COOL CONTRASTS.

The last 3 years of my school life were filled with many contrasts.  While I hated almost every minute of my new school, I cherished my new found freedom every afternoon and weekend.

Once I got off the train I had the freedom to stop at Warwick's for a couple of hours or spend my afternoon with Mark (Mrs C's son) in the bush with the dogs.  Neither of my parent got home until well after dark so I had at least 2 hours of freedom every day.

 At Warwick's I could meet up with my old friends, and some new ones - by this stage Warwick had recruited a whole retinue of younger boys.  Amazingly this was due to his friendship with his near neighbours who had two sons.  Warwick and the boys father both coached the local cricket team, so in their eyes he was just a friendly mentor type.  Years later many of these boys would come forward and report to the police of Warwick's molesting them.  I also was called to the police station to give a report as my name had been given by one of the boys.  Of course, due to my own criminal record and past life as a sex worker I was not asked to give evidence.

Warwick was duly sentenced some 30 years after the events.  I know we all have different viewpoints and I do assume that some of the boys were both sexually aroused and sexually confused at the time, but although legally committing a crime against minors, Warwick was, in my experience, neither forceful nor particularly demanding in his sexual appetite.  I'm sure at the time most of the boys enjoyed themselves as much as I did.

My older sister, who was working in the local bank, was seeing one of the boys from our neighbouring suburb.  Initially she started seeing the younger brother, then as teenage girls do, she fell in love with the older brother.  She was with him for 3 years and he, his brother and their friend Max, became a regular part of our household.

The two brothers were nice guys, but typical rough, tough going nowhere boys.  Max was the only one of the 3 who was still at high school, finishing his HSC (university entrance exams).  They were all into cars and motorbikes and not much else.

On the weekends I would often tag along with them.  A few kilometres from our house was an old disused section of highway.  It was in the middle of the bush and had long since been replace by the new highway.  It stretched for about 4 kilometres and was only accessible through a 'locked' gate (which the boys soon unlocked) and was the perfect place for them to ride their motorbikes.

With them and my sisters girlfriends we would spend hours riding the bikes.  They only had one motorbike and took turns both riding and doubling us along the track.  The first time I was on the back of the bike with Max, he told me to put my arms around his waist and hang on tight.  Off we went as fast as I had ever been before. Away from the sight of the others Max took one hand off the handle bars and put my hand down onto his hard penis.....


Max was one of the best looking guys I had known.  We were time poor and both knew that we couldn't do anything that day.  But Max would often visit before my sister returned from work and let me give him a blow job.  I remember years later having to feign surprise when my sister announced that everyone was saying that Max had 'turned gay' and was hanging around the gay scene in Sydney's Oxford St- though I never recall seeing him.

My real escape and passion though was still at the beach.  My mother's best friend and her mother both had houses on one of Sydney's northern beaches.  I would spend the best part of weekends for 3 years there and loving it.

 Not only did I love surfing but it was the one place where everyone was cool and non-judgemental.  I didn't have a surfboard, but either body surfed or used a 'surf-mat', which is a blow up rubber 1970's version of a boogie board.  I could ride with the best of them. 2, 3 and even 4 metre waves were no deterrent to me and I could spend hours behind the breakers hanging with the cool surf dudes waiting to catch and ride the 'perfect wave'.  I was even cool enough to enter the water from the rocks of the headland with the best of the surfers, rather than taking the safe, but tiring, option of battling the breakers from the beach.

It was here I would find many illicit romances with both other visiting boys or as I very quickly found out with the older surfers.  It didn't take much from being asked to help them zip up their wet-suits to being asked to meet them at the dressing sheds at some stage during the day.

 We lived some 20 km from the beach in a straight line.  Getting there was closer to 30km as I would have to travel  12 km by train, then catch two different buses,ending up with a 1km walk to get there.
In the afternoons, if I wasn't getting picked up by Mom I would ditch this and hitch-hike home, or to the railway station - still a 15 km drive through national park bushland.

Getting a lift was no problem.  Usually it was was with young guys and girls who had been surfing for the day.  It would be during these drives that I was introduced to pot smoking and on many occasions end up somewhere in the bush stoned and having sex with many of the hot young drivers.

I also fell in love with live theatre.  This was a time when Australia was emerging from it's 'cultural desert' image and live theatre was all the rage.  Of course it was expensive and the only theatres were in the city.  To finance my trips I had to find money.  There were two ways I did this.  Either I trolled the neighborhood on weekends going odd-jobs.  Gardening, washing cars, mowing lawns etc or, along with my friend Mark did the 'milk money' run on Friday nights.

It was still an innocent and safe era back then.  And while people locked their front doors during the day, everybody still kept a spare key under a flower pot or in the letter box.  We also had the long since vanished milk deliver every morning.  You would leave your empty (scrupulously washed by my mother) milk bottles next to the letterbox each night and they would be replaced by new filled ones the next morning.

I know people often say 'it's the next best thing to sliced bread', but honestly one of the greatest inventions of that time was the plastic milk bottle top!  Milk was delivered in glass bottles with foil lids and also came full fat!  That meant that the first inch of the milk was pure cream.  As young kids we used to fight for this first creamy part of the milk.  That is of course unless the Currawongs hadn't pecked their way through the foil and lapped up the cream before you got to it.  Currawongs are Australian birds, like large Magpies, with a beautiful morning song, but also an annoying habit of breaking through the milk tops and drinking the cream - so when plastic, full seal caps were invented we were all thrilled.

Anyway milk was delivered daily and once a week, in our neighbourhood on Saturday mornings, you would leave the week's bill money in one of the empty bottles.  So on Friday nights Mark and I would often meet up, generally sometime after 11pm and do the 'milk run'.  Trawling the suburb and collecting the milk money.  We never did our own neighborhood and were clever enough to pick a different area each week.  Some nights we would collect over $20 each which was a fortune back then.  It took many months and repeat visits before people got wise and started replacing money with cheques!

So despite the misery of school days and the constant tense home environment I managed to find peace, fun and my own identity.  I knew it wasn't the norm but I had never wanted to be part of the norm and couldn't wait for the chance to begin my own life away from the boredom and restraints of suburbia...