

An

Accidental

Atheist
An Accidental Atheist

By

John B. Kelly

A memoir
By the same author:

Satan's Little Helpers

Andrea's Secret

Saints and Relics

Hiroshima Sunset

To my wife Joanne

The golden leaves of autumn appear, as summer bids its last farewell. The heat of summer's sun that gave such beauty to the apricot rose makes way for a softer shade of day, a cooler air of night.

Time passes. Beauty and elegance age gracefully.

The thought of death should remind us not of the passing of ones' loved, but the years spent laughing, singing, and the quality of the life lived, and enjoyed.

As we are no longer children, nor are our children so, therefore, it is not the passing of the seasons or the years that should be feared,

We rejoice that we are happy. We rest our future on our hopes, because over many summers, we have come to know who we are.

Published by: AQUININE BOOKS

51 Roy Street, Donvale 3111 Victoria Australia

www.donvalebooks.com

Email: jb.kelly@optusnet.com.au

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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Cover design and artwork by Inge Meldgaard

Website: redmatilda.deviantart.com

First published in 2010

Copyright © 2010 by John B Kelly

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in

any manner, without the written permission of the author, except in the

case of brief quotations contained in critical articles or reviews.

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry

Author: Kelly, John Bernard, 1945-  
Title: An accidental atheist : a memoir / John B Kelly  
Edition: 1st ed.  
ISBN: 9780980709711 (pbk)  
Subjects: Kelly, John Bernard, 1945-  
Authors--Australia--Biography.  
Catholics--Australia--Biography.  
Australia--Social conditions--20th century--Biography.

Dewey Number: 920.71

"Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to."

Luke 13:24

Prologue

My story begins in the 1950's, but its origins go back to the 1860's in what was then the village of Glanmire, in County Cork, Ireland, located just a few minutes by car from the city of Cork. It was from here that Mark and Julia Kelly, departed with two young children, and sailed to Australia in search of a new life; a search that would set them free from the post-famine Ireland of the 1860's, an Ireland still coming to terms with a million deaths from starvation. They were leaving because such conditions, which undoubtedly contributed to their harsh and stubborn character, prevented them from establishing anything that remotely resembled a dignified way of life. Putting it bluntly, Ireland was a basket case of mismanagement.

Mark and Julia were also leaving without the blessing of their parents; they ran off and secretly married two years earlier. What particular hardship they faced together as a consequence of that choice, have been lost in the minds of family members now departed, but it was sufficient for them to sail half way round the world to escape. It was a journey that took four months to complete. What they brought with them in material goods is not known in any detail, but it would have been fairly meagre; like most of the Irish, they had little to call their own. The one thing they did bring was their religion, their Catholic faith, their Irish-Catholic faith.

One example of the intensity of that faith, and the lengths that such people will go to express their beliefs can be found as one travels along the road toward Glanmire today. On the outskirts of the village, a large grotto dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary stands by the roadside opposite a murky creek. The grotto commemorates the apparitions near the town of Lourdes, France. Spread across the entire length of the grotto, probably some 20 to 30 feet, in large white letters an inscription reads, 'I am the Immaculate Conception.' Such a monument to Mary, in today's very materialistic world, says a lot for a community's faith in Mary and the God of their understanding. That faith no doubt extends back in time to include the 1860's, even if the grotto was a more recent construction.

Mark and Julia made their journey to Australia, hazards notwithstanding, confident in the knowledge that wherever they went, their God went with them. One can only wonder at how their thoughts must have seesawed with the waves as their ship the ` White Star ' sailed out of Liverpool Harbour in the spring of 1867. For Mark, it was an even more powerful experience having already said farewell to his two older brothers, James and Patrick who only months beforehand had also chosen to leave their homeland for the promise of a new life in America. Why he chose not to follow them no one knows, but speaking as a third generation relative, I'm grateful that he did.

At the time though, they were sailing to a country where the Catholic Church itself was undergoing its own political struggle. The first Catholic Bishop of Sydney was John Bede Polding, an English Benedictine, whose Christian charity and dedication to his appointment was unquestioned, but who was not well supported by an infra-structure that was practically all Irish; Irish regional Bishops, Irish priests, Irish Brothers and Nuns, a vocal Irish laity and perhaps most telling of all, Irish nationalism. He tried to create a Benedictine Diocese in this new land but it failed under the weight of this Irish nationalism, and an ever growing sectarian tension between Catholics and Protestants. The Irish Catholics wanted strong Irish leadership and that meant rule by Roman Canon Law, not religious tolerance. Polding was too lenient (a whimp, one might say). What they wanted they finally got, in the person of one Cardinal Patrick Francis Moran, a strong willed Irishman, (is there any other kind?) who stamped his special brand of authority on the lives of the Catholics of early Australia, including that of Mark and Julia Kelly and their children, in a way that would carry its weight through three subsequent generations.

So, the scene was set, the actors were on stage, the audience seated and the orchestra ready to play, just like it was back in Ireland, only here they had something to eat. With plenty of food in their bellies and being good Catholics, they continued to have children, lots of them. After docking at the Port of Melbourne, in August 1867, they settled in the expanding town of Geelong, 60 kilometres to the south west. Mark worked as a labourer, Julia kept house and cared for the children. By December of 1876, they had seven children, Julia was pregnant yet again, and one could but admire the resolve that these two people had shown in their new country. Then, it all went pear shaped.

On Christmas day, of that year on a very warm afternoon, Mark decided to go swimming in the nearby river. He was seen by several people that afternoon, as he swam up and down the river parallel to the bank and none who were there that day, noticed anything amiss. Whether it was a case of being in the water too long which may have induced cramp, or whether he just became entangled in river weed, and was dragged under, is not clear. But somehow the silly old bugger got into difficulties, disappeared into the depths and drowned. Julia was suddenly a widow, with seven children to care for, another on the way and no means of support.

She placed some of the children in orphanages, run by the nuns; the rest lived at home with her, and learnt out of sheer necessity to pull together, to grow up ahead of their years, and make sacrifices not expected of those so young. There was no talk of returning to Ireland, of giving up. Throughout her life Julia displayed the same strength and determination she and Mark had shared together. She raised her children and set them on course to continue the journey the family had begun ten years earlier and in the process infused in their hearts and minds a degree of independence and self reliance that has carried through to the present day.

Mark and Julia Kelly were my great-grandparents. Julia's unborn baby who came into the world seven months later was Joseph Kelly, my grandfather. This was where it all began and often when I along with my brothers and sisters needed answers to help us through the tough times, we looked to the past and the quality of the people who were our great-grand-parents knowing that if they were able to overcome the difficulties of their time, then we could do the same in our time.

And difficulties came in many shapes and sizes.

1.

Fourteen years ago at the age of fifty, I noticed some thick scaly patches appearing on my partly bald scalp. Unable to resist picking at them, and occasionally causing them to bleed, I decided to stop this foolishness and seek medical advice.

They're actinic keratosis, my doctor told me.

Too much sun, he said. We'll freeze them off with liquid nitrogen.

Good, I replied.

But there will probably be more to come, he said.

What do you mean?

You'll find out, he replied and added, I think I'm going to make a lot of money out of you.

Am I dying, I asked?

No, not yet, but we all have to go sometime.

My doctor's quirky sense of humour was my introduction to the world of skin cancer. It was something I feared greatly listening as medical authorities discussed it when I was younger, but then, as the years passed, it somehow slipped off the radar. Other things got in the way, like career, marriage, mortgages and children. But career, mortgages and children are behind me now and finally that much longed for utopia of this work weary provider is within reach. The only quandary is that skin cancer is back on the radar.

But first things first! Today is my birthday. It's 2009 and I'm 64. In exactly 12 months time, I will be eligible for the aged pension, and after working for the last forty-six years, I'm starting to get excited about the prospect of doing what I want at the nation's expense. There were times I thought I might not make it to retirement, that the wretched sun might have the last say after all those years of foolish exposure. But retirement is just about within my grasp. I can almost reach out and touch it. You are probably thinking, 'How does he expect to live on the pension?' Well, my friends, not to put too fine a point on it, I have spent my entire working life aspiring to be poor, and overall, I think I've done a pretty good job.

So here I sit at my computer, ready to tell all. The vast scope of a life lived, the highs, the lows, the pain and sorrow, along with great joy and happiness. Well, not really. Actually it's not that exciting. I'll keep some of the more juicy bits to myself, but I promise it will be entertaining.....for some. I grew up in East Kew in Melbourne's east; there's probably a plaque there somewhere to mark the event. Back then, the world of actinic keratosis, basal cell carcinomas, squamous cell carcinomas, malignant cutaneous fibrous histiocytomas and melanomas were a lifetime away.

Back then there was just the Sun.

I was born in Caulfield, but the story goes back a bit further than that. You see, my father's twin brother Frank, married Ita Skinner whose father was a wealthy beachfront property owner who gave his daughter a house to rent. My father wanted to stay close to Frank, or was it Ita? I'm not sure, but when he and my mother married, they found a house close-by. It was in Parkdale, situated on the north side of the railway line. Aunty Ita and Uncle Frank lived on the south side, the beachfront side. Their house was so beautiful – Tudor style, money style. Some people had money in those days, but my mother and father weren't among them. My father's side of the family came from County Cork in Ireland. There was no money in County Cork, so they left and came to Australia. But there was no money here either and when Mark Kelly, my great-grandfather drowned in the Barwon River in Geelong in 1876, my grandfather, who at that stage was still inside my grandmother's womb, later decided to drown his sorrow's working as a barman in a hotel for thirty-seven years. So you can probably guess how my father Jim and his twin brother Frank developed a preference for alcohol and where they practiced their preferred recreational habits.

My mother's side came from County Armagh in the north. They were Protestants. They didn't have any money either, but they worked very hard, kept off the bottle and did well in transport and sheepskins. Then they lost it all in the depression. My grand-father on the Protestants' side, whose name was Frederick Capper, married Kitty O' Connor who was Catholic. So we became Catholic through the back door and my mother started giving birth to the first of what would be eight children. I was the fifth child born in 1945, and just like my brothers and sister before me, born into modest circumstances. I was also born into an Irish-Catholic mentality, where 'guilt and punishment' was the mindset, where the local parish priest was the arbitrator of sin, the intermediary of forgiveness, the negotiator of punishment, the conciliator of reunion with God, and an earthly Judge who had no compunction in declaring you damned to eternal Hellfire and serves you right, if he felt like it. The subject of religion held all the power of the Sun in our house. It controlled the human temperature, set the conversation flowing like the rivers, evaporated the oceans of dissent, and burned through the clouds of doubt, intractable, indomitable, and indisputable and in some bizarre twisted way, it all appeared totally logical. All this I learned before my 7th Birthday. Not bad for a slow learner.

I was also a trite confused. It was the Latin that threw me. We were suffocated with Latin phrases. I grew up on 'Dominus Vobiscum', 'Ave Maria', and 'Kyrie Eleison' which as a child sounded more like, 'keep away a lazy one.' But the one I hung my hope on every Sunday was, 'Ita Missa est', 'Go, the mass is over.' Hearing that, I whispered, 'You ripper.' It meant I could leave and go home. The response was, 'Deo grátias.' 'Thanks be to God' which is probably the genesis of 'Thank Christ' in modern day blasphemy, but I was already half way down the aisle heading for the door by the time they said that.

By any reasonable measure, growing up Catholic was not a good way to start a life.

2.

It was dark, wet and cold at 5.30 this morning. That's the downside of being born in the middle of winter; it's always like this on my birthday. Anyway, the news had just filtered through that Farah Fawcett and Ed (here's Johnny) McMahon had passed away. That's sad. I liked both of them, for quite different reasons obviously, but Farah was two years younger than me, so that makes her passing all the more tragic. Mercifully, the media might give some attention to them today instead of the never-ending saga going on in Canberra with Malcolm Turnbull and some weird story about a fake email. I like Malcolm Turnbull. I'd never vote for him; he joined the wrong party. But he does have a certain presidential flair about him. I guess we'll have to wait and see. I get fake emails everyday, mostly from enterprising fakers in Nigeria and Botswana offering me millions to give them access to my bank account. Dickheads!

I left the house wrapped in my polo coat, an item left in the taxi eighteen years ago. I have worn that polo every winter. Technically I should have handed it in to the lost property department at our local police station, but there you are...I didn't. It has since been my friend travelling with me to several countries around the world; England, Europe, USA. I have photos to prove it. Standing in St Mark's Square in Venice; on the observation deck of the Empire State building in New York: on the banks of Loch Lomond in Scotland, it's all there. It has kept me warm where ever I have gone. The customer, who left it in my taxi, was returning home to somewhere, I don't know where, but I dropped him and his son off at the airport one day and when I got home there it was sitting on the back seat, so there. I didn't steal it, I just didn't return it. I didn't know where to return it, and as the owner was from interstate I figured he wouldn't be coming back to look for it.

So, this morning I was on my way to pick up Frank Brody wearing my polo. Frank was on his way to the airport to fly to Sydney. Frank is a relative of sorts. He's my brother's brother-in-law. Work it out for yourself. He's a partner in the law firm Mallesons and someone. He calls me when he needs a cab in the morning. He's been doing it for years. I use him as a sounding board for any legal questions I might have; it's in lieu of a tip which he never gives. Today is my birthday but I won't tell Frank. He might feel obliged to tip me. I don't want to put him under any pressure. He's a delicate fellow.

I delivered him safely to the airport and began the long trip back to collect my permanent clients most of whom are people with intellectual disabilities. My first pick-up is Tiffany, a pretty blue eyed blonde who never stops talking. She was born with a mild intellectual disability that leaves her unable to read or write or tackle anything complicated such as spelling or basic arithmetic. While delightfully engaging in conversation she can be manipulative and not beyond straight out trickery. She also likes to tickle me which as you can imagine is not the smartest thing to do to someone roaring down a busy freeway at 100kph. I take her along with three other girls to a sheltered workshop in Kew. Each afternoon I return to take them home. Yesterday when I came to take them home Tiffany told me I was to take her to her parents' house rather than the unit where she lives with two other girls. Mum told me to tell you, she says. She pulls this trick regularly but usually I see through it. This time she sounded very convincing so I took her at her word. Bad mistake! I discovered this morning she had taken me for a ride. Mum wasn't happy, and had to call Tiffany's older sister, Nicole to drive her back to her unit so she could attend a regular weekly meeting with a case-worker. That won't happen again.

The intellectually disabled have been a regular part of my day for the last fifteen years. I enjoy working with them; they are responsive, often very funny, and most importantly, they don't answer back. Given the choice, I would prefer to work with these people who appreciate the care, attention and understanding they receive, not to mention compassion. It's better than putting up with, as I do, the ordinary person in the street, the majority of whom are tolerable, but among whom lurk that evil element who seem to make it their mission in life to be as difficult as they can. I'm talking about drunks, junkies, women who think they know everything, intellectual know-alls, and political fools, as well as uninformed dickheads who rely on obtaining their general knowledge from radio and television presenters because they're too lazy to properly research their subjects before opening their mouths. I tell them that talk-back radio hosts, these so-called fountains of knowledge do little more than manipulate and mislead a gullible public. If they have a personal preference they will never say so, rather, they will argue their case all very innocently as they try to persuade their listeners. Never, I tell my passengers, never believe what you hear as an 'exclusive report' from anybody. Wait, I warn, wait until the third or fourth report surfaces, because that's more likely to contain some element of truth that the 'exclusive' report didn't include because the media outlet that reported it, was more interested in being the first to report the matter rather than being the most accurate. Ho-hum, why do I bother? Nobody's listening.

Anyway, my next clients are also intellectually disabled and live in a supervised residential house in Box Hill. They spend their day at ONEMDA, an adult community service in East Doncaster that provides programs for adults with intellectual disability. Elizabeth would talk you to death if you allowed her. She asks the same questions every day, complains of the same problems, (Wendy hit me), rats on the same 'inmates', and begs me to buy her French fries as we pass by the McDonald's restaurant on the way to 'work'. Sometimes I do stop at McDonald's and she gets really excited at the prospect of having French fries. But I only stop to go to the toilet. It is a small problem I have had ever since I started taking anti-depressants. By contrast, Muriel, her travelling companion, whose whole body shakes continuously from some genetic condition, sits in the front seat with me and says nothing. But, by-the-Jesus, does she know how to slam a car door?

ONEMDA is a wonderful place. It offers these people a better education and better life skills than I received at school in the 1950's and early 60's, but more about that later. What? The radio is reporting that Michael Jackson has died. Really? I'm shocked but deep down not all that surprised. It sounds like Elvis all over again. Los Angeles will go into lockdown. Crowds will gather at any location remotely connected to Jackson. There will be weeping and wailing, mostly from women. I guess the television will be full of it by nightfall. Remind me to go to the DVD store; it could be a long night.

If a week is a long time for a politician, for the taxi driver, it is a cavalcade of mediocrity, indifference, rudeness, humour and eccentricities. The early morning call to pick up the ambitious young business executive and take him out to the airport often sets the tone for the day. Even as early as six o' clock he has no time to chat, except of course to the voice on the other end of the mobile phone. But as I listen in on the conversation, it becomes apparent that it's a nothing call.

Hi there, how are ya...pause...how was your weekend...pause...yeah, did you fuck her....pause. ..fantastic mate ...pause .... I'm in a cab on my way to the airport...pause...Sydney...pause. . .okay man catch up with you, gotta few calls to make. He makes two or three more calls, each one sliding further and further into an intellectual abyss and I cannot help but lament that this moron is being paid probably five times my income but in reality is worth only half of it. By contrast his female equivalent generally upholds the dignity of her gender and her employer's confidence with a bright engaging conversation on pretty much any subject. Sadly though, not even she can resist at least one call on the mobile. Her call will be to another female and they will discuss relationships and shopping, but on a totally different intellectual plane from the male of the species.

Indifference to cabbies is rare among women, rife with men. Maybe it is their natural instinct to be wary of getting into a car with a stranger no matter what the circumstances, but women will generally sit in the back seat, offer a courteous hello, give fairly precise directions and then spend a minute or two assessing the driver, before striking up a conversation. Men often don't even bother with the hello, mumble some vague destination which generally requires a further more expanded explanation and from then on say very little as if this is their time for deep personal reflection on how they will approach their day's work. Men are moodier, and ruder, more likely to abuse, but strangely less likely to challenge your choice of route.

It is only later in the morning around ten or so when the humour and eccentricities show their hand. It is generally with the blue-rinse set, the elderly and their daily parade to the seemingly enormous variety of hair salons, medical centres, day care centres, bingo halls, supermarkets, and visiting Doris who isn't feeling very well. I have come across literally hundreds of old folks spanning early seventies to late nineties, but never yet, am I to find one who likes being old. The elderly spend a lot of time complaining. They complain about how difficult it is to get around, why they can't do this and that, why they don't want to be late for their appointment, why the kids of today don't know how lucky they are, why they forgot to go to the post office yesterday and could I post their letters for them because it's so hard getting in and out of the car.

Beyond the blue-rinse set, sit the mentally handicapped and physically disabled; they are a special category of passenger who contrast in the mind so strongly because they are so far removed from both the frantic nature that is the business world and the comparable selfishness of the elderly.

On a huge expanse of prime real estate in upper class Kew, once stood Kew cottages, a location that had for over one hundred years provided in one form or another, a home for those poor unfortunates of this world who through no fault of their own were so born as not to be able to enjoy a state of conscious living, that most of us so called normal people take for granted.

For me, transporting the mentally ill became a regular event gradually over several years, and for most of that time I was never moved to ask myself why it was that God so permitted such a cruel circumstance of events to result in these people being born this way. It was only after my association with Charismatic Renewal that I began to query this extraordinary addendum to the 'why' of life, and the 'How can this be allowed to happen,' syndrome. It is the question that so many of us have felt compelled to ask of ourselves, and of our clergy, from time to time, but unfortunately never seem to receive a satisfactory answer.

One morning back in 1995, answering a call to pick up four residents of the cottages, I was surprised to be asked by one of the supervisors if I would be willing to pick them up everyday on a regular run, take them to a sheltered workshop and then bring them home again in the afternoon. The supervisor explained that drivers often had difficulties locating the correct pick up point which had caused a number of delays, and in turn, some trauma for the residents. I thought about it for a moment or two and realized that I would never know if I wanted to do it, until I had at least tried it for a week or two, so I said that I would do it on a trial basis. The four residents were all female, all in their late thirties or early forties. Elizabeth was the most vocal and tried to shout directions constantly from the middle of the back seat, but she was unable to speak coherently. Margaret was deaf and said nothing. She sat in the front always and just stared ahead, occasionally shaking and nodding her head and biting her fingernails. Laura was also deaf, said nothing, sat in the back with Elizabeth and just stared out the side window. The forth resident, Kathy, who sat in the back, had good hearing, but was unable to speak, only offering the occasional sound that could best be described as a grunt. She also suffered from alopecia, a condition that meant she had no hair and had to wear a wig. All four were born this way, all four had some physical evidence of their disabilities, and the evidence also showed in their blank facial expressions. None were what might be described as difficult to handle, in fact quite the opposite. Communication was by hand gestures and guiding, and each responded to a request like a child responds when so encouraged by someone they trust.

My reason for accepting this job as a permanent run was initially quite selfish. It was regular and predictable. It kept me away from the early morning peak traffic, the impatient drivers, the 'always running late' workers who want you to go faster so they won't be late for their appointments. There was no call for forced conversation and no one answered back. Only Elizabeth spoke, making sounds telling me in her unintelligible way to turn this way or that way, which was never the right way, but I always ignored her directions telling her that we were going a different way today, and she never complained. As the days turned into weeks and the weeks into months, picking them up each day, getting to know them better, seeing each one as an individual with a story of their own, I began to develop a new appreciation for my life. It was impossible not to make observations, not just about how fortunate I was to be normal and healthy, but about how unfortunate they were not to be; about why it was that they found themselves in this position and not me, and how could a merciful God play such a cruel game with humans to whom He had given the gift of life.

Anyway, my next client is Muriel Crabtree. She won't like me mentioning her name, but not to bring her into my story would be a gross omission. I'm rather hoping she will never read this; if she does, I'll just have to take the hit. She celebrated her 101st birthday two months ago. SHUT-UP, I hear you say! Everyone says how amazing she is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She doesn't think so. All I've done is stay alive, she says. What's so amazing about that, she asks? I first met Muriel about twelve years ago when I picked her up in the taxi and took her to her art class at the Victorian Artists Society in East Melbourne. She was only ninety then, just a slip of a thing. She was formerly a lecturer in Bio-chemistry at Melbourne University and still maintains strong ties with the people at University College where she once lived. Muriel now lives in a retirement village in Donvale, and is self- supporting. That's right, no assisted care for her, no bloody nursing home; no thank you. She still cooks her own meals, mostly casseroles that keep her going for a week. I wouldn't eat them, and neither would she if she had the energy to do something more creative, but its food. She maintains a healthy diet of fresh fruit, and then splurges on Sarah Lee apple pies with cream, chocolates and shortbread biscuits. She doesn't smoke or drink and gets around the unit with the aid of a four-wheel walker. When I first met her, she was fiercely pro Labor; hated Liberals with a vengeance. Nothing has changed since, but perhaps she's not so vocal these days. But in the intervening period as I drove her to and fro, we had some pretty intense discussions on what was wrong with the world. Each morning before I picked her up she would read the 'Age' newspaper and circle articles that she wanted to discuss with me. I learned from her; not so much the subject matter as the devil in the detail, the spin, the deception and the intent behind them, and oh, yes: she was and is an avowed A-theist. Nothing gets her blood boiling more than some sanctimonious politician claiming his/her belief in Christian values.

She swims everyday, damn it! SHUT-UP, I hear you say! The indoor pool is in the village amenities centre and Muriel transports herself the 150 metres or so from her unit to the centre, on her battery-operated four wheel scooter that travels slightly faster than a snail. She relies on her friend Norm to be there to help her out of the pool and generally keep an eye on her. He's just a lad in his eighties. If Norm is not there, she won't get in the pool. As I travel down the main road of the village at a snail's pace to pick her up, I carefully negotiate my way past the elderly residents who wander up and down the roadway, either blissfully unaware of, or ignoring the concrete footpath specifically constructed for their safety and comfort. I am also conscious of the possibility that at any time, a resident might quite suddenly reverse direction and step out into the middle of the road. Such events are to be expected, or at the very least anticipated, at Retirement Villages. Of greater concern is the possibility that one or other resident who still has a licence to drive, might suddenly reverse out of a carport straight onto the road with not the slightest warning given as to their intention. Many of the residents still have cars, as if to signal to the world that they may have succumbed to the serenity of life inside the village, but that didn't mean the rest of the world was safe from their ever-erratic driving habits. While some struggled to see over the top of the steering wheel, others drove with such trepidation, and anxiety, their right foot became a mechanical lever, moving up and down, up and down, jerking the car forward a few metres, then coming to a halt, jerking forward again, coming to a halt again. Danger was lurking everywhere. I cruise past the community centre where early lunch is being served. Through the large bay windows I can see a handful of tables where those residents who can no longer prepare their own meals in their private units, sit patiently waiting for their three course daily offering. I pass the lily pond, home to a dozen or so ducks who constantly wandered the grounds of the village. The ducks have recently become a major political issue. They have a most unfortunate tendency as they wander about; they leave their droppings in the middle of the driveway of the units, and residents are forever stepping into the green droppings as they move to and from their units. They carry the residue inside and onto their beige coloured carpets. Village meetings to discuss the 'duck problem' have been held and signs have gone up at the main reception doors to watch out for 'duck doo'.

Once or twice a week I take Muriel for a drive. Well, that's what we do now. It used to be twice a week to art classes at the Victorian Artist's Society and then one day a week at U3A, but she has slowed down a bit since she turned 101. She's on the Library committee at the Village, but some of the younger residents have come in recently and taken over much of the sorting and recording and there's not a lot for her to do there now. She loves to paint. Well actually she works with pastels. They're dusty and a bit messy but not as much as oils, I suppose. Her artwork has been on show at the Victorian Artists Society galleries, and dozens of them decorate her unit; mostly landscapes and portraits, but it's too hard to go to classes anymore, so Debbie, her helper and I cleaned up the second bedroom of her unit which was used as a studio but somehow got turned into a junk room. Now, she has lots of room to continue with her pastels at home. Anyway, once or twice a week we go for a drive. We go into the country, to places like Kangaroo Ground, St. Andrews, Panton Hill, Yan Yean. She loves the countryside, the animals, and the trees. Sometimes we go up into the Dandenong's, to Olinda and Monbulk, and then back to Sassafras and take morning tea at Miss Marple's Tea Room. Each trip we stop at some quaint little café and have morning tea; cappuccino and a muffin or a piece of apple strudel. It doesn't really feel like a job for me but I get paid for it. We travelled up to Kinglake last month. The town and the area were devastated by fire during last summer and many people lost their lives. Saturday February 7th will never be forgotten; a horrid day when the temperature peaked at 46 degrees Celsius, fires raged all over the state and 173 people lost their lives. The surrounding area of Kinglake had been completely denuded of vegetation. It was an unbelievable sight but it was real. All along the road leading into what was left of the township, the countryside was a wasteland for as far as the eye could see; homes lay destroyed, cars lay by the side of the road partially melted and the smell of burnt charcoal filled the air. Muriel sat speechless but for the occasional gasp and sigh. We drove into the town and bought coffee and cake at the corner store, one of half a dozen or so buildings still standing. We then continued on toward Healesville crossing the main Eltham-Yea Highway and passed through Chum Creek, where the scene was the same. All along the way, the road took us through destroyed State Park forest. It went on for kilometre after kilometre. Muriel wondered if I might bring her back another time and she could paint a scene of the devastation and auction her efforts giving the proceeds to the bushfire appeal. I said fine, great idea.

You might be wondering at this point if she has any family. Yes and no. There is one living relative, a nephew, David, who lives in Sydney. David's wife Raylene keeps in contact and visits from time to time, but it's a long way to come on a regular basis, so both Debbie and I keep Raylene up to square with how Muriel is coping.

In recent times Muriel's realized she needs to join the 21st century if she's to stay young, so this week we went out and bought a new television set, a 26 inch LCD so she could see the whole screen and pick up the new digital channels. She knew something was wrong with her old set when most of the credits at the end of the programs she watches on the ABC and SBS were out of range. We set up the old television in her bedroom so she could watch television in bed if she felt like it. We also bought her a DVD player so she could watch some movies at her leisure. That's when she fell in love with Andre Rieu. Some fool bought her an Andre Rieu DVD and that was the start of a steamy, passionate relationship with the Dutchman and his bloody violin. So, we had to get her more and more. SHUT-UP I hear you say! A bigger problem arose however. She's not strong on the use of remote controls. One she can handle, but with the DVD player and the LCD it got confusing. Transferring to AV1 mode to receive the DVD signal, then learning how to operate the DVD remote and start watching, stop, then finish and transfer back to free to air became all too much....for ME! More about that later. But jeez, have the media gone into meltdown over Michael Jackson? Is it me? I never liked his music and I thought some of his antics were bizarre, but if the media blitz is any indication, the entire world except me, wants a 24hour wall to wall Jackfest. I mean, it's not as if it was Princess Diana or Pope John Paul 2, is it?

I was just happy when the day came to an end and I could go home, put my feet up and watch Jim Lehrer, on the News Hour. Today is my birthday, but tomorrow will be better. It'll be Saturday. SHUT-UP!

3.

Because my birthday was on Friday, everyone was too tired to make a party of it so we are doing that today, Saturday. My daughter Sarah, her husband, Michael and my two grand-children are coming to visit and have lunch. Well, actually my daughter and her husband will have lunch. The grand-children are coming to trash the house, play mashies with their food and see what valuable items they can destroy. Breea is four and going to Kindergarten. Connor is nearly two and he's going everywhere; the pantry, the bathroom, the en-suite, behind the lounge suite, he gets his dirty hands all over my precious piano, he leaves a trail of food on the floor wherever he goes and, oh yes, he craps a lot. I've never seen anyone crap so much. My study, where I keep the computer, where I do all my writing, internet banking and browsing, which was once Sarah's bedroom, is now referred to as the poo room. My wife Joanne, who looks after Connor on Wednesday's while Breea is at kindergarten and Sarah attends to her School of Dance, always changes his frequently-filled nappy in my study....the poo room. Despite this gross intrusion into my secret world, incredibly, Connor and I are bonding. When I arrive home on Wednesday afternoons after a day in the taxi, Joanne is exhausted from caring for them. After a brief rest for me, Connor and I go up to the shops so Joanne can have a break and I buy him a muffin. He likes muffins. Who doesn't? But by the time we return home, you guessed it...he's crapped again. It's bad enough that we now have six rooms of our house dedicated to storing kid stuff, like boxes of toys, cuddly little teddies, match-box cars, plastic boats, and a midget tent full of plastic balls that get strewn about the house every Wednesday. But my one place of solace, my thinking room, the one room in the house where I have re-educated myself, nay, re-invented myself, has now been converted into a storage facility for plastic train lines, battery operated plastic barbeques, and now operates as a part-time poo room for a two-year-old on his periodical visits.

Joanne is cleaning up the breakfast dishes now while I place the house in lock-down alert. There's another more important reason why they are coming over today. Michael is a plumber, and we have just purchased a new dishwasher. Michael is going to install it for us. But will you SHUT-UP! The media are still suffering multiple orgasmic infusions with Michael Jackson. Will it never end? There's already talk of counselling sessions being made available for those so grieving, to express their pain. What about those of us who are desperately searching for a Michael Jackson-free zone? Where do we express our pain?

Hello! There's a knock on the front door. The family has arrived; the grand-children are here, including the crap king. This is wonderful. They will constitute the perimeter of my Michael Jackson-free zone. What a break!

My grand-daughter Breea is a right proper little Miss. She goes to dance classes at her mother's School of Dance. She's also a world authority on how to trash a house in three easy lessons and passes on all her knowledge to the king of crap. All of this we happily put up with because if it comes down to a choice between them, and me having to sit through more drivel about the life and times of the king of pop, I know where I stand. I want Breea to learn the piano. I'll happily give her my piano if she shows an interest in taking lessons. I play by ear. I want her to use her fingers; it always sounds better that way. But right at this minute the king of crap has climbed up onto the piano stool, his hands stuffed with rice cake smothered with cottage cheese and he's started limbering up before launching into his first piano concerto in d minor. I want to hide in the bedroom and pretend it's not happening.

Such are the joys of being a grand-parent and to be truthful, we wouldn't have it any other way. It's just that our energy levels aren't what they use to be. I wonder how my daughter is able to get through her day, caring for two young children, keeping house, cooking meals, looking after her husband, but then, her mother went through the same ordeal thirty-five years ago. How did she do it?

This week it's school holidays, and you would think the television people would be dragging out the kids' movies and so on, and offering all sorts of 'you beaut' competitions and stuff, but they are still going on about that Jackson fellow. God, I wish someone else would die so we could have a rest from it all. Mind you, the way they were trying to create a state of panic among us over the emergence of the swine flu pandemic, everyday reporting how many had it, how many were going to get it, what to do if you did get it, how to avoid getting it, blah, blah, blah, perhaps the king of pop's death was timely.

Now, they are falling over themselves telling us how many are dying from it. Well, that's not quite true, because the people who are dying, are really dying because they have some other serious illness and just happen to have swine flu as well. But do the reports make that clear?

Be careful what you wish for, my mother use to warn us as kids. Here I am hoping someone else would die just to get Jacko off the front page and lo and behold, Jim Stynes has just held a press conference to say he is standing down as president of the Melbourne Football Club because he has cancer. Well, it worked, but I didn't want that. Not Jim! I would rather it be me, not that I want it to be me but, you know what I mean. My mother, Noreen, died of cancer. She struggled through four years of radiation therapy but all to no avail in the end. She died in 1970, the same year Joanne and I were married. My mother had eight children. I was the fifth. Looking back, and knowing what we know today about the destructive forces of stress, I sometimes think my mother was a cancer waiting to happen. How can you have eight children and not stress yourself into a grave? Add to the mix her religious fervour; she made Pope John Paul 2 look like a lay-about atheist. It was a lethal cocktail. Devoted as she was to her family, her first love was the church; not Jesus...the church. In her mind they could do no wrong. Anyone in a black suit with a dog collar was adored, respected and honoured. She never knew about men like Father Gerald Risdale, or the more than one hundred Catholic priests and brothers Australian courts have sentenced thus far, or indeed, the Marist brother who sexually abused me in 1960. What she would have thought of the current tsunami of claims against members of the church for sexual misconduct and abuse is hard to tell. I suspect she would swiftly excise these people from her church-mindedness and consign them to an unspeakable level of betrayal. But the Church would never be seen, by her, as culpable. She would never have pointed a finger at the Church and claimed a failure of a duty of care.

My father was more layback, mercifully. While we were all devoted to our mother and always made allowances for her passion for the church, my father in his own laconic, jovial style introduced an element of balance, of sanity in an atmosphere of unbridled religiosity, enabling some of us to take one step back and consider more rational approaches. He saved us from becoming fundamentalist morons. But that came at a price.

My father liked a drink while my mother hated drink; grog that is! This juxtaposition sustained a constant air of tension in the house when the beer was flowing, largely because my father never drank alone. He was a twin, you see, and his twin brother Frank liked grog as much, if not more, than my father. The tales told of Jim and Frank Kelly are legendary today and most fondly associated with the Harp of Erin hotel in East Kew, a location often referred to as the branch office. In so many ways they were a clone of each other. They were best friends, both fathered eight children and when Jim died in 1977, Frank followed him a few years later.

My mother withdrew from this innocent and entirely normal display of kindred attachment, mostly blaming Frank as the rotten apple. To her, when they got together, it was Satan's lair. She never saw the Church as the assembly ground for Satan's little helpers. That was Frank's role. My father thus limited his drinking in the home and kept Frank and my mother separated. Frank's house in North Balwyn became the branch office. Frank's wife, my aunty Ita, was a delightful lady; outgoing, social, rational, she had an infectious laugh and so unlike my mother, she enjoyed a beer; in many ways a breath of fresh air. I loved going to their house in Greythorn Road. I liked being with my Kelly cousins, but we were not close. Damn it! We should have been. Somehow a hidden barrier had been erected and its genesis lay in the religious mindset of my mother, telepathically transmitted to me in such a way that I believed Satan lurked in and around the vicinity of Greythorn Road, North Balwyn. My cousins, on the other hand, probably harboured secret suspicions about us. Occasionally I sensed that we were viewed as a family set apart, a bit odd perhaps, religiously spooky, to be handled with care.

Socializing was a big part of my father's life and my mother struggled with this. No, I should say she stressed over this. The primary concern in her life was the spiritual well-being of her children. To this end she fostered the idea of religious vocations for all of us. My sister Margaret took up the call first and entered the Mercy Convent at Rosanna. A few years later, my brother Peter joined the Columban seminary at Sassafras. Perhaps Noreen's greatest concern for all of us was that we might not enter the Kingdom of Heaven, and thus, as she was responsible for bringing us into the world, she must accept some of the blame should any of us perish in the everlasting fires of Hell. What a burden she must have carried with her until her fragile body could no longer absorb any more. She was only fifty-eight years old when she passed away at St. Vincent's hospital, Melbourne on 22nd January, 1970.

These events are now long past but still generate sadness; less, I must add, for the life departed, more for the life not lived. I often wonder how happier, richer and fulfilling my mother's life might have been had religion not been such a dominating factor, and in wondering that, how many years she may have lived beyond 1970 had her God not been so demanding of her. I can't help feeling that her passing was a tragedy that could have been avoided. For the 'terrible twins' of course life went on, as it does, as it must. Their brotherly devotion was now free of a constraining factor that only ever menaced them; it could never have driven them apart and their remaining years together were rich and unbridled. Whether it was at the Harp of Erin, the Richmond Union Bowling Club, or the Melbourne Bowling Club it didn't matter. They always had a plan B. They were in many ways their own social club, but the warning signs for Jim were always there, if not sometimes ignored. A lifetime diet of fatty foods, a couple of heart attacks and an unchecked, dangerously high cholesterol level found him wanting. It was at the Kew Bowling club where on Saturday the 29th January 1977, while bowling, socializing, drinking with Frank and his mates, doing what he loved, Jim suffered a fatal heart attack. This was what I describe as a good death, a good way to go.

And now, I sit here and reflect on their passing as I consider where I stand in the noisy confusion of life. A small lesion on my right forehead began to bleed last week. It looked harmless but given my history of living with Bowen's disease, one of the many forms of skin cancer, I thought I should have it looked at. My doctor took a biopsy and it turned out to be a malignant cutaneous fibrous histiocytoma. Well shit! I can't even say it without stumbling over the words. It has to be cut out, but what I'm yet to learn is, how much of my face will go with it.

The annoying thing is I don't remember spending that much time in the sun as a teenager. I remember being sunburned a few times, and deliberately trying to get some colour into my pale, Celtic complexion in the afternoon before taking a girlfriend out in the evening, but I wasn't reckless. At least I don't think I was. But I've been having cryosurgery now for nearly fourteen years to remove countless numbers of actinic-keratosis, and I have literally lost count of the number of basel-cell carcinomas and squamous-cell carcinomas I have had excised. My surgeon, Mr. Simon Ceber, shakes his head in dismay every time he looks at my head; my bald head.

On more than one occasion he has canvassed the prospect of a total scalp replacement, but I'm just not ready to go there. I have a toupee, but I'm not ready to go there, either. It sits patiently atop a polystyrene hat stand hidden underneath a plastic shopping bag in my walk-in-robe, waiting for me to put it on, but I can't. My bald scalp looks like the aftermath of the battle for Tobruk, with occasional areas of clear skin surrounded by rocky outcrops, scarring and red blotches all over the place. Actually, it's more like the moon surface with craters where the skin grafts have been applied and all the space junk long since discarded by NASA dumped around here and there. But still I prefer this, to being seen wearing a rug.

So here I sit, with my thoughts. Michael Jackson is dead, Malcolm Turnbull is suffering a backlash in the polls over a fake email, Jim Stynes is fighting cancer, Melbourne is in the grip of swine flu, Andy Roddick has just beaten Britain's great hope Andy Murray in the semis at Wimbeldon and I have a malignant cutaneous fibrous histiocytoma. When I think of it like that, it makes me feel just as important as them.

4.

I was a third generation Australian raised in that incredibly conservative era of the 1950's and early 1960's. An era marked in my memory more for all the things that I could not do, rather than for any real encouragement to go in search of what I could. It was that time in Australia's political, social and religious development where one's own personal perspective on just about any issue, was more determined by one's religion, and to which political party one supported, rather than by any rational assessment of what was in everyone's best interests. It was a time when the country's leading political figures were overshadowed in the hearts and minds of the Catholics of Melbourne by one, who commanded the greatest of respect from everyone, even politicians. One, who from as early as 1917, had stamped his mark on Australian social and political life, and who became one of the most influential Church leaders of the 20th century.

He was Daniel Mannix, the incumbent Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne. I wasn't old enough then to fully appreciate the influence that this man exerted on both Catholic and Protestant but my earliest recollections of Daniel Mannix were that of a man of great importance, who was the leader of the church in Melbourne. My parents saw Mannix as the one they knew could, and would stand up and be counted when Catholics needed a voice in the community, and so at least in the Kelly household, it was difficult to be ambivalent about Daniel Mannix. He was a strong Irish nationalist who had a way of making his presence felt. In 1917 he fell foul of the then Prime Minister W.M. 'Billy' Hughes on the question of conscription of Australian men in the First World War. Mannix did not support a referendum on the issue in 1916, and when it was defeated, Hughes called a second referendum in 1917 taking Mannix on in what became a sectarian debate on the issue. Hughes tried to highlight Mannix as seditious, and anti-British, in an effort to influence the protestant vote. It failed. The `No' vote was even greater the second time. That result gave Mannix hero status among the Catholic community in Melbourne. From then on, until his death in 1963, he was to some, the most respected of Church leaders, to others the most hated. The closest I ever came to him physically was one year at the annual St. Patrick Day march. I was marching on the outside column and as we passed by Mannix's car, at the top end of Bourke St, I could have leaned over and touched him. He looked so old and pale that year, sitting in the back seat of a car that had no roof. But there was obviously something very important about him even if he was asleep. The march always attracted very big crowds, and from that fact alone, I knew that whatever the reason I was there, it was worth giving up a Sunday holiday; that it was more important than kicking the football in the park with my brothers. But for some Catholics however, Mannix's ill-perceived notoriety came at a price. They were limited in terms of career opportunities, and type-cast as disloyal to the Empire. Some were refused admission to business clubs, and in many cases, families were scorned by their neighbours, all of which only served to further divide the country into two groups, Catholic and Protestant, and both utterly distrusting of one another.

My early childhood memories are mixed. There were moments of great joy growing up in a large family, feeling protected, always having someone to play with and learn from, but large families have their downside. I had nothing to call my own; everything I recall having, owning, was handed down. From clothes to playthings, toys, whatever, it was communism in its purest form. Everything was shared, but not equally. Margaret was the first born and I have to say I barely knew her. She was nine years older than me, and that was a huge gap. Consequently, there was no interaction between us and I was only nine when she left home to join the Mercy sisters. I started school at Our Lady of Good Counsel, Deepdene, our local parish school, but it was only for two years. In that short time, Mother Assumption was the only influence on my life outside the home. She was a strange woman who had a fixation about purity and brain-washed us all with her warnings about looking at ourselves in the bath, or worse, touching ourselves in the wrong places. 'Hell was waiting for those whose mind was not pure of heart' she told us. I was five years old. However, her influence was quickly obliterated when, with my three older brothers, I went off to Marcellin College, a relatively new college started by the Marist Brothers in Camberwell. I started there in grade three. My first teacher was Brother Bede. He was friendly, helpful but somewhat benign in my early life. He was a young man, dark hair, handsome and in hindsight would have had the girls crying at their loss, God's gain, but beyond that I remember little of him. Grade four came along quickly and I came into contact with Brother Brian. I never liked him. He was devious, unpredictable, and he spent far too much time with my older brother Peter, discussing me. He told me things about myself that only Peter could have known, because at that time Peter and I shared a bedroom. Peter, seen through the eyes of a much younger brother was something of an authority figure. He never allowed himself to get too close to any of his siblings, always aloof and staying within himself. My memories of him prior to his departure for the seminary are vague.

If there was one of my brothers that I simultaneously looked up to and feared, it was Brian. He had a certain charisma, a presence about him that had me convinced something thrilling could happen at any moment. He showed me more of the real world in my early years just by who he was and the way he went about things. He was confident, exciting and could have me doubled over in stiches laughing as he romanced his way around anyone and any situation. Unlike Peter, he was not attracted to the religious life. David was the fourth child and I was closer to him than anyone else. He took me to my first day at school warning me away from undesirables. He displayed a natural artistic talent for drawing and painting from a very young age. Mary was the sixth child born, following an unbroken run of four boys. As the story goes, my mother Noreen, by this stage somewhat desperate for another daughter, promised Our Lady that if she would intercede to ensure a female birth, the child would be called Mary. Heaven agreed.

When the twins Anthony and Joseph were four we had to move. The house in Deepdene just couldn't cope with eight children. The move to East Kew enabled us to spread out and I shared a sleep-out with David. It was a tacked-on, lean-to home improvement that sufficed as a bedroom. Peter and Brian enjoyed the luxury of separate bedrooms in a backyard bungalow with the outside toilet at one end and the laundry at the other. The twins shared a room inside, likewise Margaret and Mary. As early as grade four I realized I was a bit slow but I was well protected by Brian and David and they were quick to sort out any difficulty I had with bullies and stand-over thugs that roamed the school yard. Academically, I struggled with almost everything. Ranked 44th in a class of 52 wasn't very flattering. Today, the notion of a class of 52 students would seem unthinkable, but that was the trend for the following four years. It was all so uninspiring. Grade five was worse. Our teacher was Mrs. O' Callaghan, the mother of an older student. She had a horrible voice that screeched like a cockatoo. She informed us rather than taught us and as I came to reflect on that in subsequent years, I realized they were all much the same. I wanted to be taught things, while the brothers, some of them barely out of school themselves and their lay teachers were not well trained and thus we were not well taught. It was the rule of law, not the rule of learning. There's a huge difference. And so on it went, year after year. But there were two things the brothers were good at; drumming the Catholic faith into our innocent brains, and recruiting for their vocational training colleges and noviciates. The religious instruction we received would compare similarly with that of fundamentalist Islam today, perhaps more so; if one could make an objective judgement it could be rated alongside extremist cults of today. Prayer before and after every recess, forty minute daily religious instruction, daily recital of the rosary, the Angelus at midday, monthly confessions, Catholic teaching inscribed into every area under discussion, with a heavy emphasis on the occasion of sin. We didn't even have to be doing anything wrong, we only had to place ourselves in an occasion where we might do wrong. Even that was wrong.

This was pre-Vatican 2 time, when the Church had simply turned its back on the twentieth century, upheld the anti-modernist views of Pope Pius 10th, and commanded its faithful to observe its teachings under pain of eternal damnation. And we innocents, at least for the time being, were at their mercy. They didn't fool everybody; there were voices of discontent. There were students who came to school each day armed with more rational views on what constituted a reasonable moral code, gained from their parents who for the most part tolerated the brainwashing of their sons at school and then tempered these extremist views in the privacy of their own home. We learned of these alternative theologies in huddled discussion groups during recess and lunch breaks, but they were never aired in the public domain; that would be heresy. Some of the more timid students at school avoided these gatherings while the less timid relished such unconventional, radical challenges to authority and became closet non-believers; but not the Kellys. We were orthodox in every sense of the word; passionately orthodox, frighteningly so. In many ways, the Kelly household was an extension of the classroom. We recited the rosary each night, attended mass each Sunday, were encouraged to attend mass during the week before school, receive the sacrament of confession and communion as often as possible, avoid unnecessary servile work on Sunday, attend Benediction service Sunday night, and subscribe to, and be encouraged to read approved Catholic publications. All this activity was driven by my mother, Noreen. It was her 'raison d'être'.

My father duly fell into line behind her as second in command, albeit uncomfortably I suspect. Noreen's mission in life was to see her family counted among the chosen few to enter through the narrow door to the Kingdom of Heaven. It was a mission she accepted, a mission to which she devoted her life, and in the end, it was this passion, this commitment, this fervour, this obsession, this zeal, that eventually took such a toll on her. For me, this obsession for the narrow door disturbed the development of a natural childhood for whenever I was tempted to explore some of the more curious aspects of growing up, a little angel sat on my shoulder and warned me away from Satan's call. For me, it was counter productive because it stifled my initiative to consider anything daring and prevented free open thought. It was an awful burden to bear, an unnatural burden and I failed so many times to uphold its demands I suffered a guilt complex in such a way that I dared not consider much beyond saving my everlasting soul. I spent more time in the confessional than I did in the toilet and wondered if I had the ticker to make it through. There were times when walking to school I could be the object of verbal abuse being called a 'bloody Catholic' or something similar by students from Camberwell Grammar. I didn't mind that. I took some distorted pleasure believing that they were going to end up in Hell anyway.

This was how it was, a true reflection of the era in which I grew up, an era which undoubtedly influenced my attitudes to many aspects of life. And much of it was the product of Daniel Mannix and his belligerent and confrontational approach to the political and social circumstances existing at the time. When he died in 1963, his body lay in state in St. Patrick's Cathedral in Melbourne, and I, along with almost every other Catholic in the diocese filed past his open coffin in a ceremonial tribute one would have thought more appropriate for Kings and Presidents than for a local Bishop.

But it wasn't all doom and gloom. There were fun-filled moments particularly during school holidays when, despite our fragile financial state we were able to enjoy a fortnight each year during May at a holiday house at McCrae on the Mornington Peninsula. There was such a wonderful air of freedom being near a beach within walking distance of where we stayed, having Port Phillip Bay to gaze upon and absorb without having to share it with too many holiday makers. Yes, it was cold and foggy on occasions but that simply made it feel more exotic, more appealing. I spent so much time wandering the back beaches with my brothers, scaling the sand dunes, searching for crabs in the rock pools, wishing forlornly that I could stay there forever. In the first couple of years the whole family, ten of us, spent our holidays there crammed in together some of us three to a bed. We leased the house for two weeks, and although the weather was cold, it was generally fine and there were plenty of things to do. The prospect of a summer holiday here was out of the question. The cost was beyond us. But in May it was much cheaper and it became an annual event.

That first year my brother Brian got hold of an air rifle. It was the same as those used at amusement parks where you fired small pellets to knock over the moving ducks in side show alley. I don't know how he acquired it; I didn't ask. Brian was good in the 'ways and means' department and one never questioned his methods or sources. Somehow though, he smuggled it into the car before we left for McCrae and when he produced it the next morning after breakfast, Mum exploded.

Where on earth did you get that?

From one of the guys at school.

And what do you think you're going to do with it?

Play with it.

Brian, you don't play with guns.

It's not a gun mum, it's an air rifle, it just shoots pellets like this ...see, he said, as he pointed it toward David.

Everyone ducked for cover.

He told her it was safe and that he was only going to use it for target practice and that it would be kept well away from anyone.

Don't take it off me, I'll be careful.

That's when Dad stepped in to reassure Noreen the boy was responsible. Brian was also good at networking; he had a way with Dad. Mum relented. He then drew a circular target on a piece of paper, and pinned it to a tree at the back of the house. Under the watchful eyes of Dad, Mum and everyone else he began firing away. It all looked harmless enough although Mum wasn't convinced. But despite their misgivings both parents gave the expected warnings about being very careful and then went back into the house. Not long after, Brian let David try out and then me. It was exciting. I'd never fired a gun before.

That afternoon, Mum and Dad went shopping with Margaret. Peter had gone off on his own somewhere and Brian and David went off in search of girls along the beach, leaving just myself and the twins at the house. Wouldn't you know it, Brian had carelessly left the air rifle lying on his bed in the bungalow and when I saw it there, my adrenalin went into overdrive. I took it up in my hands and adopted the firing position. I noticed that there were some pellets sitting on top of the dresser so I loaded up and went outside. I pointed the gun at the trees, at the sky, at birds flying above and realized that I had the power to alter the course of a life. While I held that gun in my hands, all I could think about was the power. I kept pointing it at various things, trees, the house, the laundry door, the roof. I imagined being a policeman arresting a criminal, and then a soldier fighting in the war.

As I played with the gun, pointing here, pointing there, I heard the back door open behind me and swung around to see who it was, all the time holding the rifle in the firing position. It was Anthony. What a dumb stupid time to come out to see what I was doing. He took one look at me and froze... as you do when you see someone pointing a gun at you. At this point he was about ten metres away from me. Neither one of us spoke. Suddenly he panicked...as you do...and turned to run back inside the house. As he ripped open the door to race inside somehow my trigger finger took control of my brain and the rifle discharged, lodging a pellet into the rear left side of Anthony's head. He went to ground screaming, I went into a state of shock and saw the horrified images of my parents as they flashed across my mind. I ran to help him and remarkably there was no blood, just a red mark and I thought I might just be able to pacify him to a point where Mum and Dad didn't have to be told. But when you are a twin, you have back-up and within seconds Joseph appeared from nowhere to investigate the cause of all the screaming.

You'll be in trouble when Mum finds out.

She doesn't have to know.

What will you give us?

Yeah, what will you give us?

What do you want?

I want to fire the gun.

Same here.

Only if you promise not to tell Mum?

Okay.

Okay.

Somehow I weaselled my way out of a potential jail sentence or at the very least, not being let out of the house for a couple of days but from that point on any time I saw someone using a rifle I always recalled the horror of that moment. As the years passed and time moved stealthily upon us, we continued to spend May school holidays at McCrae before moving up-market to a house further down the peninsula at Sorrento, but by then, the numbers started to fall away as one by one we had other needs to pursue. That first year at McCrae however, was an important lesson for me knowing that I could have made a tragic contribution to our family's future. When we returned home after the holiday, I headed straight for the confessional.

Bless me Father for I have sinned.

Please go on, came the voice behind the curtain

It has been one month since my last confession. I accuse myself of not paying attention at mass, mucking around when saying the Rosary, buying a comic from the change when I went shopping, being mean to my sister, that's all father ....oh, except that I shot my brother on the holidays.

And are you sorry for your sins and the hurt you have caused our blessed.....what do you mean you shot your brother?

I told the priest what happened and after a long pause, all I heard was a sigh from behind the curtain. He gave me a lecture about not playing with guns, and added one or two other minor bits of advice but forgot to tell me to pay the money back for the comic.

Well now, for your penance say three Our Father's and three Hail Mary's. Now make a good act of contrition.

That's how it was done and I left the confessional box feeling both relieved and elated, such that I came to associate that feeling with going to confession and being in a church. It wasn't just bricks and mortar of the kind you would see anywhere else in the street. To me it was more, much more. It wasn't just a church it was a way of life, a refuge, and a fortress for a good Catholic family; one that went to mass on Sunday as a family; one that would recite the rosary together each night. It was one whose home would contain some evidence of religious icons such as framed pictures of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, or of the Virgin Mary, or maybe of one's favourite saint. It was one whose family would subscribe to one or two Catholic periodicals which everyone would be encouraged to read and dinner time would always beginning with grace before meals and occasionally include some religious discussion. It was one whose children would attend a Catholic school, and the odd visit by the local parish priest or curate for dinner or just a chat, all considered quite normal. In hindsight it was more about what we were seen to be, rather than what we really were, and what we really felt inside. It was almost as if the depth of our spirituality and our personal acceptance of Jesus as our Saviour came second to belief in the Institution of the Church and its teachings.

Whatever the case, these were the indicators that I used to gauge a good Catholic family and I did so for good reason. They were essentially the pointers that our family displayed, the manner in which we demonstrated our belief in the institution. Most of our friends were Catholic and barring one or two exceptions developing relationships with non-Catholics was not encouraged. I don't know how I remained friends with Geoffrey from across the street. Mind you I never told anyone at school that Geoffrey was my friend, and I guess my mother, Noreen, figured it couldn't do any harm. Occasionally Geoffrey would stay overnight at our house, and after dinner, when it was time to say the Rosary, Geoffrey would have to wait out in my room until we finished. Monday to Friday, we never missed the Rosary. If someone knocked on the door while in situ, one of us would get up and see who it was, but the rest of us just kept going until we finished.

Once or twice a year we gathered with other Catholic neighbours in the area to recite the Rosary in front of the statue of Our Lady of Fatima. For one, whose early childhood was literally suffocated with a never ending variety of Marian ritual, saying the Rosary, praying in front of the statue of Our Lady, lighting a candle for some special intention, celebrating the feasts of the Immaculate Conception and the Assumption, I regarded Marian apparitions as a cornerstone of our belief. It was an essential part of our Catholic faith regardless of whether or not it was proclaimed dogma or doctrine. It never occurred to me that they might have been the bizarre construct of desperately unhappy children seeking attention and egged on by over zealous parents. I discovered that later.

5.

My elder sister, Margaret was the first to leave home as the family flag bearer for vocational calling. She joined the Mercy nuns and spent the next fourteen years as a bride of Christ. Not long after she left, Peter, my eldest brother, with just one year out of school, entered the Columban Missionary Society seminary, joining about a dozen other young men of like calling, committing themselves to eight years of training for ordination to the priesthood. If ever there was a cause for our family to celebrate, this must surely have ranked high on the list. I have no idea how many of our friends took notice, had an opinion, thought we were a bunch of religious nuts, or just couldn't care less, but it seemed to us at the time that these two events in the history of our family, somehow made us special. It certainly made for more room in the house. We had come down from a household of ten to eight, and with just one outside toilet between us, that was a positive.

Three years later, I completed the trifector. I had somehow convinced myself, with a little help from my mother, that the life of a Marist brother was my calling. The support I received from Noreen was unparalleled when compared with anything else. The cost was a serious consideration in a family budget constantly being put to the test, but not even that would prevent the fulfilment of Noreen's and God's will. I can't seriously claim today that I had such a calling, but in hindsight, with such a narrow-minded, one-sided education, my options were severely limited. The church was at its zenith in both spiritual and political power at the time and such a move seemed to me, even at the age of fourteen, wise, even fortuitous, a move that attracted attention; a move that put me in a special place within our family. Why I thought I needed to do that, I don't know. A trained psychologist, doubtless, would relish the thought of telling me.

So, with bags packed and wearing a brand new school uniform, I went to Champagnat College in Wangaratta, in country Victoria in 1960 to start what I thought was a life's commitment.

Hello boys, welcome back, welcome back. Carry your bags out off the platform to the waiting bus. The voice was deep but gentle, coming from an elderly, somewhat overweight white haired old man called Brother Prosper. He seemed so delighted to have all the boys back in his care. Other men in black cassocks climbed into the bus, greeted us politely and then began talking quietly with one or two older boys as the bus began its ten minute trip from the railway station to the college. Brother Prosper however was beside himself. He was anxious to know the names of all the new boys and from where we had come. He walked down the bus greeting everyone in a similar fashion to the way my mother greeted boys I brought home from school. Each time he saw a new face he was off and running.

And what's your name lad?

John Kelly, Brother.

Oh, the boy Kelly, Yes, and where are you from?

Melbourne, Brother. Marcellin College.

Oh Marcellin. Yes, we have other boys here from Marcellin. Yes, oh good, you'll settle in nicely, yes. It was difficult not to like him. He possessed an infectious disarming quality not at all consistent with my experiences at Marcellin.

That first night at Champagnat College and the next day were very strange. So many rules. We were woken at six by Brother Bertinus, who walked the length of the dormitory performing a slow handclap. Automatically, everyone who knew what to do, fell out of bed onto their knees to say their morning prayers. It was going to take several days before I could mentally adjust to this new routine. I followed, and waited there on my knees, wondering what would happen next. Would we engage in vocal prayer or was it silent meditative prayer? Bertinus then mumbled something in Latin, and half the dormitory replied in Latin. Then silence. I waited for someone to make a move. A few minutes passed and finally, the one they called Chesty, who's real name was Graham, stood up. I thought they called him Chesty because he looked like a character from a fitness advertisement on television. His morning prayer obviously finished, Chesty grabbed a towel from his closet, and took a walk. That looked good. I did the same. What ever he was going to do, it looked right. He walked to the bathroom. I followed.

Ablutions completed, I returned to my bed. Chesty was getting dressed. I did the same. Bad move. Not butt naked. There was a procedure to follow and that was not it. Blissfully unaware of my folly I sat down on the bed and asked the boy alongside what we did now.

Don't talk, he whispered.

Why not? I whispered back.

We're not supposed to talk yet, he said.

Right, I replied. I already knew that but I just forgot.

You should use your closet to cover yourself when you get dressed, he added.

Bertinus strode down the aisle towards us with a condescending look that reminded me of every man in black I had known at Marcellin. I looked as innocent as I could while he gently leaned over the bed and said, 'We observe great silence at this time. You may proceed to the chapel through the double doors for Morning Prayer now if you wish, but please remain silent. Don't talk to anyone.'

Yes Brother, I said. I finished getting dressed and made for the double doors.

The chapel was adjacent to the dormitory. It was four times the size of the chapel at Marcellin and I suspect it was used more often. I quickly reasoned that I was going to spend a lot of time here, whether I liked it or not. Morning Prayer began with the singing of the 'Salve Regina' and lasted about half an hour; not the singing, the whole thing. After that we were released and asked to return to the dormitory, make our beds and then return again to the chapel for morning mass. This, I quickly deduced was going to be the early morning routine for the next ten months.

After mass, we headed for the refectory where breakfast was served. It was a huge room full of tables and chairs, windows on three sides, and double doors leading off to the kitchen from where the aroma of the early morning cooking wafted its way across the room. I was directed to sit at a nominated table. Each table had its leader. I walked to the nominated table and sat down; another bad move. The leader of my table was a former Marcellin student, Peter Needham. I vaguely remembered him as being someone in Brian's class, but the memory was hazy.

We stand until grace is said, John, Peter said. I stood up.

Bertinus stood at the top end of the refectory and said grace. Finally we began to eat. Breakfast was cereal, toast and a hot plate of eggs and mashed potato. 'Mashed potato', I thought. 'Who has mashed potato for breakfast?' Breakfast at home was cereal, toast and the occasional bacon and eggs; never mashed potato. The refectory was terribly noisy during breakfast. The sounds of all the boys talking, bounced off the brick walls, and we all had to raise our voices to be heard. It was deafening and annoying. A big room full of boys shouting at each other was not a good way to start the day. There was not one girl in sight, and I thought of Elizabeth Ashmore, the girl in the next street back home, a girl with whom I enjoyed a few flirtatious moments, who was probably sitting in her kitchen with her mother, eating cereal and toast and I bet no one would be shouting at her. She would probably be wearing a brightly coloured dress with short sleeves and looking really nice. 'God,' I thought, 'She doesn't even know I'm here.'

The region itself was special to my mother Noreen. Her mother's family had settled nearby two generations earlier. I had distant relations here and Noreen saw to it they knew I was here. The O'Connors came here from Roscommon in Ireland and settled at Bowman's Forest and Whorouly, situated twenty miles south-east of Wangaratta in the mid 1800's. They were dairy farmers mostly, with some of them growing tobacco. They were second cousins to my mother, their children third cousins to me; a distant thread one might say, but Noreen didn't think so. As I nestled into the routine of boarding school and grappled with a new way of life, one by one, they came and tapped me on the shoulder; day students at the college. Hello I'm so and so. I'm your third cousin. It was a weird experience but not unwelcome. Unfortunately, I was unable to foster any meaningful relationship with them. As a trainee at the college (we were called juniors, although I never understood why), we were set apart in many ways, and the prospect of spending a weekend with my new found relations was never on. Everything at the college was regulated, disciplined, timed down to the second. I hardly had time to fart, always under the watchful eye of men in black cassocks. They walked up and down the dormitory when we dressed and undressed, they supervised our sport programs and prowled the shower rooms when we showered; they stood watching as we ate in the refectory, they herded us into the chapel at prayer time. The only normal behaviour was during classes when we mixed with day students and other boarders, ordinary boys who were here simply to get an education, not train for the brotherhood. The boarders mixed in with us at meal times. Because of the noise the only boy I could speak to without shouting in the refectory was Brian Hughes who sat alongside me. Brian became my eating partner and was later re-christened William Morris Hughes by the jovial Brother Prosper. The nickname stuck much to Brian's distress. He was a very mild mannered, inoffensive boy who did not need the attention and felt very isolated because of it. To my regret today, I did nothing to help ease his discomfort.

The two juniors I became most friendly with were Leo Keegan and Des Harrington, two fairly normal boys in what I soon perceived as abnormal circumstances. Des was from Melbourne like me and had at some stage met my brothers David and Brian, or thought he had. Leo was from Kyneton, a dairy farmer's son. Both had a relaxed sense of humour, dropped a few swear words now and then and acted more like my brothers at home. Des was meticulously hygienic though, and told me I smelt; not surprising given we showered once a week, twice if we played sport on Wednesdays. I used to shower everyday at home and found the ablutions department at the college pretty raw. I thought other boys smelt, but I never told them. Some boys had supplies of deodorant sent to them by their parents, but I wasn't one of them. However, hygiene habits to one side, I soon learned that boys are boys everywhere, and just because we had come together as potential candidates for the religious life didn't mean we had a right to be sweet smelling or holier than thou, and it didn't mean we had the slightest idea of what we were letting ourselves in for, either. If one was a prick before one came here, or a dickhead, or a fat lazy slob, one was still a prick, dickhead or fat lazy slob when one arrived here. And being here didn't change that; if anything, it reinforced it. Having said that, I suspect there were those whose reasons were noble and those whose reasons were at best, confused. I look back on those days now, and wonder how many of those boys were gay. It seems clear to me now that such places were a magnet for gay boys, even those who didn't know they were gay. What it did mean however, was that for some obscure reason we all thought we were devoting our lives to God's noble cause of discipleship.

Leo Keegan was a year older than me, and more mature. I was a child target waiting to be hit. He took me on board, and kept me out of harm's way. He and Des Harrington seemed to be able to recognize who not to turn your back on. I wasn't smart enough to be able to do that. My older brothers, Brian and David had always protected me. My older brothers were good at telling me who was a prick, or gay (They used the word 'poofter'). They claimed they could spot one from a hundred yards.

While I was at Champagnat College, my siblings had their own agenda. Margaret was at a convent in Shepparton and Peter had relocated to Turramurra near Sydney. Brian had left school and was working in the public service. David too, had left school, and was working as an apprentice carpenter. My younger sister Mary was still at school as were my little twin brothers, Anthony and Joseph. That was the state of play back then in 1960, a family partly dispersed, partly together, but all locked up in concert, dancing to an orchestral symphony in d minor thundering out the teachings of the Catholic Church. The Marist Brothers were performing on the woodwinds, the Columban Fathers on percussion, the local parish priests making up the brass section, the Mercy nuns performing choral recitals, my mother Noreen writing the musical arrangements, my father Jim, the fundraiser, and we helpless children were their prisoners, trapped in the auditorium as the cymbals crashed, the drums rolled, the French horns piped and all manner of irrational clap-trap was fed into our vacant, innocent, ready for the taking brain cells.

Could it possibly get any worse? Yes it could!

A momentary interruption. There will be a direct telecast of Michael Jackson's memorial service on television tomorrow. When will it all go away? Granted the telecast will commence at 3am and I'll be asleep, but what about the subsequent news reports? They'll run continuously throughout the day, into the night-time news and flood the news-breaks thereafter until I go to bed again. Not even Kevin Rudd's overseas trip to see the pope and plead sainthood for Mother Mary McKillop will stop them. And do I really care that Roger Federer has won Wimbledon yet again and has now amassed a record fifteen grand slam titles. Er...no!

Is there any good news? Yes!

The scab from my biopsy on the forehead fell off today and the lesion has disappeared. I'm thinking that it casts doubt on the pathology report that suggested I have a malignant cutaneous fibrous histiocytoma. I have an appointment with the surgeon tomorrow and I will present my case strongly that excision won't be necessary because there is no lesion anymore. The last biopsy I had two years ago, removed part of a tumour that grew back within a week, so I accepted the need for Simon Ceber to cut a hole in my head and get it out. It was active. But this one has gone away, so there!

If, at the tender age of fourteen, while undergoing a form of mental surgery of the mind ( otherwise referred to as brainwashing), I had any idea I would be fighting skin cancer today, I would happily have converted to Islam, and cloaked myself up to my head with anything to avoid my delicate complexion having any contact with the Sun.

But I didn't, and today, I cannot think of anything more misleading than some vague general statement suggesting that exposing my lily white Celtic skin to the harsh Australian Sun was a good thing. And while we are talking about misleading statements try analysing the nature of our religious education all of which was founded on something as tenuous as the writings of some dedicated fundamentalist cult of two thousand years ago.

Why? Because at Champagnat College, armed with that and nothing more, that's what the Church was doing to my feeble mind. But wait, there's more. They went further and told me if I didn't listen and obey them I would burn forever in hellfire. They purported to know what happened two thousand years ago, but they didn't know what was happening today and couldn't save my skin from today's burning Sun. Well, what does one say to such rear-sighted visionaries? Well done, you morons!

Brother Felix knew. He was our French teacher. Of all the Brothers at Champagnat, he was as regular as they come. I don't know that I necessarily liked French, but he had a way of making it appealing. I thanked him more than anybody when Joanne and I were in Paris in 1995, and I found myself able to communicate on a basic level with the frogs at the Kentucky Fried Chicken store at La Place d'Italie.

Pate en croute de pomme si vous plait, I asked.

Combien? He asked.

Deux, I said.

Brother Felix knew the Sun wasn't good for me. He told me I should have my hat on one day as we walked back to the college under a burning Sun after a swim in the Ovens River.

I don't have a hat.

Then get one.

He left the order some years later. One Saturday evening around the mid-seventies, Joanne and I were going to the pictures in Balwyn and we bumped into him and his lovely wife doing the same. His name was Denis, that's all I remember, but I was glad to see him married.

Not so the college principal Brother Bertinus. He was also the head of the 'juniors', the group I was a part of in the college's three-way partition. Bertinus was our spiritual director.

Our dormitory was on the second story of the building's east wing. It housed some fifty beds, a gigantic washroom with enough basins to accommodate a football team, and a row of lockers to store some of our toiletries. With such a large area set aside for ablutions it was perplexing to note that there was just one toilet. One toilet, fifty boys and one rule. We were only allowed to use this particular toilet if we needed to go at night. In the mornings once out of bed, dressed or not, we were to go downstairs. Well, rules are rules, but boys will be boys, and sometimes because I was running late for morning prayers, I didn't bother going downstairs. I preferred to wait until everyone left the dormitory for the chapel, and then make a quick trip to the washroom toilet. No ill intended, not a major indiscretion one might say, all easily explained to a sympathetic ear one would have thought.

There was however, a secondary reason beyond the inevitable queue that would develop should open use of that toilet be allowed. It was discipline. Obedience! One had to learn obedience if one was to join an order of Brothers; one had to submit to the will of the Lord. I had not quite learnt that part of the contract yet. Using the dormitory toilet was for me, a matter of convenience. It was efficient; less running up and down stairs. The shortest distance between two points; less time wasting. All very sensible I thought. But, with such an outward display of insubordinate arrogance for someone so young, I suppose it was inevitable that one morning I would be caught in the act. Had I realised the subsequent ramifications of that arrogance I would never have gone near that toilet ever.

What are you doing up here at this time, John? came the voice. I knew immediately who it was. _'Why him? Why Bertinus?'_ I thought _. 'Why not Prosper, gentle easy-going Prosper, funny, fat Prosper, who would forever be inviting students to tour his vegetable garden. Or Jerome, the serious one, always carrying his leather briefcase full of papers to correct, who would probably be wondering if I had done my math homework last night. No, it had to be bloody Bertinus, with the piercing eyes, the hooked nose, looking down on me, ready to swoop the moment he detected any minor indiscretion.'_

I had to go Brother.

You know you are supposed to go downstairs at this time.

Yes Brother.

John, you are weak, he said.

It was as blunt as anything ever said to me and it hurt. It was not as if I had broken a window or stood on somebody's clean washing. I just wanted to go to the fucking toilet.

You'd better come and see me at four this afternoon and we'll have a talk.

Yes Brother.

That took care of the rest of my day. My impending visit to Bertinus' office occupied my mind from that moment on. Breakfast tasted awful. So did Lunch, and it seemed everywhere I walked that day, everyone was staring at me, as if they knew I used the upstairs toilet after 6am.

At four o' clock, I knocked on the office door and Bertinus called me in. He acted more kindly than earlier that morning, and without any note of harshness began talking about my general behaviour, remarking on my late attendances.

Is there anything that is bothering you at the moment John?

No Brother.

Are you getting along alright with the other boys?

Yes Brother.

He hesitated for a moment and then asked, Do you know what puberty is?

No Brother.

The next part of the discussion didn't even register in my brain until he asked if I was experiencing a thickening of my penis.

Yes Brother.

How often?

All the time Brother.

Then he asked me if I was experiencing a warm sensation of pleasure while I was sleeping and noticing dampness on my pyjamas.

All the time Brother.

He told me that this was known as an 'emission'. He said it was quite normal and said a whole lot of things about God's plan for procreation and his goodness to us, but was also quick to remind me that purity of thought and mind was the best way we could thank God for his goodness and that it was very wrong to take deliberate pleasure in these moments. That, he said, would be a mortal sin. All sins of impurity, he told me, were a mortal sin. When I felt like having an impure thought, he said, I should say a short ejaculation.

Yes Brother.

He suggested some ointment or cream might help and that he would come by my bed to give it to me. Later that night, after we had gone to sleep, I woke up to find him at my bed. He said that he was going to put some ointment on me and as he pulled back the sheets, told me to undo my pyjama cord. I did as he said, and he then put the ointment on his fingers and began to rub it around my penis where the pubic hairs were growing. I began to get excited, but I knew that if I took pleasure in what was happening I would be committing a mortal sin, so I forced all thoughts of pleasure out of my head and tried to think of something holy, like Jesus, Mary and Joseph, the holy family and all the saints. My penis hardened and Bertinus kept rubbing. I told myself that what he was doing was acceptable, because he knew better than I did about all these things. After a short time he stopped with the rubbing and told me that would help me. But I didn't understand in what way it was supposed to help me. I was glad when he finished because I didn't have to keep thinking holy thoughts any more, and I could go back to sleep.

If you have followed my journey thus far, this is the point where you stop and take stock. What just happened there? At the time I didn't know. At the time I thought it must be something normal. But, then I thought, if it was normal, why hadn't my brothers mentioned something similar to me? Why hadn't Brian or David told me at some stage that Dad had rubbed their dicks with cream to help them through the onset of puberty?

The answer was easy. He hadn't! David tried to tell me about sex once and I wanted to listen but somewhere between having an erect penis and...and...I waited for more and well, he never quite got to the next part. David was always a bit slow.

6.

The news from my surgeon, Mr. Simon Ceber did not run parallel with my expectations. This type of thing can be very nasty he told me. It has to come out he says. Damn! I suggested radiation treatment, desperate to avoid yet another skin graft. He shook his head. Better to cut it out he says, radiation is not the right option here, we wouldn't know if we had it all. How much will you take out, I ask. He curls his thumb and forefinger together and makes a sign as large as a fifty-cent piece. Shit! Another huge crater on the side of my scalp; another slice of skin off my leg that bleeds and bleeds and bleeds for two weeks. Shit! It's a hospital job he tells me. I don't have private health insurance I tell him. He does his slicing at Ringwood Private Hospital. He sits there for a moment or two. Okay I guess we could do it here, he decides. That saves me about a thousand dollars that I don't have. I heave a sigh of relief as he gets up and beckons me follow him to the reception desk where he discusses my case with the nurse.

Tomorrow?

That soon?

He doesn't want to wait.

Tomorrow comes all too quickly. It's on for tonight at five. I'm in the car, my mind drifts to Jim Stynes, lying in hospital somewhere. The media have gone quiet on Jim. He's had his operation and now he's resting, waiting to see what happens next. The media haven't gone quiet on Michael Jackson though. When will it end? Channel seven news were planning to extend their nightly news bulletin to one hour tonight to cover the memorial held in Los Angeles earlier this morning our time. Thanks for the warning.

The incident in the dark of night with Bertinus planted a seed of uncertainty about my choice of vocation. Suddenly these men in black cassocks didn't look so attractive. All this praying, and pretending to be holy didn't have any further appeal but there was nothing I could do about it. I was stuck here until the end of the year. I found my mind was drifting toward other interests. A few weeks later, a group of us went to the local football match. I enjoyed going to the football. It was like being home again. I liked the crowd, the shouting, even abusing the umpire for making stupid decisions. I tried to put the incident with Bertinus out of my mind. We liked to congregate behind the goal square. This was the best vantage point for much of the scoring action and it was where other young people from the town gathered. It was also where some of the girls from the local convent school gathered. They were supporting the Wangaratta Rovers team, so as a means of attracting their attention John Braithwaite, Leo Keegan and I decided to barrack for the visiting team from Benalla. John, a junior, was a country boy himself from Albury, two years older than me and far less inhibited. He began a friendly conversation with one of the girls who seemed to enjoy his company, and he kept bringing me into the conversation, even though he could see that I was feeling a little uncomfortable. John managed the initial innocent flirtation like a seasoned professional and before I realised it, he had progressed into second gear. The girl's name was Judy and of course she came with a friend, Sandra.

The five of us were suddenly engaged in friendly banter and didn't even notice that the rest of our group had moved away. Braithwaite wasn't worried, but I felt quite relieved when the final siren sounded and it was time to return to the college. Leo Keegan thought it was amusing, but as we walked back to the college he quietly suggested that I think twice about teaming up again with John Braithwaite. Leo suggested that Braithwaite's mind was not focussed on the celibate life, and that if I were serious about my vocation, it would be better to stay clear of him.

A month later, it was time for the Wangaratta Show, where the best of stock and produce from the region and surrounds was on display. So too, were the obligatory side shows, and rides for the children. We were given permission to go to the show. Several of the juniors came from a pastoral background and it was of genuine interest to them. John Braithwaite and I went together. I would have preferred to go with Leo Keegan but he was nowhere to be seen. While John and I were wandering the grounds of the show, we came across Judy, who was on her own. John immediately took up where their last conversation ended. Suddenly I recalled Leo Keegan's advice and wished that I could just disappear, but it was too late for that.

Perhaps it would not have been so bad had we just talked for a while, and then gone our separate ways, but Braithwaite invited Judy for a ride on the giant octopus. She accepted, and like a fool I went along for the ride. From that simple mistake, the three of us spent the rest of the afternoon together, unaware that our actions were noticed by several day students from the college, who were only too willing to spread the word that two of the juniors were flirting with a girl from the convent.

Three nights later, I was called into Bertinus' office and asked to explain. I told him how it all happened. He stared at me, that long, deep stare. I began to buckle at the knees. I explained that I was an innocent bystander, that I only went along for the ride, and even then only with great reluctance. It didn't matter to Bertinus.

I'm very disappointed in you, John. I was only speaking to your parents on the phone last week telling them how well you were doing. It would be very unfortunate for me to have to tell them of this matter now, he said. I thought it unwise at the time to tell him that I was disappointed he had rubbed my penis with ointment some weeks earlier. Did you tell my parents about that, I asked silently? I thought not. I was in a no win situation here and expressed my regret as best I could. I said I was sorry but that didn't stop Bertinus from dishing out six wacks to the backside with the cane before sending me back to bed. John Braithwaite was sent home the next day.

Another brief interruption! Joanne came with me to the surgery. She didn't want me driving home with only half a head. I had been through this procedure twice before so I knew the drill. Perhaps that helped. I wasn't as apprehensive this time. It may have been the anti-depressants I've been taking for the last two years but I didn't feel too bad. While the nurse strapped me down onto the operating table, Simon came in to take a closer look at his prey and give me the usual needles to dull my senses in the affected areas. Then a change of heart! Instead of looking for a nice piece of skin on my upper leg, he starts fiddling about the back of my ear. 'Ah, virgin territory,' he says. I have no idea what he's planning until he tells me that sticking a needle into my ear is probably going to hurt. I'm not so sure. A needle in the ear is extremely painful but as it comes in lieu of a needle in the leg, it means my leg will not be used as a donor and consequently the management of a leg missing a thin slice of skin is instantly eliminated. This is very good news, therefore a needle in the ear has to be rated as a positive.

The radio is on in the operating room. Finally we seem to be in a Michael Jackson-free zone. There was a brief report about which doctor gave Michael what medication, but apart from that I think the world will soon be safe from Jackson paranoia. All the talk now is about the Ashes test beginning tonight in Cardiff. Knowing the Welsh, they'll turn it into a song-fest. Kevin Rudd is in Germany with Angela Merkel, before she heads off to L'Aquila, Italy for the G8 summit. Australia doesn't belong to the G8; we're too small, but Kevin is well regarded in Europe. He uses phrases like, 'programmatic specificity.' Nobody knows what that means but it seems that if it comes from Kevin, it must be pretty damn important. While he's over there, Malcolm Turnbull is over here running around the country with a billboard telling us how much debt Kevin is racking up for our kids and grand-kids to pay off. I don't want to sound brutal but I'd rather my grand-kids paying it off than me. I spent most of my life paying off the Melbourne Olympic Games and the Snowy Mountain Hydro-electric Authority Project. Meanwhile, Simon has noticed one or two other imperfections of the cancerous kind around the general area of my scalp and has decided to take his scalpel to them as well. The man's a sadist.

Soon, it is all over and I can go home. Joanne is waiting patiently for me, and looks relieved when I emerge from the surgery. I'm all bandaged up and will have to return next week when the results of the pathology tests are back. Meanwhile I can take a few days off from work to recover. Overall, I'm feeling very positive; things went well.

Recovering from my adventure with John Braithwaite was something else altogether. I continued on as if there was nothing wrong, and said nothing about how I felt, but I became very homesick. I thought much about home, how nice it would be to be sleeping in my own bed, to get up when I felt like it and not have to adhere to so much rigid discipline. In one of my letters to my parents, I expressed a wish they could come for a visit. Two weeks later they did. They came and spent the weekend with me, staying in one of the local hotels. That first night, we dined at their hotel. My mother told me how helpful and thoughtful Brother Bertinus was in obtaining accommodation for them, and how pleased he was to see them. He also told them how well I was doing. It was then I broke the news to them. I told them I was having second thoughts about the whole idea of a vocation and that I didn't want to come back to the college next year. If my mother was anything other than a bit surprised she didn't show it. She just told me not to worry and suggested that I take a while to think about it. The next day, Sunday, they came to the college after mass in the town, and we drove to Shepparton, to see Margaret who was teaching music at the convent. Getting away from the college even for just a day worked wonders for me. We spent the afternoon with Margaret. I didn't know it at the time, but she was having her own problems coping with convent life.

That weekend helped lift a heavy load off my mind. I did not mention Bertinus to my parents. I couldn't bring myself to do it. As we arrived back at the college that evening I felt a genuine sense of freedom. There was no more pretending needed. No longer did I feel guilty about not wanting to be here. I didn't belong here, but it seemed not to matter any more. I hugged my mother, shook hands with my father and as I did so, he said quietly, 'Don't worry about anything. Just finish the year out, concentrate on your exams, and the rest will take care of itself.'

And so I did. And for the remainder of the year, I drew great strength from the knowledge that this façade was coming to an end. I told no one. It was my secret and I put my head down and studied hard, determined not to let my father down. Exams came and I was satisfied I had done well. Then, that huge day arrived and I was on the train heading back to Melbourne. Prior to leaving, Leo Keegan invited me to come up to Kyneton for a week during the holidays. It all sounded great. I was ecstatic. But, coming home at the end of the year wasn't as easy as I had thought. Certain psychological adjustments had to be made. While at Wangaratta, I didn't realize how much the college routine and disciplinary procedures had become so firmly entrenched in my psyche; the early rising, prayer in the chapel, then making my bed followed by morning mass, communal breakfast, school, and then work after school, followed by dinner followed by two hours homework each night, followed by a religious talk, more evening prayer in the chapel, then, finally bedtime. Even though I knew I would not be returning, the routine was embedded, automatic even. It seemed to me that outside of the cloistered world lived a lot of slack and idle people in need of some discipline in their slack and idle lives. And, while I was no longer interested in the brotherhood, I was still a believing Catholic, so some of the routine was still considered normal. And I still had to face the brutal reality that my mother hadn't yet given up on me. I also thought about my return to Marcellin College; I had to be fitted out in a new uniform. I had grown five or six inches and nothing from previous years would fit me anymore. More money! My mother played a cunning game; a subtle chat here and there, an idea planted in my brain. She was convinced that God was calling me whether I knew it or not. Often reminded in my early years of my near-death experience when I was six weeks old and having to undergo a Pyloric Stenosis operation to save my life, I was naturally prone to believe that I had been saved for some future higher purpose. By early January, Noreen's persuasive nature had brought me to the point where I found myself rethinking my decision. She encouraged me to attend early morning weekday mass to meditate on the matter. Then I remembered Leo Keegan's invitation to come to Kyneton and I decided to give him a call.

When I travelled up to Kyneton, Leo met me at the train with his father and his sister Carmel. He was as excited as me to be able to talk to someone from his own recent past; two boys laughing and joking all the way to his farm, reliving some of the more bizarre moments that we had experienced while his father and sister tried to make sense of it all. It was good therapy. Leo's father was a dairy farmer and also ran a few sheep. I waited until the next morning when we did the milking, to tell Leo my plans. He was disappointed.

Why don't you give it another shot?

Because, even though there were some good times, I don't belong there.

As I spoke, I sensed that he understood why I was thinking the way I did, although like my mother, he still thought I was a show. However, he also saw the situation as an opportunity to introduce me to his cousin Patricia, whose parents owned the farm further up the road. In just one day I became infatuated with her, and for as long as she was with us, I couldn't stop looking at her. She noticed too. Every time her eyes caught mine, she smiled, and I buckled at the knees. We saw each other every day from that point on, something I looked forward to and enjoyed. That week was intended to satisfy a yearning for contact with someone with whom I shared a common institutional experience, but it went much further than that. Whatever that week did for Leo, I knew that I was clear and relaxed in my own mind about my decision not to return to the Juniorate, and I quietly thanked Patricia for showing me the way. When I returned home, my mind was made up but my mother persisted suggesting I write to Brother Bertinus and seek his opinion.

There was no way in the world that was going to happen! That's when I came close to telling my father what had happened in the dark of that infamous night in the dormitory. Somehow, I knew that my father would understand my reluctance to return and he would make it right with Noreen. I went looking and found him in the front garden of our home at Second Avenue in East Kew. I asked him if he needed any help. The summer of 1960/61 was a period of drought and we could only water our gardens with a bucket; no hoses allowed. He asked me to water the plants and gradually I plucked up the courage to talk about what I would be doing in the coming year. At that moment he was everything a father should be and saved me from the agony of telling him about Bertinus and the ointment. I didn't have to return to Wangaratta if I didn't want to, he said. I don't think he wanted me to return to Wangaratta. He was probably sick of forking out the money but said he just wanted me to do the best I could at school, get out and get a job. He made it so easy for me. It was like confession without guilt, absolution or penance. Unconditional!

After that, there was no more talk of Wangaratta.

There's still plenty of talk about Michael Jackson, but we're doing our best to ignore it. There are more important matters at hand. President Barack Obama has been photographed casting an admiring eye over the back of the Brazilian delegate to the G8 summit at L'Aquila, in Italy. Alongside him stands the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy and he's sporting a mischievous grin. What is the world coming to? They are there primarily to talk about saving the planet from climate change; and anyway, what's Brazil sending a delegate for? They don't belong to the G8. Then again, nor does Australia, but Kevin Rudd has also turned up, and he's almost stolen the show with the announcement of a Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute. All this when the world is in the grip of a financial crisis, not to mention a swine flu pandemic? Anyway, they have agreed not to allow the global temperature to increase by more than two degrees by 2050, so that should make us all feel a lot better.

While I ponder these matters, my head hurts from the savaging it took on Wednesday. In addition to a skin graft, Simon decided to cut out one or two other little 'nasties' in the vicinity of the malignant cutaneous fibrous histiocytoma, and stitch the wounds up even though there is precious little skin to drag across to complete the join. My head looks like I have gone three rounds with Muhammad Ali. In the back of my mind I can't help wondering about the results of the pathology tests on all this corrupted flesh. Has Simon got it all, or do we have to go another round?

In February of 1961, I returned to Marcellin, and old acquaintances were renewed, some good, some not. There were many distractions most of which were perfectly normal, but having been shut away for twelve months and not used to the kind of freedom now available, my attention to school and study suffered. It was the non-academic non-intellectual emphasis that captured most attention, an emphasis centred more on puberty than prayer. Patricia Keegan and I were writing to each other regularly and I joined the local parish Younger Set where girls were everywhere; but if you think this is the part where the story gets juicy, forget it. Just think back at what mischief you got up to at this very difficult time in your life and assume that mine was much the same. In brief, yes I had girlfriends, yes they distracted me beyond my best interests, and yes I went to confession a lot, blah, blah, blah.

Beyond that, there was a strange new atmosphere about school life as we studied the Leaving Certificate. It was difficult to define but easy to sense. It was about achievement, it was about going beyond the old boundaries of the teacher controlling your every move, thought and action. We were challenged to search inside ourselves to find expression; the world was in a new state of discovery. New and exciting things were being tested in the laboratory. We were encouraged to read newspapers, look for scientific magazines, even to think about new ways of doing things; a pre-requisite for an expansion of the mind. Looking back, I can see that they were encouraging us to open our minds, realise our full potential for expression and self management.

However, it was one thing to speak to us in such terms concerning our academic studies, quite another when it came to religious studies. It was more evident to me than ever before that a vast chasm existed between the realities of the everyday world, and the narrow minded teachings of the Catholic faith. They were in two different worlds. It was one thing to say to us, 'Open your minds, dream dreams that never were'...and on the other, tell us not to mix with non-Catholics, be wary of comments being made by Anglicans, and others who were not of the true faith. The dreaded 'occasion of sin' took on a broader perspective. It included associating with socialists and communists, and other enemies of the Church. Books were being published that challenged the origins of the Christian faith, and the historical accuracy of the gospels. Experts in their field claimed that the concept of a human deity born of a virgin, was no more than a popular mythology of earlier cultures, and that the gospel writers simply adopted this style of storytelling to establish their claim about Jesus. The Church vehemently opposed this view. This was heresy, we were told. These books were not to be read. Films were condemned; mostly to do with sexuality, but some challenged the way we thought about war, politics, and medical advances, anything that threatened and challenged Catholic doctrine. My reaction to all of this was simple: If only!

If only it was true. If only all this hoo-hah about the one true faith, Heaven and Hell, mortal sins, and the Resurrection was nothing more than pious invention, or worse, a grab for power. That was where my mind begged for the freedom to search and find expression. That was where I wanted to realise my full potential for expression and self management. But to do that, even think it, was heresy, the ultimate occasion of sin. To actually question any of it was to invite trouble for myself. At that time in my life I was in no position to challenge the 'narrow door' theology; that was something well beyond my ability as a fifteen year old to attempt. It would be many years later, before I could harness the forces of archaeology and palaeontology to mount a credible challenge, but ultimately my opportunity would come, and when it did, it would have its genesis in the most unexpected of circumstances.

But, for the remaining two years of my formal schooling I might just as well have gone fishing. With the benefit of hindsight, I would have done better had I left school at age fifteen, and taken up a trade of some kind. My brother David did that, becoming an apprentice carpenter and he never looked back. So, having been delivered from the jaws of death at the tender age of six weeks, there I was stumbling around in the dark searching for this mythical vocation my mother was convinced was my destiny. It was during this period that my brother Peter was ordained a priest; only the second old-boy from the school to have done so. At Marcellin, there was much flag waving and joyous celebration, lots of back slapping and for a few brief days I became an accidental hero. I found the whole episode a pain in the arse and needless to say, it didn't last long. Three months later, Peter set sail for South Korea where he would spend the next five years. My mother displayed visible signs of distress at the time and I have little doubt that at this point, she became deeply depressed.

My closest friend at Marcellin was Paul Moran. I spent a lot of time at his house on weekends. He had brothers and sisters like me and two very strident and strict parents. I liked his sister Ann, but any thought of making a move on her was checked by the thought of having to front up to her parents. Besides, Paul and I had a special talent for deceiving girls at parties and we needed the freedom to display our artistic expression and pull off some of the more outrageous scams we dreamt up. Having Ann close by when we were 'on the job' would not have worked out. Our crowning achievement was to attend parties and pretend we were talent scouts for some television producer. I know, it sounds lame, but we were sixteen or so, and the girls came swarming to us like bees to the hive.

While I was at school, the Brothers' primary interest in their students was academic. There was no vocational guidance other than religious and those that slipped through the cracks were left to their own resources and I had reached a level that was sufficient to walk into a junior clerical position in the Public Service. Feeling secure in that knowledge, I was more than happy to get out of that place and settle into a new routine, a new way of life. At a time of economic boom, jobs were so plentiful, one had merely to apply and be offered something. From there, it was up to the individual. Night studies in accountancy and various other commercial courses were plentiful, but after twelve years of uninspiring, lacklustre, dreary, plodding, I had had enough of classes. Whenever I thought of education, I thought of the Marist Brothers and whenever I thought of the Marist Brothers, I thought of Bertinus. There were some good men at Marcellin of course. Men like Brother Egbert, Brother Kenneth, Brother Bernard, and others whose names have escaped me. But the lingering memories are of Brother Nilus, Brother Ludovic and Brother Sylvester. From a student's perspective, Ludovic was possibly the most hated man ever to wear a black cassock. He's dead now as I suspect are many others, and because he's dead, I won't bother to waste any more time on him.

The year after I departed Marcellin, the senior school relocated to Bulleen, and I relocated to the public service. Brian also decided to relocate. He packed his bags and boarded a ship to England. So, another Kelly had left home. We were down to Dad, Mum and just five children. David met a girl named Kathleen and they couldn't keep their hands off each other. But things were about to change quite dramatically for me and during the intervening period I never saw it coming.

For the two years thus far of his presidency of the USA, John F. Kennedy had been quietly, if not unwittingly, supporting a corrupt government in South Vietnam. He had authorized sending military advisers and equipment in an effort to halt the advance of the Viet Cong, an insurgency force within South Vietnam, heavily supported by the government of North Vietnam. But in 1963, John Kennedy was assassinated and Vice President Lyndon Johnson took over the rental of the White House. At the same time, Indonesia's President Dr. Soekarno was making Australia's Prime Minister, Robert Menzies a bit nervous with a lot of mouthing-off about what a bunch of nannies we were in Australia. Menzies was convinced that Indonesia was the greatest threat to the security of our region and in November 1964 decided to introduce conscription to beef up the Australian Army. In an utterly bizarre selection procedure, it was decided to draft 20-year old men chosen by date of birth, drawn from a lottery.

Yeah, I know! Unthinkable today, but that was a testament to the quality of leadership back then.

So, while I was happily chasing girls, going to endless parties, staying up all night and generally having a really good time, the family make-up went like this: Brian was overseas and had moved from England to the United States. He was working in New York, where he met the beautiful Aggie Rholeder from Indiana. Peter was in South Korea with the Columbans; Margaret was still in the nunnery, Mary had gone slightly boy crazy at home, the twins, Anthony and Joseph were still at school, and David and Kathleen still couldn't keep their hands off each other. Meanwhile, President Johnson was escalating the conflict and beefing up America's commitment to defend South Vietnam and Robert Menzies was preparing for a significant increase in the ranks of Australian army personnel to put the fear of God into Soekarno.

Then, as if Indonesia suddenly didn't matter anymore, and while I was enjoying a wonderful period of freedom such as I had never experienced before, Menzies got sucked in by that womanizing, bullshitting, Texan moron Johnson, to commit Australian troops to what was essentially a civil war in South Vietnam.

And guess who was turning twenty on his next birthday?

7.

There's a new drama playing out in Canberra. It is alleged that one of Rio Tinto's executives has been doing bit of price negotiating with the Chinese in Beijing over a new agreement to supply iron ore and has found himself detained under suspicion of industrial espionage and bribing Chinese company officials. The Opposition are clambering for Kevin Rudd to get on the phone to President Hu Jintao and demand his release. Like, how dare they locked up one of us; an Australian citizen no less. Malcolm Turnbull and Julie Bishop are leading the charge. They think they've got Kevin on the ropes, claiming he is not looking after an Australian citizen in trouble overseas. Really! I recall when the Opposition were in government not so long ago that they showed no interest whatsoever in another Australian citizen, David Hicks, being locked up in Guantanamo Bay. They left him there for five years before it became politically sensitive and they were facing an electoral backlash. Hmm, oh well! To suggest that people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones sounds a bit pedestrian these days, but then, we are talking about politicians aren't we?

Back to my story! National Service was about politicians too. In April 1965, Prime Minister Robert Menzies ordered a Battalion of regular soldiers from the 1st Royal Australian Regiment, to be sent to Vietnam. My birth date, June 26, was plucked out of a ballot barrel. By May of 1965, I had received my call up notice and told to pack my bags.

Of all the eligible young men of my age that I knew, I was the only one to be called up. It was a pathetically unfair system affecting just one in twelve of those eligible, and the protests were loud and defiant. Many refused to register. Many others, who did register and receive their call-up notice, burnt them in a public display of disobedience. The ugly reality was that our country's politicians, allowed their political zeal to exceed their good judgment. Ever eager to impress our most favoured ally and trading partner, the USA, they volunteered their country's young men into a civil war in Vietnam, and conceded that innocent, happy, carefree young Australians were going to die as a result. For me, it began just five days after I turned twenty. It was a cold, misty, Melbourne morning in July. I felt a mixture of excitement and distraction about it all, but my mother felt only the sorrow of another child going out the door. When my sister Mary came running into the kitchen to tell me the taxi had arrived, my mother accidentally dropped a plate. I was packed and ready to go. My mother was very subdued. My father tried to make light of it all. I hugged Mary, punched David in the stomach, ruffled the twins' hair, shook hands with my father, punched David in the stomach again, and embraced my mother in silence allowing her to hold me as long as she wished. She didn't cry, but there was clearly no joy in her eyes. There was none of the joyous expectation I witnessed six years earlier when I left home to go to Wangaratta. For Noreen, it was another child leaving home but this time the reasons were far, far removed from similar previous experiences.

In the taxi, I sat in the front passenger seat. Not a lot was said between me and the driver; it was a time for reflection. The radio was playing 'Mr.Tamborine man', by the Byrds and then a throw back to the late fifties with Johnny Mathis singing 'Twelfth of Never'. We drove to the Signals Corps centre in Swan Street, in Richmond. When we arrived there, protesters were waiting to greet us, all fired up with megaphones and banners demonstrating their opposition to our involvement in the war. The police were there too, in large numbers and a lot television cameras and newspaper reporters. It was a great party atmosphere, but one that threatened to erupt into something far more serious.

I walked toward the melee, my heart dragging about six feet behind me. The crowd was noisy. One or two protesters called out, urging me not to go in. I presented my papers to an officer at the front gate, and was told to go to the rear of the building, and get a cup of tea. For a brief moment it occurred to me that I was a free man. I could walk away from all this and disappear somewhere, never to be found again. I could flee to some secluded part of the country, or even overseas, I could run away, establish a new identity and...and...and.... Somehow the reality of the occasion overtook this sudden gush of excitement, and I continued walking toward the rear of the building.

A new form of institutional life began for me, at the rear of the Signals Corps administrative building. An hour or so after waving goodbye to the protesters, and mingling with about forty other young men of all shapes and sizes, we assembled under the direction of Staff Sergeant 'Whatsisname'. He ordered us into one of the waiting buses, and we were soon heading out along Swan Street. We passed through the line of shouting protesters. There was a police officer on a horse and the horse became a little agitated as the protesters tried to surge forward. The police on foot held their ground as we passed through, and the television cameramen ran forward of the bus as they filmed. From inside the bus, I looked out at the melee but we moved so quickly it was difficult to know what was going on outside. We were on our way to Puckapunyal, sixty miles north of Melbourne. The bus driver asked 'Whatsisname' if we were going to stop anywhere along the way. The staff sergeant told the driver, we'll stop at Kilmore... let 'em have a piss and nothin' else.

As the bus found its way out of the city and onto the Hume Highway, the inevitable question arose. 'Was I really ready for this?' Alone and unprotected, I wondered if my life's tutors thus far, the cassocks, and my family, had adequately prepared me for what lay ahead. My twenty years thus far, had seen me survive the cassocks, but not without a foul residual taste. But was I ready for this?

We had our break at Kilmore, and arrived at Puckapunyal a half hour later. I had barely spoken to anyone in the bus, and as we drove up the main road toward Battalion Headquarters, the media had gathered once again. They had followed us all the way from Melbourne, passed us at Kilmore, and were now waiting to continue the story of the day. There were more television cameras. There was also a strong Military Police presence, and officers waiting for us. Already dazed and confused we stumbled out of the bus, lined up in three rows, and by way of roll-call met our platoon commander. Wonderful news! We were welcome! Everyone wanted to make us feel at home. Just follow instructions our commander told us and we would all get along splendidly. I felt somewhat intimidated by the whole affair and reluctant to engage in conversation with my fellow conscripts; just the odd, nervous 'one-liner' in a feeble attempt to demonstrate my bravado. Others did the same. I could tell. Their 'one-liners' were no funnier than mine. From the moment we arrived at the Recruit Training Battalion it became an almost endless parade of appointments. We had to draw our uniforms at the Q store; jungle greens, gaiters, boots black leather, slouch hat not yet slouched, jumper, army issue underwear. The underpants reminded me of something that my father wore, something that didn't button up and had the potential to leave your penis hanging out as you climbed out of bed in the morning. Gross! We drew our weapon. 'Was this necessary? We wouldn't need this rifle thing for several weeks surely. The enemy was thousands of miles away.' My reaction was a throw back to the day I shot my brother Anthony in the back of the head, but it was too late for that now; I just had to get over it. We had another medical examination. Perhaps they thought some had faked their way in. It was too early for me to fake something terminal to get out, although the thought crossed my mind. My fellow inmates were as nervous as me, uncertain what to say, when to say it, how to say it. 'Would I be reprimanded if I swore? Why is that Sergeant looking at me? What have I done?' Names were not yet embedded in my mind. 'Don't I know that fellow from somewhere? That big hairy bloke looks a bit intimidating. Better steer clear of him.' It was a long morning but the lunch bugle finally sounded and we were bundled off to the ordinary soldiers' mess.

We had lunch: minced steak and mash potatoes. They also offered canned fruit with custard. A sandwich would have been fine. I didn't like big lunches. They made me sleepy. After lunch I had a dental check, followed by a haircut. We were finally shown to our barracks but only to deposit our gear, make up our beds, and re-assemble for a 'welcome to the army lecture', from the Commanding Officer. We swore the oath of allegiance. Actually I didn't. I couldn't hear what the officer was saying and so I just mumbled along with everyone else. Somewhere inside that day, between dental and haircut, or was it medical and lunch, I had an interview with the Roman Catholic chaplain. He was a welcome figure, oddly, someone I was able to relate to in a very strange setting, and he not only spoke in a soft friendly manner, you could also see in his eyes that he meant it. Among other things, he told me that I no longer needed to abstain from eating meat on Fridays. For as long as I was in the Army I was exempt, whether on duty or on leave. 'Wow! My first fringe benefit.' We had dinner at 1730 hours. My watch told me it was actually 5.30 pm real time and very early to be having dinner, especially after such a big lunch. Perhaps I could talk to someone about that, so they could re-arrange things for tomorrow. Dinner was chops, baked beans, and vegetables and we walked along in a queue with a tray in our hands while the chef's assistant slopped it onto our plates. There were piles of bread on the tables and even though the quality of the food might have been questionable there was no chance of us starving. A Corporal walked up and down asking us if we had any complaints. 'Yes,' I thought to myself. 'I don't like this place and I think I would like to go home now.' I didn't think that he would agree so I didn't actually say it.

After dinner, I looked around to find somewhere to sit and watch television. I learned that there were no television sets available today, but I would be invited to sit through a three hour I.Q. Questionnaire in a matter of a few moments; just as soon as everyone was finished in the mess. The bugle sounded fifteen minutes later and we were ordered to line up in threes. I realised that lining up in threes was going to be the order of the day for the next two years. We marched to a marquee some distance from our barracks, and took our places at the portable desks, so arranged as not to allow for cheating. The I.Q. test was laborious; pages and pages of incredibly stupid questions. They were looking for officer material. Well, this was hardly the way to go about it. 'Why not ask for a show of hands first? That would narrow the selection process by at least one immediately.' I thought that first day would never end. It was ten in the evening before we collapsed into bed, but not before being told that because we were the first group to arrive that day, our platoon was rostered for kitchen duty the next morning. That meant reveille at 0400 hours. Forty eight very tired, confused and disoriented young men were finally able to sleep.

The following morning as promised, we were woken firstly, by a scratchy recording of a bugle playing reveille, and then by 'whatsisname' at precisely 4am. He burst through the door reminiscent of a fireman raging through a burning building, yelling at the top of his voice, Wakey, wakey, hands off snakey. Get up, get up, get up.

We stirred uneasily wondering if this was a practical joke.

What, you mean now? someone called out. It's only four o clock!

Whatsisname's happy little rhyme was probably the product of years of regular recruit training, more suited to volunteer soldiers ready to serve their country, do their bit, fight the good fight, but it didn't work with us; we were no fools. 'Whatsisname' changed tack.

All right you lot, out of the cot, up and at 'em, c'mon get up, get up. The uneasy stir drifted into an uneasy calm. He was not kidding; he really did want us out of the cot.

We slowly dragged ourselves out of what had become a very warm and cosy little cocoon in a barracks without heating facilities, without insulation or carpet, only to be greeted by a freezing cold breeze that blew its way down from the bald hill several hundred yards away, and funnelled its way through the barracks door that 'Whatsisname' had so kindly left wide open. Few of us spoke, we were all still in a state of shock. Those that did speak, did so with such elegance and polish as to betray their privileged backgrounds.

Fuckin' hell. Voice one.

Christ Almighty. Voice two.

Jesus fuckin' Christ what is this? Voice three.

Hey shut the fuckin' door ya mongrel. Voice four.

Whatsisname put a stop to it.

Put your greatcoats on, and move outside for roll call, c'mon, c'mon, c'mon move it move it.

We climbed inside our one size fits all greatcoats. It felt like being engulfed into the furry belly of an upright grizzly bear smothering me with warmth, but cutting me off from any real contact with the outside world. They were huge. One by one, we then gathered outside, surrendering to the call to line up in threes. 'Line up in threes, line up in threes, line up in threes. Fuckin' hell!'

Plaaatooon, Arrtenshon, our Staff-Sergeant cried as we formed something vaguely similar to a classroom assembly. 'Stand at Ease Stand easy'. He paid no attention to the fact that hardly anyone made a movement one way or the other and proceeded with the inaugural roll call.

When I call your names, you will answer, Sir, he informed us, as he took up a position approximating the centre of the gathering.

Anderson, a short pause... ANDERSON, he bellowed with a voice that made me jump in my loose laced boots.

Sir.
Allen, Sir Benson BENSON Sir Caulfield Sir and on it went.

Whatsisname was decked out in full uniform, right down to his spit polish boots. He meant business and wasn't about to take any crap from anyone. He roll-called, and each in our turn called out 'Sir'.

Davidson, Sir. Elson, Siron and on it went.

Harris HARRIS Sir Kelly. Thank God. I was awake and ready. Sir.

*

The memory of those first days has stayed with me all this time. It's something you just don't forget. Today I see regular soldiers serving in East Timor and Afghanistan and it seems to me that history is repeating itself even though there is no conscription anymore. Two words come to mind: 'stupid' and 'useless'. Afghanistan is a basket case and will never be solved militarily.

But wait! Australia is playing another 'ashes' series with the 'old enemy'. There are some in Australia who think England is a basket case too. England looked good in Cardiff for one day, Australia looked good for four. The result: a draw. Now they have arrived to play at Lords where England hasn't beaten us in a hundred years. No one has ever won a war in Afghanistan for over a hundred years either. On a more important note, the spy business with China is stepping up a notch. Kevin has told them they'd better watch out or cop some flak from the rest of the business world. The Chinese won't be bluffed though. Their economy is booming again and it seems that a booming again China will save the rest of the world from economic pestilence and ruination. So, they've told the business world to 'shove it' and don't interfere. One gets the impression listening to our politicians that the world still fears China. When I was growing up, China was the 'bad guy' because they were communist. Today, nobody gives a rat's hiss that China is communist. Today, we all fear China because if they don't continue to grow and develop their market economy, the rest of the world will suffer; such is our reliance on their appetite for an improved standard of living. We need THEM to maintain OUR standard of living!

8.

Back in 1965, at Puckapunyal, kitchen duty was a new experience for most of us. I had a slight advantage having been assigned such duty before at the Wangaratta Juniorate, but this was a nightmare. The kitchen was bigger than the Melbourne Town Hall. We started by having breakfast in the mess. Eggs and bacon, toast, coffee, at 0430 hrs. By 0450 hrs, we were ordered to return to the kitchen where a mountain of dirty, greasy pots and pans awaited our attention. From that point on, the day deteriorated progressively. All day long, bus load after bus load brought more and more bewildered, confused young men through the mess hall. It was a short but necessary interlude, as they continued on their journey to the Q store, or was it the dentist, or the barber or the commanding officer's pep talk. They came through relentlessly, and every time they returned their plates to the kitchen, my happy little group of newly acquired friends and I had to wash them. Some didn't know what to do with their plates and simply left them on the table. The duty Corporal constantly nominated someone to go about the mess and collect the plates. We all became known as 'that recruit there'. The duty Corporal didn't know our names so he just said, 'that recruit there' and pointed.

'That recruit there.' I looked up to see he was pointing at me. 'Yes you soldier; you go about to these tables here and pick up the dirty dishes that recruit there.' Now he was pointing at someone else, 'Yes I'm calling you, you do the same over that side; on your way lad, on your way.'

Occasionally we were mistaken for real soldiers by conscripts who were coming straight off the buses, through the doors into the mess. We were in uniform. They were still in civvies. They didn't know that we had put on our uniform that morning for the very first time.

What's it like? One poor frightened looking fellow asked me.

What's what like, I replied.

This Army thing, is it hard?

Yeah, but it's a great life, I told him, you're going to love it.

I didn't want to be too cruel to him. After all, I felt the same as he did, yesterday. We young men of just twenty years had been assembled together as one, without regard to personal space, delicacy of sleep patterns or individual culinary preference. We were together for reasons quite remote from those that I experienced at Wangaratta. Although the setting was vaguely familiar, I realised that these young men with whom I was now inextricably linked, were not about to speak of their desire to serve God, or to live a life in the pursuit of godliness, carrying out good works toward their fellow man. No, suddenly, I realised that I was in a fucking concentration camp. It was time to do some quick thinking. My mother Noreen would have been horrified that one of her own had been thrown so callously into this den of iniquity. The place was without doubt going to be an ongoing 'occasion of sin'. Saying the rosary each night in the mess was unlikely and I didn't hold out much hope for Morning Prayer. I deduced that some compromise was going to be necessary. If I was going to be seen as one of the boys, I reasoned that it was going to be prudent for me to engage in a little role reversal. That meant ditching everything I had ever learnt at home, and at school, and start learning about life in the fast lane. That meant telling lies about a lot of things: where I'd been, what I'd done, how drunk I could get, swearing profusely, and bragging about how many times I'd slept with a girl. I was now on the other side of life, the side everyone thus far had tried to shield me from. All this I worked out, inside the first forty eight hours.

Our platoon's kitchen duty lasted four days. On day five we were introduced to our rifles. A self loading, magazine fed, bolt action 7.62 calibre something or other. It was very technical and I really wasn't into the technology of modern warfare. All I knew was, that if I fired it, and someone was in the way, they would most likely be terminally hurt. It really wasn't for firing anyway. It was for holding while marching and doing other tricks that invariably caused me to drop it on my foot. There was no greater sin than dropping one's rifle on one's own foot, unless you accidentally dropped it on the foot of your drill instructor. Our drill instructor Corporal Hendricks, a veteran of the Malayan emergency, didn't like that at all. He became very upset and shouted his displeasure right into my face. The veins in his neck expanded and protruded all the way up to his head. You could tell he wasn't happy.

Cum ere you 'orrible little man, he said, and I took one step forward. What's your name, recruit?

Kelly, Corporal.

Recruit Kelly you dropped your rifle.

Yes Corporal, it fell out of my hands.

Noooooo It didn't. It didn't fall out of your hands lad, Yoooo dropped it, didn't yooo?

Yes Corporal.

Yoooo won't let that 'appen again will yoooo Recruit Kelly?

I certainly hope not Corporal.

Nooooooo you don't hope not Recruit Kelly, yoooooo know don't you? It won't 'appen again because you won't let it happen will you?

No Corporal.

I was anxious to please him. I thought that if his veins stuck out any further they might just pop out.

Just to help you remember that Recruit Kelly, take your weapon up in your 'ands, raise your arms and run around the parade ground until I tell you to stop. Go, go, go!

The look in his eyes told me he was deadly serious. I felt I should do his bidding. Better not to cause a scene. There is something to be said for solidarity in the face of adversity though, and my obedience was the catalyst. As I ran around the parade ground with my rifle above my head, I notice that one, two, no, actually it was three more of my fellow recruits were doing the same. Did they drop their rifles in sympathy? It didn't matter. It was very reassuring to know that the brotherhood of the oppressed was alive and well in the Army.

On day six, we were finally able to sleep in. We had forgotten what day it was. We knew it only by number. When we paraded at 0600 outside our barracks, our Platoon Commander, who, I subsequently learnt had a name, was standing ready to address us after roll-call.

Good morning gentlemen, Lieutenant Couples began. Today is day six. Please pay attention. This is important for both you and the Army in general. If, before you arrived here last week you had a love affair, and by that I mean that you had sexual intercourse, it may be that you will start to experience a burning sensation when you urinate. If you do, you are to report it to the Medical Orderly immediately. It may be that you are in the first stages of Venereal Disease. It is not a crime to contract V.D. but it is a crime not to report it. Make sure that you treat this advice seriously. That's all Corporal.

That address really put the wind up me. No, I wasn't experiencing any burning, thank God but the very thought of it gave me the chills.

Lieutenant Couples had inadvertently set off a ticking time bomb with his comments about what we might or might not have been doing the week before we arrived. Homesickness descended upon our platoon. There was something truly melancholy that evening in the barracks. Grown men sitting in little groups, heads down, cigarette smoke wafting above, sharing a common lament. Benson started it off.

Jeez I miss my girlfriend, I wish I could call her somehow.

If I can't talk to my girl soon I'm going over the hill, said Anderson. 'Over the hill' was a metaphor for, 'packing my bags and going over the hill far away where no one will ever catch me'. One by one we began to talk to each other about who we had left behind. Each of us had our own story to tell, the rest happy to listen, gaining strength from the camaraderie of it all. Unashamedly, we poured out our emotional attachments, we announced our true loves, and to a lesser extent our intimacies to others we had only known a matter of days. Midway into the second week, that melancholy descended one step further into disarray.

The Ordinary Mess was now open for business from seven to nine thirty in the evening. That meant grog on tap. The three phones outside the mess were now also open. It was a maelstrom. Approximately two hundred, disillusioned, homesick, 'fed up to the back teeth with this Army crap' young men attacked the bar and the phones. They joined two queues. The queue for the phone was only marginally longer. But when someone in the phone queue, realised that others in the bar queue were buying beers for those ahead of them, in exchange for a place in the phone queue, all hell broke loose. Threats to one's personal safety were uttered fearlessly. Dubious references to one's parentage were common place; the tenderness demonstrated by one another just days before was forgotten, and as could have been predicted, it wasn't long before fists started flying. It took the Platoon Sergeants from all five platoons of 'E' Company, plus some help from some less passionate recruits, to quell the disturbances. A time limit was placed on the phone call but no limit was placed on the grog. A more experienced officer would have arranged it otherwise.

Several days after my introduction to the army's kitchen duty, we had our first religious gathering. From this I deduced that it must have been Sunday. But it was day twelve so I also realised that the Army had tricked us, and missed one Sunday already. We were separated into three groups, Catholic, Anglican and 'the rest'. We Catholics were marched to the RC chapel, told to remove our hats and ushered inside. Any thoughts I had that God might be turning a blind eye to my thoughts, words, and deeds while I was here were quickly dismissed. The chaplain's sermon during mass took care of that.

You have not come into the Army as soldiers. You have come in as Catholics, and you are old enough to know what is expected of you, he said.

SHIT!

To me, the chaplain's words were a clear message from the top. I may have been removed from the watchful eye of parents, teachers and our local parish priest, but I would never be free from the responsibilities that came with being born into the Church, being born a Catholic. God would be watching no matter where I was sent; no matter what I was doing. Nothing had changed. A mere handful took communion that day. The good chaplain had a lot of work in front of him.

In the Army I did not have the luxury of scrutinising, of checking out my companions for the dreaded occasion of sin. I was living with these young men as closely as I lived with my own family. We were all new to this soldier business, a little bewildered as to why we were here, and most of us a little frightened. A mentally overpowering Regimental Sergeant Major could quite easily replace your fear of God, or suddenly appear to be God himself, when his voice reached high 'c' and he demonstrated his own special formula of ridicule and personal abuse. When He appeared on the parade ground to look us up and down, we simply held our breath, fixed our eyes firmly on something directly ahead, anything at all, and hoped that he could not smell fear.

Our training program had now begun in earnest. Immediately it shattered my initial thoughts that this was going to be a great adventure. We learned how to wear our uniforms correctly. We wore jungle greens during the day and battle dress after training, a sort of dress for dinner outfit, including beige tie.

We learned how to line up, how to dismiss, how to stand to attention, how to stand easy, how to open order march, how to close order march, slow drill, double time, single file. We learned how to clean, thoroughly, spotlessly, shine in your face clean, spit and polish clean, how to salute, and who to salute. It was officers only, left hand to the side, with right hand longest way up, shortest way down. We learned how to hold a rifle, not to kill, only to march, how to shoulder arms, above the arms, below the arms, on the ground but for Christ's sake don't ever drop it. We learned how to clean, thoroughly, spotlessly, shine in your face clean, spit and polish clean. We learned how to walk single file in the bush, quietly, quickly, how to apply first aid and how to clean, thoroughly, spotlessly, shine in your face clean, spit and polish clean. The Army was the cleanest place I had ever seen.

One simple rule covers all, bellowed our section Corporal. If it moves, salute it, if it doesn't, clean it!

What we learnt, was governed by how we learnt it. Our instructors had their own peculiar ways of getting their message across. They did it by numbers and through effective use of the tactic of 'fear'. The most effective manifestation of that tactic was in shouting abuse on the parade ground while teaching us to march. In the middle of winter with the chill winds of July blowing down the hill, onto E Company parade ground, our left hand almost frozen to the handle of our rifle, we stood to attention suffering the weather, rather than provoke the ire of our drill instructor.

But he was provoked anyway.

Plaatoooon Arrtenshon! Corporal Hendricks bellowed.

One, one two! We screamed.

What the hell was that...Recruit Kelly? What the hell was that?

I was coming to attention Corporal.

That wasn't coming to attention Recruit Kelly; that was a pregnant cow getting up off the ground. Let's try it again. Plaatoooon Arrtenshon!

One, one two! We screamed again.

Recruit Anderson, are you waiting for a bus?

No Corporal.

Then stop leaning on your rifle you horrible little man, what are you?

A horrible little man Corporal.

Plaatoooon Artenshon!

One one, two! We tried a third time.

That's half better. By the right, kaweark march. Ef, ef, efrigh ef. Plaatoooon Halt!

One two! We cried.

Where the hell do you people think you are? This isn't Sunday school! Recruit Benson who do you think you're looking at?

I'm looking at you, Corporal.

Benson thought he gave the right answer.

What the hell for Recruit Benson? What the hell for?

I don't know Corporal. Poor Benson! He didn't deserve this, really!

Don't look at me Recruit Benson you dim dozy dickhead. As long as your arse is pointing south you look to the front. At all times you will look to the front, do you understand Recruit Benson?

Yes Sir!

He didn't mean to call him 'Sir'. He was just a bit rattled.

Don't call me Sir, Recruit Benson. I am not a Sir!

Yes Corporal!

It didn't matter which instructor was in charge, they all did it that way. A wrong answer resulted in twenty press ups, or a run up and down a hill. Sometimes, for a minor misdemeanour, a soldier would have to run some two hundred yards across the parade ground to where another instructor was similarly engaged in his version of abuse with his squad of recruits. The soldier was told to say, 'Corporal Hendricks said that I am a dim dozy dickhead.' He would then be told to return to Corporal Hendricks with a reply.

When his moment came however, Benson couldn't resist the temptation. He ran just fifty yards toward the next group and stopped.

Corporal Hendricks, he yelled out, is a dim dozy dickhead.

The good Corporal did not understand the meaning of 'a little light relief', and Benson was down on the ground doing another twenty press ups.

Our P.T. Instructor was a little different though, and always ready to provide a little light relief.

By the Jesus, you fellows are going to get fit no matter if it kills you,' he bellowed. 'We'll be doing lots of running, marching at the double, lots of press ups, lots of good healthy exercise everyday and supplement that with lots of food, in fact everything that's good for you.

Recruit Hollyfield then asked the obvious question. What about sex? Everyone held their breath.

Sex? the PT instructor responded, Sex is good for you, he said and gained rousing cheers all round. With one light-hearted comment he had won the hearts of the common man.

But sex wasn't good for us; at least unprotected sex that is. We found that out later, when we were ushered into the auditorium one night and given a lecture on Venereal Diseases and the importance of using condoms. It was followed by a graphic educational film on Syphilis and Gonorrhoea. I had never seen anything like it before and it made me nauseous; full-blown pictures of diseased penises with ugly puss ridden sores. Not content with that, we were shown graphic pictures of how the disease can spread to other parts of the body. I had had enough and moved to leave. A few of the soldiers laughed at me.

Fuck you, I shot back. As I walked toward the rear door, Corporal Hendricks stopped me.

Where do you think you are going Recruit Kelly?

I replied simply and honestly.

Corporal, if I stay here, I am going to throw up. I can't take any more of this.

He hesitated for a moment and then said, Okay you can go. Wait outside. I did, and within two or three minutes I had company. Other similarly distressed lads, probably as green and inexperienced in the ways of the world as I joined me for a cigarette, relieved that we did not have to watch any more. The nausea passed quickly despite the sounds of groans and squeals coming from inside the training hut. We deduced that it was from lads who were either enjoying this morbid demonstration in some perverse way or who were throwing up on the floor, unable to escape in time.

We drew strength from our loved ones, because there was nothing to love about the Army, and the Army did not pretend to love us. For the Army, this was business as usual. They had no handbook response to lethargy and discontent. They were simply doing their government's bidding. They were used to volunteer recruits; men who came willingly, and did not complain or try to run away. They struggled to counsel rebellious conscripts whose lives had been abruptly turned upside down and who from time to time made their feelings known. So they handled the matter the only way they knew how. They either placed us on a warning, or responded with threats of their own. Simple violations, such as failing to obey an order instantly won a soldier twenty press ups. Trying to desert, going AWOL, merited a confinement to barracks with extra drill duty after hours. If a soldier went AWOL and it took a while to locate and return him to barracks, twenty one days in Holsworthy Military Corrective Establishment was the most likely response, with the 'missing time' added to the end of the two year contract. The threat of having to serve longer than two years made us shudder. It was enough for most of us to try and knuckle down, no matter how much we hated it. We were guinea pigs of the lowest order. We were being assessed for our stamina, our staying power, and our psychological reactions. The results would be tabled and used to guide the Army on how to overcome difficulties that arose with future intakes. Clever bastards!

After six weeks of shock and awe, we were given a four day leave pass and a rail ticket home. We were bussed in to Seymour railway station where special trains were waiting to take us to Melbourne. My father met me at Spencer Street station and brought me home to civilization. Never did four days race by so quickly; I barely had time to catch up with anybody, but in hindsight, that was probably a blessing. If I had been given more time to gauge how little anyone in Civvi Street cared about us, how ambivalent attitudes were, I might have taken ship and sailed off to join my brother Brian, and never come home until Gough Whitlam had won government in 1972 and set us all free. Arriving back at camp on the last night of leave, there was an air of resignation in our conversation. Some spoke of what they did over the past three days, but most spoke of what lay ahead. It would be more of the same; of getting through recruit training and moving on to corps training. After our long awaited leave break, we realised that we were no longer civilians in uniform. We were soldiers, and for many of us, the very notion, was absorbed with increasing discomfort. The Vietnam War began claiming Australian lives, soldiers' lives and the talk from politicians was for continued support. For some of us, Vietnam was looming. After that first leave break the next six weeks were consumed with weapons training, an overnight bivouac, inoculations and lectures as well as marching drill. Firing rounds from a SLR 7.62 calibre rifle left a filthy black residue in the barrel. It took a special skill to clean it; running a piece of weighted cord with a cloth attached through the barrel and pulling it out at the top. The skill, was being able to do it as many times as necessary to pass our instructor's visual inspection. Stripping our best friend had a whole new meaning in the Army. Our best friend was our weapon. We took it to pieces, gave it our tender, loving, cleaning, care, before putting it back together again. The same process applied to the other two weapons we used. The M60 machine gun was a weapon capable of quite lethal destruction of anything placed in its way, and the Carbine, a nifty little piece of metal that cut up anything at short range, so long as you could aim it accurately.

Weapons training involved firing at stationary targets, moving targets, targets that jumped out from behind trees and phantom targets. It involved discerning an enemy target from a friendly source. I just shot the lot of them and mostly missed. The afternoon of our final tests as we advanced down the range in the blinding rain, I fired my weapon only to have it misfire repeatedly. The bolt jammed. I did not get off all my rounds. Yet later, the notice-board showed that I had passed, scoring a miraculous fifteen hits from twenty discharges. When our target results were posted on the notice board, I suspected foul play. Some one in a position of authority obviously did not want to have to go back out into the rain to repeat the morning's work. I suspected someone fudged the paper work a trifle. I realized then, that if it was easy for them to fudge the paperwork, then perhaps their hearts were not as resolute as they should have been.

I spent my first night out in the open. My father never took us camping. One night out in the bush and I knew why. Man was not born to live in the bush. Man was born to live in houses. The bush was cold and wet. It contained little things that crawled into your pockets at night, thus proving that not even little things that crawled around at night, liked being there. We were trucked out several miles from barracks, dropped into the middle of nowhere and told to set up our base. There were no tables or chairs to sit at, when we ate. We sat on the ground or a tree stump and ate with one hand forking food into our mouths, the other to brush away the flies. We shaved in cold water. More blood was spilt than at Custer's last stand. There were no toilets. It was disgusting and demeaning to be given a shovel and a piece of paper and told to follow your nose. The bush latrine was a communal trench in the ground, up to ten feet long. I had to squat. 'Jesus, how disgusting!' Thank goodness it was only for one night.

We marched and marched, by the right quick march, by the right slow march, open order march, present arms. The instructors were becoming increasingly frustrated. We were not doing it right, and they threatened us with failure and a re-posting to Kapooka, the New South Wales equivalent of our training establishment, to do it all over again. We were smart enough to realise that this was a ploy. They were making the same threats in reverse to our brothers in captivity at Kapooka. When we began to rehearse the drill for our passing out parade, we were also smart enough to realise that it was to be a showcase to the media, to our families and to the rest of the country. We could screw up big time, or make an effort. This was not some fancy school where one could be expelled for poor performance.

During the second half of our recruit training, I received a letter from my father, telling me that my mother was undergoing radiology treatment for a cancer growth in her hip. He said there was nothing to be concerned about, but I knew that was not true. My father had never written to me before. His news sent me into a state of shock. My mother was ill. She was diagnosed with some form of cancer in the hip and was undergoing ray treatment. This was a new experience for me, the realisation that parents don't live forever, that the time had come when I had to take these things seriously, that I was an adult and had to approach it as an adult. Some weeks before our passing out parade we were asked to submit our preferences for the corps units we would like to be assigned. I had no idea what I wanted, but I knew what I didn't want. The Infantry! The Infantry were foot sloggers, cannon fodder, and the most expendible form of life in the Army. Infantry soldiers were sent to Vietnam and were shot at. They were always the ones engaging the enemy. The Armoured corps personnel were protected inside their tanks and personnel carriers. The Artillery was derisively referred to as nine mile snipers, for good reason. They never saw the damage they did. I nominated for Service Corps as a first preference because it seemed safe and administrative, less hard slog; often referred to as green grocers, they sounded perfect. My second choice was Artillery, because they were referred to as gentlemen and it sounded like the Army needed more of them. Included in my request, I enclosed a copy of my father's letter describing my mother's condition. It seemed to have no effect. When the announcements came, I along with the vast majority of my brothers in pain, was assigned to the Infantry and despite all the threats and lamentations about our poor progress, we were all promoted from recruit, to the rank of Private.

Our passing out parade was a major moment for the Army, the politicians, the demonstrators, families, television crews, and if we were silly enough to believe all the hype, the North Vietnamese were shitting themselves in fear. Thousands of friends and relatives made the journey up from Melbourne. The roads were clogged with traffic banking up three miles out from RTC Puckapunyal. There were literally dozens of cameramen and journalists willing to shove a microphone in any face they thought would produce a story. The band played Waltzing Matilda, the Commanding Officer took the salute, the crowd roared their applause, we marched our hearts out, and thank Christ it was finally over, and we were dismissed to the waiting arms of family and loved ones.

My parents made the journey up the Hume Highway even though it was physically difficult for my mother. She saw little to get excited about as I gave everyone a guided tour of the camp and my barracks. When I asked her about her treatment, she assured me everything was fine and that the treatment she was having would expel the cancer. I introduced her to one or two soldiers I felt would not give her cause for depression. They were ordinary guys just like me and they didn't disappoint me.

We were shipped out to our Corps training units the next day. I was posted to the Infantry Training Centre at Ingleburn in New South Wales, about thirty miles west of Sydney. It was as far away from home as I had ever been, and I was separated from most of those I had lived with, for the past three months. We were assigned to a new platoon with new faces from other companies, and trucked out again to Seymour railway station, only this time the train travelled north.

At Ingleburn, it was like starting over again and homesickness reared its depressing head. I was worried about my mother and I was sick of this Army business and wanted the whole thing to go away. The nature of the training was very similar, but carried out at a more intense level. We were introduced to deadlier weaponry; rocket launchers and hand grenades. We were taught contact drills, and jungle training, all with what seemed to be a greater sense of urgency. The instructors were all Sergeants this time, not Corporals, more frightening and less forgiving. Watch out if we ever called them 'Sarge'; they did not like it. There was much talk about Vietnam, about a larger force being sent there, and I began to feel as if I were caught up in a net from which there was no escape. Field exercises were more intense, but differed only in the length of time we were out overnight in the scrub. The longest was nine days. Nine days sleeping under the stars, or the rain, with only a very thin plastic poncho to protect us. The food rations left us continually hungry, unless we were smart enough to stock up on chocolate and biscuits from the canteen before we left. There were no showers, but there was a mandatory requirement to shave every day, and we still had to crap into an open trench, adopting the squat position, while trying desperately not to fall in. Sleep was interrupted because we had to stand on guard duty for two hours each night. Occasionally we would be 'attacked' at night by an 'enemy' who fired off noisy blank rounds for hours, continually interrupting our sleep and constantly calling out unsettling and abusive messages. On these nights, we didn't sleep at all, but we still had a full compliment of activities the next day. I came to hate the bush and the March flies that hovered over me while I tried to heat an eight ounce can of stew in a little hole, dug out to protect the tiny flame from the wind. Coming back to our barracks from field training was like coming home. A hot shower, some real food and a nice warm bed; on such occasions the barracks were Heaven.

Three months later, Infantry corps training ended without too much hype or fanfare. There was another passing out parade, this time more subdued, but it didn't prevent me from stuffing up. It was a simple mistake. I do remember being issued with my new Infantry corps badge, and I recall some soldiers applying the brasso to bring it up to peak condition. But I do not remember any one telling me that I needed it to replace the rising sun. Our slouched hat, an Australian Army talisman, was not the simple piece of equipment it appeared to be. The badge aloft the hat, that so proudly displayed the blazing emblem of the rising sun, was issued to us as recruits. Upon our graduation to the Infantry corps, a new badge specifically struck for the Infantry became the official issue. I just do not remember any one telling me so. Thankfully there was no crowd of proud parents, journalists or television cameramen to witness my neglect. It seemed that the initial interest had subsided. Maybe they didn't think we were newsworthy any more. Perhaps we were now yesterday's story. Small mercies!

We assembled on the parade ground for the passing out parade. The company Sergeant-Major was making a last minute inspection of the troops. He noticed that I had not changed my Rising Sun badge on my slouched hat. He looked at my hat, then back at me, and then let fly.

Your badge soldier, where is your badge?

What badge is that sir?

The Infantry badge! He said, That badge, he said, pointing to the hat of the soldier in front of me.

In my locker sir. I answered.

What's it doing in your locker soldier? You are supposed to fit it to your hat! He wasn't happy.

I didn't realise sir.

There was a long pause. He looked up the line to see how soon proceedings would begin. The Commanding Officer was making his way down toward the parade ground. The Sergeant-Major concluded that there was not sufficient time for me to return to barracks, replace the badge and rejoin the platoon.

Get off the parade ground now, he ordered, pointing the way.

Yes sir.

Get back to the barracks. We don't want you here. Get away now.

I was dishonourably dismissed. He was very angry and I did not want to annoy him any more. I did his bidding, returned to barracks and waited for the inevitable recriminations. I had not endeared myself to anyone during this period of my training. There were no favours to call up, no plea bargaining. So I sat in barracks and waited, and while I waited, I apologetically fitted the new badge to my hat.

The passing out parade proceeded with piped music, the C.O. took the salute. An award was given to the most conscientious soldier and soon it was all over. The troops returned to barracks and as they made their way in, I thought, 'now I'm for it'. I waited for the call. It did not come. This was cruel and unusual punishment, making me wait like this expecting the worst, sweating out all the possible scenarios. 'What will it be? Extra drill, cancellation of leave, what?' An hour passed and nothing happened. I decided to tempt fate. I joined the assembly for dinner. The Sergeant-Major looked us over, looked me straight in the eye, and dismissed us to the mess. He had forgotten. Either that or he was an enormously forgiving man. I blessed him, thankful that being unremarkable in this man's Army had its advantages.

The letter from my father that I had attached to my corps request application at Puckapunyal was to have far reaching consequences. When Infantry training finished, we were posted to our Battalions. We were given no opportunity to select a location this time. We were in the hands of the number crunchers. Most of the soldiers at the centre were posted to 5th Battalion R.A.R. stationed in Queensland, the next most likely Battalion, we were told, to be sent to Vietnam. I had not endeared myself to anyone of my instructors during this phase, and probably would have joined them. However, my father's letter had been attached to my file, and precipitated an alternative posting. I was posted to the newly formed 7th. Battalion RAR stationed at Puckapunyal, and for the time being at least, they weren't going anywhere. I had eluded the ever threatening prospect of overseas service. 7th Battalion was a new Battalion consisting of veterans from 3rd. Battalion RAR who had served in Malaysia. The rest were National Servicemen. Much of the stringent discipline of recruit training and corps training was gone now, and replaced with a high degree of seasoned maturity, with soldiers who knew their job, knew when they could play, and when they could not. This, for we newcomers, was training we couldn't buy. We watched highly trained experts at work, followed their lead, their example, and as we did, we realised why Australian soldiers were held in such high regard. They were very good at their job and I felt a strange sense of pride being in their company. I was also now able to go home every second weekend. That helped me feel more relaxed about my mother.

Throughout the two years I spent in the army, the dark shadow of Vietnam hovered over my head; from recruit training to Infantry corps training, then a posting to 7th Battalion RAR. But it never happened. My mother's health delayed an overseas posting and my two years were up before 7th Battalion was shipped out. On the day of my discharge at 9AM, I was at Watsons Bay in Sydney; so were about four hundred other conscripts, all of us wanting the same thing, an interim discharge certificate. To say it was a shambles would be an understatement but then again, the Army had never faced anything like this since the end of the Second World War. There were bound to be a few hiccups, not to mention a few hot under-the-collar moments. The frustration of some, manifested itself in personal abuse of the clerks who were doing the best they could to process so many applications. Some soldiers had to be reminded that they were still officially soldiers and were subject to Army law. A Warrant Officer came in to see what all the fuss was about, and threatened to charge any soldier who stepped out of line. What I had expected to take an hour or so, was not achieved until about 4.30 in the afternoon. Still, eventually we were issued with a piece of paper that said we were free. There were one or two familiar faces from recruit training, who like me, had avoided Vietnam and had been stationed at other units around the country. We travelled into the city, found a place to have a drink, a talk and a meal. There was no great sense of jubilation or a feeling that we needed to celebrate anything. I think we were all just relieved that it was finally over.

But it wasn't all over. Trying to resume a normal life again after two years of total disruption, disorientation and bewilderment was never going to be easy. I was lost, confused and unable to find my proper place. Returning to an office environment in Civvi Street just one week after discharge was not properly thought through. With the benefit of hindsight I should have packed my bags and headed off to Europe as Brian had done three years earlier. He and the beautiful Aggie Rholeder from Indiana were now married and living in Melbourne. That event took place one year previously, while I was enjoying the exotic setting of Canungra Jungle Training Centre in Queensland. Within weeks of my discharge David and Kathleen were married, Mary was still deciding who she was going to marry, but I was like a lost soul wandering a strange planet searching for what? I didn't know. Looking back now, I realize that from the time I returned home from Wangaratta, I had been wandering through life, disillusioned, lost and confused. My disillusionment manifested itself in some poor behaviour and my mother, Noreen copped the brunt of it; I was prone to sudden outbursts of anger and rage over petty issues. She didn't deserve that, and as circumstances evolved, I did not have the opportunity to set things right.

9.

My mother Noreen died of a cerebral haemorrhage on Thursday evening 22nd January 1970 at St Vincent's Hospital in Melbourne after collapsing into a coma earlier in the day. I was working at Bacchus Marsh that day when I received a phone call from the office to call home. Peter was home on leave from his work with the Columban Missionary Society in South Korea. He told me what had happened and what the likely outcome would be. I came home immediately and joined other family members at the hospital soon after.

At the hospital, I remember being ushered behind a screen, and standing at my mother's bedside. I looked down on her pale but peaceful face, and I held one of her hands. Her eyes were closed, her body motionless, unconscious. I spoke to her the best way that I knew how; it was hopelessly inadequate, but it reflected the true depth of my emotion. I was gutted. She passed away soon after. Just two days later at her funeral, the church was packed. It was to be expected. Our family had been a part of this parish community for thirty years, and Noreen's life and final struggle was no secret. My brother Peter, showed enormous strength of character to participate as a con-celebrant at her Requiem and to act as spokesperson on behalf of the family. Later that morning after the long drive to the cemetery, I remember thinking as I watched her coffin being lowered into the ground: 'At least you never had to learn about Brother Bertinus; that would have killed you even sooner.' Why he of all people should come to mind at that particular time, I don't know. Perhaps the memory of him was there all the time, buried deep in my sub-conscious, waiting for an unguarded moment when it could once again emerge and set about implementing a disruptive agenda.

But the living have to go on living and we all did that as best we could while grieving silently, unable to find the words that would help us through this awful time. I'd like to say each of my siblings handled everything pretty well, but I really don't know. We never spoke to each other about how we felt. We did it the Irish way, holding it in, quietly, isolating our sorrow, pretending we were over it and ready to resume normal life. But we weren't over it. Not by a long shot. Only a few months before this, I met Joanne and we began going out together, but regrettably, I never brought her home to meet Noreen. Joanne unwittingly helped me through the weeks and months that followed. I still felt terribly isolated, but somehow having her close by made it more bearable. We were engaged shortly after and married later the same year.

My father kept his innermost feelings to himself as well. Perhaps he didn't want us to see him in a distressed state; married to my mother for thirty six years, he came from the same mould. In trying to guage his emotional state as it was then, I often feel his heart did not relish embracing the religious faith with the same passion that ruled my mother's attitudes. He came from a rougher, less inhibited background, strong Irish connections yes, but weathered by the harsh nature of his own father's tough upbringing. My grand-father Joseph Kelly was the youngest of seven children and never knew his father, Mark. Some of Joseph's siblings were institutionalized because their mother Julia could not take care of them. The family was split and that rooted a strong sense of survival within each and perhaps too, a survival of the fittest mentality. My grand-father showed little interest in his grand-children and we showed little interest in him. My only memories are his occasional appearance on a Saturday evening when he, my father Jim, and his twin brother Frank came home from the football and the three of them would drink on into the night and 'Pop' Kelly as we called him would make endless trips to the outside toilet to relieve himself. 'Pop' Kelly was a barman and that explains a whole lot to me about Jim and Frank's fondness for grog. They were a happy pair of drunks, never aggressive, always ready for a song or two when the moment was right. But my father was also a very practical person, hard working, dedicated to his family and socially minded and although he supported Noreen's relentless religious agenda, I don't think his heart was always in it. I rather think he would have preferred Mark and Julia to have left their religion back in Glanmire. I know I do.

After my mother's death, he soldiered on, enjoying a free rein with Frank, no longer restrained by a disapproving wife but I know he missed her terribly. Joanne and I became engaged a few months after Noreen died. I was working as a sales representative for Amoco, the American Oil company. I liked the oil industry. To advance my career prospects I defected to Amoco from BP where I had been pre-army. Joanne had moved down from Queensland with a girlfriend and worked at Amoco. Soon after I began there, we started going out together. Shortly after my mother died, I was posted to Hamilton and to some extent that sped up our plans to marry. Joanne was not Catholic and we were subjected to an absurd series of 'talks' with a priest prior to our wedding. We both sat there listening to this half-hearted attempt to impress upon her the Catholic view on marriage and family. Having put up with that, we were married in Brisbane in September, 1970 on Preliminary Final day. Notwithstanding my father's love of football, he turned his back on the second most important day of the footy calendar and came north to celebrate another of his sons tying the knot. My brothers and sisters came, Geoffrey from across the road was my best man and the only one missing was Noreen. That hurt all of us but probably Dad more than anyone, and left a gaping hole in all our wedding photos.

Joanne and I settled in Hamilton but not comfortably. The isolation unsettled us and we longed for a life in the city closer to family. Within a year I was transferred to Ballarat, only one hour from Melbourne and we were happier there. 1971 came, and with it the emergence of Hawthorn as a football powerhouse. I joined a local football team at Springbank, but was never good enough to make the senior side; still, I was more than happy to be playing in the reserves. It gave me the chance to listen to the football in Melbourne each Saturday afternoon while barracking for Springbank seniors. When Hawthorn made the Grand Final I decked the car out in brown and gold streamers and we drove to Melbourne to the astonishment of everyone we passed. I had patiently waited ten years for this moment and I wasn't going to let it pass by without a Yeehaw! It was a brutal game with both sides leaving a trail of blood all over the field. At three quarter time I thought we were gone as St. Kilda held a handy lead. Then a bloke by the name of Bob Keddie teamed up with our super-forward Peter Hudson and the Hawks came storming home to win by seven points. Little did I realize then that this second premiership in the club's history was only the beginning. Another eight were to follow over the next 37 years.

Shortly after Joanne and I were married, Brian and Aggie decided to return to the United States to live; a brave move at any time but even more so with two young children in tow. It was somewhat reminiscent of the journey Mark and Julia Kelly undertook in 1867, except that instead of a four month sea journey, it took them just 24 hours. It left a hollow feeling in all of us for a while, particularly for my father. He and Brian were close, perhaps closer than the rest of us, and Jim adored his grand-daughters Anita and Melissa. But Aggie came from a large family in the mid west and they provided plenty of strong support before Brian and his family moved first to Indiana, later settling in St Louis, Missouri.

A year or two later, Brian convinced Dad to get on a plane and come to the USA for a visit. Jim was keen to go and after one or two false starts due to health issues (his heart) we got him in the air. He stayed for a month and returned animated, energized and full of life. He took notes of the places he visited, the people he met and the things he learnt. In his diary he kept a series of phrases commonplace in America but not so obvious to us; so he translated them. One such translation went thus:

'Blowing smoke rings out your arse, same as, pissing in your pocket.'

That little gem identified jovial Jim Kelly better than any I can recall.

My brother Joseph threw a small spark into the fire when he married Sally....outside the church! This was front page news back then. None of us had thus far bucked the system; although I ran it close marrying Joanne, a non-Catholic. Joseph went one better and turned his back on the church altogether: a brave move at the time. My father handled it well, all things considered. I think he was just happy to see them married considering they had been living together up until then. 'Tell them to get married,' he said to me once, 'it's embarrassing.' But he didn't mean it. I think he stood proud as he canvassed all his children's achievements great and small. He enjoyed his grand-children too, and they were now being born in fairly rapid succession.

These were some of the pressures we had to deal with when it came to starting our lives as adults. The 'pill' was another. I was sort of let off the hook. Joanne wasn't Catholic and she was damned if the Church was going to tell her what to do. I did not object so I suppose by association I was damned too. I know some of my siblings struggled with the Church's big-brother attitude but took the pill anyway, and others didn't take it at all. But, notwithstanding all of those pressures the next generation of children found their way into the world; Anita, Paul, Fiona, Angela, Melissa, Matthew, Stephen, Travis, Damien, Bronwyn, Christopher, Sarah and Lisa. Even Joseph and Sally came good with four of their own: Kathryn, Alexander, Laura and James.

Our son Travis was born in 1974 and Sarah arrived in 1976. I followed convention and both went to Catholic primary and secondary schools even though the local state school was only 200 metres away. Joanne couldn't see the logic but went along with it anyway. In hindsight, our children would have performed equally as well at a state school. I don't follow the argument that private schools get better results. It is not the school that makes the child. It is the child that makes the school.

My father played lawn bowls; he lived for it. It was his weekend social highlight. I can't remember when he started, probably in his late forties but he was still going strong at aged 68 until one Saturday all the cholesterol and fat in his diet coupled with a hopelessly inadequate exercise plan caught him out. Earlier that day I went over to the house to see him. I had my son, Travis with me; he was just three at the time. We sat and chatted for a half hour while Dad had a light lunch before heading off to the Kew Bowling Club in Wellington Street. Travis and I left him around midday. I had no way of knowing then that we would be the last members of the family to see him alive.

Around three that afternoon I was working in the garden when Joanne called out to say my cousin 'Jim' Kelly was on the phone. 'Jim' was Frank's eldest son and he broke the news to me that Dad had suffered a heart attack at the club. By the time I contacted the club he had died and I had the unenviable job of going to the Coroner's court to formally identify him. It was a shit of a day but through it all I couldn't help thinking that he went happily socializing with his mates; in all probability it was the way he would have chosen to go. It was a good death. He was in good company dying in 1977; Errol Garner the jazz pianist joined him, Sir Anthony Eden, former British prime minister, actor Peter Finch, comedian Eddie 'Rochester' Anderson from the Jack Benny show, actress Joan Crawford. Jim Kelly would have been very much at home with those people; a musician, a politician a comedian and some actors all partying together. Throw in Maria Callas, Bing Crosby and Elvis Presley and I bet it was a hoot. Of course, he was unimpressed with Hawthorn's success in the 70's. He was a Collingwood man, the poor fellow. Mercifully though, his passing in 1977 saved him from the embarrassment of seeing his team lose four grand finals in the next five years; but I'm sure the whiskey and a few 'Americanisms' from his travel diary would have taken care of that.

10.

Having followed my journey this far, you have probably gathered that I am a somewhat benign, humorous fellow; gentle, unassuming and even compassionate. Actually I am none of those things. Those that know me well see quite a different side to this old-fashioned, blatant approach to life that you have surmised. Take our former neighbours for example, John and Suzann Knot who lived next door to us for seventeen years until they could stand no more. John and Ann-Marie Dornam lived opposite for almost as long. They gave up in the end and moved out. Then there was Des and Gabrielle Turner who lived two doors up. We even went to the same church for mass on Sundays. Even they had to wave the white flag and find new lodgings. What caused this mass exodus?

Well, I have a tendency to speak my mind; I believe that's what it's for. Suzann Knott, is a gentle woman, always there when help is needed and who never said a mean word about anybody.....except perhaps Malcolm and the boring Barbara, but we won't go into that. There she was the night I began vomiting and passing blood back in 1977. In those days I was a passionate Hawthorn supporter and at the time my team was going gang-busters, winning almost every week. Every Saturday night, if they won that day, I would stand outside my house at around 8.30 and play the club theme song on a trumpet I borrowed from a neighbour up the street. It got so annoying for the other neighbours some of them took up a petition to have me declared a public nuisance. Not Suzann!

She defended my right to be a public nuisance. Des Turner wanted me hung up on the orange gum outside our house and John Dornam, ever the quiet, polite gentleman, wanted me injected with a performance reducing substance. But Suzann insisted that every citizen had the right to look like an idiot at least once.

So, there I was, vomiting and passing blood in early December. The football season was over; Hawthorn didn't even make the Grand Final, but I was in deep trouble. Joanne called in a locum who suggested I try to drink some milk. I just brought that up again, as you do. Joanne panicked; also as you do, but she had the presence of mind to call Suzann, who came in immediately despite her husband, also called John, suggesting it might be better for everyone if they let me bleed to death. 'Let him go,' John called out as Suzann ran out the front door, 'think of the peace and quiet!' he said. 'It'd be better for the neighbourhood in the long run. Think of the property values.'

Suzann burst through our front door, sized up the situation and said, 'Call an ambulance, now!' An hour later, I was lying on a stretcher, in the corridor of Box Hill Hospital Outpatients, waiting for some medical authority to come along and save my life. Back at my home, Des Turner called up half the neighbourhood who gathered outside my house. His wife Gabrielle suggested they pray together, to which Des replied, 'What for? That he drops off the perch sooner rather than later?' Cruel man that Des. He opened the first of many cans of Carlton Draught and the talking continued on past midnight, some even discussing where they should hold the wake. For Des and the two Johns, justice had been served.

Well, I recovered from that little warning. I had three duodenal ulcers removed by way of a vagotomy and pyloroplasty, and returned home a new man. During my confinement I thought I had been extended a rare sighting of Jesus at the far end of a long tunnel, but the light was so bright I really couldn't be sure. I decided however that it was Jesus and that it was time I set my life on a new path. I was born again! There would be less of 'We're a happy team at Hawthorn,' from now on, and a whole new singing experience with gems like, 'In the name of Jesus.' But, best intentions don't necessarily translate into deeds and there would be a twelve year vacuum prior to the spiritual flow that was to come and during that hiatus there was plenty of action going on with the broader family.

We missed having Brian and Aggie and the girls around and we were not able to watch Anita and Melissa grow up. David was determined that he and Kathleen would go to America to see them. David talked about it endlessly.

We're going to go to America come hell or high water, he said.

Kathleen wasn't so keen.

It's so far away and I don't know how the children would cope. Besides we need a new refrigerator.

One night David rang me. He had obviously cut a deal with Kathleen on the issue. She would get her refrigerator, and he would go to America to see Brian.

I'm going, he said, do you want to come?

An incredible thrill ran through my body. I'd never been overseas before. Could I go? What about Joanne and the children. What about my job?

When?

Next March, we've got four months to put it all together.

How long would we go for?

I dunno, let's say two weeks or so.

He was deadly serious, I could tell by the tone of his voice. I took a moment to toss it around, and then without even discussing it with Joanne, I said okay.

Okay, he said, I'll book the tickets; you'd better get yourself a passport and a visa.

Telling Joanne what had just transpired wasn't all that difficult. I put the phone down, walked back into the rumpus room where she was watching television.

Guess what?

What?

I'm going to America.

Really? That's nice dear; could you make me a cup of coffee before you go?

No, I'm not kidding. David just rang and said he's going, but Kathleen doesn't want to go. She going to get her refrigerator, so he's asked me if I want to go with him, so I said yes.

When?

Next March, what do you think?

How Long?

Two weeks.

A long pause. I could see the whole idea cranking over in her mind. Then, enormous relief.

Can I have a new refrigerator?

We don't need a new refrigerator.

Well, I suppose it would be good for you both to go and see Brian.

What about you? I offered thoughtfully. How do you think you would be on your own with the children for that length of time?

Oh, I'm sure I'll manage. Yes, okay you can go.

It was that easy. I was so excited; the next four months couldn't come quickly enough. That's the thing about time. It doesn't slow down or quicken up for anyone or anything.

We flew out of Melbourne at 6P.M. on Friday evening 7th March, 1980 on a great big Qantas Jumbo. We crossed the international dateline and arrived in San Francisco at 6P.M.on Friday evening 7th March. Time had stood still for the entire journey. Brian was there to meet us. True to form he had booked the three of us into a motel but only as a double. One of us had to wait outside while he checked in. There I was, not five minutes in a foreign country and already an accessory to theft by deception. But as always, when I was with my brothers, I felt safe.

The next morning after breakfast, Brian hired a car and we went sightseeing. All the picture postcards, the television shows, the movies I had seen about life in America now came to life. Fisherman's Wharf, Alcatraz, Chinatown, the Golden Gate Bridge. I was on a high. The following day we flew to Las Vegas. I'd never seen anything like it. What took my breath away more than the bright lights, the traffic and the sheer pace of life in this gambling town was that while we walked along the main Strip, I was propositioned four times by the ladies of the night.

Brian had a business appointment in Phoenix, Arizona on the Monday and from there we flew to his home in St. Louis. Aggie and the children were waiting to meet us at the airport. It was very cold and Aggie said that it was going to snow that night. The next morning I woke and looked out the window of their home in the somewhat affluent suburb of Manchester, and took a deep breath as I gazed across the neighbourhood covered in a thick carpet of snow. It was one of the most beautiful sights I'd ever seen.

We spent the next day in St. Louis, and the day after, David and I decided to take the train to Buffalo New York, to see Niagara Falls. Brian had to work so it was an opportune time for the two of us to go off on our own. The train took us via Chicago, Cleveland and a few other cities to Buffalo. We spent the day at Niagara Falls and returned to St. Louis by bus travelling overnight.

We spent the next few days in St. Louis, and that gave the three of us time to sit and talk. We talked about the way things were in America, compared to Australia. We talked about Mum and Dad and the rest of us, how we'd all turned out as the years had passed. We talked about the children and our hopes for their future. Anita and Melissa spoke with strong American accents, and their memories of Australia were fading.

We have family here somewhere you know, I told Brian.

He looked at me as if I had lost the plot.

What are you talking about?

We have family here, I said. Two brothers of our great-grandfather. It's on some document.

Do you have any other details?

No, that's all I know. Their names were Patrick and someone.

Fat lot of good that is!

Up your arse, dickbrain.

We enjoyed casual insults. It was how we expressed our endearment for each other.

The following day was St. Patrick's Day, so we went to an Irish Bar for lunch. They were serving green beer. All the bartenders and barmaids were dressed in green. There were green and white balloons everywhere and a small band was playing Irish music.

Are you Irish, the barmaid asked me when I ordered a whiskey. I think my accent confused her.

Irish-Australian, I said without thinking, but I'll be heading there one day to be sure.

Come back and tell me all about it, she said.

And then she was off chatting up someone else.

The three of us talked about Dad and Mum and it was interesting during the course of the conversation to notice that each of us had a different relationship with our parents. Whereas I saw Dad as a warm hearted authority figure, Brian had a much closer relationship, like a best friend. David was closer to Mum. He felt that she had taken a special interest in him. She was the one who got him started in the building game. It was good to sit there in that bar so far away from home and yet still feel the warmth of family around me.

At this point David was happy to stay in St. Louis. I wasn't. We had to be back in Los Angeles in four days to fly back to San Francisco, so I chose to do the trip by bus, going via the Grand Canyon. I said goodbye to everyone and headed off. After two nights and one day in the bus, during which time the bus passed through Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, and New Mexico, we arrived at Flagstaff Arizona. From there I changed buses to go up to the Canyon. As we approached the Canyon the driver advised those of us planning to return that evening that we must be on time. In a very deliberate, uncomplicated, complete American manner, he spoke thus:

This bus will arrive at the Canyon shortly. This bus will depart the canyon at 5P.M. this evening. The walk down into the-canyon will take three hours. The walk back up the canyon will take six hours. The time is now 10A.M. Therefore, if you walk down to the bottom of the canyon, you will not be back in time to catch this bus.

I got the message; it was too far to walk anyway.

David and I met up again at the airport in Los Angeles two days later, and after the obligatory visit to Disneyland, returned to San Francisco the next day in time for the long flight home. Two weeks had never gone by so quickly. The whole trip was over so soon, I longed to be able to return with Joanne.

They're very much like us. I told her, except they drive on the wrong side of the road, and we speak English. We'll go back one day soon.

Yes, dear, one day.

11.

Well, blow me over with a feather. England has beaten Australia in the second test at Lord's for the first time in 75 years. The year 2009 will go down as a watershed for English cricket....well, for 2009 anyway. Meanwhile the stock market seems to be recovering, and we are being cautiously cajoled into believing that the worst of the World Economic Crisis is behind us. That's fine, but what about the Global Monetary Meltdown, the Global Financial Collapse, the World Financial Slump, and a slump in Barrack Obama's approval rating? What with so many slumps, pandemic swine flu, suicide bombings in Indonesia, Australians being thrown into gaols in China and Hawthorn on the slide, the last thing anyone wants to hear is that England has beaten Australia at Lords.

The good news is that the pathology report on my malignant, cutaneous, fibrous, histiocytoma has come back. It has all been removed; and I still have most of my head in tact. My surgeon Mr. Simon Ceber is pretty good at what he does and as much as I would like to keep the rest of my head on my shoulders, if anyone is going to take it off, I'd rather it be him. I would like to know if there's anyone I can sue for causing my skin cancer. Surely someone has failed in a duty of care? My parents, the Marist brothers, the Army, the bloke at the beach who attracted all the girls and made me feel such a 'wooss' when I thought to cover up my lily white body? Anyone? Perhaps the entire female population of Victoria who's attention I sought, which thus prompted me to go out in the sun, which subsequently led to these sad, unintended consequences. Then again, it could be a sign from above; a punishment for leaving Charismatic Renewal and becoming an accidental A-theist. It occurs to me now, that the problems I'm now living with began to manifest themselves around that time.

I joined Charismatic Renewal in the early nineties. It was a long time after Suzann Knott's timely intervention prolonging my life but the life threatening duodenal ulcers had moved my spiritual time-clock from 'easy as she goes' to 'time I did something'. The problem was I didn't know what to do. I changed jobs several times; got sacked twice. I had dutifully encouraged my son and daughter to fear God (something they later lost interest in doing), but still I felt a yearning for something deeper, more meaningful; something profound and life-changing.

Sitting down at the completion of mass one Sunday, I was spiritually awakened by a man giving a talk about the power of the spirit. Come along to a life in the spirit seminar next Wednesday and learn all about it, he said. Bells started ringing in my head. This was it; something deeper, more meaningful; something profound and life-changing. The man said it all. I went home all wound up. How long does one wait for a sign? I don't know. I don't care; mine had arrived.

When things got underway the following Wednesday at the church, there was lots of singing and hand-clapping; lots of body language, lots of spontaneous praise, and worship by different people. Such faith! It was very weird at first and I felt quite uncomfortable. I was almost about to leave when this lady came and stood alongside me and began talking with me. She made me feel more comfortable, less inhibited. I can't even remember now what she said, but it was enough for me to decide to stay a little longer.

Half an hour later after a lot more singing and happy clapping she gave a talk. It was so powerful. She said that everyone who had come to the meeting had been brought here by the power of God's Spirit. She said the Holy Spirit, the third person of the Trinity had called us here to find a new life; a new purpose to our lives. She said we had been called to experience a new relationship with Jesus.

Welcome to you all tonight, she bellowed with deliberate eagerness; especially those of you who are here for the first time. Let's continue our celebration, our joy in our re-birth, calling on the Lord as we sing, _'In the name of Jesus.'_ Michelle, would you lead us please, she said, nodding to the young lady sitting at the organ.

Right on cue, Michelle began the introduction and from the very beginning of the lyrics, the faithful burst into boisterous hand clapping, and hip swivelling gyrations, that would do justice to their children at any rock concert. Suddenly, propriety and conservatism were thrown out the window as the intensity increased. Not content to gyrate in the one place, there was a procession of movement around the hall, as another of the faithful led the fray. I was taken by surprise. Ambushed! What the hell is this, I thought to myself as the lady alongside me went wild with expression, her hands waving about above her. I stood there not knowing what to do. Join in? Fake it? Stand erect? Resist this foolishness? What to do? I remained stoic, stunned and isolated. I hated how I was feeling. Even if I believed in none of this foolishness, it would be better to join in, look less isolated. Slowly, I felt an urge to cast aside my inhibitions, and so began ever so tentatively to clap my hands, and sway a little to the left and right. After all, it was only music. Everybody gyrated to music at some time or other. I shut the lyrics out of my mind, and pretended I was at a party. Stupid, I thought to myself. Whatever made me want to come here?

The singing continued, a constant repetition of lyrics, over and over again, until the end, when the entire gathering burst into spontaneous applause. Rousing cheers all round! Then, they were off again into another song, equally boisterous, equally repetitive and the whole process continued with more songs, each time under the very enthusiastic direction and leadership of this...this...er..leader! As the devotion continued I surveyed the church. All these people are expressing their faith without the slightest concern for who might be watching them.

After several songs of praise, the leader called for a moment's reflection. 'Praise you Jesus, praise you Lord,' she said, her voice projecting around the hall. 'Spirit of God, you have called us here tonight to experience a new relationship with you. You have brought us into the light to find new life in your great love for us, to find a new peace and contentment. You have called us to experience a deeper understanding of your will. Praise you Jesus.' Her comments sparked a rush of responses. 'Praise you Lord, praise you Jesus,' came the cries from the faithful. As she spoke Michelle began playing some very soft, reflective music. The meeting had very subtly moved up a notch. What would happen now?

As our leader continued with her ad-lib praise, invoking the name of Jesus constantly, the faithful bowed their heads in meditation. They were licking up her words like honey off their fingers. Some began muttering to themselves quietly, an inaudible murmur that sounded like a humming bee circling around the petals of a flower. As the praise intensified, so too the murmurings until, _'bloody hell, what on earth is going on here?'_

Suddenly the hall erupted in mutterings. Suddenly the entire gathering was overtaken with a form of gibberish, strange sounding words that made no sense.... 'Kelia kumria setata conanimbria heliamate batena shumia shumata.' As the gibberish intensified so did the volume of the music. As the volume of music increased, so too did the voices of the faithful. Before long the voices reached a plateau and held themselves at that level. 'Eliosha comate coshanunda selia someanta shundia coliana munda.' As I listened and watched, I realized they were almost in perfect harmony. It was like a choral chant in a foreign language and to my amazement, everyone but me was caught up in the frenzy. As they garbled fearlessly, eyes closed, head erect, facing the podium, I noticed some were holding hands with each other. Then they broke away and with both arms extended forward, they appeared as if in some kind of trance.

Then as gradually as it began, it subsided, its softening soothing tone, retreating back to an eerie quiet. In a matter of a moment or two, the church was silent, so silent the only audible sounds were the traffic noises outside, and the gentle calming breeze filtering though the open doors. Michelle stopped playing and stood, her head bowed in silence. 'Let us wait on a word from the Lord,' the leader said. More silence. 'Let us wait for a prophecy,' she said, her eyes closed, her head bowed in expectation. Silence, dead silence. Then after a minute or two, it came from the back of the hall; a lone, deep, male voice. 'I have come that you may have life and have it to the full,' the voice cried out. 'Praise you Jesus', the gathering muttered in reply. More silence interrupted only by an occasional cough or sneeze. Another voice from the side, this time it was a woman. 'I have come to heal the afflicted,' she proclaimed. 'Praise you Lord,' the gathering responded. More silence. 'There is someone with us tonight, who suffers,' a voice called out. 'The Lord is telling me that there is a woman here tonight who has great pain, great suffering.' A murmur of sympathy rippled through the hall. As the prophetic impulses of a deeply devout congregation manifested themselves in several bible quotations, and the power of the moment filtered through, the leader played her ace. 'Come forward if you are suffering. Come to the healing heart of the Lord,' she cried out. No one moved. 'There is a dark shadow hanging over us tonight,' she pronounced. 'There is one here tonight who suffers from cancer. Come forward to feel the healing power of the Lord.' Not a sound could be heard. 'The Lord is telling me He wants to heal you. Come forward, don't be afraid,' she said, her head still bowed down.

Somewhat stunned by this sudden change of pace, I turned my head slowly, searching for some movement among the faithful. Around me, all heads were bowed down, each person in the hall meditating deep within. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed an elderly lady take a step forward from the rear. Slowly, step, by step, she moved forward up the side of the hall, as our leader continued to make the call. 'Come and feel the healing power of the Lord,' she said. As the faithful waited, the silence was broken gently by subtle, soft, soothing music as Michelle resumed her seat at the organ. Our leader also caught sight of the elderly lady now standing nervously at the side. 'Come,' she said and beckoned gently. The lady stepped forward and spoke in whispers to her. 'Let us pray with Mary,' she said as she beckoned those in the front row to come forward. 'Let us surround Mary with the healing power of the Lord. Let us lay our hands upon her and call upon the healing power of God's Spirit.' Several people moved forward and surrounded Mary, laying on hands and once again erupting into ecstatic gibberish. 'Shimdiamata cobera kioushu kadata manata eloshi a mera,' they muttered. Once again the perfect harmony enveloped the gathering with the leader's voice rising above the others, encouraging them to greater heights, greater intensity of prayer. As the voices increased in volume, so too, did the music. Feeling more isolated than ever, I observed couples now facing each other, heads bowed, holding both hands and chanting the gibberish. The elderly lady, Mary, had been provided with a seat by a considerate member, and the half dozen people stood over her, laying on hands, praying in tongues. My mind was now drunk with great expectation. I had heard of such a phenomenon before; people with incurable illnesses, being healed at prayer meetings by people praying in tongues. 'Did it really happen? If it did then maybe I could witness it.' I watched intently as the process of healing prayer continued.

The praying began to subside, the music softened and the faithful stepped back from Mary, allowing her to stand and thank those around her. As she returned to her seat, I was confused. 'Was that it? Was she cured?' Nobody seemed to know or care. Mary resumed her place at the rear and the leader continued praising the Lord for His goodness to all.

Thirty minutes later, the leader brought the meeting to an end, but not before reminding the faithful of the draining overheads associated with conducting these meetings. So, after generous notes of money were placed in the basket being passed around the church, the meeting ended as it began, with boisterous singing and more praising. As the gathering began to disperse, the leader spoke to me. 'I hope you enjoyed the evening,' she said. 'Yes,' I lied. 'All very interesting,' I said. 'I'm curious to know what happened to the elderly lady though. Has she been cured?' I asked. 'That is a matter for God, John,' she said. 'We can only act as instruments of his will. Only Jesus cures. Only time will tell if our efforts here tonight have been successful.' I nodded in agreement, but retained a vacant, confused look.

I returned home that night uncertain if what I had witnessed was the sign I had been searching for, albeit unwittingly. The word 'fundamentalist' meant nothing to me at that stage; after all this was 1991. 9/11 was years away. Besides, I wasn't one of them; I considered overt displays of religious and spiritual beliefs spooky. People who embraced this cult type, offbeat, wacky, demonstrative style of behaviour, in my mind, had generally experienced some major trauma in their lives and were searching for some meaning to it, or, failing that, had simply been out in the sun too long. At this time I did not know that I was the one who had been out in the sun too long.

Notwithstanding my reservations, I decided to go again the following week and it was all much the same, except for a different leader, a different healing, a lengthy talk and more of that very weird praying in tongues. It seemed at the time that praying in tongues was the manifestation of a desperate longing to connect. That is clearly too simplistic an explanation and it deserves better, but for simple minds like mine that's how it appeared. But over and above all the weird stuff, I found I really enjoyed the singing. It was so different from the hum-drum, Irish originating, meekly mouthed, hymns we sang at school and the more sedate stuff we sang at mass. It had a bounce to it, a rhythm, a bit of soul with attitude. It was the music that kept me returning each week and I suppose it was inevitable that the longer I stayed, the greater the chance I would succumb to the dreaded praying in tongues. I did, and looking back it was a strange experience. I thought I had been blest with a gift that wasn't extended to everyone.

It was just one of many strange experiences my journey with Charismatic Renewal took me; they were interesting areas of learning, areas that I had never touched on anywhere else. The subject of demonic possession was often discussed and I never felt comfortable with it. In fact the deeper I became involved, the more I began to realise that some of my new friends had an unhealthy pre-occupation with this particular subject. Prior to joining Renewal, I had given the idea of the existence of the devil over to primitive mythology. But to my mild surprise I found it alive and well in the corridors of this movement. There seemed to be a general if not primary acceptance that anyone who came to us for prayer and who might be suffering from some form of depression, was a possible, if not certain candidate for prayers of deliverance. And there were plenty of willing volunteers ready to offer their services.

One Saturday I went with a number of friends from Prayer group to a seminar given by a priest who was also an Exorcist. It was one of the strangest talks I had ever heard. He spoke of an underworld of darkness and evil intent, of weird beings with near unpronounceable names. It was very strange. I was later encouraged somewhat, when I came across a dynamic young priest from another parish, who devoted a very generous amount of his time to charismatic renewal, and who had also detected an unusual interest by others in the area of possession. He used any opportunity available to water down this interest. I think he realised that it had the potential to get out of control, and in the process gained very strong respect, and broad support from most of us, even though I'm sure he probably did believe in the devil.

Charismatics were also very active in the area of Healing. This was one of the nine gifts of the Spirit as described by St. Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians. There were gifts of Wisdom, Knowledge, Faith, Prophecy, the gift of praying in Tongues, the gift of Interpreting Tongues, the gift of performing Miracles, the gift of Discernment and the one that seemed to evoke the most emotion, the gift of Healing. Healing came in many forms. It could be physical, involving the cure of some debilitating illness, or in more dramatic instances, the curing of some terminal disease. It could also involve deliverance from demonic possession. It could mean being released from some burden of guilt or some psychological condition which may have had its roots in early childhood abuse of some description. Whatever the condition, there was always a willing party ready to pray for healing and while in most cases the conditions were fairly simple ones, there were also times when I felt that those praying were somewhat out of their depth, and that treatment being administered for those so afflicted, should have been through more professional sources.

It was not uncommon for people suffering terminal illnesses to come to our prayer meetings, or our Healing Masses which were held fairly regularly, and we would with every ounce of compassion in our being, endeavour to extend our spiritual efforts in prayer, in the hope and expectation that these people would be cured. We would pray over them, lay hands on them, and encourage them to believe that God wanted to cure them. We would even develop a mental picture in our minds of the affected area of the body and imagine that God's loving goodness was doing its job right there and then on the spot. But something wasn't quite right. What caused me to become somewhat uncomfortable about this gift of healing, or more correctly, the way in which it was being ministered was the occasion of a couple of healing services that I attended.

I went along to one service which was a major event in the Charismatic Renewal calendar for that year, and involved a well known priest from overseas, who had developed a healing ministry. Having never been to one before I didn't know what to expect, but I suppose I was lured to the service by the prospect of seeing a blind person receiving their sight back, or the possibility of someone confined to a wheelchair suddenly standing up and walking; the sort of thing that one heard was happening at Pentecostal meetings. The meeting in question was too big for any local church, and a major public venue, the Myer Music Bowl had been hired. There were over ten thousand people there and it began with a fairly traditional formula. After an introductory period of boisterous singing, praising and praying in tongues, there was a period of silence as we waited for a word of prophecy from someone within the gathering. Without any prompting a voice would cry out in the crowd, giving all of us a message, a word of hope, a word everyone there believed was coming from their God. Then others would cry out in a similar fashion. When things went silent, you could have heard a pin drop. This continued for about fifteen minutes or so and then the prayer leader standing on the stage brought it to a conclusion by settling us all down and introducing the visiting priest. The priest addressed the faithful and called upon them to believe in the healing power of Jesus. He then proceeded to nominate some illness or affliction that one or several people in the audience were suffering, and told them that they were being healed as he spoke. At this point he encouraged them to come forward to confirm what he felt the Lord was telling him. One by one, if not very slowly, some of the faithful would begin to come up to the centre stage and as they were ushered toward the priest he continued to encourage others to come forward. Those who had come up were introduced to the priest and they would then explain the nature of their illness, the associated pain, the extent to which their lives had been affected by this problem, and then to the rousing applause of the congregation proclaim that the pain had now passed. 'They had been healed', I thought. 'Praise the Lord.' But something was bothering me deep down.

It was too stage managed, too theatrical, even to the point of having a doctor present, presumably for the purpose of confirming that whatever the illness had been, it was no longer present. The nature of the illnesses themselves also bothered me. Rather than, as I had hoped, being a witness to something quite dramatic, such as the lame walking, or the blind receiving back their sight, the afflictions were fairly minor and in some cases almost trivial. They included, chronic back pain, hearing problems, one leg shorter than the other (by a whisker), headaches, arthritic pain, and non-descript shoulder pain. They were of a nature that no one could really confirm actually existed, or if they did, whether or not they were really cured. In one or two cases I knew the people who were coming forward to claim their healing and while I was aware that they did suffer from some problem or other, I suspected that it was more the euphoria of the moment that caused them to present themselves to the priest, rather than an actual healing; a suspicion that was confirmed only days later when I learned that they were still ill.

The second healing service I attended was identical to the first in every respect save that of the healing minister. This time it was a doctor, also visiting from overseas, and obviously a very devout and dedicated fellow. But the format was the same, the nature of the illnesses were the same, and the procession of the "cured" was the same. It appeared to me that there was a set formula to follow, a procedure that seemed somewhat rigid in its application, which may or may not have been designed to eliminate any uncertainty about what might happen. These observations that I made did not impugn upon the intentions of those involved in the running of these services, but I could not help but feel a great sense of helplessness for that other group of people who had come and who were suffering some very real and serious life-threatening illnesses. The cancer patients, those suffering the crippling injuries sustained in motor car accidents, the mentally ill. I felt a great sense of despair for those people who's disabilities were so great, and dwarfed only by their faith, who had come in search of an anticipated healing, a something, that in all the euphoria, the praising, the prayer, and the crying out for a miracle, was in the reality of the day, never going to happen.

This I found very uncomfortable. On the one hand, while I truly admired the commitment of the people involved in this kind of work, and would not for a moment question their good intent, I also had to acknowledge on the other, that over a five year association in Charismatic Renewal, despite some fairly extravagant claims of physical healing being made, I did not personally witness any sort of healing that I could realistically say was of a supernatural cause. On the contrary, while some were claiming to be cured of a sore back, or a minor hearing problem, or relief from the pain of arthritis, even a heart murmur, I watched, over that same period, three people whom I had come to know and love, die from various forms of cancer. And with each death came the same question, "Why"? How was it that the demonstration of God's healing power, at healing services such as the two that I attended, was being seen to be revealed in the cure of a sore back, or improved hearing, or some other minor ailment when at these same meetings, there were literally dozens of cases of people who were quite obviously very ill, and who were clearly undergoing some form of chemotherapy or radiation therapy, people suffering terribly from cancer, who had come in anticipation of being blest with a cure, but who would always go home disappointed. To me, the claims being made of minor cures and the communal joy so expressed as a result of those minor cures, by contrast seemed somewhat trite.

There was an occasion some months later, when a young woman came to our prayer meeting one night with her husband. She was suffering from a severe form of bone cancer known as Osteogenic Sarcoma. She had come on the recommendation of a friend thinking that in the absence of a medical cure, we might join with her in her prayers, in the hope of experiencing a healing through spiritual intercession. Over a thirteen month period, our group gathered around this woman and her family and prayed with a faith, and a sense of anticipation, more intense than I had ever previously witnessed. She wasn't having any joy with an ongoing course of chemotherapy, and as her condition worsened it became necessary to have her right arm amputated. This setback notwithstanding, we continued our vigil of prayer. In the end this beautiful young woman of just 34 years, died, leaving a husband and two young children. How was it I asked myself, that we were expected to rejoice in the apparent demonstration of God healing a shortened leg, a simple headache or even arthritic pain, but not be able to rejoice in the demonstration of the saving of a life? It was this glaring anomaly that I found unable to resolve. It bothered me greatly and I decided not to attend any further healing services, feeling that if I continued to view them with such pessimism, I might also lose interest in the overall movement itself.

I subsequently made it my business to read many books on the subject of healing, and even came to understand and agree with the basis of their explanations both spiritual and psychological. I was convinced that there was a direct relationship between the state of our minds and our physical well being, a relationship founded on the principal that if our minds are in good order, so too should our bodies. But this seemed to me to be more a natural expectation of the healing process, and did not explain why we should expect God to intervene in the process of healing someone as a direct result of prayer alone. It also did not explain why some deeply devout people, who had devoted their lives to God's service, more or less since they learned to talk, still became ill.

I read somewhere, that clinical studies revealed one in five people who were administered a placebo as a healing agent, was cured. The conclusion drawn from this study was that where it could be shown that some genuine healing had taken place that most likely, the forces of healing already existed within the person concerned, and all they needed was some external stimulus to set the process in motion. In that same book it was suggested that the healing miracles performed by Jesus happened in much the same way. I found that a little unsettling, but I didn't dwell on it. Notwithstanding these observations however, and what I perceived to be one or two shortcomings in respect of claims of physical healing, it was obvious to me that this movement played a very real and important role in the area of psychological and emotional healing, and had without doubt been the source of great comfort to people who had been the victims of emotional trauma. Many people who came to our meetings had been through some recent major turmoil in their lives, a separation, divorce, loss of a loved one. They were looked after with wonderful compassion and understanding. The members of our prayer group did this simply and unobtrusively, and for this commitment alone, were fulfilling a vital function. I learned a great deal about so many things, during the time I spent in Charismatic Renewal, things that otherwise would have passed me by. While I began to struggle with some aspects of the movement, I hoped that I would be able to stay with them and be productive in some way. But I also suspected that more serious difficulties would arise further on down the track.

12.

While my involvement in Renewal continued to grow, Joanne had been able to find some part time work; Travis finished secondary school and was at University studying Geological Engineering. Sarah finished school too, but decided to work for a year before taking up any study. So I looked ahead to when we would be celebrating our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. What would we like to do? For years we had always talked about 'that trip', the big one. The one that everybody talked about but few ever did. We decided that it was time to give it some serious consideration; a 25th anniversary celebration. Why not?

We took a year to plan it, and over many cups of coffee, talking to those of our friends who had been to England and Europe, drew up an itinerary and after making seemingly endless alterations set off in the southern autumn of 1995. Actually we cheated a little, going six months before our 25th anniversary. We left the children to fend for themselves although given their ages, twenty two and nineteen, it did not sit all that well with us. They of course, couldn't get us out of the house quickly enough.

Our trip took us firstly to London with a brief stopover in Bangkok. It was such a long flight and when we finally touched down at Heathrow and were able to get out of the plane, I thought to myself that if there really was a hell, we had just been there. We took the train from Heathrow to Piccadilly Circus and changed lines to to Euston where we were staying. We had finally done it and from then on it was a case of doing whatever the itinerary dictated. We were doing England and Europe as first time visitors, always a touch overcome, that we were even able to take such a holiday, but thrilled to the back teeth just the same.

Our time spent in England and Europe was breathtaking. Despite all of Europe's adaptations to life in the modern 20th century, not one country we visited was able to hide the depth of its history and the character that was so much a part of that history. We visited locations and explored the intimacies of so many of the places and buildings that in my earlier days at school, I had only known from photographs in text books. England, France, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Italy and Greece all impacted on both of us, in their sense of timelessness and the grandeur of their history. Basilicas, Cathedrals, Monuments, Palaces and Battlefields, we blazed our way through three thousand years of history. Perhaps the impact was too great. While in Germany, in the southern city of Pfortziem, we had checked into our hotel, freshened up a bit and were on our way downstairs to eat in the dining room. As we did, Joanne slipped on the stairs, and fell. She suffered a sprained ankle that was serious enough to necessitate a trip to hospital. It was an unnerving experience, trying to explain the accident to the staff at the hospital, none of whom spoke English. Eventually a lady doctor who knew some English was able to treat her and eventually we got out of there and back to our hotel. An x-ray showed no break and although Joanne was barely able to walk for a few days, it was a minor glitch.

We visited Rome, Pompeii and Florence, travelled through 168 motorway tunnels to France. We followed the same route to Paris that Napoleon did prior to his triumphant entry in 1815; and of course, visited the Tower of London where we cast our eyes upon the block where Anne Boleyn's head was separated from the rest of her. Poor girl! But for me, it was Ireland that became the most memorable. I was returning to where it all began. As we landed at Dublin Airport on a lazy midweek afternoon, I could not help but be aware of the significance of this journey. I was 'coming home' and that feeling was for me, a profound experience. In my luggage, I had brought all the documents detailing our family's ancestral connections to this land, struck at times that it was as far away as one can travel from Australia, before one starts coming back again. We spent our first night in Dublin, and the following morning, after a visit to Joyce House in Lombard street to obtain a civil registration entry on one of my great uncles, we travelled by car, southwest to Cork. All the time as we travelled along that road through Kildare, to Portlaoise and on through Kilkenny, with a brief rest at the Rock of Cashel, I was ever conscious of passing through a land, a countryside that my relatives of past generations had most likely also travelled, and but for the passing of time could be there still. We drove on through Mitchelstown and Fermoy and finally reached a road sign that simply read, Glanmire 3m. We took the turnoff, and drove along the narrow bitumen, slowly, and as we did so, I found myself absorbing the moment, as one absorbs the taste of a glass of wine, the aroma of an arresting perfume. It was intoxicating. I looked upon this tiny village and without even allowing sufficient time to form an opinion of its presentation, its character, its ascetics, I found myself adopting it as my home, which in the ancestral sense, it was anyway.

After spending some time chatting with some of the locals in the pub, knowing that to try to locate anyone distantly related to my family would take far more time than we had allowed, we drove on into Cork City, a few minutes away, and stayed there that night. The following morning I got up early, leaving Joanne to sleep on, and drove back to Glanmire. It was Saturday, there was virtually no traffic, and a haunting mist had settled along the banks of the canal that is part of the Lee River. I drove to the Catholic Church and from there purely on intuition, travelled along a road at the back of the church, a few miles to the north of Glanmire, where I came upon a cemetery. Believing as I did, that I was being led in some way by the spirit of my dead relatives, I parked on the side of the road, and walked across to the cemetery. The cemetery was fairly large, spanning both sides of the road, and dominated by the ruins of an old church, the origins of which were not displayed. I wandered among the resting places of those who by their elaborate headstones and others by simpler markings, indicated both recent burials as well as generations long past. Some twenty minutes, and literally hundreds of graves later, I came across a small, well worn stone block, from which I was able to make out the inscription: Michael Kelly, b. 1808 - d. 1879. The name immediately rang bells for me and I ran back to the car to check my papers. There I found it on the broad sheet my brother Peter had prepared, which detailed my great-great grandfather, Michael Kelly, born 1808, date of death unknown, father of Mark Kelly who married Julia Hickey, who together with their two children, Michael and Bridget, had emigrated to Australia in 1867.

It was a thrilling discovery. I knew that I could never be certain that the Michael Kelly buried here, was really my great-great grandfather, but somehow that didn't matter. I felt convinced, that I had made a connection with the past. I walked back to the place where I had found the marker, and stood there in silence, for some time, reflecting on the poignancy of the moment, not without a tinge of emotion, ever presently aware of the 120 odd years that separated us in body, but not in spirit. As I stood in the middle of that cemetery on that chilly Saturday morning, and cast my eyes across the rolling hills of green, I could not help but feel the spirits of five generations re-united and at peace. It was a remarkable by-product of my experience on that Saturday morning that I felt I finally knew who I was, and where I had come from. My journey to my ancestral home had helped expose and reveal to me, the nature and culture of the people who were my family. In so doing, it helped me understand the nature of the way I was raised as a child, and more particularly, the origins of my being raised as a Catholic.

But for an accident of birth, I could so easily have been of English stock or Scottish, anything at all, and assuming the same migration trail to Australia as did in fact happen, I could so easily have been born into an Anglican family, Presbyterian, anything. And had that happened, how different would my life have been? I realised that it is simply by an accident of birth that we find ourselves where we are. I could have been Buddhist, Hindu or Jewish, I could have been anything. As it happened I was born Catholic.

Shit!

We drove north-west that day, and saw the sun go down over Galway Bay that evening. The following morning, Sunday, I got up early and walked to the parish church of St. Mary's, about five minutes from our hotel, to go to mass. It was the first time I had been to mass for the whole trip. From there we drove to Dublin and flew back to London. I deliberately left a part of me in Ireland, a longing to be a part of it. After we left, I could still feel its call, hear its tune and I longed for its simplicity and openness. But it was time to move on, to stick to the itinerary. I had not planned for any unforeseen circumstances that would enable us to stay in one place any longer than we originally planned. We could so easily have done that here.

We left London and headed for New York where we stayed three days, and then on to St. Louis to stay two nights with Brian and Aggie. It was great to be back there with them, and Joanne was enjoying it for the first time. I recalled the barmaid at the Irish Bar where we had lunch fifteen years earlier and I remembered that she wanted me to come back and tell her all about Ireland. Brian thought that maybe after fifteen years she might have moved on, or even if she was there, he doubted that she would remember the conversation. He was probably right. We said our goodbyes and travelled on to Los Angeles and home.

We came home rich with experiences, wonderful memories, lots of photographs and we promised ourselves that one day we would do it all again. Travis and Sarah had somehow survived without us, and so had the house. To be sure, all 25th wedding anniversaries should be like this, I thought.

I continued as part of the parish prayer group for a few years until someone opened the window one day and the sun came shinning through. It came in the form of bible study, a subject, never very close to my heart, discouraged in my youth by the Church for fear, I suspect, that I might actually learn something. Bible study or more correctly, the study of Biblical Scholarship was my ticket to freedom; from renewal, the Church and God forever. Alleluia brother!

13.

My sister-in-law, Kathleen is a smart gal. Unlike me, she has studied at University. She is an honours graduate with a Bachelor of Arts degree in the faculty of Humanities, majoring in Religious Studies. Back in 1993 when I began studying Biblical Scholarship on my own with no lecturer to consult, no secular expert to provide answers to my questions, Kathleen was always there to confer with and to give a straight answer. When I was growing up we rarely referred to the Bible in the telling of life's experiences. When a conversation about some religious discussion came up in our home, or at school, it would be made to relate to the teachings of the Church. I didn't realise it at the time, but this was because the Church never relied on the Bible as the primary source of the authority it claimed for its teaching, and it still doesn't. That honour was and is accorded to Church Tradition. I began to learn why.

In my youth, I had developed the very distinct impression that the Bible was really a Protestant thing rather than Catholic, something often indirectly reinforced when I observed some reference being made to the bible, by a Protestant minister on some religious television programme, and compare that with the sermons at Sunday mass. The Protestant minister would quote a particular passage from either Hebrew or Christian scripture and demonstrate how that would apply to us in our lives today. The priest at Mass would explain the Church's teaching on some particular matter and then quote a passage of scripture as a means of re-enforcing that teaching. The minister used the bible as his authority while the priest used the Church as the authority and scripture as an example. Yes, I know. You are asking what in the name of Osama bin Laden am I doing watching religious programmes on television. Don't worry about it. Just call it a literary tool!

One of the first things that set me back as I began this journey was learning that this man who had been proclaimed the Messiah, the Saviour and whom the New Testament called Jesus, wasn't Jesus at all. His name was Yeshuah, or Yeshu or Joshua. That was his given name. That was how he was known. The name of Jesus was simply the English version of the Latin which itself was derived from the Greek translation, carried through 2000 years of history, only because the New Testament was written in Greek. Furthermore, the authorship of these documents upon which the Christian world lives and breathes is unknown. We don't know who wrote them. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are considered to be pen names. As a child I often had the impression that, as Jesus walked the streets of 1st century Palestine curing people of their diseases, and as he taught his apostles and disciples his message, there was actually someone taking all this down as it was happening. That, in my child's mind, was the only way I could imagine that so much could have been remembered. That, of course was not the case at all. The truth however, was even more difficult to comprehend.

Mark was the first Gospel, written about 70 C.E., most likely after the destruction of the Temple, but nobody is really sure about that. Matthew came next, around 80 C.E., followed by Luke, somewhere near 85 C.E. and John came quite a bit later written about 95-100 C.E. This meant that the first written account of the life of the man we know as Jesus, the first account that western civilisation adopted, came some 35 years after he died. I quickly deduced that in all probability, by that time, most of Jesus' apostles and disciples would have been dead, and I therefore logically drew the conclusion that each of the gospels was not an eyewitness account, but would have been at least a second generation account. So, I asked myself, where did all the material for the gospels originate? With this and a number of other questions spinning around in my head, it was only natural therefore that I would seek some independent source to help me. It was only to be expected that sooner or later I would stumble across some authoritative analysis by someone who really knew their subject. I figured the best place for that, was at the public library. It was time to broaden my horizons and get serious. When I did, I came across material that I would never have found in any parish or school library. It was to set me on course for a completely new appreciation of those events of 2000 years ago and change my very limited understanding of them in a way I never anticipated.

I came across books at the library which suggested to me that the historical certainty of some of the very cornerstones of my faith might not be as certain as I first thought. When I began pressing the issue within Catholic circles, asking a priest and one or two theologians, no one was prepared to venture an opinion beyond what was official Church teaching. One person I spoke to suggested that the 'jury was still out' on those matters and that it was best to simply follow the teachings of the Church. The Church's teaching will preserve us from error, he said.

What a cop-out!

I decided to move outside what I considered to be these narrow minded precepts and seek help elsewhere. That meant reading books, lots of them. Not the sort of books that the church would be happy to see me read, but books which nevertheless suggested to me that for the better part of my life, I had been living in a cocoon. I had no idea there was so much material available on the subject of historical biblical criticism, all of it as close as our local library. There was material that literally placed every aspect of Jesus' life under the microscope and called into question every claim ever made about him. It also, by association, called into question much of Catholic theology, and doctrine.

I knew that my sister-in-law, Kathleen was doing some study in this area, and I thought that at least she would give me some straight answers. The areas that bothered me in particular, were the Virginal Conception and the Resurrection. My brother David and Kathleen had stopped going to church a couple of years earlier. We had never discussed the reasons why, and I had never associated that decision with Kathleen's study; at least, not until I began talking to her.

What do you want to know about it, she said when I called around?

In addition to her degree she had studied Ancient Hebrew and Koine Greek, which is the Greek of the New Testament and she had written a thesis on the goddesses of ancient Israel. Heavy stuff! David's pretty bright too, but when it comes to a Bachelor of Arts degree in the faculty of Humanities, majoring in Religious Studies, he's not the fastest gun in the west. We start off with the small talk. It's not my bag but I do it because...because...I don't know why I do it.

How's the taxi business going, she asked, as we sat down in their spacious and very comfortable lounge room?

It's okay, I said, But it's only to fill in while I'm looking for something else.

You've been saying that now for ten years John. Are you sure you're not in denial here?

Get Out! Has it really been that long? It's funny you know, I've been driving taxis for over ten years, and during that time I've picked up every conceivable kind of human life form one could imagine. I once counted representatives of seventy two different countries with whom I had exchanged a word or two. I've counselled the rich, the poor, the smart, the stupid, the strong, the meek, the pious and the blasphemous. I have heard a formula to save the world at least once a month, and a formula to 'fix up' Australia, at least twice a week. How long can cabbies keep doing this before someone recognises that we all should be issued with degrees in Psychology?

Write a book, she said.

I think it's been done already.

And so we got down to it. I told her what I had been up to in renewal, and about the little bit of bible study I had been doing. I said that some of the things I had learned through my reading, unsettled me.

What things?

I mentioned things like the Virginal Conception, the Resurrection, the miracles of Jesus, the Ascension and so on.

So how can I help?

I thought if I just asked some very blunt questions, you might be able to explain your understanding of them in the light of what you have studied.

Sounds easy enough, fire away.

Well, Was Mary a Virgin?

Well, in any culture it's a bit hard to go along with such a concept, she said. She then reached for a bible.

You may have come across this yourself already, but lets have a look at it. In the gospel of Matthew it reads...Now all this happened in order to make come true what the Lord had said through the prophet. A virgin will become pregnant and have a son, and he will be called Immanuel, which means 'God is with us'. The prophet referred to in this passage was Isaiah; the passage was chapter 7 Verse 14. However, the word 'virgin' did not appear in the Book of Isaiah until it was translated into Greek some 200 years before Jesus was born and in any event, Isaiah was referring to some royalty of his own time, not someone in the future. In the original Hebrew passage the word for virgin which is Betulah was not there. The word used in the original Hebrew text was Almah which simply means 'a young woman.' When the text was translated into Greek, the word Parthenos was introduced, which in Greek means virgin. Notwithstanding that an oversight caused the word Parthenos to appear in the Greek translation of Hebrew Scripture, this of course doesn't mean that it was an oversight that began the Virgin Birth tradition, although it very well could have. It is quite possible that the author of Matthew simply used it unwittingly to re-enforce his story and didn't bother to check the original Hebrew text. But given that the notion of a virgin-conception had already existed in other religious traditions well before Matthew's time and was used as a means of explaining the divine origin of great figures in mythology, it is not unreasonable to suggest that Matthew's account was also designed to do just that. It would be difficult, I think, to mount a case that the author of Matthew did not know about these traditions.

I told you she was good.

If that's true, I said, then that makes the whole Christmas story, the three wise men, the Angels, Bethlehem, the star, all sound like a fairy tale?

Yes, it probably is. You have to realise that Mark's Gospel which was written first, has no Christmas story at all, and the earlier letters of Paul make no mention of it either. But Jesus was born somewhere and Bethlehem suits the Hebrew Scripture connection, so it was an obvious choice for the author of Matthew.

How much then do we really know about the Jesus of history?

Kathleen hesitated for a moment to consider her answer.

The bottom line is, not much. He was born; he might have been a prophet of some description. He may have come from the Essene community at Quumran. Some of his teachings like the Lord's Prayer, and the Beatitudes, which we originally thought were unique to him, go back well before his time. They have been found to be a part of the official prayers of that community. They were found in the Dead Sea scrolls. It's even possible that the New Testament authors styled him after the Teacher of Righteousness, who lived fifty or sixty years before him. The miracle stories in the gospels are generally considered to be a literary device to enhance the image the author was trying to project, although most acknowledge varying degrees of accuracy concerning some of the healing miracles. He was crucified by the Romans, but we don't know the reasons why. That's about it.

That's it?

I know this may come as a bit of a shock to you, but it's not as if anyone has been keeping it a secret. Everything I'm saying is consistent with what biblical scholars are saying. I'm sure that you have already come across material that was pointing you in this direction. Only Catholic exegetes will hedge on these questions and try to avoid saying what is fairly obvious to everyone else, she added.

What about the Resurrection then?

There is literally any number of interpretations for that. It's really what you make of it yourself and what it means to you personally in your life. The big difficulty for everyone associated with the study is that there are four accounts, and they all differ with each other.

What's your theory then?

Well, let me explain it to you, as I see it. You have to understand though, that this is just my opinion, and doesn't hold any more weight than that.

Okay, I said.
I think that the story of Jesus' resurrection was a passionate and dynamic expression of faith. But I also think it was a literary invention. It represented the experience of the early apostles and subsequently, the gospel writers, as they tried the very best way they knew how, to demonstrate the enormous impact this man had on their lives. They used their Hebrew tradition to demonstrate what in reality was beyond words to describe. They used that tradition to overcome the indignity of what they saw as a pitiful end to his life under sentence of a roman execution. His life as they saw it, as it impacted upon them, would never be forgotten. He may have been crucified by the Romans and rejected by the Jews, dead and buried, but as far as his followers were concerned his memory would live on, no, better than that, HE would live on ...God would "raise him up". He would be their Messiah. He would be a priestly king in the line of Melchisedek. The writers of the New Testament would bring Jesus alive by demonstrating that his life was a continuation of God's relationship with His people. They would do this by searching back into their own faith story, found in their sacred scripture. They would retell the heroic stories of the past as if they were happening in their own time and which would focus and centre on the person of one, Jesus of Nazareth. You have to say, it is a fabulous tradition and takes us to the very heart of Judaism. Rising from the dead was nothing new to the Jews. There are three such accounts in Hebrew Scripture. They can be found in, 1 Kings 17.22, 2 Kings 4.34 and 2 Kings 13.21.

But what about a bodily resurrection for Jesus? I asked.

No, I don't think so.

And the Ascension?

I think the Ascension was an updated version of Elijah's journey into heaven riding in a fiery chariot, except that Jesus didn't need a chariot. It was the best possible ending. They just didn't figure on successive generations of gentiles over two thousand years taking it all so literally. It makes you realise however, that he must have been a very charismatic man, for them to want to do this.

I told you she was good.

You look exhausted, Kathleen said. What for? I'm the one who's been doing all the talking.

She got up to make some coffee. David came in and we talked a bit. When she returned, I asked them both if this was the reason they had stopped going to mass.

Partly, Kathleen replied, but I also have a big problem with the way the church treats women. I think it's appalling. But please don't get me started on that.

I looked across at David. He was shaking his head very firmly. Please don't get her started on that.

But if what you've just told me is true, I added, that means that just about all of Catholic doctrine is without any real historical foundation.

Well, it has a foundation, but not on historical grounds; they base it on Church Tradition which itself, is a bit flaky. But you try telling that to the conservatives in the Church today. If you said it eight hundred years ago, you would have been burned at the stake. Look how long they took to acknowledge that Genesis was fiction.

I had already experienced the conservative side of human nature driving taxis.

In my taxi, I said, I have probably discussed every kind of mainstream religion with someone at one time or another. Prostitutes, pimps, priests, thieves of many sorts, politicians, business people, housewives, school children and bank managers all catch cabs and they all want to talk. They all have an opinion. What I have observed across every socio-economic class structure, every religion, every philosophy, is that the differences that exist among us, resonate from one single aspect of our lives, and that is the cocktail of information that is fed into our minds. People are just far too willing to accept explanations they are given, if it comes from someone they trust.

Kathleen was more philosophical. People will believe what they want to believe until it gets to a point where what is obvious, cannot be denied. For many that point is never realized.

I had to go. Joanne had rung asking how long all this was taking; we were going out that evening. I left to head on home. I was fired up; I wanted to take on the world. My mind scanned across the course my life, my childhood, my fears as a child and the source of those fears. 'The bastards,' I thought to myself. Have I been tricked? Is all this stuff that has been fed into my brain over a lifetime a load of codswallop? Who else knew of this? How come it's not on the front pages of every newspaper in the free world? Does Paul Keating know about this? 'The bastards.'

14.

Would you believe that after all the good economic news filtering through from all the experts who helped get us into the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930's, Kevin Rudd has told us to brace ourselves for higher unemployment, rising interest rates, severe budget cuts, and more expensive food and petrol. What a party-pooper! He's a clever man our Kevin. He knows that if he's wrong, he'll be even more popular than if he's right. My former neighbour Suzann Knott doesn't like Kevin. In fact, she doesn't like anyone or anything associated with the Labor Party. As a Labor voter, I'm privileged to be a part of her inner circle and we have a long history. She saved my life while others begged her not to. And I wouldn't dismiss thirty-seven years of niggling each other on the strength of her political convictions, no matter how whacko I thought they were. She and John invited Joanne and I to their daughter's wedding. We invited them to our daughter's wedding. We celebrated when they became grand-parents; they celebrated when we became grand-parents. That's bonding for you. We all get together twice a year. I call it the gang of eight; two Knotts, two Kelly's, John and Ann-Marie Dornam and Des and Gabrielle Turner. Politically speaking it's seven against one, but I can handle it. I can hold my own in any political discussion, any religious discussion, and any social discussion. John Knott swears by private health insurance. He would rather give up eating than give up private health insurance. I say bollocks! John Dornam defends banks as socially responsible. He has to, he works for one. I say bollocks to bankers too. Des Turner thinks Collingwood can win the premiership this year. I split my sides laughing and say he needs serious counselling. But there's one thing we all agree on: Suzann is a wizard of a cook. Every July she puts on a spread that would have the folks at Master Chef drooling. The gang of eight minus one are all big on restaurant dining. I loathe restaurants.

I get unsettled the moment I walk into a restaurant for lunch or dinner, which explains why I don't do it very often. Either the seat is too hard, the table is directly underneath a fan blowing an irritating gust of air down the back of my neck, the noise is so loud I have to shout to be heard, or the waiter takes too long to come and ask our order; or if they come too early, our dinner guests wave them off and that irritates me like you wouldn't believe. Then there is the interminable wait for the meal to arrive and more often than not, I spy some other diners who came in after we did, being served with their meal before us. And I still have to shout to be heard over the din, and I can barely hear the person across the table who's shouting at me. It's just not good for the digestion or social chit-chat. Then, to add insult to injury, at the end of it all, they expect you to pay for it. So, you can understand why when Suzann rings up to arrange a date for a dream of a meal for the gang of eight at her house, I go off my head with gleeful anticipation; and I get to talk about politics, religion, finance and its relationship with social responsibility.

Politics is awkward because Suzann works off a short fuse when I mention Kevin Rudd, but we seem to survive it. I like talking finance but not with a friend in the industry when I have such little respect for that industry. So, I'm careful with John Dornam. To my way of seeing things, there are two kinds of financial advisers: those that don't know, and those that don't know they don't know; and they're the dangerous ones. When the global financial crisis hit the wall and I saw my superannuation in free-fall, I quickly rescued it and put it into something nice and safe, like a term deposit in one of Kevin Rudd's guaranteed savings accounts. Then I watched as it began to rise again while super funds were still going south. Religion is awkward. Des and John and their respective spouses are Catholics. I was Catholic until I saw the light, and I'll generally walk a mile to tell people how I saw the light, but when you are with friends whose beliefs are based on faith rather than common sense, it's difficult to engage them on the subject without making it uncomfortable for everyone; so I have to bite my lip.

They all know that I left the church and religion generally after I broke off my association with Charismatic Renewal. Studying biblical scholarship did it for me and ironically it was the people at Renewal who urged me to take it up. Sadly for them, I approached it from a different angle. While they thought I was studying what Jesus meant when he said, 'I have come that you may have life and have it to the full,' I found that rather dreary and had moved on to study whether Jesus actually said that at all, or anything else that is attributed to him in the gospels. Having a sneaking suspicion that most of the gospel stories were just that and no more, I began to investigate the culture that produced that style of story-telling and concluded that the whole rotten mess started with the apostle, Paul, and he never met Jesus, so what was he on about? Paul came from Tarsus where the Mithraic tradition began, and guess what? They practiced the ritual that we know today as the blessing of the bread and wine; that part of the mass the Catholic Church calls the Consecration.

The blessing of the bread and wine originated within the Mithraic tradition. You don't have to believe me about this; you can check it out for yourself.

So, I added two and two together and got four. If Paul never met Jesus and Paul was the first to write about this particular ritual, what were the chances that Paul incorporated a Mithraic ritual into his theology, and the first gospel writer, Mark, copied what Paul had already written and incorporated it into the Jesus story of the Last Supper?

Interesting, I hear you say, but that was just for starters. Once I found a crack in the plaster, I took a closer look at the rest of the wall and cracks started appearing like tributaries along the Amazon. Why, if Mark's gospel is the first gospel, is there no Resurrection story? Could it be that there was no Resurrection? And if Jesus didn't rise from the dead, was he really divine? Once I reached this incredibly invigorating phase of enlightenment, I started taking a much closer interest in 1st century life in Palestine. That led me to discover mind-blowing revelations about a brotherhood of holy men called Essenes, whose lifestyle was near identical to what we would identify as Christianity today. The Dead Sea scrolls, discovered in 1946, brought this ancient pre-Christian community to light. Then, there were the Nag Hammadi texts that revealed a treasure of Gnostic gospels previously unknown; there was the Therapeutae, a religious brotherhood from Alexandria who were actually Buddhist monks and philosophers. I read their story and could not help but notice the similarities between their leader, Siddhartha and the gospel stories about Jesus. So, where did the gospel writers get their ideas from? There are perhaps twenty or more story elements in the gospels that are near identical to, and could have been borrowed from the Buddha. It even struck me as I considered Jesus' words in Luke 13:24, "Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to."

The most fundamental teaching of the Buddha was to 'follow the Right Path.' How similar, I thought, was the philosophy of. 'the right path' and 'the narrow door'. Perhaps, if Jesus used those words he did say 'right path' and the gospel writers changed it. Perhaps, he never used those words but the gospel writers used them and they were later edited sometime before the Council of Nicaea. Who knows?

So there I was, like a child looking in wonderment and awe at a completely unexpected Christmas present given to me by a distant relative. That present sounded the death knell for my faith. I kept asking myself: If I have faith that Jesus rose from the dead, and he didn't, what value was my faith? All this didn't happen overnight of course. It took a number of years before the light was so bright, I couldn't see any other direction to take. I became an accidental A-theist.

I began to wonder too, about my friends at Charismatic renewal who were so committed, who were so deeply religious and who did not hesitate to attribute some small blessing in their lives to the work of Almighty God. Many would frequently remark from time to time such things as....'I know God blesses me each day and takes care of me. I have faith in Him and trust that He will protect me always. Yesterday I was running late for my train, but when I arrived at the station three minutes late there it was, still there waiting for me. Praise the Lord.' This was a familiar remark from just about anybody. But as I began to make some fairly basic observations about theirs and my 'blessed' life, I wondered what was blessed in the lives of those poor unfortunate friends of mine, the residents at Kew cottages, the ones I worked with everyday, who found themselves born into this world with profound physical and intellectual disabilities? I wondered about such glaring anomalies and made mention of it once or twice to friends and the odd priest. But it was soon apparent that despite some fairly adventurous attempts, no one was able to explain why our trivial little blessings such as running late for a train were being answered, while the quality in the lives of all those residents at Kew cottages would never ever reach even the most basic level of our lowest moments.

I began to wonder about the theology of divinely sponsored inequality, and perhaps for the very first time, I began to wonder if there really was such a being as Almighty God. My thoughts at this stage were all over the place and as the reality of what I had learned from Biblical scholarship began to evolve in my mind, so too did the prospect that Almighty God, might well be nothing more than a figment of pious invention.

So you can see that the conversation at one of the gang of eight dinners could be very much a flip of the coin depending on the circumstances of the day; but it didn't seem to matter. We all got along. We were more interested in the food anyway. My religious views were occasionally sought by Suzann, and I expressed them in a way that was sensitive to my friends who I knew to be believers, but I expressed them unequivocally. It seems to me, that if there was a God, we would know; a personal revelation or instinct the same as we know to eat, to breathe and to have children. It wouldn't be a matter of speculation, debate or endless theory and it certainly wouldn't be left to a bunch of old men wearing silly hats feasting their bellies on fine Italian food while half their constituents in Africa, South America and Asia were either starving, or living in chronic poverty! There! I think I've said it; if there was a God, we would KNOW!

15.

Trying to describe the thoughts and emotions I experienced back in 1965 when I had to confront the possibility of my mother dying is something I find hard to do, even today, in 2009. It seems easy to say that you never think about these things until they stare you in the face. Somehow we tend to think our parents will always be there. It's a convenient form of denial of something you don't wish to contemplate. Having to deal with it when I was only twenty didn't seem fair, but my younger twin brothers Anthony and Joseph were just fifteen, so how much harder was it for them? Of course there are plenty of people who have lost their parents at much earlier ages than that. All I can say is that it hits you at the very core of your being and you silently gasp for air as your lungs expel without warning. But of course Noreen didn't die then. She hung on, in fact, for a further five years, a testament to her inner strength and tenacity. For decades after her death, I had believed she gained that strength through her religious beliefs, and so I continued to cling to those beliefs for similar reasons. But now as a non-believer, I realize that source of inner strength has to be revisited. If, as I believe now, there is no God, and by extension, no afterlife, from where do I draw the strength to suffer and survive life's cruel turns?

Surprisingly, the answer comes to me devoid of choirs of angels and bells tolling, all quite naturally. The God that so many seek above and on high is much closer than that. The God of our inner strength is within us, and one doesn't need any other God or Messiah to see that. Even Jesus knew that. 'The Kingdom of Heaven is within you.' he said. Or, at least that's what some writer way back then, HAD him say. Once I grappled with that little revelation I realized the incredible resilience of the human mind and its ability to conquer any Everest that lies between us and where we want to go. Except death of course! We can't conquer that...well, not yet anyway. But we can delay it. Take note of the numbers of people who live well beyond 100 years today, something as rare as hen's teeth 100 years ago. So, what age will some people be achieving 100 years from now? I suspect 150 would not be out of the question.

It is an unfortunate fact that throughout human history we have been conditioned to seek the view of the holy men among us, the mystics, the elders, the prophets, the soothsayers, the witchdoctors, the fortune tellers and the lady we saw on television last week who convinced us she was on first name terms with people on the 'other side.' Then there were the visionaries, so called, and their minders who would have us believe that Jesus or the Virgin Mary or some Archangel had appeared to them with some dire message for mankind. It took the reading of many books dealing with the psychology of the human mind explaining the lengths some people will go to, or be pushed, to achieve notoriety, fame, wealth and power before I was able to rationalize the reasons why they did this. It took me some time to realize that most of the people involved were too young to realize the ramifications of their claims; they came from poorly educated, staunchly Catholic backgrounds and in some cases, suffered in domestically unstable environments, resulting in psychologically traumatised childhoods. Their 'apparitions', were their defence mechanisms when they endured suffering and tried to survive life's cruel turns. So why did we allow ourselves to give credence to their claims? I believe most of us who were raised in a pre-Vatican 11 environment were also victims of similar psychologically traumatised childhoods; not by our parents as much as the Catholic Church. Our parents were merely the instruments of that trauma. Let me say it even more clearly: I was psychologically traumatised by the teachings of the Catholic Church from as young an age as I can remember until, through no fault of their own, the good people at Charismatic Renewal opened a door of opportunity for my release. If my mother was alive today and had been given the opportunity to study the things I have studied, I have no hesitation in saying she would have felt as let down and as annoyed as I do. And had she not been so traumatised herself, she may very well still be alive today. She'd be ninety-eight.

The subject of the 'Apparitions' at Fatima in 1917 is a subject I have often wondered about, largely because it played such a prominent role in my religious upbringing. If I was to question the authenticity of the Fatima story in conservative Catholic circles, the response would be: The three children at Fatima didn't imagine anything. They saw the Virgin Mary. They saw and spoke to Our Lady. This raises a good point here and it deserves our consideration. Personally, I wasn't there at Fatima when these events took place so I don't know what happened. All I know, is what I have been told, what we have all been told, and that version is a very devotional account. Clearly something happened, but how much of it was of divine origin and how much was pious invention, I can't say. What I would ask everyone to consider about Marian apparitions, and as we all know there have been plenty of them, is this: What good has come from them? What have they achieved apart from creating tourist bonanzas, disguised as pilgrimages? If these apparitions were genuine attempts by God to set us on a new path, to warn us of impending doom, how successful were they? In saying that, I can hear the cries of astonishment. The miracle of the sun; thousands saw it, you cry. The sun moved in the sky. Well, did it really?

The sun is 150 million kilometres away. It doesn't move about. Whatever those people at Fatima thought they saw or imagined on that day, it wasn't a moving sun. It was more likely a collective chimera, activated by mass hysteria; a fantasy, a figment of the imagination. Let's face it. The human mind plays tricks on us. We know that! How often have I been to a football match and screamed blue murder at the umpire for not awarding a free kick to a player when he was tackled without the ball, only to go home that night and see the incident replayed on television and realize that no infringement took place. I saw what I wanted to see. I wanted the umpire to pay a free kick, so my mind invented an infringement. Consider this: If the claims made by the children at Fatima were true, we have to ask ourselves: why was it that such an important revelation was limited to so few? And why did it take another twenty years before these messages were made public? If these apparitions were meant to reveal a message of vital importance to the whole world, why is it that only three children were entrusted to deliver it?

If we allow ourselves to follow our hearts and not our heads, then our faith is misplaced. We have to be more discerning than that. Then how are we to know, I hear you ask? We DON'T know. That's the whole sum of it. We don't know and why we think we NEED to know is what stumps me. If we needed to know, we would know. If God exists, he must know how stupid we are and that he couldn't possibly expect us to work it out for ourselves without mindless arguments, leading to fights, wars, inquisitions, and mass slaughter, not to mention a holocaust here and there.

Having said that, I can't tell my mother she was fooled. But sadly, I think we have all been fooled, those of us who so slavishly followed such irrational teachings. The people I do listen to today are the scientists. At least they are honest. They have to prove their claims, their findings. The gurus of faith we call theologians, don't have to prove anything. They can just make it up as they go along and pretend they are in step with science and remain blind to the bleeding obvious.

Consequently, in an age where science is diligently chipping away at their very foundations, exposing so much of what we took as gospel and rendering it mythology, folklore, and old wives' tales, the Church continues to thrive in countries where education and the quality of life is at its poorest. This must surely ring bells in our heads. Why does the developed world, let's call it western civilization, continue to pay lip service to the Church while in thought, word and deed, they desert it in droves? The answer I think, can be given thus: because it has passed its use-by date. The Roman Empire passed its use-by date and the Catholic Church stepped in to fill the void. Is it now the case that the Catholic Church has passed its use-by date and the New World Order disguised as the free market has stepped in to take its place?

In time, I suspect, when South America, Africa and Asia develop and enjoy the quality of life that exists in the west, these final frontiers of Church influence will disappear. What the world will be like then, is the burning question.

16.

I began writing 'Satan's Little Helpers', in 1999 after I had severed my ties with my parish and the Church. That severing happened in 1998 when I found myself between a rock and a hard place. As I pondered the spiritual revolution in which I found myself at that time, I resisted the temptation to discuss it with anyone. My feeling was that a theological discussion would not help, a text book response was all I would get, and I didn't want that. If I was looking for any reassurance or rebuttal, theology wasn't the way to go. I had never enjoyed a close, friendly association with any priest in the past, and as much as I liked my Charismatic friends, they were too far off the planet to cope with what I was dealing with. I had never regarded them as sufficiently open-minded to manage the sorts of things I was learning and not go bananas. So I never discussed it with them.

I felt they would most likely diagnose this spiritual crisis of mine as the work of the devil; that I was being targeted, quite deliberately. Satan had me in his sights with the intent of dragging me down, down, down into the depths of despair, depression and whatever else he dragged one down to. When Satan was on your tail you were in deep poo. I understood where they were coming from: it was easy to slide into that sense of uncertainty, that fear complex. After all, we were Catholic, we were raised on fear.

Now and then I would unload the odd broadside on some poor soul at prayer meetings just to gage a reaction. I had been reading a book about the cult of the Virgin Mary and I suggested the claims made by Bernadette Soubirous at Lourdes, sounded a touch orchestrated. When she was asked in what manner the lady identified herself, Bernadette supposedly answered: 'she replied, I am the Immaculate Conception.' Coming as it did just four years after the pope had proclaimed the Immaculate Conception as authentic dogma, it sounded to me like a set-up. Saying this to some parish members almost set off a couple of cardiac arrests. But that was just the beginning. The real problem arose when our local parish priest decided to hold a parish mission.

He was looking for some way to involve the parish, to help them deepen their spirituality, and I suppose he wanted to bring them together as a community in a more meaningful way. By the skin of my teeth I avoided the committee for that event. I never enjoyed committees; too much talk, too little action. I was already editor and committee member of our monthly paper. We didn't have meetings. Any problems that arose, we just fixed them with a phone call or two. Much better idea!

The Parish Council voted in favour of the mission proposal, and after a great deal of planning and promotion over several months, two priests and a nun arrived to conduct it. It was surprisingly well attended, given our parish's track record for similar events in the past. The priests presented a very challenging way of seeing our faith in the modern world, one I found very enlightening. It challenged the whole concept of sin, and encouraged a deeper and more profound spiritual life without fear. But unfortunately, not everyone saw it that way. The mission caused a great deal of controversy among parishioners, which tended to divide and polarize them into two groups, those who liked what they heard and those who did not. In the middle of the furore, one Saturday in January, Joanne and I were enjoying breakfast in bed, and reading the papers when we noticed upon a discount flight offer to London. We were always intending to go to Europe again and so we booked the tickets the same day.

As the weeks went by after the mission, our parish paper, was inundated with letters from parishioners articulating this view and that view, and one of them suggested that one of the priests involved in the mission did not believe in the divinity of Jesus or the 'real presence' in the Eucharist. It appeared to me that the focus of the controversy was shifting from what had been said, to the people who were saying it. It was at this point that I decided to show my hand in a very public way.

As it happened I was editor for the Easter edition. I had already prepared an article for this edition that called into question the historical accuracy of the claim that the Jews had cried out at Jesus' trial, 'Let his blood be upon us and upon our children.' I had quite deliberately written it for the Easter edition, to impress upon readers that the very celebration of Easter in a pluralist society alienated us from other religions, and marginalized our Jewish friends, and that such celebrations had the potential to go beyond pious devotion to a point where more judgmental reactions could manifest themselves. I knew the article would cause a few raised eyebrows; that's exactly what I wanted it to do. I wanted them to THINK for a change.

As a consequence of the fallout over the mission though, I sat down and wrote another article. In this second article, I praised the courage of the two priests for what they were doing and expressed my disappointment at the way they had been treated, by some of the right wing conservatives of the parish. I wasn't the only one to write an article supporting the two priests, but I went a step further and made a public admission that I did not believe in the 'real presence' of the Eucharist, saying that I thought it was symbolic, and stated my reasons. I wrote...

'It is not for me to tell others what the Eucharist is for them. At the same time I do not wish to be told what it is for me. For me, it is a symbolic presence, a sharing of a common hope that somewhere inside each one of us, there exists an all powerful tremendous force words cannot describe, greatness, and a creativity to which the depths of our being are inextricably connected. This force for me is the source of all goodness and strength; it is the source of our very being from which all life comes, known and unknown. It is the originator of our most powerful emotion...love. I believe that Jesus had an awareness of this force, few others have had before him or since, an awareness so intimate that within the limits of his human understanding he was able to give it a name. He called it..Abba...Father. If, in receiving the Eucharist one can bring oneself closer to this force, as close as Jesus thought he was, then even the most eloquent theological determination is by comparison, no more than a shadow that blocks out the Sun's rays....'

I decided to run both articles in the one edition.

Quite coincidentally, the day the edition containing the articles was put on the stands, Joanne and I flew out to London. Well, did the spaghetti hit the fan big time or what? The paper was taken off the stands but not before a note of concern was issued promising a full response in the following month's edition. Meanwhile Joanne and I were enjoying a visit to Prague.

Prague was wonderful and dirt cheap. Our son Travis had been there previously and gave us a tip.

No, you don't stay at the tourist hotels, you stay at a pensione.

A what?

A pensione. It's a bed and breakfast type thing like in England.

Bed and Breakfast?

Bed and breakfast is okay.

Okay, but how do we do that?

You can organize it when you get there. They have a whole list of them at the airport and rail stations. You just pick the one you like and ring them.

Neither Joanne nor I were comfortable with the idea of flying into a foreign city where the people didn't speak English and at the same time take a punt on accommodation, so we made our own enquiries about a pensione. The travel agent was very helpful, and was able to show us a selection of hand drawn sketches which included all the relevant details, such as en-suite and so on. The cost was only half that of the tourist hotels and the facilities looked satisfactory, so we booked three nights. We flew into Prague on a balmy Sunday afternoon, with a warning from a British Airways steward not to use the white taxis, because they overcharge.

When we cleared customs however, and walked out of the airport, the only taxis that were waiting at the curb were white. It was like lambs to the slaughter. We showed the driver the address that we wanted to be taken to, and asked how much. It was four times the amount the brochures indicated, but what could we do? He drove us to the address, I handed him some money and waited for my change. He didn't give me any. When I queried him he simply said, 'the rest is tip.' The thieving bastard!

We picked up our bags and walked into the pensione. It looked more like a converted army barracks. An elderly lady sat inside a cubicle in the foyer and smiled as we entered. We showed our papers to her and she nodded and welcomed us in broken English and said we could have room number one. Then she said, 'or two or three or four, you are the only ones here.'

Oh really? I choked, as she handed me the key to room number one. Joanne began to talk to her while I took the luggage to room number one, a short distance away. I went inside the room and my jaw dropped. It was marginally better than an upgraded prison cell; a relic of the cold war. A small rectangular room with two narrow little beds up against the wall, a steel table, two steel chairs and a fibreglass en-suite tucked into a corner. Christ, I thought, Joanne will die when she sees this. I walked out and asked if I could look at room number two. The lady handed me a key and said, No en-suite in two. I looked anyway. She was right. Jesus! I looked down the passage-way and noticed that the doors to each room were equally spaced apart, concluding that it didn't matter how many rooms I checked, this was as good as it was going to get. Joanne finished talking to the lady and walked into room number one. I followed and closed the door behind us. She took one look and turned around to me, her mouth wide open. She literally couldn't speak.

We were both momentarily in shock. This was nothing like a Bed and Breakfast. It was like nothing we had ever seen before, and I suddenly realized that we really were in an Eastern European country and that they hadn't quite caught up with the latest ideas in budget tourist comforts. Our first reaction was to get out and try somewhere else, but it was already late afternoon; we wouldn't get our money back, and the reality was that we were at least going to have to spend the night here. That was a difficult reality to grasp for those first few moments in that room. The only solution there and then was to get out of that room, take a walk somewhere and try to place the whole experience in the broader context.

The walk took us to Wenceslas Square and that gave us an opportunity to find a familiar sight amongst all the unfamiliarity, something that we could instantly relate to; an oasis in the desert, or a light in the tunnel. McDonald's. Our spirits were lifted immediately. Slowly but surely our shock and disappointment at the standard of our accommodation was overtaken firstly by the taste of a quarter pounder, and then by the curiosity and excitement of exploring this historically famous city.

Over the next two and a half days, we visited the Old Town and soaked up its beautiful medieval quality, the uniqueness of the centuries-old clock tower and the churches which stood as a backdrop to the more modern markets and restaurants catering to the ever increasing tourist industry. We went to a concert in the church of St. Nicholas and listened to a beautiful chamber orchestra performance of Mozart's Divertimento in D Major, and Dvorak's Prague Waltzes for a very cheap ten dollars. Music seemed to be the international language in Prague. Wherever we walked there was music playing somewhere, in a shop, a street corner, or a spontaneous open air concert given by a small orchestral group. As the charm and beauty of this place unfolded before us, the stark austerity of the pensione diminished.

After the concert, we walked arm in arm across the Charles Bridge and browsed among the souvenir stalls and the artists, joined by hundreds of other tourists, always under the careful watch of each of the dozen or so saintly statues blackened by pollution that span both sides of the bridge. At the opposite end of the bridge which leads to Prague Castle there was a souvenir seller who was playing some music on a portable tape deck. The music was immediately familiar to me from a time many years before. I walked over to the souvenir seller and asked her if she could tell me its name. It was Smetana's 'Die Moldau.' Only when she mentioned the word 'Vltava' which was another name Smetana gave to it, that I made the connection between that music and the fact that I was now standing on one of the many bridges, that cross the Vltava River, about which that very piece of music was composed. GET OUT! It resonated from deep within me. It was one of those deeply fulfilling experiences that I was able to carry with me from that point on.

When we returned to London we hired a car for a few weeks. We drove down to Cornwall in England's south west and stayed overnight in the seaside resort of St. Ives. That evening as we walking through the narrow little streets of the town, we came across 'The Old Curiosity Shoppe' above which is inscribed the famous poser, 'As I was going to St. Ives...' But that wasn't all we came across. At the top of the street stands the Catholic parish church of the Sacred Heart and St. Ia.

On the side wall of the church there was a mural which had the date 1549 inscribed. Below the date, and displayed in a circle formation, there was a cross, a steeple, a gallows with a body hanging from it, a monk kneeling in prayer, a dove, and a priest holding up the Eucharist. In the centre of the circle was an open book which I can only presume was meant to be the bible. Across both pages of the book were written the words 'We will have the Mass.' Underneath that, was written the following....

"To honour John Payne Portreeve of this town who was hanged in the market place, and all the men of St. Ives who died to defend the Catholic faith in the Western Rising of 1549."

Joanne and I stared at the mural, part in wonder, part in shock, her a Protestant, me a Catholic. That such a Rising occurred is undeniable history. We thought bad enough that it happened, but to inflame the minds of bigots and the like by displaying a public memorial attached to a church in 1998, was hard to fathom. As for John Payne Portreeve and his mates....the poor bastards, they were simply born at the wrong time in history.

On the flight home Joanne could see that I was deep within myself. You're looking very serious, she said. What's up? I told her that I had been giving it a lot of thought and I had decided to leave the Church. She said to me: I have no problem with you leaving the Church; in fact I would welcome it. It's probably the only thing that we don't share together. But if you are going to do this, just be sure of your reasons why, and make sure that in doing it, you will be at peace with your decision. When we arrived home, I rang the parish priest. We chatted briefly over the phone before I went to see him. He began by telling me about the fallout over my articles in the parish paper.

You've upset a few people, he told me.

How many?

Enough. He said. I'm concerned that some of them may confront you when they see you.

How many supported me?

Don't know.

Too intimidated to speak up?

Who knows?

The Church is riddled with hard line conservatives. I should have seen it coming. They're like the bloody Gestapo.

I brushed over that piece of news and told him that I had decided to leave the Church. He expressed his regret at my decision. I expressed my regret at putting him on the spot. Later, when I went to see him at the presbytery we continued talking and the atmosphere in the room softened somewhat, such that we parted on good terms. So that was that, and afterward, I enjoyed a feeling of relief that it was all over.

I did wonder how Travis and Sarah would react. For all my attempts in their early years to have them embrace Catholicism, I might as well have been pissing in the wind. Their generation was never going to buy a Virgin birth, pointless miracles (walking on water or changing water into wine), a Resurrection or the Ascension. As it happened, neither battered an eyelid.

That's fine.

Okay, no problem.

For them it was no big deal.

17.

We live in such a dumb-arse world! One would have thought after a few million years of human evolution that we would have learnt a few pertinent facts about ourselves, but when you look at where we have come from and where we're heading, it's clear, we haven't learnt the more important facts at all. But we are good at creating names for places we don't even know exist. We call them Heaven or Nirvana, and Hell. Heaven and/or Nirvana are where we want us good people to go. Hell is where we want the bad people to go. It doesn't seem to occur to us that we already have these places right here. We don't need to go anywhere. We don't have to die to go to these places.

Our primary motivation appears to be the creation of wealth. Those at the thick end of it will say, 'wealth conquers all'. I'm not going to get bogged down in a forum on Socialism versus Free Market philosophical ranting. For every pro Free Market argument there's a downside. For every socialist plus there's a corresponding minus. But when I listen to the news on the radio, or watch it on television, catch the odd story in a newspaper I find such enormous diversity of need, of expectation, of aspiration, I realize how the idea of places like Heaven and Nirvana came about? And, by definition, if we have invented places for rewarding goodness, then it stands to reason that we should also have places for rewarding evil. So, in this context, Hell makes sense. The problem is: It's subjective.

This week is a good example. This week, 6-9th August, 2009, we remember Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Try having a discussion about the morality of dropping a nuclear bomb on each of these two cities as happened in 1945.

It would be true to say I have a passion about the bombing of Hiroshima. Earlier this year I published a novel on the subject, 'Hiroshima Sunset.' The real truth behind the bombing is something few people know about. It has been buried in an avalanche of spin from the moment the bomb was dropped. While there is a plethora of information out there, it seems most people don't want to know. In brief, Japan had made overtures to surrender as much as five months before the bomb was dropped. They knew they were defeated. The US military knew they were defeated and Gen. Dwight D Eisenhower cautioned President Truman against using the bomb. Truman went ahead and did it anyway. It was more an experiment in terror than it was a genuine attempt to end the war. They could have ended the war by entering into dialogue with the Japanese, who it must be added, were not only defeated, they were starving. No one is kidding themselves about Japanese atrocities committed during WW2, and POW's know more about that than anybody. But the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima killed civilians more than anyone else. Their stories are just as horrific.

So who was right and who was wrong? Well, the Americans thought the Japanese were evil and should be in Hell, so they did their level best to send them there. But it wasn't some mystical 'other worldly hell' they were trying to send them to; it was right here. The Americans built it. Let's take a moment or two to consider what happened that day...

For the residents of Hiroshima, the 6th August 1945 was the day to end all days; the dawn of a new age of horror, when night came in the morning and the most depraved of all the weapons used in the war, was unleashed upon her unsuspecting people. As her citizens both military and civilian, went about their early morning activities, busily preparing for their day, travelling to work, riding in buses, travelling on trams, children on their way to elementary school, the temperature rose quickly to twenty-eight degrees centigrade.

Above them, at 30,000 feet, Major Claude Eatherly, of the 509th Composite group, piloting Straight Flush, radioed his weather report to the command pilot of Enola Gay several miles to the south... 'Cloud cover less than three-tenths at all altitudes. Advice: Bomb primary.' That message sealed the city's fate and the lives of 130,000 people. Had the weather report been unfavourable, Enola Gay would have proceeded to either Kokura or Nagasaki. On the ground, it was 7.30 am, Straight Flush could no longer be heard or seen and the all clear siren sounded, advising people that it was safe to resume normal duties. Few had even bothered to take shelter.

To the south, and climbing to 31,000 feet, Colonel Paul Tibbets, piloting the aircraft he renamed Enola Gay after his mother, was leading a group of three B-29's on the most important and by far the most expensive mission the United States had ever mounted.

'It's Hiroshima,' Tibbets announced to the crew through the intercom. The long night's flight was over. Now, the months of intense training and the realization that this mission was itself historic in nature brought them all to a new level of anticipation. Each man aboard Enola Gay was there for a specific purpose; each a specialist in his field. Thirty-five minutes later and within sight of the city, Colonel Tibbets set his course for the bomb run. As they approached from the east, Tibbets' group bombardier, Major Tom Ferebee, took control of the aircraft, piloting from the bomb bay, and manoeuvred the M-9B Norden bombsight, the most advanced of its kind ever constructed, into position. The target was the Aioi Bridge, so chosen because it was so easily recognized from aerial photographs, forming a perfect T-shape with the Ota River.

Just minutes before release, Ferebee could see the city's suburbs appear beneath him as he made a slight adjustment to his delivery angle to compensate for the wind. At 8.15am local time, he flipped the switch that released 'Little boy', a 9000lb uranium bomb, the first ever constructed, from the pneumatically operated bomb bay doors of Enola Gay. Three minutes earlier, in the hills east of Hiroshima, the lookout at the Matsunaga monitoring post reported three high flying aircraft tracking west toward the city. One minute later, the air raid warning centre at Saijo confirmed the sighting and telephoned the communication centre in the bunker underneath Hiroshima Castle. From there a frantic attempt by a schoolgirl in the bunker to relay the sighting to the local radio station, in an attempt to warn people to seek shelter, was too late. When Ferebee reported that the bomb was on its way, Colonel Tibbets turned off the automatic pilot and immediately banked Enola Gay sharply sixty degrees to the right. At the same time, the second B-29, The Great Artiste, dropped three aluminium canisters attached to parachutes, and its pilot Chuck Sweeney hard-banked to the left, both planes attempting to outrun the expected shockwave. The blast-gauge canisters dropped from The Great Artiste would record vital information and relay details of the impact by radio signal back to the aircraft. The third B-29, Dimples 91, later renamed Necessary Evil, hung back some 18 miles to the south ready to view and photograph the results using a slow-motion camera. The bomb dropped into the freezing air and began its deadly descent, set to detonate at 1850 feet, the height calculated by the scientists who built it, to inflict the maximum damage on the city of Hiroshima.

At ground level, just seconds after detonation, the impact was appalling. The temperature at the core reached greater than one million degrees centigrade, intensifying outward in a brilliant flash of light followed by a roiling display of electrically charged colours; reds, greens, yellows, purple. On the ground directly below, the temperature peaked at 3000 degrees centigrade, twice the heat required to melt iron. Those immediately exposed to the heat at the burst point were vaporized where they stood or turned into blackened, overcooked lumps of scorched char on the street. Within a one mile radius of the hypocentre, all manner of life and matter melted in the thermal heat, clothes disappeared from human bodies and skin fell away from flesh like wrapping paper from a parcel. Human organs liquefied, boiled and vanished. Later estimates suggested 50,000 people died in the first few seconds. Cats, dogs, birds, pets and insects of all description, all plant life simply ceased to be. The shockwave followed; a force of high pressure, initially greater than six tons per square metre travelling in excess of 7000 miles per hour propelled its way across the city, destroying everything in its wake. It demolished Hiroshima's predominantly wooden structures in seconds, blowing out windows and sending splinters of glass into the seething fiery air, flying indiscriminately, piercing anything and anyone in its path. The shockwave thundered in all directions, setting fire to everything it struck, but even worse, carrying with it, the deadly neutrons and gamma rays, that would poison the air and ground for years. As the entire city was set alight, the radioactive particles spread their silent, invisible legacy.

Aboard Enola Gay, Tail gunner, Sergeant Bob Caron watched in shock as the mushroom cloud climbed six miles high. As the cloud raced upward, Caron could see the shockwave materialize in the thermal heat and race toward the retreating planes now eleven miles away from the blast. Even at that distance and height, Enola Gay experienced strong turbulence, as the plane shook violently and the approaching shockwave battered against the fuselage now caught up in the expanding force of energy. The mushroom cloud reached a height of 60,000 feet, a furious, boiling mass of fire radiating all the colours under the sun. On the ground eight miles from the hypocentre, tiles blew from roofs, windows smashed, homes were destroyed, and trees were incinerated. Everywhere fires started, catching residents in the foothills unawares as they came out of their homes to see what had caused the brilliant flash of light and the terrifying, thundering roar.

Then came the firestorm! As the air temperature soared, it rushed upward, sucking the oxygen along with it, leaving behind a vacuum. Cold air rushed in to fill the vacuum, creating a tornado that tore through the city at frightening speed dragging the fire, and the debris, as it hurled itself along, relentlessly and indiscriminately. Above the inferno, Enola Gay flew out of the after-shock and made a left turn, Tibbets rewarding the crew with a panoramic view of the results of their months of long, hard training and the isolation experienced in the most top secret of missions of the entire war. The crew crammed across to the starboard side of the aircraft, momentarily stunned into silence by what they saw. Ahead of them lay a further six hours flying time before returning to Tinian Island in the Marianas. As the radio operator sent a brief message to Tinian, reporting a successful mission, the B-29 and its two companions, tracked south-east away from the devastation they had inflicted. Ninety minutes later and nearly 400 miles away, Tail gunner Bob Caron could still see the mushroom cloud. Amid the mixed cries of astonishment and wonder among the crew, Tibbet's co-pilot Captain Bob Lewis, scribbled in his log, 'My God! What have we done?'

What had they done? They had created a man- made hell, that's what they had done! So why bother with a mystical 'after-death' one? How could you possibly continue to experience being vaporized in 3000 degrees Celsius of thermal heat for all Eternity? Anyway, that's for the bad guys, of which neither you, nor I, are one. We're the good guys. We're off to Heaven. The problem is: What is it and how do we recognize it...and manufacture it?

Well, if we believe the economic gurus of the world, it's wealth; simple! Get rich! If we believe the poor people, they think it's wealth too. They don't like poverty, they want to get rich. If we believe the bad guys of the world, it's wealth. They're always trying to take it off the rest of us. If you believe the average man or woman in the street, it's wealth; they spend their lives chasing it. If you observe the Catholic Church, it's wealth...it has to be. They are already filthy rich and show no signs of divesting themselves of it.

Of course, there's a small element within most societies that thinks happiness is all we need to experience heaven, but that then begs the question: how does one find happiness? Devoting ones lives to the service of others? Caring for the sick? Praying for the redemption of lost souls? Winning a fortune in the lottery? Having lots of sex? It's all so subjective you see. So, while we know what it is, and we think we know how to recognize it, how then do we manufacture it?

This next bit gets somewhat complicated, so I'm asking you to hang in there. It was easy manufacturing Hell. It's not quite so easy to manufacture Heaven and still have everyone agree with you. So maybe we have to think about manufacturing individually styled heavens; a sort of tailor-made state of mind, blended with an adequate dose of personal preference; a sort of X-factor. How does that sound? For me, that means being free from the insatiable cravings of life, free from constantly wanting things, free from feeling left out, free from being told by others how I should think, what I should believe. Allow me to be free from all this, from dissatisfaction, jealousy, greed and ignorance and I would surely be on the right path to Heaven/Nirvana. So, if it's that simple, why don't we follow that path? What's stopping us?

What's stopping us is that most of us are dickheads, and can't make those kinds of decisions. We need someone else to make them for us. We need spiritual advisors. We also seem to need financial advisors, nutritional advisors, education and vocational advisors, all-purpose analysts, personal trainers and the one I like the best: a life coach. Doesn't that one just hang on your mind like the failed punch line from a stand-up comedian? We can't seem to do jack-shit without first consulting our life coach or our miscellaneous advisor for all things difficult. So when someone asks the question: Is there a God, instead of saying 'how the fuck do I know,' which would be the intelligent answer, we look for an advisor; in this case a man of religion to give us the easy answer rather than think the whole thing through and reply, 'does it matter?' We dare not ask 'does it matter?' That would show us up as a dumb-arse. We have to pretend we know when we don't know; which in the end makes us bigger dumb-arses.

And so by allowing all these life advisors to run our lives for us, it becomes impossible to seek Heaven, which is the one thing we really want, even though it is no more than a mind-set away. The Buddhists know how to do it; they know how to follow the right path. Christians don't; they're too busy pissing off the rest of the world with their evangelical clap-trap. The financial guru's don't; they just want your money to keep them in a job. The poor people don't; they spend too much time listening to people who don't know any more than they do. The bad guys don't; if they did, they wouldn't be bad. The average man or woman in the street doesn't; if they did they wouldn't be keeping all these financial advisors in a job. And, of course the Catholic Church doesn't either. If they did, they wouldn't be trying to influence the rest of us to believe what they say, not what they do.

Let's now demonstrate our dumb-arse stupidity in another way; the way we deal with drugs. This is not the first time someone has tried to demonstrate the folly of our approach to tackling the drug problem in our society and doubtless it won't be the last. I realize too, that the emotive issue attached to this disease is probably the single most difficult side-issue working against our efforts. Put simply, emotions are not going to help us in the fight against drugs. Emotions are about as helpful as the present, outdated, unworkable, inefficient laws that our governments force the police, and the judiciary, as well as Customs and Immigration to work within, and which plague our community outreach centres. Drugs kill people, mostly our young; so do cigarettes, alcohol, sleeping pills, motor cars, airplanes, kitchen knives and any number of other items we use every day.

Yet, of these, drugs are the only ones we outlaw, setting aside that vast arsenal of prescription drugs we permit for lots of different reasons...some good...some questionable. But, like the ones we outlaw, even the drugs we approve, can be abused and result in death. So what have we learned from all of this? Nothing, it would appear. In the 1920's the United States outlawed alcohol. What did they learn from that? Mostly that it was a very expensive waste of tax-payers money. It diverted law enforcement resources away from other more pressing matters and helped foster new markets for underworld crime. Those who wanted alcohol, found it by various means. Some were so desperate for it they bought from 'shady' operators who sold them home-made brew. Some of it was so poorly refined, it killed people. Sound familiar?

So I ask myself: when are we going to demonstrate some maturity here? Does anyone seriously think that the present method of tackling the drug problem is working? Does making drugs illegal, work? Does that stop the drug trade? Unless you have been living on Mars this last century, you know the answer to that, particularly if your house has been broken into and violated by people desperate to fund their habit. The issue of drug related theft is just one spin-off to these laws that is out of control. There is also the issue of drug related murder, rape, white collar crime...need I go on! Fifty years ago, 75% of adults in Australia smoked cigarettes. Today the figure is around 20%. Did we achieve this by outlawing cigarettes? No we didn't. We achieved this through education and rehabilitation. Is there anyone out there smart enough to realize that if drugs were de-criminalized and we transferred all the money we currently spend on law enforcement into education and rehabilitation, we would be no worse off than we are now? Can't we see that such a relatively simple policy turn-a-round could create the foundation for a more enlightened approach to this insidious ailment?

No, it seems we can't. And what is it that stops us from seeing this? It's the emotional approach! We think of drugs and we fear for our sons and daughters. We must protect them. Time and time again, the fear of our society going to the dogs, and the ever-present threat to our young seems to blind us to conscientious, mature, decision making processes that in the long term are more responsible.  
Let us for a moment imagine a world where blind fear does not get in the way of responsible decision making. It begins with recognizing that drugs will always be available and that trying to stop their manufacture, distribution and sale is a waste of time. On the contrary, by trying to stop them, we actually encourage and assist black markets to flourish. Why couldn't we simply license their manufacture, distribution and sale as three separate entities or Government manufacture, distribute and sell them as a non-profit concern, or adopt any combination of the two? The prices could be regulated and affordable such that any black-market dealing would be unviable; not illegal, just not worth the effort. Just think of the savings we would achieve in law enforcement; and those saving would be channelled into educating our young to the dangers associated with drugs as vigorously as we have channelled funds into educating our young about the dangers of smoking, drink-driving and so on. Would those of our young who don't "do drugs" suddenly rush headlong, at breakneck speed to the nearest outlet to buy cheap quality drugs? I doubt it. They choose not to smoke now because we have taught them about the dangers. I suspect they would choose not to take drugs, illicit or otherwise for the same reason. Would those who take drugs today, rush off madly to obtain cheaper drugs to satisfy their addiction? Yes, of course they will! Will some of them overdose and die as a result? Yes, of course. There's an idiot on every corner. Would we as a community be any worse off than we are now?

I don't think so.

Would we have solved the drug problem? No! But I strongly suspect that over time, we would position ourselves far more effectively to deal with the problem and at the very least, be heading down the right path. And who knows? Perhaps in 10 to 15 years time, when the next generation of potential addicts enters the target market, they might be sufficiently educated and alert to the dangers to be dissuaded from experimenting. To me, none of this is rocket science. It's common sense. But when we factor in the dickhead element, i.e. human decision making and all the fringe group interference that comes with it, suddenly it becomes as complicated as assembling a nuclear bomb.

We are such a dumb-arse lot.

18.

The news from around the world suggests things are looking up for the economy. That troubles me deeply. I interpret that news as a call for we hard working people to plough our money back into the world of property development, futures, derivatives, hedge funds and any other type of 'you beaut' investment strategy dreamt up to help all those poor, badly done-by financial advisors get their jobs back, jump on their horses and take up where they left off. Well, bollocks! I'm not falling for that again. What little money I had before the global financial meltdown would have been more secure and better invested had I stuffed it under the mattress; at the very least, it would still be there.

I think we get sucked in too easily with promises of high returns, forward thinking strategies and the like. I'm over it. To all you investment advisors out there don't waste any more of your precious time flying your corporate flag or any other flag on my television screen. I'll only look at it with contempt as I reflect on the oh-so-tenuous nature of your industry; up one day, down the next, just like the flags you all hide behind.

And while we're on the subject, what is it with flags? Why do we have them? It may surprise many but some of us loathe the wishy-washy sentiment attached to flags. The nations of the world and their citizens are obsessed with flags. To anyone out there who thinks flags represent national identity, I say bollocks! Some would even suggest they evoke pride and determination of spirit lifting the bearers to even greater heights of achievement. Well, bollocks to that too! Does a colourful rag...er flag really achieve that, and why does the very mention of them cause passions to stir? If you believed all those patriotic bimbos out there, you could be forgiven for thinking that the flag came first and the reason for them, a mere afterthought. They fight for the flag, they win for the flag, and they fly them on buildings and salute them. They drape them around their bodies as they run around sporting arenas, they sing to them as they run them up a flagpole and oh yes... they drape them over coffins. Why do they bother? What message are they sending to the multitude of onlookers?

Perhaps there are some out there who feel they need a multi-coloured security blanket to compensate for some national identity crisis? But I challenge anyone to nominate one positive thing about a flag other than its decorative appeal? Celebrating international sporting events is a good case in point. Do athletes want the whole world to celebrate their achievements or just their country? Do we need champions like Michael Phelps draped in an American flag or Roger Federer with a Swiss flag to celebrate what they have achieved? Watching someone win a major international event and then run around an arena with a flag draped over their shoulders has got to be the most pedestrian of all celebrations. I cannot see how this nationalistic fervour is good for the world? The Americans are obsessive about flags; it was the first thing they did when they landed on the moon. European sports fans taunt each other with them, and South Americans....well, don't get me started. So what's the remedy? Let's start by imagining a world without flags, other than for rodeos and mindless car races and perhaps occasions when we need something to brighten our spirits. Just paint them the colours of the rainbow. Let's get rid of these silly national props. Would life continue to exist as we know it? Would the world as we know it begin to haemorrhage without flags? And as for politicians who like to rouse national fervour by sanctimoniously placing a flag behind them when they are sucking up for your vote, what is it that they are really saying? What they are saying is that they are so boring we need something to distract us from their hubris.

Don't forget that people like Hitler used them to unite the German nation, Japan made them synonymous with the Emperor, and Napoleon did the same, so we know they are good for wars. They show us in which direction to shoot, although when you think about it, I doubt when the troops were dodging bullets in Iraq and Afghanistan, the flag was on their minds. Unfortunately, I don't think the idea of getting rid of flags will catch on, and so for those of us who find the whole thing analogous to cultural cringe, they will still be used, selfishly and dishonestly, and the people who are sucked in by all this nationalistic razzmatazz, will continue to believe that honouring a flag somehow makes them good citizens.

What a load of bollocks!

There's even more bollocks going on in Canberra right now. Our overpaid politicians are playing ducks and drakes with emission trading schemes and renewable energy targets, only a fraction of which the general population understands. Minister for Climate Change and Water, Penny Wong has put them on notice and they'd all better get their act together or there will be trouble ahead. Yep! She's right. We are in trouble. I was taking a passenger to a medical centre last week when she asked me if I thought the planet was climatically doomed. I said no, the planet isn't doomed, the planet will recover, but to do so it might have to eliminate the most serious threat it faces to achieve that recovery. What's that? The woman asked. Us, I said. She looked at me with those disbelieving eyes and started shaking her head. No, she said. God would not let that happen. I groaned in despair. What God? I thought to ask but held myself in check. How do we save the planet when possibly 60% of the population might think the same? But then I thought that if she was silly enough to believe that, she probably believes that Noah built an ark on God's instructions to survive a previous annihilation of mankind.

Yeah, you're right, I replied, winding up for an evangelical tease. He, (God, that is) did it once before and it didn't work. He wouldn't do it again, I said.

When was that? she asked.

Stunned at her lack of biblical awareness I decided to have some fun. God said to Noah, build an ark and take two of every living thing into the ark at which time the heavens will open and it will rain forty days and forty nights... I said. And so it came to pass, I continued. And the heavens opened up and it did rain and all that remained upon the earth did perish as God had foretold. She remained silent, probably trying to absorb it all. So don't think it can't happen, I said. God is angry, I said, it's no problem for Him to wipe us all out and start again. All the warning signs are there. This time He won't send the rains though. He'll let us do the dirty work. If the atmosphere doesn't suffocate us, from an excess of carbon emissions, the nuclear holocaust that will result from wars being fought between nations fighting over dwindling water supplies will, I said. It has already been foretold in the book of Revelations, I said. The poor lady did not know what to say. Was she in agreement or did she think of me as some kind of religious nut case? I never found out. She never responded. We arrived at the medical centre; she paid the fare and left me sitting there in my car. I hope she's okay. I don't normally quote the bible to anyone, unless they do it to me. For every righteous quote I have heard, I could generally reply with one that offset it, but it is a pointless exercise. They just don't hear you. This was one of the lighter moments I have enjoyed over the past 26 years of taxi driving. There have been others, but not sufficient in number to recommend the occupation. On the other side of the coin there are plenty of reasons to discourage anyone from seeing taxi driving as anything other than an act of desperation.

'How do we fix the taxi industry?' is a cry I constantly hear from radio talk-back hosts. In fact it is they who seem to lead the charge whenever the issue floats to the top. Unfortunately, they also seem to take the easy road and give their listeners what they want to hear...the negative side. They rail against poor performance, lack of street knowledge, dirty cars, not arriving on time, and so the list goes on. Talk-back radio is a magnet for aggrieved users of cabs to get on the phone and tell their story, relate their personal experience, and express their pain. When we juxtapose these sorts of complaints alongside any other occupation, the cry usually goes up... 'You get what you pay for'. But strangely, no such claim is ever heralded when it involves the taxi industry. Why? The answer is simple. We know that if we pay them more, it comes out of the individual's pocket. That's right! We will have to pay for it; a far cry from complaining about executive bonuses, golden handshakes and the like.

So, are we prepared for the cold hard truth or not? Are we ready to cop it on the shoulder, swallow the medicine? Let's take a closer look at where the fault really lies.

How do we fix the taxi industry? I suspect the answer lies somewhere in between, 'you get what you pay for' and 'you get what you value.' It is not, I suggest, our taxi industry that is failing us, it is our community failing the taxi industry. When the community learns to respect the industry as a vital and important part of our infrastructure, and values the people who represent it on the front line, the industry will respond. The essential problem today is that the community does not respect or value the industry. If it did....driving a taxi would be seen as a worthwhile occupation. It would be something people would aspire to do. It would be something people were attracted to, as it is in say, London, or Japan for example. London cabbies spend two years in training. A Japanese cabbie would not dream of starting his or her day without first thoroughly cleaning the car and attending to their high standard of grooming. Here in Australia, it is a job of last resort....low pay, dreadful conditions, with drivers subject to abuse and assault, no holiday pay, no guaranteed income, no sick leave. Asking drivers to perform to the standards we expect, but in the process treating them in this way is a clear indication that we do not respect them, or value what they do. We value our police, nurses, teachers, firemen, and although they too, complain about their conditions, at least they are rewarded for their performance with a proper, regulated pay structure, holidays, and sick leave. Taxi drivers are called upon to be the front-line ambassadors to our cities, and in return we guarantee them nothing! When someone rings a radio station to complain about an incident they have experienced, you can hear the talk-back gurus licking their lips, ready to fire broadsides at an easy target. For all their hyperbole, they have done nothing to help. They have in fact done the reverse. If we want a taxi service we are proud of, we must first learn to respect and value its components. It is no use to anyone to say..... 'When they learn to do the job properly, we'll respect them.' The buck stops with the community. Every fare increase sees a new round of complaints emerge and the same old rhetoric from talk-back radio hosts. Then it all dies down for a while, as some other issue grabs their attention, or until a new complaint arises.

But things might be about to change. Last year in Melbourne, in the space of a few hours of passionate determination, a new style of driver in the industry, made up predominantly of immigrants from the sub-continent and the Horn of Africa, most of them students working part time to cover the cost of their education, brought the city to a standstill. They displayed their naked bodies across every newspaper and television channel in the country, had Minister for Transport, Lynne Kosky, jumping to attention in record time, and lo and behold, gained concessions that the rest of us were not even asking for. One must ask that if they could do that, simply by sitting down in the middle of a busy intersection, naked, unorganized and unrepresented, what could they achieve if they really got serious? These newcomers to the industry have built up their numbers over the past ten years or so, almost unnoticed, and are different from the rest of us. They have passion and they demand respect. Moreover, they value the work they do and sense that the public does not. This is a recipe for continued disquiet. Within the next ten years or so, a significant number of 'baby-boomer' drivers will gradually retire, and the baton will pass to this new generation, who, because of the ease by which they can enter the industry, will transform it. I wish them well. I hope they will find a way to break the stranglehold currently enjoyed by a handful of multiple-licence holders; a stranglehold, that has in 26 years, seen the value of the licence go from $40.000 to $400.000, while the average driver, who is excluded from any equity in this phenomenal increase, works a 60 hour week to scratch out an average annual gross income of $20.000. As if to add insult to injury, he is deprived of any sick leave or holiday pay and labours under conditions that many of the new generation came here to escape. And, oh yes, he may also be stabbed and even murdered for his trouble.

It's not as if the circumstances are any different from 26 years ago. There have been several murders of drivers in the past, before the Indians and Africans came, yet I don't recall much more than a whimper of protest or alarm being raised. The best we did was to provide a guard of honour as the hearse drove off to the cemetery. Recently, I tried to put the case for taxi drivers in a discussion topic on Facebook. I genuinely thought there would be some sympathy for our cause. I was wrong. The reaction was astonishing. I never realized that we were held in such contempt by so many people. And why was that? Because some driver didn't know where to go, or he was rude, or his car was dirty, or he went the wrong way. Well, hello! Try stacking that up against the driver's experiences: passengers who are also rude, abusive, drunken, urinating, defecating, vomiting, and who more frequently these days, run off without paying. Try telling the new generation who experience this kind of behaviour that the service is unsatisfactory.

I guess it's easy for me to say these things now; I'm over my earlier years of angst. Notwithstanding the gross intrusion of a malignant, cutaneous, fibrous histiocytoma, into my world, I'm retiring next year. I plan to walk away from this industry and happily leave it for someone else to moan about. My moaning achieved nothing and I have other more exciting reasons to celebrate. My son and his partner are having a baby. I'm going to be a Grandad for the third time. Now, that's something to celebrate. The only problem is, my son lives in England!

My son Travis, left our shores in 2001 with not much more than a backpack and a Geological Engineering degree. He arrived in England at a time when his particular engineering discipline was in short supply. He met a girl, as you do, and they now live in a pretty little village in Oxfordshire. And so, from Mark Kelly's epic voyage from Ireland in 1867, his great-great grandson has made a somewhat epic journey of his own 134 years later, and returned to the British Isles. It has taken him another eight years to get his act together but his first child will be English. Could Mark have possibly foreseen this development? I doubt it.

I have much to be grateful for when I realize how much my children have led me out of the darkness of ignorance that was much of my world until then. They gave both Joanne and I a blast one evening as we sat down together for dinner insisting that we buy them a computer to help them in their secondary school studies. I knew nothing about computers and secretly hoped that I wouldn't have to. Our children changed all that. We bought them a computer and I watched in awe as they demonstrated a whole new world of creativity before my eyes. And this was before the Internet. It was only after they left home and so generously left the computer with me, that I was able to open a window to a new world of information by connecting to the internet. The computer kick-started my writing career, the internet became my primary source of learning. It was so easy to find the answers to questions receive multiple opinions on social issues and be able to post my own opinion and have others respond with their comments. It was a lot of fun too. Once I realized the awesome power of a search engine the possibilities were limitless, and quite unexpectedly, one of the first names I googled was Brother Bertinus, Marist Brother. I found nothing but clearly there was unfinished business deep in my sub-conscious prompting me to do that. But I found using a computer to write suited me in a way free-hand writing could not; instant corrections, spelling checks, page layout, it was all so comprehensive. The words came thick and fast and I couldn't keep up with them so wherever I went I kept a notepad and pen close-by at all times to write things down as they flashed across my mind. I soon learnt that if I tried to remember, I would forget and the thought would never come back.

Following countless rejections of my first manuscript, I investigated the possibilities of self-publishing. After all, when one reads that writers such as Deepak Chopra, Mark Twain, Earnest Hemingway, Rudyard Kipling, Zane Grey, Edgar Allen Poe, Leo Tolstoi, Margaret Atwood and many, many others self-published at some stage in their lives, the very idea of doing the same placed me in high company. By 2002, I had completed my first novel, Satan's Little Helpers, but it would be another two years before I could summon the courage to 'put it out there.' Again, it was the internet that presented the opportunity with the emergence of digital print technology and Print on Demand online services. An artist friend gave me permission to use his painting of St. Patrick's Cathedral in Melbourne for the front cover, I called upon an old school friend to read it and write a review for the back cover, and when it was published, I was ecstatic. I didn't care if people didn't like it; I realized there were lots of books published by mainstream publishers that people didn't like, didn't buy and have long since been forgotten. I felt I had as much right as they did to be out there and accept whatever criticism came my way. From that point on, writing became a passion. I wanted nothing else but to write a second book, if for no other reason than to show the first wasn't a fluke. I had things to say, stories to tell, characters to invent, a mind ablaze with ideas and a vehicle in which to make it all happen. Do we learn from our children? My feeling is that if we don't, there's something wrong. So, I happily acknowledge that my children's demands for a computer and my willingness to accede, achieved a double benefit. They were able to complete professional looking assignments, take pride in their work and strive to improve their overall results and I became computer literate thrusting myself onto a 21st century technology arena that opened the door to a writing career. And when Travis moved to England we were in daily email contact; a far cry from the days of letter writing that took weeks to arrive and weeks to reply.

As I write these words, the news has filtered through that England has won the fifth and final test match at the Oval in London and as a consequence have won the Ashes. I can just visualize the weeping and gnashing of teeth across our country. Calamitous! Poor Ricky Ponting; that's twice now he's led a side to the old country and come back empty handed. Kevin Rudd will have his head on a plate for this. It's not fair. If anyone doubted the effects of climate change this must surely be proof. There we were left to chase a massive total of over 500 runs with two days to do it. In the past we have always been able to rely on a deluge to wash the game out, force a draw and secure that dirty black stuff they keep in a wooden urn the size of my big toe. But what happened. It didn't rain. There you have it: climate change!

19.

Joanne and I were able to travel to England in 2008 to see our son, Travis, and enjoy free accommodation as a fringe benefit. It gave us the opportunity to trawl over Europe, the USA, Asia and parts of the Middle East providing me with a rich canvas upon which to write stories. It was from similar wonderful experiences that 'Andrea's Secret,' 'Saints and Relics' and 'Hiroshima Sunset,' found their way into print. We have come to regard England as a second home. They speak with many strange accents, not always easy to understand but at least they drive on the same side of the road as us. The food is ordinary; the traffic in London horrendous but when you break out onto a motorway and head in any direction the countryside is delightful. It's green; multiple shades of green. I remember green. It's what my garden used to look like before climate change wrecked it. Motoring along the M4 toward Oxford there are forty different shades of green. You see it in the rolling hills, the forests, the dales. This is where my grand-child will be born; in a green country where it rains and people don't have to worry about running out of water. Joanne's maternal grandfather came from Cheltenham in England, so it is full circle on that side of the family as well.

On this particular trip I was able to visit Russia. We had planned to take an overnight ferry from Stockholm to Tallin in Estonia with Travis and Octavia and during the planning stages I realized how close we were to Russia. I had to go there. I had to! I quickly surmised the opportunity would never present itself again and if I didn't grab it now, I would regret it forever. Joanne shook her head doggedly. I'm not going to Russia, she said firmly. I think she harboured some irrational concern about Gulags and stuff, thinking that she might finish up in one. Not me! You go if you want to, she said. So I did. My only port of call in Russia was St. Petersburg, (formerly Leningrad) a gem of a city perfectly located at the western edge of the Gulf of Finland. For a city that experienced such horror and devastation during WW2, it sparkled in the bright sunshine of a chaotic summer where darkness came at midnight and daybreak at 2am. I arrived in St. Petersburg a little after 2pm on Wednesday 11th June 2008 after a fairly interesting 6 hour train trip from Helsinki. Along the way, the countryside was so green I felt so jealous. Melbourne, now suffering in its thirteenth year of drought was brown and lifeless. Here in Finland and Russia it was rich pine forests, and open green fields as far as the eye could see. Quaint little villages flashed past, where little old ladies with their heads covered were working outside old wooden homes painted dark brown, gathering in clothes or tending the vegetable garden. Occasionally we passed by a small town almost deserted where large concrete buildings, once factories were empty and derelict and disused rail sidings were still holding rusting rail stock. During the train journey we were issued with immigration papers to complete. When we passed into what they call the immigration zone, (the border area) situated between the last Finnish town and the first Russian town I received my first reminder that the old ways of the Soviet mindset were still alive and well. At this point the toilets on the train were locked and everyone was asked to resume their proper seats. Russian immigration officers came on board and inspected everyone's passport/visa documents. Then, they took our passports away for about half an hour or more leaving us to ponder on the idea of being in a no-go zone, without our passports. The why of it was never explained but I knew. They were checking to see if I was listed on a 'dangerous persons' list. With a name like Kelly, it's a burden I have had to carry all my life. It only takes one lay-about Irish larrikin to upset the applecart, rob a bank or two, shoot police officers and everyone who carries his name thereafter is painted with the same brush. It's the same the world over. Ask any Italian named Capone, any German named Hitler, any Russian named Stalin, and any Tasmanian named Flynn. They didn't scare me. My great-grandfather survived the potato famine of the nineteenth century. We Kelly's walk tall and will not be intimidated.

When we disembarked from the train in St. Petersburg, we were ushered off the station platform onto the street where buses and taxis waited. The address of my hotel was written in Romanized Russian rather than the Cyrillic alphabet common to the locals. Therefore I had great difficulty in finding a driver who could work out where I wanted to go. When one did, he quoted 1000 roubles to take me there saying it was 15 kilometres away. I said 'niet, too much,' and he came down to 700. I said niet, and he waved me off. The next fellow quoted 1500 roubles, also stating 15 kilometres. I told him the last fellow quoted 700 and he faked surprise. I began to walk away and he called me back quoting 800. I said niet, and offered 750 which he accepted. While he was putting my luggage in the boot another driver who was negotiating with another passenger called out to him. Some discussion followed whereupon, my driver took my luggage out of the boot and dropped it into the other taxi driver's car. The other driver then told me to get in the car. I made a point of telling him that I was only prepared to pay 750 roubles and he seemed to understand. Then the journey began. It took about one hour in time, but as dark storm clouds gathered, we travelled no further than about 5 kilometres. The delay was in the horrendous traffic jams where we sat going nowhere, for ten to fifteen minutes at a time. When we finally arrived at the hotel, he remonstrated with me when I offered him only 750 roubles. I stood firm, grabbed my luggage and left him standing. The taxi itself might have been a recent model of something Russian but looked and sounded like a relic of the cold war. Forget about a taxi meter. It's a negotiated rate.

The hotel was a pleasant relief. It seemed to be a boutique type place without any signage other than a small bronze plaque on the side of the wall outside what looked like an apartment house. Up a few stairs and into a small foyer, everyone was very polite and the room clean and comfortable, but no English speaking TV channels. Then the storm broke and foolishly I ventured out, needing to find a bank where I could exchange some money. It was a heavy downpour, and I noticed that the storm water downpipes from the buildings washed onto the footpath. They weren't connected to the storm water drains.

St.Petersburg is Russia's second largest city with little by way of freeways. Therefore traffic is congested, with trams, trolley buses, ordinary buses, pressing on unrelentingly and presenting a danger for those not familiar with right hand drive. Some roads, particularly between St. Petersburg railway station and the Palace Square are simply chaotic. The buildings are unashamedly 18/19th century and in many I was reminded of what marvellous Melbourne once looked like before our once grand Collins and Bourke Streets were sacrificed to cater for modern commercial development. Likewise behavioural patterns such as smoking in taxis and in restaurants was different from us and slightly unsettling. The first evening, I walked around the Palace Square in front of the Hermitage. The square is huge, bigger I think than St. Peter's Square in Rome. From there, it was a short walk to one of the many canals that wind their way in, around, and through the city, most finding their way at some point into the Neva River, itself a very large waterway, and focus of pleasure cruises on anything from the slow multi-seat craft to high speed hydrofoils. On the opposite side to the Hermitage is the Fortress of Peter and Paul, which contains in its Cathedral, the final resting place of many former Tzars, notably Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, and also the Romanovs, Nicholas 11, the Tzarina Alexandra, and some of their children, all murdered in 1917 following the Bolshevik revolution. Their remains were placed in the cathedral in 1998. Two of the children are missing: Maria and Alexis (the boy) whose remains have never been found. The irony is not lost on the citizens of St. Petersburg that this city once renamed Leningrad, to honour the man who ordered the deaths of the Royal family, now honours the recovery of their remains in a special part of the Cathedral. Two other city highlights, the Church of the Saviour of the Blood, easily identified by its multi-coloured onion-shaped domes, and the Cathedral of St. Isaac were a vivid reminder that I was walking through history. A ride on the underground metro of any city is always an education, but doing so, as I did, trying to identify Cyrillic station names with their Roman equivalents in my guide book was a challenge. But by far the most cherished of attractions in St.Petersburg is the Hermitage, incorporating the Winter Palace. The crowds queue before opening time everyday and the tour buses flock like seagulls waiting for a free feed. The museum contains a huge collection of original paintings and pieces of art acquired by various Emperors over the past 400 years, and the rooms of the Winter Palace are stunning in their lavish display of architecture, sculpture, gilding, and opulence. After four hours of solid viewing, I was exhausted, but unsure if I had covered the entire area. It was all too much to absorb, but I left uplifted and thrilled, knowing that I had walked the very halls and parlors of such a critical part of Russian and world history. The following day I took a ride on one of the hundreds of water taxis that clog the canals and felt humbled when our English speaking guide pointed out the house where Rasputin was murdered in 1917. Did that caused the bristles on the back of my head to freeze or what?

When I left St. Petersburg, taking the 11.30 PM train this time to Tallin in Estonia, I was subjected to the same scrutiny exiting Russia and entering Estonia. They don't trust anyone on either side of that border; especially if your name is Kelly. And they don't mind waking you at 2.00 in the morning either. Again, I not only prevailed but inadvertently ran the gauntlet of Baltic hospitality later accidently helping myself to a free breakfast in a hotel near Tallin station when I was searching for a toilet. The waiter must have thought I was a guest but never asked for my room number. I would have paid quite happily, but no one asked. It must be my innocent eyes. Joanne and I once shared a similar experience in Norway. We helped ourselves to a smorgasbord dinner in our hotel in Voss, but no one asked for our room number. When we checked out the next day, the $100+ dinner wasn't on the bill! I suppose you might be thinking that with these admissions of my transgressions while abroad, I am vindicating the stern measures practiced by border security agents to keep undesirables out. Well, you're right, I am; it must run in the family. Nearly 30 years ago my brother David and I travelled to the USA to see my brother Brian. He met us at San Francisco International Airport and we drove to a motel nearby. He told me to wait in the car while he and David checked in. He didn't want them to know three people were going to occupy the room so we could save some money. I wasn't in the country one hour before I was part of a conspiracy to commit theft by deception. Is there any wonder people look at people named Kelly and wonder if we shouldn't be locked up? Perhaps that's why Travis left Australia to live in England. He didn't want to be tarred with the same whip. God, I hope he's not planning to change his name.

Meanwhile the media are in damage control not quite knowing how to react to the Ashes defeat so they've shifted the focus to Rachel Finch. She's our red-hot candidate in the Miss Universe contest currently being held in the Bahamas. She's a hot favourite, they tell us; can't lose, they say. Bollocks, I say! Funny how the Aussie media are always desperate for a winner. Is this an example of the cultural cringe factor we hear so much about? There's nothing culturally cringing about being named Kelly. We take it on the chin every time. Which brings me back to my malignant cutaneous fibrous histiocytoma thingy. While everything looks fine after Simon Ceber took the tumour out, the prognosis isn't quite so comforting. Apparently I have a 25-55% chance of surviving the next five years. Well, thanks for nothing! At the beginning of the 2008 football season in the AFL, Hawthorn was given only a 25% chance of winning the premiership and they got up to win it...so there!

Changing tack abruptly, but who cares, they buried Teddy Kennedy yesterday. For someone who literally grew up during a time when the Kennedy name drew instant attention whatever the reason, I might be tempted to think an era has come to an end. But with two Kennedy's of the next generation already forging political careers perhaps that would be premature. It might however, be reasonable to say that the impact of the three Kennedy brothers on American politics will not be repeated.

Can you believe it? They finally buried Michael Jackson. It took two months; I didn't know you had to join a waiting list to get put under.

20.

Mercifully the tipping competition I joined this year is over. I always fancied myself as a good tipster which is probably why I'm no good at it. I might just belong to the smallest group ever formed; just 10 of us. It was 11 at one stage but my sister Margaret dropped out for lack of interest. You would think I'd be a chance with just ten, particularly when there's only one other Hawthorn supporter in the group. Hawthorn has won more premierships in the last fifty years than any other club, so you would think that Hawthorn supporters would know more about football than anyone. Apparently it doesn't work that way. My wife Joanne doesn't follow any club and doesn't know anything about football either, yet she has won the bloody thing twice!

This year I thought was my year. Coming off the back of a Hawthorn premiership year, my confidence was sky high. Nancy Ilardi is one of the participants. She's a Bulldogs fan, poor girl. The last flag they won was in 1954 when she was only ten, so you can imagine how deprived she feels. Her husband Frank is a Collingwood man, so just like his team he's got no hope either. Mind you Frank's from Sicily so I'm always very careful not to upset him. Then there's Joe and Helen Wilson. Helen, follows Hawthorn like me, and that makes her special. Joe on the other hand follows Essendon and unless you've been on Mars for the last thirty years you would know that there's bad blood between them and us. They stole two premierships off us, the bastards, and every time the two teams have met since, someone gets knocked out or rubbed out or walks around looking for his teeth. So, it's refreshing that Joe and I get along like two old codgers who meet up for a beer on Friday nights. It starts off friendly but by night's end we're throwing bottles across the room each hoping to crack the other's skull.

I'm kidding.

The dark horse in our group is Jim Hampton. He's a Richmond fan, a tiger through and through. The only problem is: I hate Richmond, the dirty bastards. They stole a premiership off us too. Back in 1974 we beat them twice during the year but they won their way into the Grand Final and we didn't. Needless to say we would have beaten the crap out of them if we did. I guess you can tell I'm carrying some baggage over that one. Richmond knuckle dusted their way to four premierships during the sixties and seventies breaking plenty of opposition bones along the way. Anyway, Jim's a big bloke, over six feet and counting, so I can't give him too much cheek either but he's always close to the top in the tipping competition. His wife Loraine is good too. She and Joanne are on the phone every second day talking about nothing in particular; it's usually about someone either dead or dying at the bowling club, or about someone who didn't clean the toilets properly and when told so, stormed out of the club vowing never to return. The elderly have a tendency to get a bit precious you know. It doesn't take much to set off a skirmish at the bowling club; just suggest to some poor old dear that she's punching below her weight in the kitchen and all hell can break loose.

I'm not a member of the bowling club. I was a member for three years doing the hard yards but I just couldn't get sufficiently motivated to like the game. It was too slow. Playing fours on pennant day with men old enough to be your father and twice as slow did not activate my competitive juices. It was like visiting a nursing home every Saturday at noon and not being able to leave until dark. Sometimes the game took that long! Some took a lifetime to pick up their bowl, line up on the mat, survey the situation at the other end as best they could, then bend over to bowl only to fart and lose their balance. And the older they were the more savage they reacted as if the wind or the sun or the lady on the next green or some dog barking three hundred metres away caused them to bowl on the wrong bias. Sometimes they looked at me, as if it was my fault.

What the fuck did I do?

It wasn't just the game though. I have to be honest and say that having a bald head so brutally punctuated with keratosis, and squamous cell carcinomas and resembling something like a cow paddock didn't help my social demeanour either. I dreaded the moment when the bell rang for afternoon tea and we all filed in for a cuppa and a biscuit. I knew I had to take my hat off and expose my head to the gawking masses. They probably didn't notice my head at all...er, yes they did. I could see the quirky, almost embarrassed expression on their faces as their eyes flashed upwards while they spoke or listened to me, like they were desperately trying not to look but couldn't resist. There were more bald heads sitting down to afternoon tea at the bowling club than I've had Chinese take-away but did any of them look like a cow paddock?

No!

So, I never really enjoyed my time there. But Jim and Loraine Hampton did. They loved it. Jim was into everything, knew everyone, and did everything with a great big smile and bowled like he was determined to kick ass. So did I, but nobody noticed. At the time I didn't know I had a bigger problem; one that was much bigger than a dispiriting game of bowls and far more dangerous.

It had lingered for several years, and was slowly draining away every interest I had in life except writing. Winston Churchill called his version of it the 'black dog.' It was Jeff Kennett who helped me back on the road to recovery; he showed me the light. Jeff is the public face of Beyond Blue; he's also president of the Hawthorn Football Club. He was once the Premier of Victoria. I never liked him then; I thought he was too bullish, too in-your-face, and worst of all, too Liberal. But after he left politics a new Jeff emerged. His high public profile brought the issue of depression out into the open. He also steered Hawthorn to a premiership in 2008, but before that, and before he took on the role at Beyond Blue, depression was only heard about in whispers as if it was a mental illness or something. Dhrr...yes it is, but does that mean we shouldn't talk about it? Beyond Blue's website clearly listed all the symptoms and for me it read like a biography. I was depressed. Multiple issues had surfaced; issues relating to work (I was just plain sick to death of it), of family and the future, my cow paddock of a head and a handful of other things that are none of your business. When I considered the way I was feeling and some of the terrible thoughts that I was experiencing (including suicide) and compared them with the general symptoms of depression which Jeff helped make very public, I realized I needed help. I went to my doctor, confident in the knowledge that he would be sympathetic and not just tell me to get over it, or not to worry, it will go away or something equally stupid. And he was. Depression happens when external events cause the chemicals in the brain to get out of whack. Medication is available that restores and corrects that chemical imbalance. I've been taking medication for two years now and feel great but I haven't returned to bowling. Not yet. I'll hold out for a few more years or until I'm in my eighties and don't mind spending a whole afternoon and half the evening vegetating as I bowl just fifty out of the four hundred bowls that it takes to play a game of fours. And then spend the rest of the game watching seven others with whom I have nothing in common, except the odd fart now and then, do the same.

The other pair in our tipping competition is Bill and Sue Aitchison. I don't know if they bowl, in fact, I can't say much about them; I've never met them. They signed up to our group two years ago, on-line. How about that? They sent me an email each week giving me their tips. That was the only way I knew they were still alive, but emailing didn't help their tipping. But we are finally about to meet. The prize for the winner of our competition is a free dinner. We will all troop off to a restaurant of the winner's choice and review the year just past. When the bill arrives we'll divide it between everyone except the winner. And there's the rub. I've never scored a free dinner. Joanne has scored two but it's not the same. This year was going to be my year. I was leading by one point with just two games to go.....and then I choked. Frank, my Sicilian friend won....again! It's just not fair; it was my turn. Now I have to wait another year before I can claim victory.

But I do get my own back.

Our next formal gathering will be on Melbourne Cup day. We'll get together, enjoy a barbeque, good food, wine, grog of any sort and have a sweep. If you don't know what a sweep is, you shouldn't be reading this book. We each put in five dollars and draw two horses (sometimes three depending on who hasn't turned up). I don't believe in divine intervention but squaring the ledger is a different matter. By some crazy twist of fate, I always win either first or second prize, sometimes both and Joanne generally shares a place win too. The rest of them are fed up with my constant winning and want to limit the number of times a person can claim first prize. That's fine by me so long as the same rule applies to the tipping competition. If that happens, I will win next year by default. This year the Melbourne Cup barbeque will be held at our house. It's our turn, and this year I can play my favourite prank. While everyone is sitting in my rumpus room watching the horses make the turn into the straight, the excitement grows; you can feel it in the air. I sit at the back unobserved. The horses are at the 200 metre post; the tension is gripping, Loraine is beside herself, Nancy can't watch, Jim wants to go to the toilet but can't leave for the anticipation of it all. Frank, Helen and Joe have their eyes so glued to the television that a thief could walk in, steal Joanne's precious Wedgewood and no one would notice. There's 100 metres to go and...WHAT?? Nobody notices as I press the remote control that suddenly brings up the DVD of the last quarter of the 2008 Grand Final when 'Buddy' Franklin takes a mark on the fifty metre line, turns and kicks the ball through the goals to put the game beyond Geelong's reach. Was that a moment to savour or what? The cries of protest, bewilderment, and 'what the bloody hell has happened?' echo in a chorus around the room as everyone turns on me. What did I do? I ask. Turn it back, Joanne screams. Okay keep your blouse on I reply as I return to free TV. Oh God! The race is over, Nancy yells. Who won? Frank asks. Which horse is that? Helen says looking at the horse and rider on the screen. Now we missed it, Jim mutters. Dhrrr. Yes you did!

Who won they ask? Dhrrr, like we are never going to know are we; not for at least another ten seconds or so and then twenty times a minute for the next half hour, followed by the endless bloody replays that go on for the next six hours. Who won? Who cares, just gimme the money.

Have you noticed things are turning decidedly dirty for Barack Obama in the United States? Just last week when the President was addressing a joint sitting of Congress, a republican House of Representatives member, Addison Graves Wilson Sr. otherwise known as 'Joe' Wilson heckled the President during his speech by calling out, 'you lie.' Back in January, amidst all the blissful, idyllic, rapture that we saw both in America and around the world following the election of Barack Obama, I was forced to ask: what will happen when the euphoria fades and America waits in eager expectation of the much promised change? What sort of change do they expect and how long will they wait? Not long it seems.

Just this weekend thousands marched in Washington D.C. protesting the president's policies, particularly his policy on health care. What I saw while watching the news reports on that march was something far more sinister than a protest march. When one of the banners incorporated the word 'communism' in its condemnation, what I saw was a thinly veiled protest not about health, not about communism, but one about race. They couldn't come out and say 'we don't want a black president,' so they found another way of expressing their deep seated racial intolerance and chose the issue of health as they covertly applied Shakespeare's, 'a rose by any other name..' literary tool.

Americans have always struggled with their image and that, by definition, includes the issue of race. They struggle primarily because their ancestors created the circumstances that brought about the race issue: kidnapping free Africans and bringing them to a place where they were committed to slavery, all of which irks the collective conscience. It's not all that far removed from the difficulty we as white Australians face in confronting our race issue. Our white ancestors just barged in and assumed control with no care or concern for the civilization that was already here.

In both cases it is the manifestation of white European ignorance, a lust for wealth and power, and a belief in their own superiority. It existed then and it still exists today. That is why, I think, for Barack Obama, fighting the war on terror will be relatively simple compared with the difficulties he will face convincing Americans and the world in general that he is up to the task. In a nutshell, Barack Obama will have to perform twice as good as any former white president, simply to be judged their equal. The first faltering will bring a multitude of doom and gloom merchants out of the woodwork. This weekend we saw the first foray of those doom and gloom merchants.

To succeed, Barack Obama will have to somehow end the war in Iraq and do it in a way America retains its integrity. He will have to outshine Richard Nixon's clumsy but welcome exit from Vietnam.

He will have to restore America's economic credibility. That means regulation; something Americans have in the past at least, abhorred.

Then he will have to address America's disgraceful record of health care; all this, as the world struggles through a major economic correction, something his own countrymen caused.

These are his goals, but to achieve successful outcomes, he is going to have to stare down a lot of powerful people. The Military won't like admitting defeat in Iraq. Big business won't like him interfering in their wealth-creation agenda, and even a Democrat controlled Congress will gasp at the cost of establishing universal health coverage.

Internationally, world leaders will be beating a path to his office. I suspect he will no more trust them than he would the Republican Party. They want America's international image restored from the blundering, bleeping, slipping, sliding, stupidity that marked the eight years prior to Obama's arrival. But they won't give an inch beyond their own national interests to help. Their leaders will, however, fight each other to get that all-important photo shot with the new messiah.

He will be urged by his own advisers to compromise at every turn and if he wilts, he will fail.

One has to look back to the election of John Kennedy in 1960 to recall someone with such youth, enthusiasm and charisma, someone capable of galvanizing a nation and leading them to the Promised Land. Kennedy tried to teach America a new way of communicating with the world. He refused to wilt and paid the ultimate price. The problem for Barack Obama is that his concept of the Promised Land is in stark contrast to those whose interests he will threaten. Meanwhile there are strong forces within the US that hide behind that thin veneer known as the 'Christian Right' who wait for him to show the way, and hope he will fail. Those thousands who marched last weekend would, if asked, all profess Christianity as their faith, and deep down they see a black president as the work of Satan. Despite Obama's electoral success, there is a strong element of suspicion and distrust among the masses; ignorant people who express their concerns in covert terms suggesting he is a Muslim, a terrorist, and perhaps worse, fear that he might just be a thoroughly decent bloke. It's easy to recognize them. They usually begin by saying... "I'm not racist but...." Deep down, they just cannot cope with the idea of a black president, their black president. Staring them down and reforming an ailing empire will define his presidency. His biggest threat right now is ignorance. Ignorance of the breadth of his vision by small-minded, bigoted countrymen who cannot see let alone wonder at what he could achieve for them.

I guess you're probably wondering by what six degrees of separation Barack Obama's problems have got to do with my ambition to win the tipping competition. Well, it's simple really. We both wanted something desperately. He got what he wanted. It's a case of knowing what you want, planning to achieve it, and then going like hell to carry it off regardless of the opposition. So, next year, I know I'm going to win because I'm going to cheat. That's my plan. I'll make sure I'm in charge of the whole thing, just as I was this year, but unlike this year where I played it straight, next year I'll put my tips in late Sunday night after all the games have been played and give myself a perfect score every week. No one will suspect anything; they all trust me like the dear friend I am. Mind you, if Frank finds out, or suspects anything I'll need to stay clear of his Sicilian friends. They play it rough.

Did you read where David Hicks might have been convicted on a bum rap? It turns out the Pentagon no longer believes that providing material assistance constitutes traditional law of war offence and is not a charge that should be brought before a military commission. How interesting. The law council of Australia was suggesting the same thing two years ago. I always found it rather strange that for five years our government showed no interest in David Hick's rights until it became politically expedient. Funny how some things always come back to bite you on the bum. I don't think we've heard the last of this.

We haven't heard the last of the cricket either. England may have won the ashes but Australia is giving them a lesson in one-day cricket; currently five/zip in the best of seven matches.....er shouldn't it have finished when Australia was four/zip? Yes, but we are a heartless lot. I have the feeling we want to wipe the memory of that appalling and embarrassing Test series loss from the minds of the Poms and this seems the best way to do it; a thorough thrashing, no less. So let's keep on going and make it a clean sweep. Summer is coming and we want the crowds clicking through the turnstiles when the West Indies and Pakistan teams come down for a lesson in humility.

There won't be any more summers for Mary Travers, the beautiful blond girl and part of the trio and golden sound of Peter, Paul and Mary. Mary died yesterday after a long battle with cancer. Jeez, they were good. I still listen to and resinate with their fabulous version of Bob Dylan's, 'The times they are a changing.' Mary was 72, which is hard to imagine having only ever seen her when she sang with Peter and Paul. I seem to be tuned into people dying these days, more so than usual. I think perhaps it's because I am now far more attuned to my own mortality. My friend and taxi client Muriel Crabtree now racing towards 102, has no friends left in her age group. Her nearest friends are her former students who still keep in touch with her, but her contemporaries have all gone. She has outlived everyone she ever grew up with. Somehow I don't think I'll be around to make a similar claim and even though Mary Travers was eight years older than me, that only makes her the same age as one of my brothers. With her passing, it awakens me to the fact that my generation, the war babies, are very much the next in line.

21.

Today is a big day on the sporting calendar in Australia. Today is AFL Grand Final day, when the two sides who have battled it out to reach this pinnacle of adoration from fans and anti-fans alike will meet in a winner-takes-all, no quarter given, down to the last drop of blood, head to head, all season conquering last stand. Phew! Geelong play St.Kilda; the Cats versus the Saints. You all remember Geelong don't you? They were the team that my team, Hawthorn, beat last year in this very same event. My team isn't playing today; they needed the rest to gear up for next year.

Today was traditionally the busiest day of the year for taxi drivers. With up to one hundred thousand people heading for the MCG to watch the pre-game entertainment, it has been the time when more people look to take a cab rather than drive their own vehicle. Over the years I've realized that Grand Final day hosts more theatregoers than fans. It's important for some to be seen at certain events even if they know jack-shit about the game. I've been a member of the MCC (that's the Melbourne Cricket Club, in case you're a theatregoer) for about twenty years. It has been great value for most of that time mainly because I actually went to the games throughout the year; not the cricket, stupid, the football. Yes, I go to the cricket too, but I'm not talking about that just now! But these theatregoers who never go to the game during the year have connections you see. They know people who can get them a ticket or an invitation to be the guest of the MCC, thus depriving some poor soul who has followed his/her team all year only to find that they can't get a ticket to see their team play in the most important game of the year. Get it? Theatregoers! They are there to be seen on the big screen or on the live telecast looking oh-so interested and game wise. Anyway, I began by saying that it's the busiest day of the year for cabs, which may or may not be true but on those grand final days many years ago when I did work, it certainly seemed to be the busiest. But that might have changed. In more recent times perhaps the Thursday before Good Friday may have taken over as the busiest day of the year. It's hard to say. With so many people clamouring to get out of town for the four day break, Easter could have assumed that mantle.

I'm just nine months away from the pension now and I lament that over the past 26 years while much improved technology has been introduced into the industry little by way of reform of drivers' conditions has transpired. Sooner or later, someone will have to take on the call for reform. That, I now realize, will only come when the community learns to respect the industry and makes driving a taxi something people find attractive, rather than a job of last resort. Perhaps the new kids on the block will be the ones to break through. I wish them well. We can't have it both ways.

The public will have to learn to stop complaining and do something positive. But first, we must respect and value the service, and demonstrate that in a productive way. So, the question arises: Are we prepared to pay three times what we pay now, to have the type of service we expect? Because that's what it will take! I suspect not, and if that is the consensus, I guess the only alternative is to grin and bear it.

22.

Joanne and I celebrated our 39th wedding anniversary recently. It would have been an occasion to remember except that...we forgot. Well, almost! It came upon us when other matters had assumed priority. Joanne's Mum who lives in Brisbane is not well and had just undergone a hip replacement. At 86 years of age that's no picnic particularly when it is combined with several other ailments that are none of your business. Suffice to say her health has been a major concern recently. Our son and his partner in England who is pregnant also weighed on both our minds as we plan to be there a few weeks after the birth. We talk regularly on Skype but it's not like being there. Our two grandchildren here celebrated their birthdays at a joint gathering last week. Our daughter Sarah does that because their birthdates are only a few weeks apart. It's very economical but it takes more organizing than a trip to the moon. We also had Preliminary Final day and for the purists like me it's the real event, not like the Grand Final when all the theatregoers come out to join the parade. So, as you can clearly see, there was a lot on our minds. So we forgot to plan anything for our day. So shoot us! At lunchtime we took a break, Joanne from cleaning the house, I from gardening and trying to repair a shelving cabinet that she tried to use as a footstool that snapped in two and collapsed. During the break we discussed what to do for dinner. There were several options that we could have arranged at short notice ranging from a candlelit dinner at our local Italian restaurant to picking up a cheeseburger at McDonalds. In the end, it was all too exhausting and we settled for home made spaghetti bolognaise while watching 'Before the game' on television. So we sat there quite content, peacefully reflecting on this and that, our travels, where the thirty nine years had gone, who took them from us, what the future offered, how long before one of us is struck down dead or in need of full time care? Would Pakistan and India finally 'nuke' each other, yes, Richard Nixon was a crook but hell, he did bring the Vietnam War to an end, we really need a skylight in the dining room, and all the other usual things a war baby and a baby boomer discuss over a meal when all is quiet on every other front.

Kevin Rudd says our house can be insulated for free, I said.

We are already insulted; I didn't get any stimulus money, Joanne replied.

Not, insulted, insulated.

Well, we are already insulated too.

Yes, but that's just that fluff stuff they blew in about thirty years ago and it doesn't work anyway.

Well, ring Kevin and ask him to send someone around.

Look at Straughnie, does he really think he can coach Collingwood? I asked.

They haven't won a flag in twenty years; why not give him a try?

Can you buy some ricotta cheese next time you're at the supermarket?

What do you want that for?

To make some muffins.

You made muffins last week. Where are they?

I ate them, I reply.

You're getting fat. Look at that belly of yours.

Hmm, I say.

It's times like these that one feels very secure in the relaxed nature of the relationship. That such mindless rambling can be perfectly acceptable for both parties is comforting, but also because neither one of us will remember the conversation tomorrow. There will be things to do, people to see, places to go. Tomorrow will bring its own mindless chatter. Mind you, Joanne still looks as young as she did the day I married her, except when I look at our wedding photograph on the dressing table in the bedroom. The fellow standing alongside her is a far cry from the image I see in the mirror too, but then, I've worked hard, obviously spent a bit of time out in the sun and developed a more rugged complexion. So shoot me! Let's see what you look like after a surgeon has taken several scalpels to your head and face.

Jim Stynes isn't out of danger yet either. We thought everything was going fine after his surgery but now they've found a tumour on the brain. He looked fine when he rocked up to the Brownlow medal night with his lovely wife but left a note on twitter.. "Small bump on recover, little tumour on brain, will know soon. Good news PETscan all clean on rest body. Great support everyone." It's a sign of the times though; we can all now quickly circumvent any mischievous rumours that abound concerning information about ourselves. Had Jim not twittered his latest condition, and someone leaked it, any number of media outlets, you know the ones I mean, could have taken the direst, most pessimistic view, ran with it on the front page, milked it for all it was worth, gained a huge audience, won the ratings and claimed they were satisfying a public interest regardless of whether the story they ran was entirely accurate; just like they did with Simon O' Donnell over a decade ago. Jim blocked all that by giving it to us directly, concisely, accurately and with a minimum of fuss. There must have been much gnashing of the teeth inside some of our media houses that day. Today, anyone can publish their own material on the internet using a wide variety of outlets: Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, blogs of all shapes and sizes, and even personal websites, like mine. The most exciting part of this revolution for me is in the world of self-publishing. No longer do aspiring writers like me need to go cap in hand to submit our manuscripts to the major publishing houses, wait six months or so only to receive yet another rejection notice. We can publish the book ourselves. That for me has been a god-send. Oops, I don't believe in God. Let's call it a cosmic moment.

In the recent stampede by the various factions to have their say on the proposed de-regulation of book imports, one group seems to have been overlooked: The self-publisher. It may come as a surprise to some, but more books are self-published in Australia, than are published by the mainstream publishing houses. Self-publishers are writers who self-finance the publication of their books because nobody else will. As one literary Agent put it to me recently: "Self-publishers are a conundrum for the industry and we don't really know how to deal with them." As long as they maintain that attitude, they never will.

To analyse this "conundrum" more closely, one needs only to understand the industry in simplistic terms. The major publishing houses are essentially commercially based entities. Like any business, they only want to back winners. Books, be it novels, biographies, self-help, non-fiction, are all products a publisher wants to sell; no different from a cosmetics manufacturer wanting to sell lipstick. And, they invest big money in the hope of getting bigger money back. In many ways they are not unlike an AFL football club that carefully selects a list of players to win them a premiership, but also cultivates a rookie list for the future. Most writers on the other hand do it because we love it. It's a passion. Therefore it will not surprise anyone to hear that there are far more writers out there, than there are publishers willing to publish their work. Publishing houses could receive up to 5000 manuscripts a year, from which they may choose one or two for publication; most will not even be read.

So, what do you do when you have a product you believe in and nobody to produce or market it?

In the past, the majority of writers in this position filed their manuscript in the bottom draw of the cupboard at home and started on something new. However, since the introduction of Print-on-Demand technology, all that has changed. Now, a self-publisher can publish her/his work, develop some simple computer skills and design her/his own cover and enlist the assistance of a number of self-help websites to have their work edited, and reviewed free. They then have access to a world-wide market by submitting their book to Google Books and Amazon and Lulu's websites, all available for a start-up cost of less than $100. They can then join a plethora of author websites offering assistance and encouragement to promote their work. Some of these sites act as a sort of union with members buying each other's books. The entire publishing industry including newspapers is on notice. The internet has changed our way of life in ways unimaginable, two decades ago.

Self-publishers explain this revolution in two words: The future!

So where do you think the self-publisher stands on the issue of de-regulation of publishing and parallel importing? I won't speak for others; they can do that for themselves and not everyone will necessarily agree with me. But for me, the bottom line is: I couldn't care less! Publishing houses have never shown an interest in me. Literary Agents ignore me and Bookstores only call me when someone makes an enquiry. Yet my books sell here and overseas in a cut-throat market. A book doesn't have to be something special to be published. Books are bought on the basis of interest and value, not literary merit. The reader doesn't know if the book is good until it has been read. Most books today are purchased on-line. The very nature of competition has been turned on its head and the once revered retail bookstore is staring its use-by date down the barrel just like the neighbourhood hardware store. But it isn't the threat of de-regulation that places it in this invidious position. The internet already has!

One can debate the positive and negative impacts of this development, but it has nothing to do with government regulation. When I look back at the time I decided to self-publish my first novel, 'Satan's Little Helpers', I suddenly realized it was not a moment for the faint-hearted. It's not the expense as much as the gall, the temerity and flying in the face of an industry that is telling you at every turn, 'we are not interested in you.' But digital technology has made it so easy that determined writers are choosing to go down this path in their hundreds, nay, thousands. The internet, digital print and the on-line revolution has promoted self-publishers and given them more prominent exposure placing them on a level playing field with the industry that has repeatedly rejected them. So we no longer need to go cap in hand to anyone. We write, we publish and we get equal online billing with Tolstoy, Shakespeare and Peter Costello.

23.

Back to more interesting matters. Last night the members of the football tipping competition held their end of season celebratory dinner at a local Greek restaurant. There were twelve of us altogether including 9 years old Luka, who I have to say turned in a very satisfactory performance as a tipster beating the crap out of his grandfather Joe. My sister Margaret did not attend. Actually she didn't even know she was a member. I had entered her name and pretended she was active hoping that, if she won, I could claim first prize by default. It didn't work. I was no better tipping under her name than I was my own. But, I finally met the elusive Bill Aitchison and Sue Guymer. You remember them, the mysterious email members who, to this day had redefined the term, 'low profile'. And bugger me dead if it didn't turn out they lived just a stone's throw away. Bill and Sue were retired from the workforce, Bill a former Actuary and Sue, from a career in Insurance, so they had a lot of time to consider their tips. Sue began the year like an express train racing through East Richmond station only to crawl into Nunawading at the end on her hands and knees. Bill was the pacer, keeping a steady average all the way through; not that it did either of them any good. For a couple versed in the collection and interpretation of numerical data and also the risk management of financial contracts, I wondered if I could hold them to account for the decimation of my superannuation fund during the Global Financial Crisis. With all the background noise around us at the restaurant it was perhaps not the right time to go into the subject in any depth so, when I discovered they were fellow Hawthorn supporters I backed off, thinking no Hawthorn supporter could possibly be responsible for the Global Financial crisis.

Sitting opposite Bill and Sue were the happy smiling faces of the third time winner of the competition, Frank Ilardi and his lovely wife Nancy, herself a former winner. Did I mention previously that Frank came to our shores from Sicily? No, he's not from Corleone, but he says he's driven through it, so I treat him with the utmost respect. Besides, anyone who finishes in the top 400 tipsters on Sportsbet.com is entitled to that. So Frank is here tonight to collect on his free dinner which the rest of us pay for, and Nancy has brought her calculator with her to make sure the math works out right. Nancy was a bookkeeper before retiring so we don't mess with her either. Then there's Joe and Helen Wilson. Joe is that Essendon supporter person with whom I engage in much gnashing of the teeth not to mention the occasional snarl. Helen sits with their grandson Luka who has been allowed to join us so long as he is home by 9.30pm. Alongside Luka is Helen's brother Bruce who has flown in from Fiji for a visit and got dragged along to help offset the fact that Luka would be leaving early and not be paying. Jim and Loraine Hampton arrive late because they have been out bowling all afternoon and of course it finished late (as it does) so they have to sit at the end of the table and strain to hear most of what's going on. It's one of my major hang-ups with restaurants; there's too much noise. All restaurants should have a round table to cater for large parties so if we can't hear we can at least lip-read.

Most of the gathering decides to go with the banquet. Joanne and I are the odd two out. We opt for something else; Joanne wants fish, I select lamb souvlaki with a Greek salad as entrée. The food arrives, we pitch in, and it's all going along splendidly until Joe stands up to toast the winner, Frank. (It should have been me...it was my turn!). Then, as if to add insult to injury, Joe produces his statistical report which highlights each contestant's strengths and weaknesses. Do we need this? Do I need to know that I improved my position by .05% over last year? Do I need to know that Jim Hampton improved by over 10%? Does Nancy need to know she went backwards? Jim proposes that we introduce a new rule for next year. Anyone game enough to tip a draw gets double points for the whole round. There's mixed support for that one so it's referred to the rules committee which doesn't meet until the day before the next season begins. Everyone will have forgotten about it by then. On the way out, I have a brief chat to Helen's brother Bruce about Fiji's dictator Frank Bainimarama. The Australian and New Zealand governments have him in their sights for suspending the all-hallowed democratic process. Democracy? What is it that makes us think that democracy is the best form of government? Americans have democracy and they got George Bush for eight years. Frank Bainimarama has fixed the problem though. He's shut down Australia's and New Zealand's radio transmitters tossed out international media people and controlled the domestic reporting. Way to go Baini! I watched an interview George Negus conducted with Baini on SBS not so long ago and I came away thinking this fellow is okay. He's trying to reform a country that has a racist bent against the Indian population, something Baini abhors and is determined to end. Way to go Baini!

Bruce agrees. He's clearly a man of great wisdom. Bruce says Baini-thingy is a good leader and will straighten the country out. He just needs some time and some support from his near neighbours, most of which he has, except for Australia and New Zealand. Democracy? Do me a favour. Democracy gave us Richard Nixon, Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe, and that 20th century gem, Adolf Hitler. I suppose you're wondering now since I have denigrated the sanctity of democracy whether or not I have a viable alternative. Is there another way I hear you ask? Well, something happened in Melbourne this week which might give us a clue. It's called Trade Week in AFL circles where all the team negotiators come to town to see which players they can filch from other clubs without having to give up too much in return. It's a meat market where players are traded from one club to another based on need and availability. There's nothing democratic about it, but somehow it seems to work. There are winners and losers of course and fans don't like seeing players they have followed for years, even bet on, who have motivated them into buying memberships, who have been the idol of their pub conversations for years suddenly cut from the herd, sent packing off to the next paddock and who they know will be wearing an opposing team's colours the following season and possibly create havoc for their former team mates the next time they meet. What ever happened to loyalty? No one gets a vote on this, least of all the fans who keep the game going. Carlton fans are livid that Brendon Fevola has been traded to Brisbane. Hawthorn fans are delighted that we have picked up Shaun Burgoyne and...and....and...WHAT?? We've given Mark Williams to Essendon. WHAT? SAY AGAIN! We've given Josh Kennedy to Sydney. YOU MUST BE JOKING!

Bloody Essendon again! We've given one of our best sharpshooters to that miserable bunch of prowling, marauding, looting, pillaging, gorillas. Joe Wilson is going to pay for this. If he thinks his mob can just come in like a thief in the night and walk away with a star player, he can think again, and as for trading Josh Kennedy; it seems dynasty's don't count for anything anymore. Josh's grand-father John is a living legend at our club and his son John a multiple premiership player. Now John's son Josh is a Swan? Where's the justice? Where's the family? Where's the democratic process? Where's Jeff Kennett? I've a good mind not to sign up next season.

My reaction to the pilfering of Mark Williams may sound melodramatic, flippant, even comical, but it is genuine. I AM NOT HAPPY! BUT, it isn't going to change anything and life will go on. I didn't get a vote on this and I can't threaten to throw out the people responsible. They'll keep on running the club as they see fit and even the most hardened critic of Hawthorn, for whatever reason, cannot obliterate the fact that they have been the most successful club since the end of the Second World War. So, I'm now wondering how this system would work if a similar corporate organization was running the country; top level decisions made without the fear of being unceremoniously dumped at the next election. Long term interests replacing short term expediency. Everyone would be working for the benefit of the country. What's best for the country is best for the individual in the long term; the country would come before the individual. Now there's a new idea! We should have a name for this: how about socialism or nationalism. Somehow I don't think the idea will catch on; it's too close to that other naughty word that as children we were taught was evil beyond redemption. The problem is we're all too bloody selfish. The prospect of living for each other rather than for ourselves is anathema.

Within our own family units we live for each other, for our children, for the good of everyone in the family, but once we step outside the front door it's a different story; it's the rat race, the dog eat dog mentality that takes over. It's a jungle out there and we must survive and prosper or perish. That brings about a radical, even werewolf transformation as we skip down the driveway to the bus stop or jump into the car to head off onto the freeway. Here, we are different. Here we trade our benevolent, compassionate, kind-hearted, empathetic approach that defines us as caring parents in favour of full battle dress, armour and weaponry to get through a day that will bring constant challenges and challengers determined to unseat us and claim the spoils. It's a jungle out there. To help us survive this onslaught we are always open to the advice of the three wise men of the jungle; the financial advisor, the moral advisor and the all-purpose guru of modern life: the talk-back radio jock. As our anxieties increase, we're all too ready to succumb to the ranting of journalists and talk-back radio hosts who delight in scaring the bejesus out of us with doom and gloom stories all of which might be good for their ratings but are bad for our sense of justice, compassion and simply being good for goodness' sake.

We don't want to be bothered with difficult issues that call on us to take a stand. It's easier for us to listen to anyone who presents an argument that supports the path of least resistance. As an example, talk-back radio jocks have a tendency to develop an almost hysterical reaction to the issue of Asylum seekers. Listening to these, the most accessible of the three wise men, to these pariahs of the human mind means we don't have to think too hard. But we should, because something is happening as I write that characterizes the very nature of the problem and demonstrates the extent to which this way of living our lives, is counter-productive.

There's a boatload of some 78 Sri Lankans stuck in some port in West Java who are trying to come to Australia or anywhere else that will take them because they are Tamils and believe they are no longer safe in their own country. It's Tampa all over again, but this time Labor are in power and Kevin Rudd is taking the hard line instead of John Howard. If there's anything that gets me wound up it's this notion that if we let a few boatloads of refugees into our country we are going to be overrun with hoards of Afghans, Iraqis, Iranians, Sri Lankans and anyone else who tries to come here to seek a better life.

Yes, we have a generous refugee policy but there are some 40 million of them in refugee camps around the world and some have been there for as long as ten years. It's easy to see why refugee camps are not all that attractive to people fleeing war-torn regions, opting to sell all their possessions to raise the money to pay some miserable people smugglers to bring them to Australia. We have over a thousand people stuck on Christmas Island right now who are wondering what will happen to them while we complain about the cost. Fine I say, let them in, and then we'll have no one on Christmas Island and we won't have to worry about the burdensome cost. They might even become productive and generate more employment.

The United States once opened out its broad arms of welcome and said, 'give me your poor, your weak, your hungry..' Well, notwithstanding all their difficulties, they didn't make too bad a fist of it over the last century. And what if the Aborigines had a policy in 1788 that said, 'We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances under which they come.'

The question I ask of the talk-back radio jocks who promote such pathetic objections as: we can't afford it, they are queue jumpers, we have a proper system to handle refugees, it only encourages the people smugglers and anyway, they are wealthy people paying thousands of dollars to get here, is this: What is it that you fear? Are your efforts in trying to scare the life out of the easily led, an accurate reflection of what you really believe or is there some deep seated more sinister reason that might better be described as bigotry, prejudice, or narrow-mindedness that lurks in the back closet of your mind? Or is it just ratings? To those who harbour anxiety and fear and are influenced by these and the other two wise men, I recommend that they visit that dark corner of their psyche, confront their perceived fear and analyse whether they apply the same consideration to the plight of a few hundred people on a leaking boat, to how they care for the needs of their own family. If they try that little exercise, they might find their fears evaporate into the nothingness. That's right. 'There is nothing to fear except fear itself,' to quote Franklin D. Roosevelt. Mind you, he was the man who authorized the construction of the first Atomic bomb, so I guess he was afraid of something. But notwithstanding that little mistake, he was right.

I can't help but suspect that Kevin Rudd's action in preventing these people from going to Christmas Island for processing is political. I suspect he has one eye on public perception and the other on history. It worked for John Howard who was facing defeat in the 2001 election. I suspect Kevin thinks that public perception hasn't changed. This is one example that demonstrates why democracy sucks. This matter should be above politics. The Opposition have seized upon this, sensing an opportunity to embarrass the government, to accuse it of being soft. The genuine concern for the refugees is secondary to scoring a few cheap political points.

This is where dictatorial leadership is required, where compassion can be exercised without fear of a political backlash. It highlights the need for a bi-partisan approach to a world-wide problem but as long as political mileage is there for the taking, that is never going to happen. Kevin might be doing what the people want but what the people want isn't always what's good for them. And, it might be worth mentioning, all this comes against the background of the release of the 2009 United Nations Human Development Index which charts 182 countries improvements in the wellbeing of its citizens. It places Australia 2nd overall behind Norway on a range of criteria including life expectancy, literacy, school enrolment, and gross domestic product per capita. Niger was at the bottom of the list just below Afghanistan.

What a surprise that wasn't!

It would be no surprise either to read which other countries made up the top ten: Iceland, Canada, Ireland, the Netherlands, Sweden, France, Switzerland and Japan. If you were thinking USA you'd be wrong. They came in at number 13. So from this one could reasonably conclude that we have a greater capacity to help refugees than most nations. Why we choose not to, is something about which history will inevitably judge us very harshly.

When Joanne and I married 39 years ago, things were very different from today. Firstly there were no personal computers. Major corporations had them but they were in the infancy stages and only pushing out information to assist sales and stock control. These monsters often took up an entire floor with information stored on tape. There were no VCR's to watch a movie at home. For that, you went to the local cinema. There were no satellites in space beaming pictures into our living rooms live from the other side of the world. We didn't see major events on television until days later, not that we really wanted to, but things did not happen that quickly.

Back then, if a boat carrying asylum seekers were to be heading for our shores, they would probably arrive, be processed and allowed into the community before we even heard about it. If you doubt this, I would remind you that the true death toll caused by the bombing of Darwin in 1944 was never reported accurately. The number of people killed was much higher than the number officially released. The government didn't want to start a panic, you see. Well, how farsighted was that? Today, when we have news of approaching boat people flashed onto our screens, usually days before they could reach our shores, we are bombarded by media reports tapping into what they perceive as a wave of national anxiety and trepidation. They then milk it for every drop they can, hoping the easily-led within our communities will think the world is about to end and flock to them the way sulphur crested Cockatoos gather at Westerfolds Park to drop do-do all over the roadway.

24.

But enough of this! Who cares? I hear you ask. Nobody, and the news has just filtered through that the lanky yank, Don Lane has died. He sang, danced and guffawed his way into my world for years with his TV show. Some of his skits with Bert Newton were just hilarious and the show was good enough to enjoy being aired in the USA if only for a brief period. His nickname for Bert was 'Moonface' which resonated with me for some weird reason. My sister Mary has lived in Richmond, Queensland now for many years and her partner John Walsh manages the family cattle property. Scattered around Richmond and particularly around John's family property are moon rocks, which are limestone spheres that come in various sizes from a few centimetres to huge boulders weighing several tonnes. These rocks are oval in shape and contain the fossilized remains of pre-historic fish, shells, and trees inside their cores. Richmond is famous for them as it is for 'Minmi', one of the best preserved dinosaur skeletons in the world. Richmond has a museum, the Kronosaurus Korner fossil centre dedicated to the display of marine reptiles as well as our 100 million-year-old 'Minmi'. I first heard about these moon rocks at school and wondered as a child if, like the man on the moon, they all had some weird human image worn on them by the sun, wind and rain. So when my brother Anthony and his wife Glenda decided to motor up to Richmond from Warragul a year ago, to see Mary, I asked if he would bring me back some moon rocks.

Yeah sure, he said. What do you want them for?

To show my grandchildren if you must know.

What for?

Mind your own business.

Don't get nasty, just asking. How many?

One or two will do.

Fine. Can you remind me later?

When later? When will you be in Richmond?

Don't know. We're meeting Walshy in Townsville. I'll call Mary.

Unknown to me at the time another of my brothers, Peter, was also travelling north from Sydney. At seventy, Peter has now retired and spends his time running hither and thither, so when Anthony had arrived in Townsville he called Mary only to find that Peter was already in Richmond.

We're tied up here for a day or so. Can you send John some moon rocks?

What does he want them for?

I don't know, he just wants them.

Peter is here and just about to leave to head back to Sydney.

Ask him if he's interested in going back to Lillico to look after the house.

I'll put him on.

G'day.

G'day.

Are you interested in going back to Lillico to look after the house for a week or so?

Yes, that sounds okay.

Could you grab some moon rocks for John?

What for?

He wants them, I don't know why.

He's got plenty of them here.

Not John Walsh, John Kelly, your brother.

What's he want with moon rocks?

Jeez, I don't know; show and tell or something.

How many does he want?

One or two...whatever!

Okay.

As the story was relayed to me, Mary packed the rocks into the boot of Peter's car and he began the long drive to Warragul via Melbourne. Peter later claimed that on the way back he called in to see some old school mates at Shepparton and while they were returning home from dinner at a local restaurant, he was pulled over by the police for a random breath test. He was okay on the breath test, but the officer noticed that his rear tyre was almost flat. Peter thanked him and said he would stop at the next service station and put some air into it. When he got to the service station he decided to change the tyre rather than run the risk of having a blowout the following day. He had to empty the boot to get to the spare tyre (as you do) and when the job was done he left the punctured tyre at the service station to be repaired and said he would pick it up the next morning before continuing on to Melbourne. So, everything that was taken out of the boot was subsequently put back in, minus the spare tyre. The next morning he said his goodbyes to his mates and returned to the service station. The punctured tyre had been repaired so he then emptied out all the stuff in the boot, lifted in the spare tyre, repacked the boot with all the junk he had removed, paid the attendant what was owed and went on his way. Travelling down the road he suffered a brain fade completely forgetting about the moon rocks for me and decided to by-pass Melbourne for a more interesting cross country tour. He turned off the highway at Seymour and headed toward Yea then Kinglake to Healesville to Warburton to Noojee to Warragul, which, if that's what you want, all makes sense.

Meanwhile, I'm at home eagerly awaiting the arrival of my moon rocks. Days go by and nothing happens and I begin to suspect that communication lines have failed and my moon rocks are not going to arrive. I text Anthony:

Did Peter pick up the moon rocks?

Didn't see Peter. Ask Mary.

Mary, did Peter pick up the moon rocks?

Yes, I put them in the boot of his car. Check with Peter.

Peter, where are you?

In Warragul.

In Warragul or Lillico?

Same thing.

No, are you in the town or at Anthony's place?

At Anthony's, why?

That's Lillico.

What do you want?

Have you got my moon rocks?

What rocks?

My moon rocks. The ones you brought back from Richmond.

Don't know. Let me check the car.

Minutes pass by.

No, don't have them.

Mary said she put them in the boot.

Not there. Call Mary.

Bugger.

I call Mary.

Mary, Peter says he doesn't have the moon rocks.

I put them in the boot.

Not there.

Must be.

Bugger.

I accepted Mary's word even though she can be a bit loopy sometimes and rang Peter back in the hope of retracing his movements.

I did have a flat tyre at Shepparton and had to have it repaired at a service station on the main road, he said.

Jeez!

Six months later and Joanne and I were heading up north to Howlong to a wedding of a friend's daughter and we passed through Shepparton. Needing petrol, I pulled into the next service station and filled up. When I went into the sales lounge to pay the owner, there on a shelf in the window sat two small boulders, with a sign attached: "Moon Rocks...$25.00 each." Feeling fairly certain they were mine, I approached the owner.

Where did you get those moon rocks?

Found them.

Where?

Don't remember.

Bet you do.

Some kids picked them up off the road.

How do you know they're moon rocks?

An archaeologist in town told me.

They're not from the moon you know?

I didn't think so.

They're from Richmond.

Richmond, where?

Queensland.

Oh.

I'll give you $5 each for them.

C'mon, they're worth more than that.

No, they're not.

$15 then.

Nup.

$10.

Nup. It's $5 or nothing.

Okay.

25.

Today is the 1st November. It's All Saints Day on the Catholic calendar. Funny how I remember that after so long. Even though I left the church and embraced Atheism eleven years ago, the principal feast days of the Church still ring clearly in my mind. Tomorrow is All Souls Day, when the Church remembers all those poor bastards it committed to burn alive in its mythical Purgatory who waited hopefully on the mercy of their God to release them into the Kingdom of Heaven. If we prayed for them in a particular way on All Souls Day we could secure their release. How such a certainty was negotiated, I'm not sure but we followed the formula every year and I can remember doing it sufficiently one year to secure no fewer than six Purgatorial pardons.

All Saints Day used to be a Holy Day of Obligation meaning that it was compulsory for Catholics to attend mass on that day or suffer the pain of mortal sin. If we didn't go to mass and later walked in front of a moving bus and were struck down dead and missed out on receiving the last rites or didn't make an act of perfect contrition, we were stuffed. We would not have gone to Purgatory; we would go straight to Hell and would never benefit from the prayers on All Souls Day so generously offered by the mere mortals on Earth. Phew! Did you follow that?

On a mere secular level, the day after All Souls Day this year is Melbourne Cup day. This is something I can make sense of, not that it's all that sensible. It's a public holiday in Melbourne, just like Good Friday, so you can see how well balanced our great city's approach is to placating the needs and wishes of both Christian and Atheist alike. It's the height of the Melbourne Spring Racing Carnival. It's a huge party where fifty thousand girls frock up, fifty thousand boys wear a collar and tie and look half decent and everyone goes off to Flemington to stuff themselves with chicken and champagne, get blind drunk, throw up on the lawns, all over the roses or over their partners and cause all sorts of problems for the police who have to deal with the remains. Meanwhile a few horses run around the track, their owners get millions of dollars if their horse wins, and the horse gets a pat on the bum. Really! The absurdity of it all is enough to drive one to religion.

So what do Joanne and I do? We have a barbeque with our friends, run a modest sweep and conduct ourselves in an orderly fashion before assembling in front of the television to watch the race. Jim and Loraine Hampton will be there, along with Frank and Nancy Ilardi and Joe and Helen Wilson, except that I'm not sure how I feel about Joe since that miserable bloody mob of his stole Mark Williams from us at AFL trade week. I imagine we'll be cordial enough for a while until someone says something to spark a comment that will have one of us pour barbeque sauce over the other's head. It'll be a hoot.

When Tuesday comes, Jim and Loraine arrive for the barbeque, and Jim is dressed up like he's Sir John Kerr.

I didn't know it was fancy dress, I said.

Make an effort, he said.

What do you suggest?

The Mob?

No thanks.

I went inside and found my Arab head dress I bought in Dubai last year and put it on together with a pair of black rimmed sunglasses. The doorbell rings. It's Joe and Helen Wilson. Joe gets the fright of his life and takes a step back when an Arab answers the door.

But he's not fooled for long.

Don't shoot, he says. You can have Mark Williams back.

It's a magnanimous gesture and shows me that Joe is sensitive to my feelings on the issue.

Just give us Shaun Burgoyne instead.

Bugger off. He's ours fair and square.

As we know, 'Shocking' won the cup, the weather held up, the police were generous in their praise of public behaviour and for the media who were previously drooling over the possibility of another Melbourne Cup for Bart Cummings' mantelpiece, it didn't work out that way and they had to re-write the script for Mark Kavanagh. By the end of the week, we'd forgotten all about the cup as television and print journalists began salivating over the arrival of 'Tiger' Woods in Melbourne for the Australian Master's at Kingston Heath. It would seem they can't get enough of him, as if he was something akin to royalty or better still, 'Elvis' miraculously restored to life and coming to town. On the world scene it was all about the 20th anniversary of the dismantling of the Berlin Wall. Mind you, for society today, something as historically momentous as the downfall of communism in Europe hardly rates when you have 'Tiger' Woods coming to town. I don't know what it is that sees us constantly, relentlessly celebrating anniversaries in lots of ten years or multiples thereof. I think we have something of a fascination for zeros and multiple zeros. Remember the bi-centennial celebrations in 1988? And who could possibly forget the hype of the year 2000? We like zeros. We make a huge deal over $1000 dollars or $100.000 or $1.000.000 as if $999 and its multiples didn't rate. And what about when someone was turning 100 years of age? As my friend Muriel Crabtree remarked to me after all the hullaballoo over her reaching one hundred, 'What's all the fuss for? All I've done is stay alive.' The irony is time only exists in our time-honoured world. There is no time outside our planet, because we invented it, didn't we? Outside our planet, we observe timeless phases. I can't remember the number of times during my association with Charismatic Renewal someone suggesting to me that the world would end in the year 2000. How convenient; more multiple zeros. The people who really believed that didn't seem to know that in their precious bible it clarifies Jesus' birth at approximately 4-6BC. Why? Because someone in the 6th century stuffed up in their calculations when the world moved from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar. Oops! The real 2000 Anno Domini was somewhere between 1996-1999.

For me those silly notions about the end of the world had their genesis at Primary school with the nuns and it continued unabated throughout my secondary years and I could still hear the brothers bellowing it out as I walked out of the school gates for the last time. Let's consider the ramifications of that. When one realizes that it is the experiences of our earliest years, the things we are taught in the home and at school, that determine so much of what we do and don't do in our adult years, one begins to see the light. When I was a child, the forces that played such a prominent role in what I believed, came from the teachings of the Catholic Church, and during this time almost everything I was taught, was expressed in terms relevant to the teachings of the Catholic Church. It's a pity that when this initiation of the mind and spirit began, this brainwashing, there wasn't a number of cooling off periods, a waiting time to allow the dust to settle, the mind to rebalance and then someone should have asked me what I thought about it all.

Someone should have said, 'Well John, now what do you think about it all?' But nobody ever did. It probably never occurred to anyone, that someone at the tender age of twelve or so might have an opinion. Perhaps it's just as well. I don't think I did. I would have simply shrugged my shoulders and said...'I don't know'.

So here I am, in my sixties, resplendent in the wealth of my experiences posing the question all of us ask sooner or later, 'What do I think? Where did I come from? How did I get here? How did the universe come to be? And the most vexing question of all: What is God?'

The answer to that last question, now takes an interesting twist. The answer is the same now as it has always been; I don't know what God is. But today as opposed to then, it is a more mature answer. It is an acknowledgement of my place in the universe, how ordinary and insignificant that is, and how totally overwhelming it can be when I attempt to go beyond the limits of an ordinary man, in trying to figure it out. So why is it, that when we approach this question of what or who is God, do we suddenly find ourselves surrounded by those who claim almost unlimited knowledge on the subject? Surely for anyone one of us to say that he or she knows the secret of life beyond any shadow of a doubt is going beyond the limits of an ordinary being. And yet our religious leaders, bishops and priests, all the way up to the pope himself, speak of God as though He were living just up the road, able to be contacted at the drop of a hat at anytime. They tell us where God is, how God thinks, what his reaction will be to any given situation. They tell us what is moral and what is not, how we should behave in any given situation and what we must do if we are going to be saved. Saved from what? And how do they know all this? Did God appoint them in some official capacity as guardians of our well being? Was there an unmistakable moment in the course of human history when out of the nothing came something, something that gave them divine knowledge?

Good question!

The leaders of the Christian church will of course say yes there was. They will say that in the person of Jesus Christ, we have the manifestation and the Incarnation of the Spirit of God. They will say that in the person of Jesus, in what he was, in what he did, and in what he said and taught, lies their authority in determining the boundaries of proper human morality and their right to try to enforce that morality.

In recognising myself as an ordinary man however, I have to ask, that if this be true, then why did God not tell us Himself in some more obvious, collective and unambiguous way? If such a person as Jesus is the ultimate reality of our being, why is it that we find the original details of the momentous events of Jesus' life as no more than ancient records scribbled down on parchments that no longer exist, and which now rely on doctored copies written in a language that our best biblical scholars are not even sure he spoke. Why is it that there is such ambiguity about those documents? How could something so utterly monumental and critical to the future of mankind be shrouded in such uncertainty and corruption?

Is it possible, that what the Church claims as the 'Inspired Word of God' is no more than the product of human invention? Is it something that we just made up? Is it possible that this Jesus was no more God than I am, but merely the means by which both religious and political leaders of past civilisations used to institute a code of conduct, a way of life?

If we did invent this theology ourselves and all our beliefs about God evolved over millions of years of human fear and uncertainty, how is it that the church has got away with it for so long? You have to keep in mind that when I was growing up as a young Catholic boy, one absolutely fundamental teaching hammered home to me over and over again, was that the Catholic Church was the inheritor of Absolute Truth. They were right, and everyone else was wrong, and I believed it. How have they got away with this, for so long?

The last twenty years have clearly been the most illuminating I have ever experienced. Had I not responded to that initial sense of inner awareness that came over me in 1991, had I not bothered to listen to the words of that lone layman speaking to the congregation at mass that day, had I not entered into the spirit of Charismatic Renewal, had I not allowed the yearning of the spirit inside me, to follow its call to receive what I believed at the time to be the Baptism of the Spirit, it is probable that the ensuing personal growth which led me to this point, might never have surfaced. Had I not bothered to respond to that call, I might very well, have continued to live my life in blissful ignorance, starved of all that I had subsequently learned.

So what! I hear you say. Well, I realize it's not as important as 'Tiger' Woods coming to town and judging by the way the media are going gangbusters over his visit it's probably fair to say Nelson Mandela wouldn't get much of a look in either. It's not fair really. We pay him $3 million to come out here to hit a few balls around the park, something thousands of Victorians do every day. So what's the big deal? I'm the first to admit that I'm no golfer, but I'm not bad at baking muffins and not everyone can do that so does that mean I qualify for an appearance fee at Cinnamon Jennie's Designer Muffins?

I don't think so!

My brother Anthony is coming up from Warragul to see 'Tiger' play at the Masters. You remember Anthony. He's the one who couldn't organize a couple of moon rocks to be sent to me from Richmond, Queensland, but he has no problem getting into the Masters to see 'Tiger'.

Frankly, I'd rather be in Berlin and shake hands with Mikhail Gorbechov, the real hero of the Cold war. Gorbechov is my man of the 20th Century. To take on the huge task of dismantling an economic and social culture that had been in place for nearly 70 years and do it so quickly, was pure genius.

Golf! Give me a break!

Back to my original point. How come, if the Church inherited Absolute Truth, they didn't know that the Earth revolved around the Sun and when a couple of their brightest scholars, Copernicus and Galileo pointed it out to them, they didn't believe them?

26.

Most priests are good people. They are for the most part genuine in their belief, their faith, their intention and the execution of their responsibilities. There is unarguably a rogue element within their ranks that preys upon the more vulnerable in their care, but that sad fact applies to every occupation where people are placed in a position of trust. Politicians, judges, lawyers, police, teachers and even taxi drivers have their scoundrels. Why therefore should we expect flawless behaviour from priests, particularly when they dwell in an environment we now know to be a magnet for those genetically disposed towards the abuse of others? As a consequence, it is most unfortunate that the majority in the secular world now view clerics with some degree of suspicion and distrust when clearly the majority do not deserve to be treated this way. My brother Peter is one such priest. Now in his seventies, a little grumpier and less tolerant of those who have frustrated the development of the third world, he is retired and taking time out for himself. He spent his whole career in the service of others in South Korea and China. Most priests are exceptional in their dedication, their commitment and the sacrifices they make, particularly in forgoing the opportunity of a life partner and establishing a family. It's a commitment that comes from deep within and I suspect if the ones about whom I speak were lay atheists like me, rather than priests, they would still be engaged in work of a similar nature. And don't be fooled if someone suggests to you that Jesus is their life partner. That is pious fantasy.

Once, I sat in on a forum with some very dedicated people associated with Charismatic Renewal. I had previously been involved in many discussions about faith, about the gifts of the Spirit and so on. This one was part of a prayer meeting and after the forum I spoke with a priest who I thought would be willing to offer some non-judgmental advice. It wasn't long after I had written those highly contentious articles for the parish paper and copped all the residual flack. He knew about the articles and knew my state of mind at the time. We had a one on one chat about my decision to leave the church. Well, not surprisingly that discussion went nowhere. He was caught unprepared for the sorts of things I was saying and I wasn't really interested in listening to what I thought would be (and was) the same old rhetoric that I had been hearing from the pulpit for fifty-plus years.

Time passes (as it does) and passions subside, commonsense returns, as does a desire to enter into meaningful discussions which don't have to result in a change of heart or an argument but at least generate a mix of ideas and approaches that enable both sides to retain their point of view with integrity. So I thought it would be a worthwhile exercise to approach him again and ask if he would be willing to be interviewed as part of my research. He was happy to play along, but I first asked him to read my novel, 'Saints and Relics', to give him some idea of the direction I had taken over the past ten years or so. 'Saints and Relics', is a novel set in the present day but which draws heavily on the life of Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque, a 17th century French nun who was the prime mover behind the present day devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus within the Church. She made some outrageous claims about seeing the bleeding heart of Jesus in several apparitions and her claims were accepted by the Church despite serious reservations raised by some of those investigating her case. It would be safe to say the woman suffered a serious mental disturbance and had a propensity for self-harm, but all of that was ignored when they proclaimed her a saint. The novel also articulated a present day dilemma for the Church: What to do when a priest falls in love. The priest read my book and subsequently agreed to have another one on one chat. He also agreed to have the chat taped so I could transcribe it at a later time.

It went thus:

Priest. You haven't always been writing along these lines have you?

Me. No, I only tend to do that when I get passionate enough about something.

Priest. Fair enough. The subject matter can be very obsessive. The trick, I think is to pace yourself. Take in as much as you are able to comprehend, and no more. Then give it time to settle, allow it to digest and see how you feel after that.

Me. That's pretty much what I did. But one thing that I noticed along the way was that whenever someone challenged Church teaching or suggested something radical, something that went beyond mainstream thought, those who opposed the view tended to come down pretty heavily on the person making the claim, rather than make an objective analysis of what was actually said. They tended to become very defensive.

Priest. Yes they do. And unfortunately that's where the whole thing often loses its objectivity. It's a 'shoot the messenger' mentality. It never works. It only gets people polarised. I take it you intend to look at similar areas of Church history?

Me. That's right.

Priest. Do you mind telling me why?

Me. I'm keen to learn as much as I can. I'm trying to analyse how faith can be accepted so easily. When I look at what I've learnt about the origins of the Catholic Church the more unsettling it becomes.

Priest. In respect of what?

Me. Doctrines that I believed in for most of my life; doctrines, the origins of which don't stand up to scrutiny when I've tried to match them up with something tangible, something rational.

Priest. Well, you must do what you feel is right, but if you are doing it because of what you have read in biblical scholarship, you should also take into account the fact that many others have read what you have read and still retained their faith.

Me. Yes that's true but it doesn't mean they're right. We're all different. We all see things differently. Perhaps it has something to do with the way we were taught things as children. The Catholic Church had for nearly fifty years convinced me that it knew better than anyone else, and on reflection it staggers me that they were able to do that. Whether it was because of my parents and their commitment to the church or simply out of fear, I don't know. But it was a form of mind control of some description.

Priest. I can understand that some people, those in their mid to late fifties and beyond, still experience some degree of difficulty associated with the way the Church taught thirty, forty years ago. Perhaps some still come to church out of a sense of fear, but at the end of the day the Church must follow what it believes to be revealed truths. Maybe we have not always expressed it well, but all our doctrines are well founded either in Scripture or Tradition, and we have a number of eminent Catholic Scholars using the same scientific methods as anyone else. They don't seem to have any difficulty integrating scholarship and faith.

Me. I find it difficult to accept that, given that there is an equally long list of other eminent Catholic scholars who in the pursuit of truth found that much of the Church's traditional doctrines were highly questionable. When these people went public with there findings, they found themselves either on the sidelines or removed from their teaching positions altogether. What was it that they saw, that your eminent scholars did not? I have read so many books on the origins of the New Testament and the person of Jesus that it is no longer possible for me to listen to someone say that Jesus said this, or Jesus said that, and not be prompted to ask if that person had the slightest idea of anything Jesus said. I realise so many things now, things that I would never have even dreamt of twenty or thirty years ago, things that I would never have even considered possible before.

Priest. Like what for example?

Me. Well for example, I realise now that the events around which the gospels were written, about how Jesus lived, preached and died were not seen in their time as the great momentous events the Christian world sees them as today. In fact they went by practically unnoticed. Jesus made no personal impact whatsoever on the multitudes of his time, save for a mere handful of followers. He barely rates a mention in the historical documents of the time, and there is only a very brief reference made about his followers. Pilate makes no mention of him in his memoirs, there's nothing in the Dead Sea scrolls, Josephus gives his followers a couple of words and apart from the gospels it would appear nobody had ever heard of him. All we have to go on is the zealous endeavour of just a dozen or so close friends from which began a small religious movement, a movement which was dedicated to the simple teachings of a carpenter from Nazareth.

Priest. Why should that make any difference?

Me. Well, it's a far cry from the sort of thing we were told at school and I don't ever recall hearing a priest saying anything along these lines at Sunday mass. Not at any stage of my religious upbringing were we told that these gospel stories were anything other than factual accounts of actual historical events. I also realise now, that it wasn't until a generation after Jesus' death that things began to be written down about him, things that could never subsequently be proved one way or the other. If I'm to accept what the majority of scholars are saying, most of what we read in the gospels amounts to little more than pious invention. A virgin birth, celestial visions, miracles, prophesies, and a resurrection, all of which seem to have been manufactured from Old Testament writings and other long established mythologies of Jewish and Buddhist and Mithraic cultures. I realise now that it's quite possible that every word accredited to Jesus might well have been invented, or more likely, borrowed from some other source. I realise now, from reading other historical accounts of that early period that a new religion that offered to free people from the rigours of ritual, and which embraced some common elements of existing mythologies would be very easy to latch on to. And that to me, explains why the early church grew more quickly in geographic regions that were well away from where the original events were supposed to have taken place.

Priest. You didn't hear about these things at school because much of it was not known then. Biblical scholarship is not new I admit, but the findings of scholars is the result of painstaking research on a huge scale, and is carried out today in a far more sophisticated way than was possible thirty or forty years ago. Unfortunately it has also attracted some people to its ranks who would be better advised to keep their opinions within the fraternity of the scholarship rather than to race off to the nearest publisher every five minutes with another so called 'well researched' theory.

Me. That sounds suspiciously like censorship to me.

Priest. Well, it's not meant to be. Most professional organisations engaged in research generally discuss their findings with their peers first and then only release material when there is a consensus.

Me. I hope you are not using the word 'consensus' as another way of describing Vatican approval?

Priest. As I said to you before, the church must follow what it believes to be revealed truths and having every Tom, Dick and Harriet postulate their views in the public arena without qualified guidance does not help foster the faith of Christ's brothers and sisters. On the contrary it only serves to confuse them and cause the sort of spiritual conflict that you find yourself in now. Besides, if what you say is true, how could the Church have survived on such a misunderstanding for two thousand years?

Me. That's a good question. It's the same one that many of my Catholic friends have asked me. But if they had bothered to look at the history, the real history of the Christian Church, they would realise how it has lasted that long. And I think that you already know the answer.

Priest. And what's that?

Me. It goes something like this. A few loyal followers decide to preserve the memory and the teachings of one they loved. Once having attracted support in various ways and survived a bit of persecution here and there, which of itself often tends to attract further support, it develops from a cult into a movement. From there leaders emerge who become influential and charismatic; that as we all know, breeds power. People who by pious means or otherwise, suddenly find themselves in a position of power, are generally very reluctant to relinquish that power. They cultivate that power and protect it by making alliances. The early Christian Church cultivated an alliance with the Emperor Constantine, and once they did that they had the best of worlds, spiritual domination and temporal control. The rest, as they say, is history. Government and Church united. One controls social and commercial interests the other controls the mind and morals and both share the benefits. Church leaders were the only ones who had copies of the early Christian writings, including the gospels, which they re-wrote to suit their own circumstances. If you don't believe me, check it out for yourself. They destroyed anything that didn't agree with their newly developed theologies, which explains why none of the original documents that make up the New Testament exist today, and they then set about writing up a whole host of dogmas and doctrines which they bound the faithful to accept under threat of both temporal reprisal and spiritual damnation. They then carried out witch-hunts on anyone who opposed them. They dominated society and influenced government, in some cases they even appointed and crowned kings. Of course they would last. And you know that what I'm saying is true because it's all there in the history books. Unfortunately for you however, not all those documents were destroyed. When the Dead Sea scrolls were discovered fifty years ago, suddenly we began to learn a whole lot more about the kind of civilisation that Jesus came from, and the nature of the writings that we call the New Testament.

Priest. You have no right to say these things. You are not a historian or a theologian.

Me. No I'm not. I'm not an archaeologist, a palaeontologist or an anthropologist either. I'm just an ordinary layman who spent most of his life believing you and trusting you. But not any more! At least I've gone to the trouble to study this stuff. If every Catholic did, you'd have even fewer followers.

There was a silent pause. Neither of us seemed to know quite what to say and I was a little shaken at what I considered to be my own eloquence. I tried to soften things up.

Me. I don't think there is any way that we could be absolutely certain of what happened 2000 years ago. There is just too much uncertainty about who witnessed what and who did what. And I know how easy it is for people to get it wrong.

Another pause.

Me. Does it strike a nervous chord with you when you hear a mere layman speaking like this? Does it bother you when you come across an ordinary person like me who is no longer impressed when listening to the usual Vatican rhetoric concerning faith and morals?

Priest. It's not something that I enjoy hearing, but I wouldn't say it makes me nervous. There are many things we know today that we didn't when I was in training, but I have sufficient faith to believe that there will emerge such knowledge as to provide the answers to all of your questions. It's a difficult time for the Church and I realise that many are leaving because we don't have the answers, but no, I don't think it makes me nervous.

Me. It should you know, because if you can no longer keep people like me in the fold, I think that you have a pretty ordinary future. If you can't keep me in the fold you will have no chance of keeping my children either. And the children are your future. The Church, it appears to me, has allowed too many minor considerations to get in the way of its mission. It has allowed too much of the mystical, to cloud what is real, and it is the mystical and its associated intrigue, that has over the centuries, been its strength. We have allowed too much of our expectations of the unknown to influence our behavioural patterns, things like Marian apparitions for example, and that, in many respects has caused us to lose sight of the real picture.

Priest. And what's the real picture?

Me. The real picture is that we are here in the 'today' of life, and it is what we do in the 'today' of life that will determine what happens tomorrow. I'm no longer sure the Church can do that effectively, if it is hung up on tradition, on dogma and doctrines. I don't know how you can do that when you are hung up on structures that have historically inhibited freedom of thought. I think that all the bishops need to take a long look at the Church's doctrines, and ask if any of them are what is really good for the progress of the human mind. Can you really afford to continue living with a mentality that is more appropriate to the fourth century than the twenty-first? Is it good to have a doctrine that is founded on something that a large number of today's exegetes tell us in all probability never happened? Could it be that the reason why so many Catholics have left the Church is because they simply do not believe in your authority anymore? Might they have drawn the same conclusions as I have, but not bothered to tell you?

Priest. I cannot agree with you that these things as you put it never happened. It is utterly inconceivable to me, that the Christian faith could have lasted this long if the very foundations upon which it was built, never happened.

Me. You don't believe that people could be duped in that way for so long do you?

Priest. No, I don't.

Me. Well, there was a time when I would have agreed with you, but not anymore. People can be duped into believing anything. In most cases it's the elderly and the uneducated that are the most gullible, and in many ways that's entirely understandable, but as it happens it's the elderly and the uneducated that make up the bulk of your flock these days.

Priest. That's not quite the same thing as following a religion that has lasted for nearly two thousand years, and I have no doubt that the young people of the world will ultimately find their way back to the faith of their parents.

Me. Well, there's nothing really new about religions lasting a long time, I said. What was it that happened to enable the Jewish faith to last so long? What was it that happened, to make the Buddhist faith last so long. And what was it that happened to make the Hindu religion last? All these faiths have been around much longer than Christianity.

Priest. I'm no expert on those religions, but I would say they all began with some revelation, some form of faith experience.

Me. Well I'm no expert either, and I agree with you, but I don't think the Christian faith is any different. The problem I have with the Church today is its claim to absolute truth, and the arrogance of its teachings, not to mention the pain and suffering they cause. The Church is so dogmatic about its origins when the truth is, that it knows very little about its historical origins. It freely admits to knowing very little about the historical Jesus and refers to him as the Jesus of Faith. It seems to me that they would want to know as much as they could, but whenever the subject comes up they always seem to be very uncomfortable about it. They immediately go on the defensive. It doesn't help the situation when Catholic biblical scholars are told that they must start at a pre-determined position that upholds the validity of the Jesus of Faith. That makes it near impossible to face up to the reality of what the bulk of biblical scholars are saying today.

Priest. How can anyone know these things for sure? We take them on faith; you know that. We live in hope, not certainty, just hope. We don't know anything for sure, but if we don't have hope what do we have?

Me. All my life people have told me that I must have faith, but I think that this faith thing is a fraud.

Priest. How so?

Me. If something is true, if for example the gospel stories are historically factual, then we don't need faith, they happened! If however they did not happen, then all the faith in the world is not going to change that. The problem as I see it, is, that if what the Church teaches is true, then we should know. It shouldn't be something that at the end of the day, comes down to a mystery that we are expected to take on faith, we should know, it should be obvious, obvious to everyone. So what's wrong with simply being grateful for what we have in the here and now, and not go off on tangents expecting or hoping for anything else? Atheists don't seem to have a problem with it. Why do we need dogmas and doctrines and infallibility and all that? I can understand people of the fifth century, the tenth, and the fourteenth, believing all the things the Church told them, because at that time nobody knew any better. But that's not the way it is today.

Priest. There's nothing wrong with thinking that way. But wouldn't you rather hope for something better? Isn't it better to hold out for something you think is worthwhile even if you think it's a long shot?

Me. Hell no! That's an open invitation for all the creepy con-merchants of the world to take advantage of you; which pretty much explains what's been going on for the last 2000 years. When I was a kid, the Church frightened the life out of me; telling me about Hell and how easy it was to finish up there.

Priest. Yes, I understand that. That was wrong. That was a great pity. Some of us were very good at telling people about Satan and Hell and those we told believed it. I know also that from time to time the over scrupulous experienced a lot of guilt. Most priests that I know felt a genuine concern for them and when we recognised such cases we would act promptly and with great care and prudence. Several times I remember telling penitents in the confessional not to bother mentioning certain sins again, to simply forget all about them. It's a pity we didn't put our energies into something more positive but that's how it was. I'm sorry for what we did to you. I'm sorry for what we did to a lot of people. As for what you have told me about the gospels and their origins, well, what can I say? When you were at school, there were some strong forces in play, there was a lot of insecurity in the authority of the Papacy. There was a great fear of communism and where it was leading; there was a lot of anti-Protestant feeling here in Australia among the Bishops. There were a lot of things happening and to some extent it got out of control. We felt threatened and went after people's minds instead of their hearts, and it worked too, at least in the short term. But for your generation and mine, I realise now that we did a lot of psychological damage. I don't know if there's much we can do about it now. In some ways we are between a rock and a hard place. People over the age of sixty or so, don't want the trauma of major changes in their lives now. We should let them be. Confusing them about things they have grown up believing all their lives is not going to help them now, they don't want to hear these things, it's best to let them be. I realise there are some like yourself that want the truth whatever the cost, and I suppose that's why there has been such a huge interest in books and films like, 'The Da Vinci Code'. But there are others who don't. We each have to follow our hearts, but if you are a compassionate man, as I think you are, you will do it quietly. If you want to raise the roof, think about who's underneath it. Do you really achieve anything by up-ending other people's beliefs just because you see it another way? You don't have to be too smart to see that the Church is in decline, and it's not just us, the other Christian churches are going through a similar phase. But the Church will still be here for those of your generation who feel they need it; it will still be their rock, their fortress. After what we've done to them, they are entitled to that. What will happen after that, I don't know. It's obvious the younger generations are not responding to the call. There's too much science around for us to sustain the mystical nature that the Church thrived upon in the past.

Me. There are times I feel like I want to crack some heads together for the nights when as a child I couldn't sleep for fear of dying and ending up in Hell.

Priest. I can understand that, but try to look forward. Try to let the past be the past. We can't change it now. Whatever is coming will come, and we can't do much about that either. If there's nothing for us after this life, then so be it, but I'd still like to think there was. And if there is, then I'm sure it will involve all of us in some productive way.

I won't pretend that this conversation was one of mutual appreciation for each other's position on the matters discussed. It wasn't, but at this point we both realised we were not going to achieve anything further and decided that this was a good time to exit. I was extremely grateful for his honesty and his candour.

27.

Back on planet Earth, the world loves a champion and 'Tiger' Woods is getting lots of love at Kingston Heath. Crowds are pouring in to see him perform his magic at the Masters. On day one, they were packed in six deep behind the Tee, five deep along the fairway and don't even ask about the Green. They love him. Better still he had a great round. On day two, he's adored again and leads after eighteen holes. Day three he runs into a little bit of strife, but nothing the champ can't handle on the final day even though he says he was fortunate to still be in the tournament. The crowd is ecstatic. On day four, the real 'Tiger' comes to play. He shoots a four under the card sixty-eight and wins $270.000 on top of the $3 million appearance fee. He has spearheaded the great renaissance of Australian golf.

Yeah! Alright! I guess! But, all they do is hit a ball around the park. Try doing it underwater. Huh? Gotcha! Anyway 'Tiger' has left and gone home now and all we have is the mess to clean up at Kingston Heath and to wonder if he will come back next year to defend his crown.

Yesterday, I drove my friend Muriel Crabtree to hospital. You remember Muriel; she's 101 and counting. Anyway several years ago she had a pacemaker fitted to keep the blood flowing and now they've decided it needs to be replaced. She's not worried about the new pacemaker but she's a little apprehensive about having a general anaesthetic. Anyway I arranged to pick her up at the Retirement Village and take her to where the procedure will take place. We arrive at Epworth Eastern in Box Hill at 7am and I log her in. The receptionist checks her daily whatever sheet, runs down the list and can't see Muriel's name.

She's here for a pacemaker replacement, I tell the receptionist.

What's her birth date, she asks me while Muriel takes a seat and falls asleep.

The 9th of April, hold on to your hat, 1908, I reply. She starts to type the date in, stops, looks at me disbelievingly.

She's 101, and she's having a pacemaker replacement?

Yep, I nod, looking over toward Muriel wondering if she's saved them the trouble and dropped off the perch, or should I go see if she needs to be revived. I turn back to the receptionist who looks like she needs to be revived.

Oh yes, here she is, she says looking back at me and shaking her head. Just have her wait over there and we'll come and look after her.

Don't forget her, I say. I tell Muriel it's all under control and I'll come back later to check how it all went.

I get back to the hospital about four hours later. She's in the Cardiac care unit sitting up in bed, wide awake ripping into some biscuits and coffee and watching one of those morning television shows that are really one very long infomercial.

What's happened? I ask.

Oh, it's all over, she says. I didn't have a general anaesthetic. I was awake all the time and didn't feel anything at all.

She might be 101, but her mind's as fresh as if she were in her forties, hotly political (it's a good thing we're on the same side), and highly critical of anything she doesn't approve of, which is pretty much everything. She approves of the medical sensation performed by surgeons this week at the Royal Children's Hospital in Melbourne, though. A specialist team of twenty, successfully completed the separation of Trishna and Krishna, two orphaned Bangla Deshi conjoined twins in a marathon 32 hour operation. All of Melbourne if not the entire country climbed on board this event willing its success and it seems to have worked. It has been the feel good story of the year, but of course, it didn't have much competition. Not that there aren't feel good stories out there; it's just that they don't sell newspapers and they don't help television ratings, so they have to be unevenly balanced with shock and awe to remind us of how good they really are.

I bet you they'll be calling it a miracle, she says. And everyone will be bowing their heads in thanks and praise. I hope they remember to give some thanks and praise to the medical team, she adds. But for Muriel with her new pacemaker, the campaign to save the ducks has still to be resolved. There are those in the village, she believes, who would have the ducks mysteriously disappear, bringing the 'duck droppings' saga to a swift conclusion and she even suspects one or two villagers might be planning a terrorist plot to bring about the ducks' demise.

Oh, how could they?

Think again Muriel, I said. Christmas is bearing down upon us.

Christmas?

Ducks!

Christmas?

Ducks!

Christmas seems to creep up on us so silently these days and when reminded of it, all I think about is how to get through it and get it behind me. Muriel loathes Christmas. I don't look forward to it any more, either. The religious side of it leaves me cold and if not for my grandchildren, I could happily ignore it totally. My brother Anthony has saved me the stress of bothering. We will gather at his farmhouse at Lillico this year for Christmas dinner; a family celebration no less and that will be good. Very good! I rejoice with my brothers and sisters that we are all still alive, that we all still speak to each other, that we enjoy each other's company and celebrate our achievements, large and small. Each of us has found our way through the minefield of life and come out the other side, relatively sane, with our lives intact. I'm not the only A-theist in the family, but that's never been an issue and who cares? We're family.

But as I speak, there's a battle royal going on in Canberra. It's all over a CETS (Carbon Emissions Trading Scheme), or a CPRS (Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme). It really depends on your interpretation. What is becoming apparent is that an ETS (Emissions Trading Scheme) has a sinister odour about it, so any further mention of it is to be avoided. Kevin Rudd and most of the country want action on climate change. The Coalition is split down the middle. Some of them don't believe humans cause climate change. It's a position somewhat reminiscent of the Flat Earth Society; they still won't believe human activity is causing the Earth to warm. Well, that's okay. I understand their position entirely. For over fifty years I believed in miracles, I believed in the Three Persons of the Blessed Trinity, I believed Jesus rose from the dead and ascended into Heaven. I believed in the apparitions of the Virgin Mary at Fatima, Lourdes, and dozens of other places. I believed in God and I believed in a life after death; Heaven for the good, Hell for the bad. I believed I would escape Hell if I did the Nine First Fridays. I believed in Plenary Indulgences. I believed in Saints and Guardian Angels. I believed all that. So, why I ask is it so strange that there exists within the ranks of society today, people who still believe they can defy science and cling ever so tenaciously to a God belief and the mistaken premise that we are not responsible for dirtying up the planet? If pressed hard enough, I suspect most of our politicians would acknowledge Christianity as their faith, whether they believed in God or not. Of course, not too many would have the balls to say they did not, even if it were true. They are after all, politicians. So, it is likely that they would also profess to believe in most of the previously mentioned Christian fundamentals, except say, the ones about Fatima and Lourdes; only Catholics believe in those. They accord science its due of course, but only in the areas where it is undeniable and doesn't compromise Catholic teaching. When science theorizes over an issue that challenges such teaching it's, 'hang on mate! You can't prove that.' There's something rather odd about all this isn't there? They won't accept scientific theory that we are dirtying up the planet until it is proven fact, (by which time it will be too late), but will happily profess belief in the great unprovable theory of all time: that God exists.

They say we get what we pay for but in reality we don't even get that. For the quality of governance we enjoy today, our politicians are woefully overpaid. What is hard about engaging a team of expert consultants to give us advice on what we should do? What is clever about receiving that advice and then ignoring it? Conservative political parties the world over never look too far into the future. They are the party for today. Let someone else worry about tomorrow. One senator on the Coalition side said he would refuse to vote for a Carbon Emissions Trading Scheme because it would place a new tax on every Australian. How noble of him. The future of the planet is on the line, the quality of future generations is threatened and all he is concerned about is the inconvenience of a new tax.

Why do I care, you ask? Because I have grand-children! Because I don't believe in God and I care what we do as tenants on Earth. I don't believe that we are here for a reason and that some Divine solution will save us in the nick of time. That is fantasy. There are others who will follow us for centuries to come, and I care about the inheritance we leave them. We know we are polluting the Earth. That fact alone should jolt us into action.

Malcolm Turnbull knows we are polluting the Earth but the poor fellow has been battered from pillar to post by the media and members of his own party while he struggles defiantly to drag them screaming and kicking into the 21st century. I cannot remember a time when such open revolt has occurred within a political party.

Meeting the challenge of climate change will be the defining moment for all current world leaders. But here in Australia, while Kevin Rudd's Government tries to pass the vital legislation needed to start the ball rolling, the Opposition are generally carrying on like a bunch of spoilt children. After eleven years of regressive, conservative government, I suppose we shouldn't be surprised. So, as things now stand, the progressive Malcolm has been dumped in favour of Tony Abbott, a right wing conservative Rhodes Scholar who believes he has the 'people skills' to unite the Liberal Party and return to government after the next election.

Tony, aka, 'The Mad Monk', aka, 'Captain Catholic', and sometime user of the phrase, 'Shit happens!' reckons that religion makes people better, but not perfect. Well, I'd dispute that, but does he provide us with a choice? We, at this moment, have two devout Christian politicians leading our two major political parties. (Yes, I know, that's an oxymoron but we'll have to let it go). One of them got there on a wave of youthful popularity, the other by a bunch of extremists who pulled off a sort of 'mob takeover'; analogous to Generalissimo Franco's grab for power in the 1930's. Tony has a different world view on how we should tackle climate change and that will be explained to us in due season. Kevin Rudd is about to join most other world leaders in Copenhagen to decide er well er I'm sure they will eventually decide something probably. And Malcolm Turnbull will go down as the man who sacrificed his career for his principles. But as we all know, in politics, principles don't feed families. This book was initially intended as a memoir but it has subsequently expanded to become something akin to me telling you what's wrong with the world. Well, everyone else, it seems has a point of view. Why can't I?

As for we A-theists, we'll just have to soldier on, and put up with more hot air coming from every direction and lots of mind numbing discourses on politics, climate change, religion, taxi drivers, the media and football, until rationality and science become the foundation for a new creed.

Oh well, I guess Tony's right. Shit does happen.

Afterword

For the past eight years or so, ever since I connected to the internet I have googled the name, Brother Bertinus wondering if anything might pop up and give me a titbit of information; was he still alive, had he been the subject of any complaint by former students? It was difficult to avoid thinking about him. Almost every week of this decade I have read a story in the newspapers or seen an account on television of some new claim or charge against a priest or brother for sexual abuse of students in their care with some of the claims going back several decades. Some of the stories that surfaced made my blood run cold particularly when I learned of the lasting effects the abuses have caused: the depression, the dysfunction, the alcoholism, the broken families, and suicides. I saw on television the pain on the faces of those so affected as they came forward so bravely and told their stories. It seemed that what started out as a handful of isolated cases gradually turned into a tsunami of complaints. As each and every case became public I was shocked at the enormity of it all. It made me think more and more about Bertinus. I wondered if anyone had come forward and accused him of something similar to his treatment of me. When I compared my experience with that of those damaged individuals that were being portrayed in the public domain I realized mine was probably on the lower end of the scale but that, I thought, did not in any way diminish the betrayal of trust and failure of a duty of care that was so obvious with these other more serious cases.

Eion Cameron is a breakfast radio announcer for the ABC in Perth. He was once the MHR for the federal seat of Sterling in Western Australia. He was born in Mt. Gambier, South Australia, one of ten children and grew up on a farm nearby. In 2003 a book Eion wrote entitled 'Rolling into the world' was published. Eion's book was an autobiography of his early life growing up in South Australia and attending a Marist Brothers College in Mt. Gambier. One thing I discovered with my newest best friend 'Google' one hot day in January 2008 was that Eion Cameron and I had experienced something in common.

Brother Bertinus!

I've never met Eion face to face, but in January 2008, the ABC published on their website, an interview he gave with a local reporter where she mentioned Eion's book, 'Rolling into the world', and his experience with Brother Bertinus while attending Mt. Gambier Marist Brothers College in the early 1960's; a matter he describes briefly in his book. It is difficult to describe the emotion that welled up within me as I sat in front of my computer and read the details of that interview. My first reaction was to check with my local library to see if they had Eion's book on their shelves. They did. Within the space of a few hours, I had his book in my hands and rather than drive back home and read it, I sat in the undercover car park of the shopping centre to which the library is attached and read his story....well, not all of it, not then, just the part about Bertinus. My heart was racing almost uncontrollably. One of the first images that flashed across mind was that of my mother and father and how glad I felt that they were not alive to read this. For some strange reason it mattered less to me that I was now vindicated, than they were protected from this.

Back in 2004 I self-published my first book entitled, 'Satan's Little Helpers.' In this book I told a fictional story of Simon Hickey who went off to a religious training college in the country. It was to a large extent my own story, but I did not have the courage to tell it as non-fiction for fear of recriminations. I even invented the name of the religious order calling them the Aquinine Brothers. And then, because I was writing it as fiction I felt free to exaggerate, embellish and invent some of the storyline. The one part I did not exaggerate, embellish or invent was the part where I described what happened to me at the Juniorate and that section was repeated earlier in this book word for word, except for the names of those involved. So you can imagine how stunned I was to find that in Eion Cameron's book, 'Rolling into the world,' he had described a similar incident to mine but did not fictionalize it. He named Brother Bertinus as the offending party. His publishers clearly saw no reason to suppress it. Broiling with emotions that I find difficult to explain, I returned home, sat down at my computer and emailed Eion at the ABC. I told him that I was a student at Champagnat College in Wangaratta in 1960 and had been dealt with by Bertinus in a similar way. From his reply it was obvious he was still affected by what happened to him in the early 1960's and, like me, wanted to do something about it.

It was then I decided to approach the people at Broken Rites, an organisation set up to assist victims of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy and lay teachers and seek their advice. With their support and encouragement I then submitted a letter of complaint to 'Towards Healing', the body set up by the Church to handle complaints of this nature. I can't speak highly enough of the people at 'Towards Healing' and those they engaged to investigate the complaint for their compassion, their encouragement, their professionalism. I was advised that Brother Bertinus was still alive, in his mid-eighties, retired and living in New South Wales. I underwent several interviews, identified Bertinus from a photograph and was continually reassured that my case was being given serious attention. I was given regular updates, offered psychological counselling and told that Bertinus had been interviewed concerning both my complaint and also Eion Cameron's, and I gathered they were being handled together. I also learned the investigation revealed yet a third victim. The process took twelve months to be resolved, but resolved it was. At the end of it, I was enormously relieved, also grateful to the Marist Brothers who, accepted that what I told them was true notwithstanding Bertinus' denial of the claim. Apparently, he didn't even remember me. Through their representative, Brother Alexis Turton, they conducted themselves in a dignified and admirable manner. If I came away from the whole episode convinced of nothing else it was that male religious communities such as the training college I attended and clerical seminaries the world over have been a magnet for disturbed and dis-oriented boys and men who may feel deeply committed to their God's work, but who also see the closeted nature of religious houses as a natural haven to express their sexual preferences. It is to the detriment of those men of high calibre and noble cause who also enter such places intent on acting out their perceived vocation in life, who also must suffer the collateral damage, and the fallout that comes with the territory despite having nothing but good intention and a healthy desire to do good work.

The recovery road for me has been made that much easier knowing the matter is no longer a secret and that my experience far from being an isolated case was one of several. I mentioned Brother Alexis Turton because he helped restore my respect for the Marist Order, something that had for such a long time gone missing. There are several other people to whom I am enormously grateful including Paul Murnane, Sister Kathleen Moran, and Kerry Buchecker from Towards Healing, Bernard Barrett from Broken Rites and mediator, Shane Wall, all of whom played their part in bringing the matter to a satisfactory conclusion. Somehow the well-worn phrase, 'It's a tough gig but someone has to do it,' has taken on a new meaning for me.

Eoin Cameron's story became public recently with a chilling interview on ABC Perth radio. The broadcast was podcast on the ABC's website. As I sat listening to Eion's story I realized how much his family life resonated with mine. But for the fact that his parents were still alive and came to learn of their son's ordeal reading his book, whereas mine had passed on, never knowing, we have shared similar ongoing difficulties. However, when he began detailing his horrific experience with Bertinus I struggled to maintain my composure. His incident was far worse than mine and he carried it with him in silence for 46 years. Common to both our lives in the aftermath was a lack of interest in education. We both left school prematurely and in both cases, the first person each of us confided in, the first person we could bring ourselves to talk about our violated youth, was our wives.

With the issue now behind me, I feel that the psychological release experienced after having dealt with this matter has now assumed dominance over the matter itself and while the memory never leaves you, the procedure undertaken, approaching Broken Rites and Towards Healing, has cemented an avenue of release. When the matter crosses my mind as it still does, I can now process it internally and put it in its proper place in my psyche.

The year 2009, has been a stand out year for more than one reason and notwithstanding my malignant cutaneous fibrous histiocytoma, the odd Basel cell carcinoma, and a scalp full of Squamous cell carcinomas, I'm confident 2010, will still see me retire, and enter a new phase in life's incredible journey . I will watch my grand-children grow, celebrate their achievements, and enjoy what's left in store. My friend Muriel Crabtree has demonstrated to me that one should never try to anticipate one's life span; never hold back on your plans thinking you are too old. There is always something each of us is still capable of committing ourselves to, and achieving. As an A-theist I believe there is nothing beyond this life and that is precisely why this life is so precious.

Hiroshima Sunset

HIROSHIMA SUNSET is much more than a novel. It's a love story woven within a riveting factual account and told by way of a mysterious journal that keeps the reader guessing until the end. Cleverly written, easily understood and shocking, it exposes some little known truths about the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima in 1945; that Japan wanted to surrender and overtures to the west were ignored. Little known also, is the fact that thousands of Australian soldiers served in the post-war occupation and worked to re-establish some normality in a devastated country. Even if you are not into war stories, this is an educational must-read. Fascinating, descriptive, informative; a page turner.

Fiona Cottingham.

A beautiful story with a very poignant message about the decision to drop the bomb. For me it puts into perspective the term used so much today "Weapons of mass Destruction". Nothing a terrorist could contrive could come anywhere close to what was dropped on Hiroshima. That apart, this book is one of the best stories I can remember.

Review by Keith Renshaw.

Available at: www.donvalebooks.com

Saints and Relics

THE PLOT: A casket containing a remarkable relic of a 17th century nun, Saint Margaret Mary Alacoque, is stolen from a devout society in France by one of its members, a priest from Sydney. The priest, Father James, secretly entrusts the casket to two women in Monterey Creek, a small country town in New South Wales. The Society immediately sends Monsignor Henri Pascal from Paris to Australia to recover both the relic and a manuscript written by the nun, which describes her final revelation.

THE COMMENT: Set in a small country town in New South Wales, and complete with an assortment of colourful characters, this intensely human story poses questions for devotees of saints and relics, confronts long standing theological convictions, and articulates a major dilemma for the Catholic Church: What to do when a priest falls in love.

A powerful and absorbing drama about ordinary people, played out in Australia and France, it captures the essence of human frailty, and that unique Australian spirit of scepticism.

Available at: www.donvalebooks.com

The Cicada

By Inge Meldgaard

The year is 2450 C.E. and the world has enjoyed two centuries of peace. The population of the planet has stabilised at 3 billion following the devastating effects of climate change, famine, disease and wars that raged for nearly 200 years. One central government, the World Federation of Nations, based in Luzern, Switzerland, administers the judicial needs of all nations through its General Assembly and funds scientific research dedicated to restoring the planet's fragile ecosystems. But greed and corruption go hand in hand with power, and for some, the stakes are high.

At a principal research facility located in Melbourne, Australia, a scientist is assaulted and vital data stolen from their computer records. Almost simultaneously, four other facilities around the world are similarly compromised. When violent murder impacts upon the course of events, Federation investigators realise they are dealing with a dark conspiracy that stretches across the globe. They enlist the support of the scientists and their sometimes capricious cats; mysterious creatures bred in special centres.

The Cicada is brilliantly conceived and beautifully written, playing out its enthralling story in Australia, Switzerland and Myanmar and offering an insightful preview of what life could be like 400 years into the future. This highly imaginative novel by Inge Meldgaard has raised the bar in the Sci-Fi genre.

