but I also left school that afternoon with a chip on my shoulder about the way my parents had let me down, genetically and environmentally. My kids, I vowed, would never be average.

I set in motion a plan for physical improvement the very next day. When Cowboy arrived at school, I confronted him with a proposition.

"Hey, Cowboy, how about I stay at your place this weekend? You can show me around the farm and I can help you with a few chores." In actuality, I was looking for the secret of those long legs and strong arms.

He stared at me in surprise and puzzlement, trying to determine if I was joking or not. In the end, he gave up guessing and asked me.

"Are you serious, Fish? You never struck me as the farm type. I thought you preferred the surf?"

"I am serious. Honestly. I like the surf, but it's not everything, you know." To utter words such as these was the ultimate blasphemy, but I had to convince him somehow to let me stay at his farm. "I want to feel what it's like to be a man on the land."

Cowboy chuckled, amused at the city slicker images he thought I must have about farming.

"It feels pretty tiring and pretty dirty most of the time. I'll tell you that now. But if you are serious about this, why not? I'll ask Mum, but I'm sure she wouldn't mind having a city boy out to stay. She'll probably try and fatten you are up for starters."

"Thanks, Cowboy," I replied gratefully. "You won't regret it. We're going to have a great time."

I went home that night and informed my parents that I had been invited to stay at Cowboy's farm for the weekend. Dad was quite enthusiastic about the idea, happy that his son was taking an interest in the community and broadening his horizons a bit. I'm sure that somewhere he had a checklist of goals to be achieved by himself and his kids through the move to the country, and would go away tonight to tick off one more successfully-achieved aim.

Mum was a little less enthusiastic about the idea. Her women's magazines had several articles on the hazards of farming, including encounters with snakes, spiders, tractor accidents, drowning in dams, bull-gouging, and choking on home-baked pumpkin scones. She made me read all of them and promised I would be very careful during my stay. Even after my numerous promises, she went and made up a first aid kit for me to take, just in case. She seemed to think that the farm folk didn't have any medical supplies themselves. When she began to look up the phone number of the Royal Flying Doctor Service, I reminded her that Cowboy's farm was only 15 kilometres out of town, and assured her they had a car that could make the distance. She reluctantly accepted this.

"You can never be too careful, PJ," she insisted.

"Yes, Mum," I said out aloud, though inside I was wondering how many children died each year from being strangled in their mothers' apron strings. Hundreds, I'll bet.

The weekend came quickly, for I'd asked Cowboy about staying over on the Wednesday. I was to travel home with Cowboy on his school bus on the Friday afternoon, so I spent much of Thursday night packing a bag for the weekend. I wasn't really sure what clothes to take, other than jeans and long sleeved shirts. Mum naturally enough acted as an adviser, with the result that I packed about two weeks' worth of underwear, 10 pairs of socks and enough jumpers to outfit an Antarctic exploration team.

"You can never be over-prepared, PJ," she kept responding to my protests.

She also put a week's supply of frozen sandwiches in my bag, despite my insistence that Mrs. McDowell could cook and would be feeding me. She had obviously been reading her magazines again, about the effects of years of drought, cyclone or flood on farming communities, and I decided it was pointless telling her that Cowboy's parents had achieved good yields from crops and good profits on the cattle markets over the last couple of years. Instead, I eased my frustration by picturing the great feast my friends and I were going to have at school tomorrow, consuming a week's supply of sandwiches. I wondered whether I should ask Mum to supply some drinks as well, just in case the McDowell's water tanks were dry. I thought better of it, realizing that she might cancel my stay in her overcautious concern for me.

The bus trip out to the McDowell farm was an educational experience in itself. I'd never been a bus kid, always living too close to the schools I attended to qualify for bus passes. Bicycle had been my major form of transport. Most of the Wingindi kids, on the other hand, had spent their entire school lives travelling to-and-fro on buses, leaving for school early in the morning and getting home late in the afternoon. There were some advantages, I realised, to living across the road from school. These country kids had never experienced the joy of going home for lunch, nor catching the afternoon cartoon shows on TV just as they started. What deprived childhoods they had, I thought, as I sat amongst them.

During the trip, along undulating narrow roads through fields of grain and grazing cattle, one aspect of the bus children surprised me. Despite all the years of bus travel, they hadn't seemed to tire of doing all the stupid, annoying things that kids do when they get onto a bus, especially for the first time. You know, opening and closing the ashtrays, open and closing the windows, playing with the overhead vents, pulling the hair of the person in front and all the other nuisance activities that send bus drivers crazy. In the 25 minutes I was on the bus, the driver stopped twice and threatened to dump all of us on the road to walk home. I was thankful when we finally stopped at the recycled milk-can letterbox bearing the name "Dowdale", marking the gateway to the McDowell farm.

The driveway to the McDowell farmhouse was a little longer than our driveway in town, by about 1.5 kilometres. I watched Cowboy as he stood at the gate, checking for mail in the letterbox, waiting to see if he was going to start walking, or sit on the gate and wait for a ride home. No such luck, for he jumped the gate, said "Come on" and strode off down the gravel road towards his house, school bag over his shoulder. I threw my bag over the gate and climbed it clumsily, praying I wouldn't slip and hurt myself, thereby justifying all my mother's concerns. I made it over safely, picked up my heavy, now-dusty bag and trotted off after Cowboy.

By the time we reached the house, I was feeling tired and thirsty and satisfied that I knew part of the reason for Cowboy's endurance capabilities. The house itself looked like a farmhouse, with its white weatherboard exterior, large verandah, silver corrugated iron roof and the smoke puffing from the chimney. Resembling pictures and photographs you sometimes see in books or magazines, it was surrounded by both fence and shady trees, with a well-kept lawn and a few flower gardens. As we walked through the front gate, a small black cattle dog pup came bounding down the front stairs from its resting place on the verandah and barked around Cowboy's legs. He boxed its head a few times with his open hands, then bent down and pulled it into his arms, whilst the dog wriggled playfully and snuffled loudly.

"This little fellow is Snowy. My little brother got him for his birthday a couple of months ago." The ironic name was typical of most country farm dogs. A blue cattle dog is called Red, a hyperactive Kelpie is called Slowpoke or Snail. If they had Great Danes or Chihuahuas, which weren't working dogs and so didn't tend to appear on farms, they'd be called Tiny and Stretch respectively. On the subject of tiny, I had met Cowboy's little brother, Michael. He was only four years old and went to preschool in Wingindi three days a week. He was pint-sized, but looked and dressed like a miniature Cowboy, complete with Akubra hat and elastic-sided boots. Farming blood was thick in this family.

"Gidday, Snowy," I said, reaching out cautiously to pat his head. My family was never a 'dog' family, so I grew up with a natural suspicion and fear of dogs, especially the big varieties that chased you down the street as you rode your bike, or barked at you through fences.

"He won't hurt you," Cowboy reassured me with a wry grin on his face. "He's a harmless little fella." To prove this, he rolled the pup onto its back and began rubbing its stomach vigorously. The response was a chorus of contented groans and a vigorous wagging of the tail across the ground. If someone rolled me on my back and rubbed by stomach, I doubted I would react so harmlessly or warmly. But there was always Wendy.....

"Come on, Fish," Cowboy said at last, cutting into my pleasant thoughts, "we can't waste our time out here. I'm starving." He stood up and walked towards the house, schoolbag in hand and black dog nipping at his heels. I savoured this pleasant picture of farm life for a moment, then hurried after him. I was starving too.

As we entered the house, removing our shoes in the small entry hall, I had pictures formed in my head of the interior, created from the photographs in Mum's home improvement magazines and the biscuit advertisements I'd seen on TV. In the kitchen, with its polished wooden floor, there'd be a wood stove, on top of which would be a pot of soup or stew simmering. Freshly washed dishes would be draining in the rack on the sink, and on one of the polished, varnished wooden bench tops, trays of freshly baked cookies would be cooling. Beside these there would be two tall glasses of fresh cow's milk, waiting for us. Cowboy's mother would be busying herself in the kitchen, her floral print dress covered by an apron which she would remove apologetically as I entered.

The rest of the house, I imagined, would be spotless. Embroidery would cover most of the table and shelf surfaces, the freshly vacuumed thick-pile carpet would be covered in places by sheepskin rugs, and a cat would be curled up in the lounge room near the fireplace, in which a fire would be raging. The only sign of disarray might be a half-completed woollen jumper, left with knitting needles and balls of wool on one of the armchairs in front of the fire.

My mental images were soon shattered as we entered the kitchen. For starters, it looked very much like our kitchen in town, with laminex-topped benches and a vinyl floor covering. There was a wood stove, lit but with no pot of stew on top nor anything baking in it. Nor were there any fresh baked cookies on the bench, or glasses of milk.

"Is that you, David?" came a voice from behind us, out on the verandah. The screen door opened and a middle-aged woman appeared in the entry hall, clad in blue jeans, an old pale green sloppy-joe jumper and a pair of rubber boots. Her dark hair was pulled back in a low pony-tail and her face was tanned, with white rings around her eyes where sunglasses normally sat. "Hello, you must be Phillip Fisher. I'm David's Mum. David, make sure you and Phillip have some afternoon tea before you go and do your chores. Your dad and I are having troubles with one of the cows in the far paddock, so we might be a bit late home for tea. Mikie's with us, so you don't have to worry about him. Bye." With that, she went back out through the screen door and headed off out into the paddocks again.

"What do you want to eat, Fish?" asked Cowboy opening a cupboard, unaware of the disillusionment that had gripped me. "I usually just have a few biscuits and a glass of milk."

"That'll be fine, thanks," I responded numbly, slowly regaining my composure. I watched as he pulled out a packet of commercially-produced biscuits and two glasses, then took a 2 litre container of homogenised milk from the fridge and filled the glasses. I could see I was going to lose a few romantic images this weekend.

We took our drinks and biscuits into the lounge, the well-worn carpet of which was strewn with Michael's toys. There was an unlit wood heater in one corner of the room, but no signs of rugs or cats or even a knitting needle. A colour TV stood against one wall, faced by a slightly-battered black vinyl and orange fabric lounge suite with two matching armchairs. A low coffee table in front of the sofa was littered with jigsaw pieces, and the sofa itself had the sections of a newspaper spread over it. So much for the spotless home.

"Sorry about the mess," commented Cowboy, as if reading my mind. "Mum gets pretty busy with all the farm work, and doesn't have much time to spend on the house. Saturday is usually our family cleaning day."

"It's OK. My mum's a bit the same," I lied. She would had killed me if she heard me say that. Mum was the original Good Housekeeper, who had fits if you even mentioned the word "dust". Every day was family cleaning day in our house.

When we'd finished afternoon tea, Cowboy showed me around the rest of the house. Like the lounge room, every room looked in need of a good vacuuming and tidy up, particularly Michael's room, which was a mess of scattered toys, most being replica farm machinery or plastic animals. Cowboy's room was bigger than my caravan home, but its walls were similarly poster-plastered, though the pictures were predominantly cutaways of tractors, motorcycles and assorted farm machinery, with the occasional sports car intermingled. His bedspread bore the picture of a horse, and there were several framed photographs on his bedside chest of drawers, depicting him at various ages atop or beside different horses. Next to the frames were trophies bearing horse-head medallions or figurines, with Cowboy's name and various dates and locations inscribed upon them.

"Wow," I exclaimed, half-seriously, "you're a real cowboy. Look at these great trophies you've won."

"Oh, they're nothing," he responded, with a mixture of embarrassment and modesty. "I won them ages ago, and it really didn't take that much skill."

"Can I have your autograph?" I teased, and copped a pillow in the face for my troubles.

"Don't hassle me, Fish. When you're in my home, you give me a little respect."

With that, we headed out to the hall and put on our shoes again. Cowboy then led me out to the front gate and around to the side of the house, where a series of large machinery sheds had been erected. Beside these was a smaller building with a latch on the door, and it was to this that we headed.

"This is where we keep most of the feed. The door keeps the animals out, except the mice and rats. We shoot them or the cats and dogs get them." Cowboy opened the door to reveal large sacks stacked against the wall. A couple at ground level were open. He dug his hand into one of them, pulled it out and showed me the contents.

"This is the chicken feed. Basically just mixed grain. We also give them scraps from the kitchen. Whatever the dogs and cats don't want or can't digest."

He filled a bucket with the feed, and indicated that we were going to leave. He shut the door as we walked out of the shed.

"Shut doors and shut gates," he said philosophically, "are a key factor in successful farming. You let the cattle into the grain crop, or into the wrong grazing pastures, and everything can get stuffed up."

I made a note to shut everything I saw during my stay on the farm. I didn't want an open cupboard or toilet lid to bring about the downfall of the entire McDowell estate.

Feeding the chooks wasn't too exciting, just a matter of throwing out food in all directions in the mesh enclosure where they were kept. The chickens themselves could easily escape the enclosure, for it was designed only to keep out the foxes, but the regular feeding and cosy hen-house meant they never strayed far. The feeding chore over, we headed out into one of the large paddocks, our duty to round up the house-cow and bring her into a small pen near the house. I pictured us running around the field after her, spinning lassoes over our heads, but Cowboy simply stood on the edge of the field, put his fingers between his teeth and whistled loudly. A black and white bovine figure came trotting slowly from a distant patch of trees, swinging its 'udder-carriage' as it moved.

"That's Bess. We get some of our house milk supply from her, and she's also good for feeding rejected calves."

He ran to the gate of the nearby pen and opened it, in time for Bess to trot through. The gate was swung closed and that task was over.

"Heck," I said rashly, "this farm life doesn't seem so tough."

"Don't talk too soon, Fish," he warned me. "There is still the wood heater to light, the wood stove to stoke up, the cats and dogs to feed, and the spuds to be peeled." He laughed at the look of horror on my face.

We were still peeling potatoes when Cowboy's parents and brother returned to the house in the early evening. I had never met Mr McDowell before, though he looked very familiar. If Michael was a mini Cowboy McDowell, then Mr McDowell was the maxi version. He stood well into the 6 foot high range, his long legs covered with faded, oil-and-dirt stained jeans, ending in giant, sock-covered feet. The sleeves of his flannelette shirt were rolled up, revealing tanned, muscular tree-trunk forearms, at the end of which were huge hands, the right one nearly crushing my poor specimen in the greeting handshake. His dark greying hair was matted to his scalp, his forehead marked by the recent presence of a hat, and his eyes had the lined, squinted look of the man who spends most of his time working in the sun.

"Nice to meet you, Phillip," he almost whispered at our introduction, obviously the gentle giant type. "Dave's told us a lot about you. Bit of a surfer, I hear."

I wondered how many embarrassing details of my school life had been revealed around the McDowell dinner table. Conversation that evening, around that very same table and later in the lounge room, revealed that Cowboy had shared with them only the more positive aspects of my adventures, and the desire to escape into the surrounding wilderness never emerged.

Saturday mornings are my favourite mornings for sleeping late, and Cowboy thankfully shared this habit. Unfortunately, for someone like Cowboy who normally gets up at 5.30 am, sleeping late means getting up at 7.30am, and I couldn't believe it when he shook me awake at this time and told me to get dressed. Nor could I believe it when I found out that the rest of the McDowell household had already breakfasted and were well into the day's activities. The whine of the vacuum cleaner forced me to believe. These people, I concluded, were not human.

First allocated task of the day after breakfast was to check on some of the fencing in one of the far paddocks. One of the McDowell bulls had been straying into a neighbouring property, and as there were no gates in the region to be left open, it appeared there might be damage to the fence.

"What are we gonna do?" I ask seriously over my bowl of porridge. "Saddle up a few horses and ride out there?" This brought a chuckle of laughter from Cowboy, who almost choked on his vegemite toast.

"These aren't the dark ages, Fish. Horses are fun to ride and handy for some things, but they are too slow. We're going to take the bike."

I have vivid pictures in my mind of us pedalling across the paddocks on BMX bikes, racing ahead of galloping horses, and it didn't make sense. Then I noticed Cowboy's wrist-twisting action.

"You know, a trail bike. Dad's 250."

"I know, I know, I'm not stupid," I replied irritably, feeling extremely stupid.

After breakfast we headed out to the sheds, and in the corner of one was parked a Kawasaki trail bike, a dirt covered machine constructed, it appeared, largely of plastic, with large knobbly tyres. A box had been attached to the rear carrier of the bike.

"The box is for the dogs to ride in," explained Cowboy. "Snowy's a bit small at the moment, but Dad's dog Missie rides in there all the time."

He went to one of the nearby benches in the shed, and took two helmets, one of which he handed to me. It was faded yellow, very scratched on the exterior and the interior was filled with cobwebs which I cautiously removed with my hand. I couldn't see any sign of a spider, but prayed that one wasn't hiding under the padding, ready to climb into my ear when I put the helmet on.

"Come on, slowpoke," urged Cowboy, already sitting astride the bike, helmet in place. "We haven't got all day. Jump on the back."

As I've mentioned previously, my childhood had been deprived of certain experiences and motorcycles were one of them. Oh, I'd looked at them a lot in shops (I'm a boy, after all), and watched them roar past on the highway, but I had never actually ridden one. My Coast friends had all been too young to ride them, none of my relatives rode them, and Mum was adamant I'd go through life never having experienced the sensation of the wind blasting my face and body, or insects sticking to my teeth.

"If she could see me now," I muttered as I climbed on to the bike seat behind Cowboy. He already had the motor coughing and spluttering away and was impatiently revving it.

"Hold on tight to my waist," he shouted above the noise and just as I followed his instructions, he let out the clutch and added throttle. The front wheel lifted slightly off the ground in protest at the weight on the back and then we were off, out of the shed and onto the bumpy dirt road leading out into the far reaches of the farm. We hadn't been going more than about a minute when we were stopped by the first gate. I hopped off, swung it open, and he surged through. I swung it closed again and ensured that it was securely latched, then ran back to the bike, and we were off again.

Racing along the dirt road through the fields, some recently ploughed, some with crops and some with cattle, was a thrilling sensation, even if I was only the passenger on the bike. It was fun bouncing up and down with the bumps in the track and swerving here and there to avoid large potholes, rocks or bits of fallen tree. Cowboy had obviously been riding motorcycles for some time, such was the smoothness of his gear changes and the way he moved his body through curves and when riding out bumps.

We reached the approximate area of our investigation after about 15 minutes and five gates. By the last gate, I had the opening and closing sequence honed to pit-stop precision. We were in a paddock in which several large bulls were grazing, one or two lifting their heads at our entry. They looked pretty mean to my city-slicker eyes, but Cowboy didn't even seem to notice them, steering the bike off the dirt track to follow the fenceline more closely. Our progress was now merely a slow crawl as we bumped along beside the fence, looking for the tell-tale fallen post or broken strands of wire.

5 minutes into the slow search, the mystery was solved. We came upon a fence post lying almost horizontal, supported only by the tension in the wire. Closer investigation revealed the post had rotted at ground level, helped by termites, and had probably been snapped by the weight of a bull trying to get at the greener pastures on the other side.

"Now what?" I asked, ignorant of the procedures one followed in the case of a broken fence. I wondered if there was a manual farmers read when they started out that told them what to do in such emergencies, or whether they were born with the knowledge already implanted.

"Well, Dad'll bring a new post out on the ute, probably this afternoon. Otherwise more of these," he indicated the grazing bulls, "are going to go walkabout. In the meantime, we'll just prop the fence up with some tree branches."

"Is your dad going to be upset about the broken fence?" This was a question from a boy whose father saw a broken matchstick on one of his models as a major catastrophe. On that scale, Cowboy's father should have been suicidal.

"Nah. It happens all the time. Fencing is just about a fulltime business for farmers, especially when they mix cattle and crops like we do. No sooner do you replace one section than another section somewhere else needs repairing. If it's not the rot bringing the fence down, it's termites, or cattle, or falling trees, or kangaroos, or erosion, or flash flooding. And by the time you've replaced all the old sections, it's time to replace some of the new ones. You can't win."

"So why does anyone want to be a farmer?" I asked perplexedly, the question having bugged me right from the first time I started listening to the lunchtime farming conversations of my country friends. "It sounds like it takes a lot of hard work and money, setting things up just right, and then you have to rely on totally unreliable things like the weather and nature to produce good results. Meanwhile there's nobody paying your wages. I couldn't stand it." I had voiced my opinion, and hoped I wouldn't get a punch in the nose in response.

Cowboy laughed and looked at me almost with sadness, I suppose realising that I would never truly understand the attraction of farming. He did his best, however, to explain his feelings.

"I don't know if you can understand this, Fish, but one of the best things about farming is that there isn't anyone waiting to give you a pay cheque at the end of the week. Oh, we wouldn't mind the money, because we sure could use it. But who wants the boss that comes with it? Farmers are their own bosses and if they make mistakes, there's no one to pass the blame to. But if they want to try something new, or work around the clock, or not work at all, they don't have to justify themselves to anyone but themselves. You understand?"

"I think so", I replied hesitantly," but if you're your own boss, couldn't you slack off a lot, knowing that there is no one to catch you doing it?" I was thinking about those rare occasions when the teacher was called out of the classroom on some random business, and the students sat around and bludged until they returned.

"Sure farmers could slack off, but what would be the point? They wouldn't last long if they did. It doesn't take much for a farm to start running down. A windmill stops pumping and cattle don't get water, a header breaks down and a crop can't be harvested, a fence like this collapses and the animals get away or into a crop. In our world, everything man-made or man-changed returns to its natural state if left alone long enough, which can be chaos on a farm. Besides, most farmers enjoy what they're doing. Those big businessmen who own massive acreage and get others to run their farms are in it for the money, but the rest of us do it because we like the dirt and the animals and the machinery..."

"And the fencing?" I added.

Cowboy laughed.

"Well, I wouldn't say that. There are some routine, niggling jobs that we have to do that aren't quite so enjoyable. But we do them anyway." He looked at the fallen post, and the line of fence stretching off into the distance. "I just hope the rest of this fence isn't weakened by rot or termites. That would mean a lot of work. Come on, Fish, let's find some wood to prop this up in the meantime, and then we'll head back and see Dad."

After wedging the fence upright with some fallen gum branches, we prepared to leave. As we were putting our helmets back on at the bike, Cowboy turned to me.

"How'd you like to have a go at the front?"

"Depends how willing you are to die," I responded. "I've never ridden a motorbike. I know the theory, and have ridden an arcade version, but don't have a real clue about the gear changes".

"Heck, it's easy", he reassured me, jumping onto the bike. "You just pull this clutch lever in here on the left," and demonstrated, "while easing off the throttle here on the right, and then push this lever down here with your left foot to find the gear you want. Up for higher gear, down for lower gear." He demonstrated this again. "Then you slowly release the clutch out while easing on the throttle. After that you just change the gears up and down when you need to regulate your speed, and use the hand and foot brakes to slow you. Piece of cake. Dad taught me when I was about six."

My head was trying to digest the "left, right, up, down, in, out, hand, foot" instructions and put them in the right order, but it was a challenge I simply couldn't pass up. I was a teenage boy, and riding a motorcycle seemed like a rite of passage. If a six-year-old country boy could do it, surely a 15-year-old city boy surfer could master it.

"Righto, I'll try it, but not with you sitting on the back. I'm willing to sacrifice my own life, but not yours."

Cowboy hopped off the motorcycle, and I stepped astride it, my feet only just reaching the ground on either side. Cowboy ran through the gear change process again with me, and I mentally and physically practised it as best as I could in the moment. Then he ran through the starting procedure and ensured the bike was in neutral before I attempted to kick-start the engine. It took a few goes, but finally the bike was spluttering away between my shaking legs. I gave the throttle a few tentative twists and was satisfied to hear the throaty response of the engine. Once again, I ran through the gear changing procedure in my head – throttle off, clutch in, foot change, throttle on, clutch out, brake out.

"All systems are go," I said to myself, and gave Cowboy a thumbs-up signal with my right hand. He pointed off into the distance in front of me, his signal to get moving. It was all the inspiration I needed. With my left foot, I changed the gear into what I hoped was first gear, then slowly released the clutch lever and the bike began to move forward beneath me. Unfortunately, I forgot to add some throttle, and the bike simply bunny-hopped forward a couple of times and stalled.

"More throttle", piped in my pit crew. I responded with a sheepish grin, invisible to Cowboy under the helmet.

Once more I repeated the procedures I had so recently been taught. Gear in neutral, hand brake on, ignition on, kick-start. Engine running, clutch in, gear change, release clutch, release brake, throttle on. This time, when I eased the clutch out, I used plenty of throttle, twisting hard on the grip. The bike surged alarmingly forwards, and my immediate reaction was to release the throttle and jam on the hand brake, causing the bike to pull up quickly and attempt to propel me over the handlebars. In response, I released the brake again and grasped desperately on the handgrips, including twisting once more on the throttle. Once again, the bike surged forwards. In this short space of time and action, I had been neglecting the steering. The bike had strayed off the narrow dirt track along the fenceline and the front wheel hit a small sawn-off tree trunk hidden in the grass. It leapt a short distance into the air, and the bounce in landing dislodged my feet from the foot pegs where they were resting, and the handlebars twisted in my hands.

Cowboy was yelling at me "Throttle off, brake on", but it was all in vain. I managed to ease off on the throttle but didn't get to the brakes before the wobbling bike met the natural arresting system of the wire fence. The front wheel stopped rotating first, so the rotation was transferred to the bike itself, the back wheel lifting off the ground. The bike then lost forward momentum, but this was transferred to the more movable rider. In a demonstration of transfer of momentum that our Science teacher Mr Miller would have been proud of, I slid forward from the seat, across the fuel tank, then over the handlebars and gauges, doing a slow motion front-flip over the fence, landing on my back on the other side. Behind me, the motorbike dropped sideways onto the ground, engine stalled.

I lay there in dazed silence for a second or two, sensing the onset of pain in the lower soft-tissue regions of my anatomy and regaining the breath in my lungs. I became aware of the muffled sound of laughter from behind me. I sat up, removed my helmet, and turned my head slowly and carefully, ensuring I hadn't sustained a neck injury, to see Cowboy bending forward, hands on knees, in fits of laughter. I felt a surge of anger rise within me at the injustice of this, then it began to dawn on me that a) I was alive and b) my antics must have looked pretty funny, and was overcome with relief instead. I was even able to crack a smile and give a thumbs-up.

Climbing slowly and somewhat painfully to my feet, I summed up the situation.

"Well," I quipped philosophically," at least we know the rest of the fence is sturdy".

The motorbike had thankfully received only a few minor paint scratches from the incident, and started for Cowboy after a few concerted kick-start attempts. Now I knew why they were constructed mainly from plastic. When he signalled for me to hop on the back again, I was a little reluctant. It wasn't that I didn't trust his abilities as driver, but rather the pain involved in lifting my legs over the bike to get on, and the thought of the pain in my lower regions on the ride home. I didn't relish the walk back to the farmhouse, however, so climbed tentatively aboard.

On the journey out to the fence, I had greatly appreciated the bumps in the road, but on the return journey I hated every one and felt sure that Cowboy was deliberately seeking them out. It was a great relief to finally climb off the bike back at the sheds. I made a vow then and there never to ride a motorcycle again (a vow which I have since broken), and admitted to myself that perhaps my mother hadn't been wrong in her fears and trepidations.

My injuries largely incapacitated me for the rest of that Saturday. We didn't tell Cowboy's parents exactly what had happened, but justified my limited participation in subsequent farm chores with the excuse that I had pulled a few back muscles whilst helping to fix the broken fence. So while Cowboy and his father went out and repaired the fence properly, and carried out maintenance on a windmill, I sat on the lounge in the house, helping Michael to put together a jigsaw and assemble Lego tractors and trucks. I also watched and listened with interest as he showed me every toy he owned, and every piece of artwork he had created in the last six months of Preschool.

Rather than stay at the McDowell household for the entire weekend, given my continuing state of pain, I asked to be dropped home on Sunday morning. I explained that my mother was the worrying type, which was the truth, and I wanted to go home early to put her mind at ease, which was a lie. The McDowells were driving into Wingindi for the morning church service anyway, so I wasn't really inconveniencing them by taking them away from farm chores. Church in Wingindi provided a significant social as well as spiritual role for the citizens of the district, and every denomination was represented in the town, their meeting places being either standalone churches, or community halls. These buildings were surrounded on Sunday mornings with Landcruisers, Hiluxes, Patrols and the other models of farm vehicle and ute. Only the lowly town citizens drove regular sedans, though many of these also owned four wheel drive vehicles, which proved more resilient to the kangaroos on the roads and the submerged floodways when it rained significantly.

My mother got quite a surprise when the McDowell's Landcruiser pulled into the driveway, and came running out, fearing the worst. The relief showed on her face when I climbed apparently unscathed from the vehicle, though it took a great deal of effort on my part not to groan or hobble as I waved goodbye to the McDowells and walked up the driveway to the house.

"I didn't want to be a burden on Mrs McDowell," I explained in response to her querying expression, which followed closely after her welcoming hug. "You know how hard-up some of these farm people are."

"That's very thoughtful of you, PJ," she gushed, unaware I was simply parroting her own words of a few days ago. "Did you have a good time?"

"Great, thanks Mum," I replied wryly. "It'll be hard to sit down and relax after yesterday's fun. Very hard indeed."

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

ALL THE WORLD'S A STAGE

Three quarters of the way through Term3, when Athletics fever have finally died out in the school for all but the one or two regional representatives, the school began auditions and rehearsals for the upcoming school concert and fete, set down for late October. This allowed for three weeks of practice before the September holidays, and three weeks to remember everything again after them. It was supposed to be an epic display of performing arts talent, involving the participation of every boy, girl, teacher and teacher aide in the school, designed to raise as much money as possible from the school community to supplement funds provided by the government or raised in the numerous pie and lamington drives, spellathons and tombolas throughout the year.

The concert/fete was a popular Wingindi tradition, and many a performer had gone on to great things as a result, including singing in the Bindeena Eisteddfod, performing at the Wingindi Show ("After the bull judging, Betty Williams will sing"), playing at the local Bowls Club or pub every Friday and Saturday night, or even peaking by representing the district at the regional Country and Western Jamboree. It was such a popular event that occasionally it even rated a mention in the "Bindeena Gazette", though this was probably because Mr Cardwell sent in a review himself.

In the Primary grades, performance pieces were chosen by the class teachers and performed in class groups. As a result, there would be the Pre-school aerobics team, Year One choral group, the Year Two poetry reciters, the Year Three recorder players, the Year Four band, the Year Five dancers, the Year Six gymnastic team and the Year 7 drama group. Class teachers became instant directors, conductors, choreographers and coaches, whipping their youthful charges into polished theatrical and artistic form in a mere six week period, in time for one gala night of song, prose and music. Or that was the theory.

For Secondary students, it was a different story. There were no year level performances, largely because we had neither the numbers nor the talent in each year level to support such a venture. The teachers, being subject specialists, seemed to lack the creativity or motivation to select concert items for us, and thus it was every student for him/herself. We had to form our own groups and find our own items. There were only two guidelines to follow: firstly, every student would participate on the night and secondly, once students had chosen an item and formed their groups, they had to approach a teacher to supervise rehearsals, to be held on Wednesday afternoons in lieu of sport.

For some of the more talented Secondary students, finding a suitable and worthwhile item was not hard. Several could play musical instruments, and one or two sang in church choirs, so these students generally were drawn together to form instrumental groups and bands. Those students who travelled to Bindeena each week for gymnastic or dance lessons also quickly formed performance items together. For the less musically-inclined or artistically-inclined students like me, however, finding a concert item required a great deal of thought. Cowboy, Allan, Rambo, Stephen and I searched through the library, hoping to find plays or comedy skits that we liked and weren't too embarrassing. Unfortunately, anything we found in dog-eared manuscripts was either outdated, too long, required too many performers, or required sets and costumes that were beyond our budget. Allan, always the joker, suggested that we do impersonations of the teaching staff, which I thought was a little dangerous based on my knowledge of the senses of humour of Wingindi staff. It didn't matter anyway, because we soon discovered that Darryl Brown and his henchman had already chosen this item and were rehearsing.

In the end, after a desperate emergency meeting on the day that concert items had to be submitted to Mr Cardwell, we came up with an idea. After a brainstorming session, we identified that our collective interests were guns, motorbikes, farming, cars, surfing, skateboarding, studying, eating, Wendy Thompson, war, comedy, movies and football. We pieced together a melodrama, a humorous play with heroes, villains and a damsel in distress, which we titled "Surfman and the Farmboys from Hell". The title was self-explanatory. Using my position in the friendship zone, I convinced Wendy to come on board as our damsel in distress, despite the fact that she was also in a choir group. Allan elected to write the script, and we settled on Mr Reynolds, our storytelling Maths teacher, to be our supervisor. We thought we might be able to tap his imaginative mind for plot developments if we needed them.

The scene was set for weeks of rehearsal, arguing, laughing and general mucking about, all in the name of the performing arts. I can't even remember what we were studying in our normal subjects at the time. We were very happy with our choice of Mr Reynolds as supervisor. Another group had selected Mrs Tucker, thinking that her English teaching background might improve their production. She had not only improved it but taken it over completely, rewriting their series of comedy skits into an almost Shakespearean production, with hardly a laugh to be found. Mr King, our fashion-obsessed HPE teacher, was supervising the gymnastics group, not to provide any advice but simply to be admired by the all-girl troupe. Wendy could only spend half of her rehearsal time with us, being committed to two items, but Mr Reynolds was happy to stand in for her in her absence, which was a great laugh. If I hadn't been so determined to have Wendy as the damsel in distress that I, the hero, swept into my arms in the final scene, Mr Reynolds would have been the ideal character for the part.

The script that Allan produced for the play was a work of comic genius. I was cast as Surfman, an egotistical show-off for whom everything seemed to go wrong. I have no idea where he got the inspiration for this role. Stephen was Beachbot, Surfman's robot assistant. Allan was the narrator, with the funniest lines to deliver, and Rambo and Cowboy were the Farmboys from Hell, villains who dressed like hillbillies, spoke like Mafia gangsters and carried submachineguns. Wendy was Lucy Lovejoy, an innocent but dopey beach-babe. The plot somehow intermingled a kidnapping, a formula for a secret surf wax, a gunfight, a rescue and a congratulatory kiss from damsel to hero at the end. The last part was my idea, added simply for dramatic effect, of course.

Rehearsals were interrupted by the arrival of the September holidays. Despite the fact that the family was to spend the entire two week break at the Gold Coast, I was a little sorry to say goodbye to Wingindi. Spring usually brings some pretty good surf, but I actually found myself reciting lines as I sat on my surfboard in the line-up, waiting for waves. That amounted to about 3 hours of rehearsal per day on its own. On the day of my 15th birthday, when the surf was unfortunately blown-out by an onshore wind, I spent time on the beach staring into space, running through my drama performance instead of staring at the bikini-clad girls walking or lying nearby. I wasn't even motivated to rush out and spend my birthday money on boardshorts or wax. Something was definitely wrong with me.

For the first time in my life, I spent my holiday time thinking of school, instead of vice versa. I realised I was suffering from some sort of strange disease, and blamed my father and his move to the country. What had he done to me? The part of the rehearsal I worried about the most was the congratulatory kiss from Wendy's character. At school, we had not really practised this, much to my disappointment, with Wendy saying it would "be alright on the night", but I was not so sure. I felt I was a long way from perfection in the kissing department, given a lack of historical experience, and wanted this aspect of my performance to excel. The absence of Wendy on the Gold Coast made this impossible.

With a strange mixture of both sadness and relief, the September holidays eventually ended and Term 4 began. The three weeks of rehearsal leading up to the concert raced by. When the night arrived, every group and class had practised their item seemingly hundreds of times, generally to the detriment of other academic studies, but no one seemed to care. There were still plenty of rough edges, but as the audience was largely to be made up of parents, grandparents and other relatives, it didn't really matter. They would pay their money without protest, and clap and laugh even if the standard of performance was less than professional. This is a universal truth, known to all who attend amateur theatre, amateur dance performances, school concerts and school speech nights.

The fete took place in the school grounds in the late afternoon before the concert, involving various stalls selling home-baked goods and home-made products, as well as games and sideshow rides. You could try to pop a balloon with a dart to win a prize (donated stationery, cooking or candy), or attempt to toss a ping-pong ball or flick a coin into a jar to win its contents (donated stationery, cooking or candy), or spin a wheel and attempt to land on a lucky prize number (donated stationery, cooking or candy). You could pat a sheep, or a horse, or a goat, or a cow. You could ride a mini chair-o-plane, or take a ride around the school oval on a train that consisted of the groundsman's ride-on mower and a couple of small carriage-trailers. Or you could buy a plate of scones, a chocolate cake, a knitted teapot cover, crocheted coat hangers, or a patchwork apron. Being on school premises, there were no alcoholic beverages on sale, which possibly accounted for why there were more adult females than males in attendance at the fete. It also accounted for why the hotel just up the block from the school was filled with well-dressed adult males, who later appeared at the concert, and who clapped and laughed more enthusiastically than you would have expected.

The concert itself began just after dark, and was held in the small town hall right beside the school grounds. The backstage area was crammed with props and anxious costumed children, hyped up on cake, hot chips, fairy floss and soft drink, and spilling out onto the grass area at the back of the hall. In the minutes prior to the start of performances, equally-anxious parents and teachers raced amongst the children, herding them into and out of the hall, straightening costumes, washing faces and fixing wayward hair with spit on hankies, and giving last minute instructions. The air was electric with nervousness and excitement.

"Surfman and the Farmboys from Hell" was not scheduled to play until about midway through the concert, which gave us an hour to peek through the backstage curtains and watch the earlier items. Compere for the night was Mr. Wilson, not only Allan's dad but also head of the Wingindi Progress Committee, a group of people who occasionally met over a drink at the Royal Hotel or the Farmers Arms to discuss ways of getting more people to shop in Wingindi, short of building a K-Mart. Allan had inherited his humour from his dad, and Mr. Wilson's commentaries throughout the night were more interesting and funny than most of the acts.

First official act of the night was the Year One choral group, singing their renditions of "Puff the Magic Dragon" and "It's a Small World". The Pre-school aerobics team had already performed at the fete, to avoid them being too tired in the evening. The Year Ones sat in their Sunday-best clothes, cross-legged upon the stage, shouting out the words in their shrill, off-tune little voices to the accompaniment of the teacher, singing even louder than the children, on the piano. The whole thing was extremely cute to watch and they received a rousing round of applause when the last notes had died away. It was either for the cuteness, the teacher's singing, or an expression of the audience's relief that the singing had ended. I'll never know which.

Hard on the heels of the Year Ones came the Year Two poetry recital. The school had to get through all the lower Primary acts early in the evening, before the children went to sleep. The poem recited was "Clancy of the Overflow", and the children were dressed as pioneering Australians, with the girls in long dresses, aprons and bonnets and the boys in long trousers, flannelette shirts and hats. For most of the boys, this wasn't dressing up at all, except for the dyed cotton wool beards stuck on their faces. As they recited the poem from memory, prompted by the teacher standing in front with her back to the audience, I noticed that many of the boys were having trouble keeping the cotton wool out of their mouths. Occasionally there were slight pauses when collectively the class forgot a line, and once or twice a solo voice could be heard where a pause was supposed to be, but on the whole they did a very commendable performance and received a thunderous applause from the appreciative crowd.

I was ready to believe that the crowd would applaud and laugh at anything until Darryl Brown's group of teacher impersonators took to the stage. They soon proved me wrong. Somehow, despite all the rehearsal, the boys hadn't managed to capture the essence of the teachers they were impersonating, or perhaps they dwelt too much on the things only Secondary students would have known, or perhaps their impersonations were considered to be cruel rather than funny. Whatever the reason, there was only a sprinkling of applause as each character left the stage, and it seemed to be given only to break the embarrassing silence,. I was very thankful that we had been unable to pursue the teacher impersonation idea ourselves, and even a little sorry for Darryl and his group, despite their generally unsympathetic, bullying natures.

Our performance, I must admit with all honesty, was a tremendous success. We didn't fluff too many lines, we made our entrances at the right times and managed to project our voices so that most of the jokes were heard. For once I didn't trip over my feet, forget to do up my fly or earn laughs that weren't supposed to be there. I was the clown only when I was supposed to be. It was a welcome change. The audience actually laughed at my use of surf jargon, though I can't vouch for Mrs. Tucker standing offstage, and found the Farmboys from Hell to be hilarious, a sign that country people can laugh at themselves and their own mannerisms. The biggest hit was Wendy Thompson's beach-babe character, though I am not sure whether it was her humorous air-head lines or the fact that she wore a red one piece bathing suit and white sand shoes for the role. There were plenty of wolf whistles whenever she took to the stage. Farmers, I concluded, were not only interested in the land and rainfall.

Whilst I delivered all my lines with enthusiasm and attention, I felt my best performance came in the culminating "hero kisses the damsel" moment of the play, before we took our bows and left the stage. I put my everything into that piece of acting, and my dedication left me seeing stars. I didn't accidently head-butt Wendy, our noses didn't clash, and I didn't manage to miss her lips or leave a trail of saliva. The kiss only last a few seconds, but in my mind, even today, it seemed frozen in time. After dazedly taking my bows with the rest of the cast, I floated off that stage with a huge smile on my face, and even Wendy seemed impressed with my performance, based on the smile she also wore.

The rest of the evening following our performance was an anticlimax for me. I had been extremely nervous beforehand, excited at the audience's response during the play, and ultimately began to feel a little sad that it was all over at the end, despite all the congratulations that we received from performers backstage. As I stood backstage during the item that immediately followed mine, my 'post-kiss' euphoria faded and my sense of loss began to deepen. The goal of rehearsal had been realized and now there was an empty space within me. No more Surfman. No more battling with the Farmboys. And no more sweeping Wendy up into my arms and carrying her away. At that moment, I wondered whether Mitchell Freeman was somewhere in the audience. I had never met him but had seen his picture in an old school photograph, and had taken an instant dislike to him. It had nothing to do with the fact that he looked bigger and more handsome than me, even in that grainy image. Wallowing in increasingly negative thoughts, I walked out of the hall via the backstage door, and realised my worst nightmare. On the grass immediately outside the door, there was the man himself, Mitchell Freeman, giving Wendy a congratulatory hug. I quickly headed down the side of the hall and in through the front doors, to find a seat and escape this tragic scene.

The remaining performances were similar in nature to those of the early evening, a mixture of song, dance and humour, intentional and unintentional. There were short delays in the programme when a guitar player broke a string during his performance and while the local doctor attended to the injuries of Mr Tynan, the Year Four teacher, who accidently fell backwards off the stage during his over-exuberant conducting of the Year Four band. Some of the performances were better than others but the audience was always forgiving and kind, and responded with generous applause. I think everyone was happy, however, when all items had been performed and Mr. Cardwell stepped up to the microphone to conclude the concert. He thanked the audience and performers, praised the standards of the items, and then announced that supper was being served. The response to this last announcement was more overwhelming than any previously heard during the night. If an army marched on its stomach, than it seemed an audience applauded on its stomach too.

I didn't hang around for the post-concert cakes, biscuits, pikelets and scones, nor fruit cup cordial or the lukewarm cups of tea or instant coffee, despite the opportunity this supper presented to receive further acclaim. I was feeling deflated, and the likelihood of bumping into Mitchell with the lovely Wendy on his arm was too great a probability. Whilst he was just a photograph, or a figure in the darkness behind a hall, I could continue to hope that, one day, Wendy and I could be more than just friends. But if I met him face-to-face, shook his hand, acknowledged him standing hand-in-hand with Wendy in flesh-and-blood, I knew I would lose hope and heart. So, as other superheroes did when their adventures and moments of glory were done, Surfman simply vanished into the night and headed home to his aluminium fortress of solitude.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

YOUR FUTURE LIES BEHIND YOU

When the school concert was over, there remained very little of the school year left, particularly for the Year 10 students. Exams began in the third week of November, and we finished school later that month, two weeks before the other year levels, who finished mid-December. There were three weeks between the concert and exam week, and these were filled largely with revision of the semester's and the year's work. Even the less-studious students began to devote themselves to study, knowing that the value of the last 10 years of schooling was seemingly hinging on these final exams. The small piece of official paper, the Junior Certificate that would be handed to us at the end of the year, could be used by others, including potential employers and the Senior Year Level Coordinators at subsequent high schools, to judge us and determine our futures. For those carrying on their education to Year Eleven, like me, or going to work on the family farm, the pressure was a little less than that faced by those who were seeking apprenticeships or fulltime jobs at 15 or 16 years of age, but it was there nonetheless. There was also parental approval to be reckoned with.

When exam week arrived, most of the Year 10s were sick to death of study and looking forward to burning a few textbooks. That didn't necessarily mean we knew all of the content, but we'd overstepped the limits of our patience and the small loading capacities of our adolescent brains. Exam week seemed almost a holiday to us, for attendance at school during the five days of exams was restricted only to the period of the individual exams themselves. If we had a two hour exam from 9.00am to 11.00am and no more that day, we could go home afterwards, theoretically to study for tomorrow's exams. It was a poor theory, because no one felt like studying immediately after an exam. I felt sorry for the students who came to school on buses, for they had no means of getting home and spent their time either studying in the school library or wandering the streets of Wingindi, waiting for the end of the school day. Once again I found myself thankful that I lived so close to the school. If only Dad would build that fence to block off the terrible view.

To this day, I still have some vivid memories of that week of exams, as I do of subsequent exam weeks in later years, in other schools and universities. We Year 10 students would arrive outside our exam rooms 15 to 20 minutes prior to the start of the exam, and stand around somewhat nervously. Cowboy, Allan, Stephen, Rambo and I would crack jokes about how little study we'd done, or how we were going to fail the exam but it didn't worry us and so forth, and then one of us would ask a test-related question that the rest couldn't answer. Immediately there would be a rush to our school bags, textbooks and exercise books would be dragged out, and frantic searching would go on until the solution was found. Then everybody would put away the books again, and the joking and small talk would begin again. This chain of events could occur 5 to 10 times before the supervising teacher arrived with the test papers, and did little to help settle the butterflies that flew in small squadrons in our stomachs. Sometimes I chatted briefly with Wendy, if we shared the same exam, but I kept our conversations brief – she was too much of a distraction and I needed to keep my head in the exam game, if only for a week.

Once the supervising teacher was present we were all moved into the exam room, carrying only the essential materials, including at least two blue biros, pencils, a ruler, an eraser and/or liquid paper, working paper, a calculator and plenty of spare batteries. Faulty tools could destroy one's concentration and cause a loss of marks, and most of us needed every mark we could in order to pass the various subjects. We weren't taking any chances. Once in the room, we'd sit alone at our desks, nervously drumming our fingers or knocking knees or tapping feet, keeping the adrenalin motor idling in preparation for the hour or more of concentration that lay ahead. I would stare at the supervisor as he or she sorted through the papers and wrote start and finish times on the blackboard, hoping to telepathically read his or her mind in order to gain the answers to the test, or at least have advance warning of what the questions were going to be. It never worked, but as the teacher finally placed the offending test paper on my desk, I'd still stare briefly into his or her face in the hope of catching a glimpse of an answer. Unfortunately, all I ever saw were wrinkles and whiskers and too much make-up (Yes, Mr King included).

Once the instruction to begin the exam had been given, all eyes were dropped to the papers in front of us, to scan the mind-boggling questions placed there by teachers to trip us up on our journeys to successful working or academic careers. The nervous toe tapping and finger drumming would be replaced by the frantic dragging of a pen or pencil across the test paper, the hand trying to keep place with the flow of ideas and answers from the mind. Or sometimes, the hand and pen lay dormant, waiting for the mind to kick into action. The exam room would be filled with the overwhelming sound of silence, punctuated occasionally by the rustling of paper, coughing, or the grunts and groans of frustration as new hurdles were met by weary or empty minds.

We fought three enemies in our exams; the first two were the exam paper itself and its assistant, the mental block, which appeared at randomly selected and inopportune times. When struck by a mental block, I would grunt and tense my body and in desperation, stare out of the window or at the blackboard, trying to find a key to unlock the secrets buried (hopefully) somewhere in my head. As suddenly as it struck, the block might disappear and all would be revealed. Frequently for me, however, the block was made of solid cement and I would be forced to abandon my attempts to get over it or around it, heading off to a new question with the usually-false hope of returning to the problematic question at some later time.

Time was the third enemy. Exam time, like holiday time, seemed to pass more quickly than normal time. Try holding your breath for 1 minute, and each second lasts forever. Start working on a 1 hour Maths exam, with 20 questions to answer, and the hands of the clock seem to race around the face. On some occasions, students actually finished before the exam time was up. This more commonly meant they had no idea what they were doing rather than they actually knew all the answers. If ever I finished ahead of time, I'd instantly check the exam to see whether a page was missing or I'd forgotten to do the back of a double-sided test. Then I'd check all the questions and answers to find out what I'd missed. Generally, however, I never finished early unless I couldn't do some of the questions on the paper. Unlike some of the other fast finishers, I never doodled on the back or margins of my test papers. I had never come across a teacher who awarded extra marks for artistic creativity in order to make up for lack of student intelligence.

The last five minutes of exams were usually signalled by the supervising teacher, leading to louder grunts of frustration and extended bouts of nervous agitation from the students who hadn't yet finished. Even at the "Pens down" instruction, some students would keep desperately scribbling, until verbally warned or the paper was snatched from them. Then there would be the sighs of relief or surrender, the crunching of staples biting into paper, and the rustling round up of stationery. Exam over, we would breathe deeply again, flee the exam room for the energy-restoring sunlight of the verandah or school yard, and vent frustration at the toughness of the exam, the presence of questions on material we had not been taught, or answers that could not be calculated. Some students would form small groups to carry out post-mortems on the test, but I was not one of these. Hindsight doesn't change answers already recorded on paper and beyond reach, so I couldn't see the point. Had I been on the Gold Coast, I would have headed home and then drowned my sorrows or released my nervous energy in the surf. Being in Wingindi, however, I simply retreated to my caravan to sleep or peruse an old surf magazine, or maybe catch a bit of daytime TV if "The Ice Queen" was not home to stop me.

My final exam, Advanced Maths, was on the Friday afternoon, and it was with great relief that I sprinted away from the test post-mortems that afternoon, home to my caravan. I felt as if a tremendous weight had been lifted from my shoulders, and the knowledge that I had actually completed the compulsory section of my education gave me a sense of power. If I wanted to, I didn't have to go back – at 15 and with Year 10 completed, I could legally leave school. Of course, I knew that I was going on to Year 11 because, at that time, I had absolutely no idea what I really wanted to do with my life. And anyway, Mum and Dad would never let me leave.

I lay on my bed in the caravan, staring at the ceiling, not counting the fly spots and mould marks but thinking seriously about my immediate future. That evening was the Year 10 graduation dance, a formal event involving all Secondary students but held to farewell my year level as we set out on the next stage of our lives. For most of my classmates, me amongst them, there was more schooling ahead. Several students were going to boarding schools in Brisbane, Toowoomba and even the Gold Coast, and among these were Stephen Douglas, Roger "Rambo" Guffrey, and Cowboy McDowell, all bound for Toowoomba schools. The gang was being split up. Others were going on to Bindeena High, including Allan Wilson and Wendy Thompson, who were both happy to remain living with their parents. My father was remaining a teacher in Wingindi, so it looked like I'd be joining Allan and Wendy on the Bindeena bus next year. It was some consolation that half of our theatrical group was staying together, but I was going to miss Cowboy. We had shared some truly great adventures and conversations.

There was a knock on the caravan door and I abandoned my thoughts to let the visitor in. It was "The Ice Queen", carrying a large box, followed closely by Dad, wearing a large smile. I wandered what I'd done wrong, for they rarely visited me in my caravan, preferring to call out to me through one of the windows if my services and presence were required.

"Surprise!" exclaimed Mum, thrusting the box into my hands. I stared at it in confusion. "Go on, open it," she continued.

"Not another macramé hanger," I thought, feeling the lightness of the package in my hands.

"It's a graduation present, Phil-my--boy," chipped in Dad, failing to alleviate my fears about the hanger but explaining their presence in my room. "You've made it through your Junior year."

I set the box down on a bench and opened the lid. A card sat on top of bunches of screwed up paper, and I began to suspect that I was the victim of a booby prize, with maybe a piece of chewing gum or a Mintie somewhere under the paper.

"Go on, PJ," insisted Mum, annoyed at my reluctance to investigate my present. "Read the card and then open your present."

I opened the envelope and took out the card. There was a picture of a tasselled scholar's hat on the front, and the words "For Your Graduation" printed above it. I opened the card and was excited to find a twenty dollar note sitting inside. I felt I had found the most important part of the card, but in respect to my parents I read the small flowery verse and the words my mother had written, wishing me success in the future and expressing my parents' pride. I'm ashamed to say that, hardened surfer that I was, I was touched with emotion and driven to give them a hug. Money has that effect on me.

"Thanks, Mum and Dad," I mumbled, not wanting them to recognise the emotion in my voice.

"Don't thank us yet, PJ," laughed Mum. "You haven't opened the main part of your present. It's in the box, dummy."

"Okay," I thought, "here comes the booby prize bit." I decided to play along, considering I was already twenty dollars richer and had nothing but a bit of pride to lose. I dug my hand deeper into the paper-filled box, and struck something hard.

"Careful, Phil-my-boy, you'll crush it," warned Dad.

More carefully, I pulled out some of the paper, revealing the object of my search. It was a hat, similar to but in better condition than Cowboy's, brown, made of felt and with a plaited suede hat-band. I pulled it out and placed it on my head, where it fit perfectly.

"It's great," I exclaimed enthusiastically, "but how did you know my size?"

"That was easy, Phil-my-boy," replied Dad in amusement. "We just asked them for the biggest size they had." Both he and Mum laughed at that, ignoring my somewhat-indignant expression. I started to search for some witty response, but decided that, under the circumstances, they had earned a laugh at my expense. It was a small price for twenty dollars and a cool hat.

"Well, PJ," Mum said admiringly, "now you really look like a part of the country." She looked at Dad expectantly, waiting for him to say something, and I realised she had just delivered the opening line for some sort of major discussion. It seemed my first impressions about the seriousness of their visit were not far from the truth.

"Phillip," started Dad, and I knew things were serious because he never called me Phillip, "your mum and I have been thinking seriously about your future."

My heart skipped a beat. The last time they had done that I'd found myself dragged from the Gold Coast off into the Outback. Where could they send me from here? Cape York? Actually, what Dad had said was a lie. "He" had thought seriously about my future, not "they". Mum never thought seriously about anything that didn't involve an article in one of her magazines. I felt sure that none of them had written anything about my future yet.

"We know," Dad continued, "that you have fitted into the country life very well, and we're pleased you made new friends so easily. Moves can be very hard on children but you've coped very well."

"Very well," echoed Mum, eager to be part of the one-sided conversation.

"Next year, Phillip," continued Dad very solemnly, "is probably going to be the hardest school year you will ever face. Year 11 is a testing time - suddenly you find yourself on your own, with harder work, less guidance and more study. It'll be pretty tough."

"Pretty tough, PJ," came Mum's echo again.

"Oh no," I thought in horror, "he's going to send me to a study skills camp over Christmas."

"Now what I'm getting at, son, is that you are going to need more time to study. Unfortunately, you'll be losing time going to Bindeena High, because of the long bus trip. It's this that worries your mother and me, and we've looked at a solution."

I tried to think what solution that could be. I was too young to drive so they couldn't buy me a fast car, and I knew they thankfully didn't have enough money to send me to a boarding school. It was bad enough living across the road from a school, but living in one all the time was my worst nightmare.

"The only possible solution we can come up with," came the answer to my unsolved mystery, "is that you return to the Gold Coast, to your old high school, and stay with Grandad and Grandma while you complete Senior. That way you'll be with old friends and teachers and have less travel, therefore more study time. What you think?"

I was totally shocked and unable to reply. I couldn't believe he had said what he'd said, that I was being given the chance to retaste and regain my past life style. Surfing, beach girls, movies, etc etc. Snatched away with one hand, transplanted back with the other. I was momentarily confused and it must have shown on my face, for Mum cut into my thoughts to reassure me.

"You don't have to go if you don't want to, PJ. It's your choice. We'd love you to stay here with us and we'd never force you to do anything you didn't want to do."

I smiled at that last bit, for my move to the country hadn't exactly been a voluntary action. Still, it was nice to be wanted and also to be given a choice, though there really wasn't any need for one. My decision was easily and instantly made.

"You still look a little uncertain, son," Dad remarked in concern, as usual misreading the moment and my reactions. "You don't have to make the choice this instant."

"It's okay, Dad," I replied with a smile. "I was just trying to calculate how many blocks of surfboard wax I'll be able to buy with this twenty dollars." With that I took off my cowboy hat and grabbed hold of my surfboard, giving it an affectionate hug.

"We're going home, baby," I whispered.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

AND NOW, THE END IS NEAR...... I THINK

The Phillip John Fisher who prepared himself for the graduation dance that evening was a very excited young man. Not only was I beginning eight glorious weeks of school-free holidays, but also a future filled with all the elements I had grown to love in my childhood. My previously-growing contentment with country life was replaced by a yearning for treasures of the past about to be regained. Once again, the thrill of standing on the beach with my board under my arm, about to sample the beautiful waves breaking on the golden beach. Once more, the enjoyment of heading off to the movies, or to cruise the malls with friends who shared many common interests. It seemed finally that the universe had seen things my way, and as I dressed for the dance, I had to keep pinching myself to make sure it wasn't some cruel dream, from which I'd wake feeling crushing disappointment. But it was true and I couldn't wait to break the news to my friends at the dance.

For a second, amidst my joy, I felt a slight pang of sorrow at the thought of leaving behind my Wingindi friends. They had helped me through what could have been a very lonely year and made it an enjoyable one instead. We had some very different interests, I must admit, but these hadn't stood in the way of our friendship and perhaps even enhanced it, for I felt I had indeed learnt quite a lot through talking and sharing experiences with Cowboy, Allan, Roger, Stephen and Wendy. And I'm sure they got a good laugh out of me, if nothing else. Still, most of them were going to boarding schools, I remembered, and Wendy was with Mitchell. There wasn't any valid reason to stay. It was time for me to move on, to seek new experiences, even if the ground in which I was searching was familiar ground.

The dance was held in the town Memorial Hall, which was only 5 minutes' walk from my house. Actually, everything in Wingindi was only 5 minutes' walk from everybody's houses. Despite this, I had Dad drop me off in the car outside the hall, in an effort to protect my gelled hair and to keep the dust off my black shoes and trousers. I had gone for the blonde Elvis look again, for it was my "Coastie" look, and represented the lifestyle I was preparing to re-enter in a few weeks' time. I was bursting with excitement and ready to rip the dance floor apart. I had rehearsed a little farewell speech to give to my friends and decided that it would be best to get this out of the way early in the evening, to prevent any emotional scenes later on.

As I climbed the stairs to the hall, well-dressed classmates and students from other year levels were filling the small entry foyer, obviously determined not to be the first ones to go inside. It was a sentiment shared by most teenagers, city or country bred, when they went to dances and parties, for obvious excitement and punctuality seemed to be very "uncool". Well, this was one occasion when I was excited and wanted it to show, so I pushed my way through the crowd, paid my entry fee and went inside to join the other "uncool" people who had already entered. Cowboy was one of these, and on seeing me came sprinting across the hall excitedly. He skidded the last five or so metres on the slippery floor and had to grab my arm to stop himself continuing on out the door.

"Fish, you are never going to believe what's happened to me," he blurted, his breath heavily scented with peanuts from the snack table. I knew that, compared to my surprise, his would have to be minor, perhaps a new tractor or a new set of blades on the header but I played along, letting him have his moment of glory.

"Haven't got a clue, Cowboy. Tell me."

"Well, I got home from school this afternoon and Mum and Dad were waiting for me. I knew something important was happening, Fish, because Dad's never home before 6.00pm."

His story was sounding a little familiar. Had he received twenty dollars and a new hat too? Was this some sort of country tradition that my parents had picked up on?

"Anyway," he continued, "they asked me to sit down because they wanted to talk to me about school. I thought it was going to be about my marks, but it wasn't, Fish. It was about next year. They said I can change schools if I want to, and guess where I'm going?"

His story was definitely sounding like a re-run of mine, which was disappointing. It would take away some of the impact of my own story when I told him. I didn't have a clue about the identity of his new school, for there were at least four boarding schools for boys in Toowoomba, as far as I knew. I guessed, to myself, that he was going to pick one that had agricultural studies as a focus. I never voiced my guess out loud however, for he answered the question himself.

"Bindeena High. I'm going to Bindeena High with you. When my parents said I had a choice, I made it straight away, because there wasn't really any choice to make. By going to Bindeena, I get to stay on the farm and I also get to hang out with you, Fish. It'll be great. We'll travel together every day on the bus and will probably even share a few classes. And imagine the fun that you, me and Allan can have at lunchtimes. Just like old times."

His feeling of tremendous joy was matched by my feelings of shock and confusion. It was like a sword had been driven into my heart. How was I going to tell him that the only thing we'd be sharing next year would be the occasional letter? Worse still, the choice my own parents had offered me was now looking like just that, a choice. Suddenly my decision wasn't so clear-cut. Previously there had been little to keep me in Wingindi, but now there were sides to both arguments.

Cowboy stared at me expectantly, waiting for my excited response, believing that I would be thrilled that he was going to join me at Bindeena High. I was thrilled, had it been true. Always the coward, I chose to play along and reserve my now less-than-exciting news for much later in the evening. Why spoil a happy occasion?

"That's fantastic, Cowboy. The gang can stick together. I'm really glad you're going to be staying on the farm with your family and not get stuck in the city." I tried to avoid mentioning my role in his decision, so my news later on wouldn't come as too much of a blow. Unfortunately, Cowboy was on to my ploy.

"Don't forget about you, Fish. If you hadn't been such a good mate this year, I mightn't have minded going away. Looking at all the trouble you get yourself into, I decided to stick around and look after you."

With each of his words, the sword was twisted about in my heart and I knew I had to flee before he completely killed my resolve to return to my old lifestyle on the Gold Coast. It was what I wanted, I kept telling myself, desperately fighting off the doubts that were now surfacing like disabled submarines. I needed time to stabilize my thoughts and emotions and the only way to do so was to remove myself from the source of my disquiet, Cowboy.

"Look, I've got to go powder my nose, Cowboy, so why don't you go and share your great news with the others. I'll see you in a second." And I sprinted off in the direction of the toilets, not caring about the image of urgency and desperation I must have presented. Better they thought I was busting with bodily fluid than overflowing with the emotional turmoil. Being emotional and deep wasn't a part of the character I'd cultivated at school and I didn't want to wreck the image on my last day.

It took me a good 10 minutes of staring at my face in the mirror, or sitting on the toilet seat when other boys came in, to strengthen my resolve that the Gold Coast was the place for me. Friendship was good, I realized, but I had many more friends where I was going than where I was now. The opportunities for enjoyment were also greater at the Coast too, I reasoned. It was okay to play around on a farm but there were more meaningful activities, such as surfing, awaiting me at the Coast. Besides, I concluded, one day I would have to settle down, and partners of the opposite sex were few and far between in the country. I didn't want to become a priest in my adulthood.

When I left the security of the toilets and ventured once more into the world that I kept telling myself was alien to me, the dance was underway. Real dance music was playing, the type that has a good beat and doesn't sound like a funeral march, and the prime of Wingindi youth were rocking and gyrating crazily on the dancefloor. Cowboy was there with a small group of boys and girls, shaking his long legs and arms out of beat with the music, obviously enjoying himself along with the others. I decided not to join them, but instead headed for the snack tables, hoping to fill the small hole in my spirit with peanuts and chips.

As I skirted along the outside of the dance floor, dodging the twisting bodies of the dancers, a hand grabbed my shoulder from behind. It was Wendy, and I remembered that at the last dance I'd been too, the Show Dance, she had done a similar thing and made the night one I'd never forget. Perhaps tonight she might once again help me to raise my spirits. I felt that she would be able to understand my decision to return to the Gold Coast, whereas Cowboy probably wouldn't. Cowboy and I were best mates, whereas Wendy and I were just friends, thanks to Mitchell Freeman, and could talk more rationally with less emotional interference.

"Hello stranger," she shouted in my ear over the loud music. "Where have you been? You don't look too happy."

"End of year blues," I shouted back. "I'm facing the future and it's a bit fuzzy at the moment."

"Well, come and have a dance with me and you won't have to think about the future."

I agreed and we moved out onto the floor. As we danced, I looked at Wendy in her black and white figure-hugging dress, at her long, brown teased hair and the warm smile on her pretty round face, and felt a sense of regret at what might have been. Then I realized what I was doing and laughed to myself.

"Fish," I thought chastisingly, "snap out of it. You're dancing with a pretty girl, and you're going back to the Coast where good looking girls are everywhere. You're a lucky man."

With that I immersed myself in the dancing, and abandoned the negative thoughts. The rest of the evening raced by, a mixture of dancing, food, soft drink, photographs and laughter. The Year 10 students were in high spirits, glad to be free of exams and finally leaving a school that many had attended for the past 10 years. There were going to be sentimental tears at the end of the evening, I knew, but until then they were swamped by frivolity and music.

As the final hour of the dance arrived, I began to prepare myself for the goodbyes. I walked to one of the side entrances of the hall and stared out at the stars in the clear country sky. I was much less enthusiastic about my farewells than I had been that afternoon, but still convinced that I was doing the right thing in leaving and determined that nothing would change my decision. Looking up at the universe, everything seemed to be in order.

Suitably fortified with courage, I turn back into the hall and sought out Wendy, who was going to be the first receiver of my farewell and then my support person when I had to talk to Cowboy. I figured she would be the most reasonable.

"Wendy, could I talk to you for a second?" I shouted in her ear over the music, luring her away from a group of female friends. "It's about next year."

"Good idea," she shouted back, and she grabbed my hand and led me out through the foyer of the hall. We sat side by side on a bench seat just outside the door. The night air was warm, though not as warm as the atmosphere in the hall. My ears were ringing from the music and my heart was thumping like a drum in my chest. I didn't know why I was so anxious – I wasn't proposing to her, just saying goodbye. She was only a friend.

"Wendy," I finally said turning to her, "Year 11 is going to be a tough year." It was the line my dad had used. Perhaps I was a chip off the old block after all, or at least a splinter off the old match. "Going to school in Bindeena will mean lots of travel and it's a big school, so things could get pretty lonely for someone who hasn't many friends there."

I quite liked the way things were going so far. I had laid all the necessary foundations to explain my departure from Wingindi and she was nodding her head in agreement. It appeared I would get the understanding I needed. I continued.

"I'm the sort of guy who needs to feel a part of things and hates being lonely. My family doesn't really satisfy that need. And, well, I also love having fun outside of school, going places and doing interesting things. What I'm trying to say is...."

"I know exactly what you're going to say, Phillip," she cut in. It took me by surprise, because I hadn't told anyone but Mum, Dad and Sarah that I was leaving Wingindi. Had Wendy been talking to them?

"I think Year 11 will be lonely too. I'm luckier than you, I suppose, because I know people there already but it won't be the same as Wingindi State School. You need close friends to talk with, and study with too. You've been a good friend to me, Phillip."

It sounded the perfect lead-in for a goodbye and I felt relieved that she was taking the responsibility off my shoulders. I resolved once more to seek her help in dealing with Cowboy when she'd finished with me.

"A lot of boys are scared of me, Phillip, because they think I'm pretty. Silly, isn't it." I nodded affirmatively, though I hadn't forgotten that it took me over three months to actually talk to her. She obviously hadn't counted those months.

"But you weren't scared of me, even though you also knew I had a boyfriend. You talked to me and danced with me and even let me be in your play. And you made me laugh more than anyone else."

"Wow, I sound like a really great guy," I thought to myself. This was the best farewell I'd ever received. "Go on, more, more," I urged silently with my eyes.

"I guess what I'm saying is that I really like you a lot. A lot more than I thought I did and, well..."

"You're having trouble saying goodbye, "I concluded for her. "It was going to be hard for me too." I would also like to have added "but a hug and a last kiss would do just fine." Of course, I didn't, and my train of thought was interrupted anyway by Wendy.

"No, silly," she laughed. "I'm trying to be serious here and you're making me laugh again. What I'm really trying to say, Phillip Fisher, is that today I've said goodbye to Mitchell."

"Mitchell!" I stared at her blankly for a few seconds. "What, is he going off to university next year?" Mitchell was in Year 12 and had graduated two weeks earlier. "Or has he got a job somewhere else?" Why was she telling me this? Was she seeking emotional support from a friend?

"I think he's going to Ag. College in Gatton but that's not my point or my worry." She looked at me seriously. "He's not my boyfriend any more. As of this moment, I am officially unattached and, well, I thought I might spend more time with you in the future, starting these holidays. That's if you'd like that."

Understanding dawned on me like an earthquake. If Cowboy's earlier revelation of changing schools had been a sword in my heart, Wendy's revelation was like a cement truck dropped on my head, crushing my resolve to leave Wingindi. Things were not working out the way they were supposed to. Six hours ago I was a man of action, with a firm future set out before me, a heart full of enthusiasm and no ropes to hold me back or tie me down. Now I was an indecisive wreck, forced to compare friendships past and present and trying to choose between a girl and a water sport. Should I go or should I stay? My poor adolescent brain was overloaded and suddenly my mind went blank.

"Well, Phillip, what do you think?" Wendy looked at me expectantly.

"Wendy, I think I need to go and powder my nose." And I stood and headed dazedly back into the hall and the toilet block.

EPILOGUE

At 11.30pm, the doors of the Wingindi Memorial Hall were closed and bolted, signalling the end of the night and school year for the senior class of Wingindi State School. Tired boys and girls milled around outside, waiting for their rides home. The mood in the group of Year 10 graduates was varied, with laughter and tears flowing in equal quantities. There was spontaneous hugging on the part of the girls, a scene I would normally like to be partake in but not tonight. Instead, I was standing off to one side, trying to come to terms with the events of the evening and the startling revelations that had momentarily left my future buried in a thick fog, whilst I perched on a toilet seat and changed my mind a hundred times.

But the fog had finally settled, my choice made and the toilet seat abandoned for some serious heart-to-heart conversations with friends in the later moments of the dance.

"Hey, Fish," called out Julie, a classmate standing in one of the nearby groups, "wanna come to a graduation picnic tomorrow at my place? Most of the class is coming."

"Sure, Jules", I responded, "but first I have to break some bad news to a friend. I've been putting it off long enough."

"Who?" she asked with concern, hoping to pick up a bit of gossip.

"A girl. She's five-eight, nicely shaped, and we've had a lot of fun together in the past. I love her but I just don't have time for her in the foreseeable future."

I knew this would send tongues wagging and minds feverishly searching for answers. Perhaps it would have helped if I'd mentioned that she was made of fibreglass, covered with wax and stood in the corner of my caravan.

Just then Wendy strolled up beside me and took my hand.

"Sorry about that, had to do the obligatory farewells to the girls, even though I'll be seeing them again tomorrow, and probably during the holidays. When I'm not with you, of course." And she kissed me on the cheek. "Now, walk me home and we'll talk about our activities for the next 8 weeks".

I grinned at her, to myself and then up at the sky. Everything in the universe was definitely in order. For now.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

I am not Phillip Fisher. I did grow up, in the 1980s, as a teenager on the Gold Coast of Queensland, Australia, and surfed my share of waves, but actually finished my high schooling there rather than elsewhere. My father was not a teacher, but worked in hardware, and never built matchstick architecture. He was, however, an excellent aeromodeller and built beautiful flying balsa aircraft, a skill he passed on to me. He never corrected my grammar, was a great listener and the ideal dad. My mother was never an "Ice Queen", baked and cooked the best, freshest food, and was never addicted to Women's magazines and Macramé. She was, however, an excellent home maker and, like my father, took an active interest in all my pursuits.

I never met my "Wendy Thompson" at high school, though I did observe and admire many versions in the classroom and the playground. I had to wait until Teachers' College to meet my "Wendy", and she was, and is, perfect. Her name is Vicky.

When I graduated Teachers' College, my first transfer was to a small country Queensland town called Jandowae, not unlike Wingindi, teaching Physical Education and English in a High-Top state school. I was not a Mr King, as I couldn't afford the expensive clothing and car, and actually enjoyed teaching my students the basics of sport and the English language. The teachers I worked with, the students I met, the community members I interacted with, the friends I made and the idiosyncrasies of country town life in my 4 years in Jandowae had a lasting impression on me. This little book is an homage.

