THE CHRONICLE OF A MASOCHIST

PREFACE

This book was written to form a record of the way I thought and the things I did during the period just prior to going to University until Graduation Day. This period was quite unique to the way I expect the following years to unfold.

It has taken the past two months to recall all the following events, which span the previous five and a half years. Should anyone else read this, I have attempted to make it more light hearted than it may otherwise have been and included this Preface and Appendices for added clarification.

Everything contained in this book is written honestly with no exaggerations involved at all (except possibly Appendix C!). Very little of what I remember has been left out. Anything left out is either because it is not all that interesting, it has been forgotten, or things were intensionally left out for one reason or another, but this was rare.

Steven Enders

April 1992

CONTENTS

DECEMBER 1986 Praying for wonderful HSC results

MARCH 1987 Uni begins (and so does the nightmare)

JULY 1987 Cuskelly- The boarding house dragon

NOVEMBER 1987 Work experience - Sydney

FEBRUARY 1988 Good-riddance Cuskelly

MARCH 1988 First sharing arrangement (Jackie)

JUNE 1988 Glen and the MGB

SEPTEMBER 1988 Animal house - pigs included

MARCH 1989 Sanity saved

OCTOBER 1989 Work experience - Perth

FEBRUARY 1990 Hell revisited

JUNE 1990 The shoe box

JULY 1991 Job hunting

AUGUST 1991 Sydney job hunting

NOVEMBER 1991 Clive James twins

APPENDICES

A Future Plans / Outlook , Summary

B Map of South-East Queensland

C The trauma in colour

D Summary of past residences.

DECEMBER 1986 PRAYING FOR WONDERFUL HSC RESULTS

It was the 23rd of December, the last day of our (Gerry and I)cycling holiday around Tasmania. We worked into the early hours of the morning at Kangaroo Point Youth Hostel in Hobart trying to stuff our pushbikes into boxes for the flight home. We thought we should be home for Christmas even though we would have liked to have stayed longer. I only had $10 on me, no bank book or credit cards either so really there was no other alternative anyway.

We ordered a taxi in the morning and stuck our boxes into its boot (half in and half out) and drove off to the airport. My share of the taxi was about $8.00 which left me with two bucks so I asked Gerry if I could borrow $20 which was okay, luckily, because I was to get off in Qld while he was to get off in Sydney and I might never have seen him again.

We got on the plane, although I was a little apprehensive because I had left Sydney to come to Tasmania and was flying to Coolangatta to start a new life and await my HSC results and more importantly to see if I got into a University.

The trip to Tasmania was a sort of celebration for all the work we had done throughout high school. It was my idea to do it but it was the second alternative to the original plan which was to hire or buy a car or 4-wheel drive and drive around Australia. It was to be Rod, Gerry and I who were very good friends throughout high school. Needless to say we couldn't come up with enough money for this so we settled on a cycling holiday either to be in Tasmania or New Zealand. We booked the Transport (return trip) 6 months prior to leaving. Unfortunately as much as we tried we couldn't get Rod interested or we got him interest but not enough to spend the money. This I suppose was reasonable as it cost me about $2000 which was equivalent to delivering 133,333 newspapers and pamphlets. (I delivered twice this during my delivery days!). When it was close to departure we were still encouraging Rod but I think unfortunately we were more pressuring rather than encouraging.

Anyway Gerry hadn't been on a plane before so I suppose I was sort of feeling happy for him. The flight was to go to Melbourne, change for Sydney then change again for Coolangatta. Luckily the flight to Melbourne was smooth so there was little to worry about. But unfortunately on the descent, Gerry began quietly writhing in agony which got worse the further we went down. It was one of his ears hurting him. We had only about 10 minutes to change onto the next plane in Melbourne but he managed to find a nurse who recommended he didn't get on the plane again to Sydney. Unfortunately the same thing happened going down to Sydney but in the other ear! I was to find out later he had ruptured both ear drums. I don't think he has flown since.

Just as the wheels of the plane came into contact with the tarmac at Coolangatta Airport I jumped up a little in my seat to try to delay the inevitable - I really didn't want to start this new phase of my life.

Mum, John and Natascha (my sister) met me at the airport. Mum met John about 6 months earlier on a trip mum made up to the Gold Coast to see her childhood friend Maria Bailey. John flew down to Sydney from here (Coolangatta) every weekend to see her. This lasted for about 10 weeks then she decided to move up here with him. Natascha and I were left down in Sydney to complete years 10 and 12 respectively. Mums sister (Lorraine) had just arrived back from overseas and was looking for somewhere to live the same time as mum was moving out. So Auntie Lorraine moved in with us and took over the lease. We stayed for a couple of months then Natascha went up to mum and John, and I went to Tasmania.

We drove to Johns rented flat at Kingscliff. John had split up with his wife and child about a year ago. Mum felt sorry because his wife would do nasty things to him towards the end of the marriage like throwing his dinners in the bin and turning his daughter against him. John was good though as he would do and say silly things.

The flat was on the second floor above another flat which was above a fruit shop and another shop. We looked out over a thin strip of caravan park across the road and then the beach. It was lovely. I unpacked my bags (which were the bags I had on my bike) in Natascha's room. We had to share the room. The fruit shop owner was a fat Italian man and he was nicknamed 'Tiny'. It seemed to be a craze around that time to call fat people 'Tiny'!

I had two months to fill in before most Universities were due to start although I didn't know if I would get in anywhere or where I may get in. I applied to most Universities in N.S.W. and Qld. I received my results in the mail about a week into January. I didn't open it for two days in fear of the worst. I found to my horror the best Uni I could get into in Queensland was not a Uni but the 'Darling Downs Institute of Advanced Education'. It sounded terrible. My options in N.S.W. sounded better. I could get into the University of Technology Sydney through attending Nepean River College for 6 months or Woolongong University. I was to read 5 years later the results sheet again, that I could have got straight into UTS (I had read it wrong!). Rod was going to go there to do Civil Engineering and I was going to Queensland in outback Toowoomba to do the same course over 4 years duration. It didn't seem right. Oh well, can't win them all. Even though Gerry's mum offered to put me up for the duration of my studies should I have wanted to stay in Sydney I wouldn't have accepted. I couldn't afford to support myself financially in Sydney so going to Toowoomba was really going to be my only choice. It was also pretty close to mum and Natascha (about 3 hours drive) and also somewhere different so I tried to convince myself it was for the best.

I spent most days walking along the beach out front along the waters edge sinking my feet into the sand searching for pipi's to use later as fishing bait. I would go fishing at night after dinner. This is what I enjoyed doing most during the two months. I would take a bucket a third filled with sand and the pipi's in it and half with sea water, my walkman, my fishing bag and rod. In Tasmania, Gerry had a tape of the Cars 'Heartbeat City' album which I thought was great so I bought the album as soon as I got back from the trip and copied it onto a tape for my walkman. It was played most times I went fishing over and over until it was about midnight or one in the morning when it was time to go home. I did quite well at fishing, usually catching Dart, Bream or Whiting.

There was a vacant block of land next door and next to that a big two storied hotel. I used to encourage Natascha to go over and have a few games of pool. It was good fun even though I would win. The games cost 40 cents each but if you just stuck 20 cents in, it would work as well so it was quite cheap. One day we were in there trying to be cool like everybody else so we decided to put on the juke box. It was three songs for a dollar, and since I was paying I picked two and Natascha picked one. She was to pick first. She rushed pushing the numbers for her song and pushed the wrong ones and then 'Islands in the Stream' by Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton came on. This was very uncool so I was simultaneously foaming at the mouth and turning bright in embarrassment at her stuff up.

John is an electrician. He fixes up peoples hot plates and lights and things. Most jobs paid cash so he didn't declare it at tax time and ended up paying virtually no tax. He had a fair bit of money and would buy mum lots of nice jewelry and clothes. He had a block of land in Banora Point. He was putting together plans for a house on this land and began building it around June of this year (1987). Mum and John were spending a lot of their time looking for types of bricks, tiles, carpets, roofs, paint etc for the new house. One funny thing John did was when we were driving, this really fat lady wobbled across the road to the island strip in the middle and bent over to do up her shoe laces (it was a horrible sight). He leaned out of the window as we went past and he cat whistled her. She stood back up very abruptly! (you had to be there!).

It wasn't all good though. I got on well with John most of the time over these couple of months. A few times mum and John would have quite heated arguments. One night we were all sitting down for dinner where the days ill feelings had come to a head when mum picked up her dinner plate with dinner on it and frisbeed it down the hallway, bouncing off at least one wall on its way through before coming to rest at the end, dinner spread everywhere. John got Natascha and I aside another time and told us we were lucky he was looking after us as he didn't have to. All this wasn't much of a problem as we were used to this kind of stuff and worse in the past.

Natascha had enrolled in Tweed River High School to finish off her last two years of high school and I was about to start up Uni. Mum encouraged John to drive us to Toowoomba to look for accommodation for me. We left early one morning with a list of places (which I had got over the phone a couple of days earlier) and headed off for Toowoomba in Johns work van. He didn't talk much, obviously disgruntled with the situation. We arrived there about three hours later and stopped at a newsagent to buy a street directory. The places I had written down had all been for boarding arrangements in other peoples' homes. I had about 8 on my list. We progressively went through the list looking at each place and asking the people questions. John was getting frustrated and mad the longer it took. It was terrible being in his van. We finally settled on a place which was close to the city centre and cheap. Mum was quite upset that was the best we could come up with because it was an old dilapidated house etc. We had lunch in a family restaurant and drove up to the Uni to check it out. It seemed quite big and spacious with lots of buildings and land and some tennis courts so I was satisfied. We drove back 'home' to Kingscliff speaking only a few words. I filled in time for another two weeks until the weekend before semester started.

Luckily Maria Bailey's daughter 'Jackie' of my age was also starting Uni at the same time there and offered to give me a lift to Toowoomba that weekend with them. I rode in the back of the van with my luggage and my bike. It wasn't much fun but at least it was better than going again with John. Jackie had managed to find accommodation on campus. Its a lottery who gets in or at least that's what I told myself since I applied and missed out. To apply you had to fill out heaps of forms and send a photo of yourself. It sounded a bit suspicious. They dropped me off at my scummy place. They picked me up again that evening and we all went out to dinner as well as a friend of Jackie - a old tutor in Geology at Uni called Eric Ricards she met over summer on a previous trip up. They dropped me back at home afterwards, wished me well, then left.

MARCH 1987 UNI BEGINS (AND SO DOES THE NIGHTMARE)

It was a typical Queensland house from the outside. Probably built in the 30's, being made of horizontal wooden planks and raised about 6 feet off the ground to allow air to circulate. I had spent most if not all of my life living in brick buildings, usually apartment blocks, and to see Toowoomba with mostly wooden and fibro houses was a bit of a shock. Our house was really divided into two like a semi (where we had the worst half). We had a kitchen, bathroom and toilet tacked to the back of the house which looked as though it was constructed in a day. The doorways were crooked, the floors sloped in all directions and this whole back area was covered in vinyl floor coverings.

My room in the main part of the house next to the kitchen was obviously an after thought. It must have been part of the main bedroom which was divided into 1/3 and 2/3 where I had the 1/3. My room was about 8 foot by 12 foot, no windows, the partition didn't go all the way up to the ceiling- leaving about a two foot gap, and I didn't have a door - just a curtain hanging in the doorway.

I got money from the government called 'Austudy', the purpose for which was to help those students to study where the parents didn't earn enough to help them out. It came to $80 per week. The average wage was about $400. Board came to $60 and bus fares $8 per week. The rent for our place was $50 per week apparently. Mrs Cleary was the lady's name who ran the place. She was about 38 years old but looked about 55 to everybody. Her kidneys had packed it in a couple of years before and she was connected up to a type of drip for most of the day. I never really saw or wanted to see how it worked but from what I gathered this drip thing dripped through a tube from a plastic bag hanging from the hat rack above her head, into her stomach. When it ran out she unplugged it from her stomach and attached it somewhere else and placed the bag on the floor or in a bucket where something oozed back into it and filled it up. This cycle would happen about three times a day. She was really fat - only just fitting into her seat in the lounge room in front of the tv. She would watch tv from about 7:30am to 12:00pm midnight really living for the day when the phone would ring saying "we've found a suitable donor kidney, an ambulance is on its way". She still hadn't received that phone call 4.5 years later.

We had two cats there, one called Puss and the other called Zac. Zac was named because Mrs Cleary got him on an Anzac day. They were pretty good cats although Zac would occasionally chuck up in side the house and Puss would bring mice into my room while I was sleeping, play with them under my bed and then kill them, leaving me to discover them. She would also go to the other side of the semi to the next door neighbours and pee on their walls. Puss sat on my expensive walkman one day and it was never the same again - it would only play in one direction.

The bathroom was terrible. With the vinyl floor, wall paper ripped to shreds, an old fashioned bath on legs, a window that was fixed open far enough for the cats to come in (I would freeze in winter) and the sink basin that had dirty brown foot prints around it which the cats used as their step to the floor. The floor was crooked and the blind didn't cover the window for privacy. I didn't like taking baths but wanted to take showers to wash myself. We only had a plastic hand held nozzle thing for this. It was only a foot long and connected to the cold and hot water spouts about an inch above the bath edge. So to have a shower I had to squat at one end of the bath (above the drain hole) trying to cover myself with what water came out of the spout. It was virtually impossible to wash the back of my legs (let alone my back) and hair because it was so short and you had to hold it with one hand. The connection to the hot water tap was hopeless. It would spray out boiling hot water over the wall papered wall, floor and me (there was no shower curtain) so a face cloth was drapped over it to try to stop it. The draw back of this was that I couldn't see the connection slide down the hot water tap nozzle that it was connected to, as it was always loose, and thus pop off so that the boiling hot water would scold my feet and the cold water now coming out of the hand held nozzle would freeze the rest of me. Often I would look up and there would be one of the cats sticking its head through the window gawking at me so I would spray it with water or try to thumb it. The cats had probably seen all this before as an Aboriginal girl used to board here before me.

The toilet was almost as bad. It had a peeling vinyl floor, a corrugated rusty roof, almost no wall paper left and you could see people walking around outside through all the gaps between each of the vertical wooden planks that made up the walls.

At night when it was time to go to sleep, Mrs Cleary was usually in her room reading. Because of the gap near the ceiling she could hear every thing I did in my room from getting changed to passing wind. I also talked a lot in my sleep. Almost every day she would tell me the things I talked about in my sleep the night before. I would lie back at night in relative silence, thinking, as her reading light shone from her room onto my ceiling. My thinking would be momentarily interrupted by the occasional turning of a page. I could hear her reach over to the reading light and turn it off, then she would then give a big sigh and go to sleep. It was now silent and I was starting to relax. Occasionally I would hear a 'Toot' noise, which reminded me of the Sydney Harbour ferries I was used to hearing, but soon I was brought back to reality when I heard a freight train engine start up and then listen to it travel through the city and fade into the distance into silence again.

Mrs Cleary got up about 6:00am, I would get up about 6:30am. Within 5 seconds of putting my feet on the floor I would have at least one flea bite on each foot/leg as the carpets in the place were infested with them. Breakfast (Weet-Bix) and a cup of tea would be waiting for me after I had my shower. Thankfully as a smoker she wouldn't smoke while we were eating but would the rest of the time. The back door and front door were usually open to let the smoke out so it wasn't too much of a problem. She would have dinner ready at about 7:00pm and this is where I discovered what the poor eat. This is where I discovered what I was going to eat. I nearly spewed when I tried to eat mutton.

During the days I would go to Uni. Uni was good. It was nice to be in real brick buildings so I used to stay there for as long as possible till the last bus left for the city. During the day I would spend a lot of the time checking for new accommodation to become available, anywhere, through the papers, Student Services or on the notice boards. Toowoomba had an accommodation crisis.

When I came home I would sit on the 'lounge' trying to relax in front of tv. I had very little say in what I wanted to watch so I gave up asking in the end. Watching Wheel of Fortune, Family Feud, Sale of the Century every day got boring. Most of my attention though was not on tv but on hearing the continual popping noise of her crushing fleas in between her fingernails. I would get bitten all over the hands and arms every day. I tried to get them before they bit me but was not very successful. As I had no fingernails (as I chewed them back) I couldn't crush them so I had to put them between my thumb and finger, squeeze really hard and suffocate them. They took about a minute to become motionless. Sometimes I managed to fit up to 5 of them between the fingers at once. Once they were motionless I could put them onto the arm rest knowing they wouldn't move much and pop then with pressure on the back of my finger nail against them, pop...., pop..., pop.., pop., pop.

After about a week of going to Uni I met Venerando Vecchio. He seemed very quiet and always seemed to stand by himself outside the lecture rooms so I went up to him and started talking as I didn't know hardly anyone. I met Khosrow Hemmati about a week later. They became and remained my best friends on campus throughout the course. Ven was born in Australia but has Italian parents and Khosrow comes from Iran.

I went to see Eric Ricards every week or so for someone else to talk to and also because he worked on the inside of the Uni. I read an article on the back of Toowoomba's road map saying there was gliding going on in the region. Eric showed me a clipping from the weekend paper offering cheap introductory flights at a gliding field near Warwick (about 200km south of Toowoomba). I couldn't resist - I had to go. That next weekend on the Saturday morning I caught a Skennars coach with my bike to Warwick. I got off the coach and rode my bike to the Youth Hostel. My Youth Hostel card was still valid from my trip to Tasmania. That afternoon to fill in time I went to a sheep sheering festival or something, that just happened to be on. It was like a little showground with lots of typical outback things happening. On the stage was a competition to see which shearer could shear 3 sheep the fastest. This comp was going most of the afternoon. There were also competitions for the women who could spin yarn out of wool into shawls and things. Also there were sheep dog trials. Warwick is probably best known for its yearly rodeo festival. The signs advertising it on the highway looks as though they were about 20 years old and in the style of an American rodeo sign. I tried my first curried egg sandwich at a take-away store and instantly fell in love with it! Early one Sunday morning, about 5:00am, I rode my bike out of Warwick with a simple map to try to find the airfield for gliding. It was about 30km away. I really enjoyed the ride as it was early, and riding along quiet outback roads (mainly following the railway line north) past endless paddocks of sunflowers and wheat was great. After I got there I was soon in the glider sitting at the front with the instructor in the seat behind. The canopy was shut around us and then the tow plane started to move off unravelling the rope joining us. We moved off with a jerk along the bumpy grass runway. Soon we were at about 1000 feet when the instructor disconnected the rope from us by pulling a lever. It made a loud twang and then it was virtual silence just sitting up there hardly moving. You could see all the paddocks in the district in all their different colours and geometric shapes. We looked for thermals (rising hot air usually under forming clouds) to try to remain up in the sky. We flew around for about 20 minutes. The pilot let me steer it up and down, left and right and shortly after it was time for us to land. Watching straight ahead as you fly around, descend and come into land is an amazing experience. You only have one chance in a glider to land because you can't take off again if things are going wrong - as you have no engine. I was back at home that evening in Toowoomba feeling invigorated.

One evening after a pretty boring week I thought I would walk a few blocks to the local cinema to see what was screening. It was handy to have it close to where I lived although I couldn't afford to go. I stood out the front of the cinema looking at the glass enclosed posters to see what was on. I would imagine I was sitting in the middle of the cinema eating popcorn and sipping Coke and watching the movie of whichever poster I was looking at. "Wasn't that a good movie", I would ask myself after staring at the poster for a while. "Yes it was great. I'll have to come back tomorrow night and see it again", I thought. After walking back towards home to the street intersection and finding the "Don't Walk" sign on I decided to cross anyway as I had always done in Sydney. There was hardly any traffic anyway. As I approached the median strip a police motorcyclist came hurtling down the street and wiggled his finger at me to continue crossing the street to see him where he parked on the other side. He stood there with his helmet still on and reached into his back pocket and took out a red and white pad and pen. "Do you realised you crossed the crossing when the "Don't Walk" sign was clearly displayed?". "Yes", I said nervously. "Do you have a reason for committing this offense?". "My dinner is waiting for me at home and it is getting cold", I said. This excuse didn't work. "I'm going to have to charge you with breaching the Traffic Act". You've got to be kidding I thought to myself. He wrote out the ticket for a $10 fine. Well there went any chance I thought I had of going to the cinema this year! A car drove past and backfired right next to us. You should have seen him jump! He must have packed his pants! Ahhh.., sweet revenge I thought.

It was announced on the radio that 'INXS' were going to play a concert in Toowoomba. It was going to be their first concert of their 'Kick' tour before visiting a few more towns to tune their act before going off overseas. I queued up outside the radio station from about 6:00am to get tickets. The concert was on a the Toowoomba showground in a large tin shed. I skipped Uni on the Friday to get there early at about 8:00am to get good seats for the 7:30pm show. Two girls turned up at about 11:00am from Sydney to see it. No-one else came till 5:30pm! The was still not many people by 7:00pm. What a strange town. There were heaps of people by 7:30pm. I almost missed out on a front row standing position in the rush to get in the door when it opened but the two girls minded me a spot when they realised my predicament. Some small band played first, Jenny Morris played for about an hour and a bit, then 'INXS'came on. It was great, it was loud,it was deafening. Get-down, Toowoomba, and boogie.

Toowoomba got freezing cold in winter. In June I would walk off to the bus stop at 7:25am, with the radio just before leaving saying it was -2.5 degrees. I would watch my hands turn from normal to red to purple to gray to light splotches within three minutes. The tactic was if you couldn't put your hands in your pockets because you were carrying your bag, try to avoid swinging your hands as you walked otherwise your hand would freeze and you wouldn't be able to let go of your bag until the 10 o'clock lecture when your hand would start to thaw. The other hand must be kept in a warm spot as you walked otherwise your hand would be too cold to grasp the bus fare from your pocket and give to the driver otherwise you would be left behind at the bus stop, by yourself - and two frozen, useless hands.

Just before and during the exam period I would begin getting pains in my side which would hurt a fair bit. They must have had something to do with stress as I kept getting them during exam periods during the first two years of Uni. It wasn't much fun.

On the radio I also heard the Toowoomba Rodeo was on. It took me about an hour to ride to Middle Ridge Park where it was being held. There was lots of horses, riders, and the bulls or cows or something which they roped. It was very different. It was very smelly.

Occasionally I would go to the Service Station to buy a snack like a Snickers bar to have. I would ask her before leaving whether she wanted anything and invariably she would ask for a pack of smokes. But this time she asked me to also get a loaf of bread but "ask for the day old bread because it was 2 cents cheaper". I was shocked. Had she been always buying day old bread for us to eat?!!

In the mornings of these cold days I would freeze my butt off having a shower and burn my front trying to keep warm, get out of the bathroom, sit on plastic eggtimer shaped (no back) 'space invader' (arcade type) chairs next to jammed open window louvers to eat breakfast, we had a single bar heater but I couldn't feel it (I think it just emitted light), and then freeze to death on the way to the bus stop. I would sit on a hard solid plastic seat in the unheated bus and tremble so badly I looked as though I was being electrocuted (but it was okay because everyone else looked the same). The bus averaged 3 km per hour (it took almost an hour to go the 3km if going in a straight line). Then come home to smoke and fleas. I couldn't bear it any longer. I found another boarding arrangement which was closer to Uni (about 7 minutes by bike) through the Student Services on campus. I told Mrs Cleary I was leaving because I wanted to be closer to Uni even though it was obviously because of the living conditions. I apologised and left for greener pastures.

JULY 1987 CUSKELLY - THE BOARDING HOUSE DRAGON

I had a friend, David at Uni who knew the bloke who vacated the room I was about to move into. I talked to this bloke to find out what he thought about it and why he left. He said it was a rip off and laughed. He said he left because he was kicked out. Otherwise besides being a rip off he thought it was okay. I still thought it was worth following up.

This place was run by an old lady (about 65) called Mrs Cuskelly. There were 3 other students living there. When I first went there to see the place was livable I knocked on the door and she opened it and let me in. We were standing in an open area between the main house and the garage with an extension built on. She sat me down and began to tell me about the place. She began by saying "we are like a little family, we don't come home after 11:00pm, we don't bring girlfriends to stay over because this is a decent place. I don't want to have to tell your mother what's going on because I know she wouldn't approve". Then she told me about the place. I was too shocked or bewildered to pay much attention to what she was saying next, after all, I am an adult and she was telling me what I could and couldn't do. Anyway it seemed anything was better than where I was so I took the room.

The house was only a few years old, made of brick, had carpets and curtains, doors and windows. It looked luxurious. Of the three students, two were female and one male. With me, and Mrs Cuskelly, that made 5 people. One girl, Leanne Puglisi was doing a Business degree, the other girl was Vietnamese or something and was doing Arts I think. They both shared a big room that was attached to the side of the garage. The bloke, Michael Sydenham was doing a Science degree.

Mrs Cuskelly would make the dinners in the evenings, call us after she put them on the table and then would go into the lounge room to watch tv. The dinner seemed okay - steamed vegetables (pumpkin, broccoli, cabbage, beans, potato) and a little piece of meat. Then we had a piece of Christmas cake with custard for desert. I didn't really talk much during dinner and after it I went off to my room. The following morning she had breakfast set up with bowls out and a couple of breakfast cereals there as well. After I sat down to eat she brought me out some toast which was nice but wasn't to last long.

Riding my bike to college at this time of year was absolute torture. Moving about at walking pace was bad enough due to the wind chill factor (Toowoomba was permanently windy all year round) but on the bike it was unbearable. In the rain it was hell.

The next night at dinner I talked to Leanne and Michael a lot and found out Leanne's family owns Sundown Valley Vineyards - the biggest in Qld located in Stanthorpe (a little further south than Warwick, nearly on the NSW border). She attempted to teach me about all the different types of wines and spirits and how they are made. Michael was great to talk to as well. He had a sense of humor very similar to mine. For dinner we had the same as the night before. The next night we had the same for dinner again! Nobody seemed to comment or mention it so I mentioned it to Michael. This made Michael think and he realized that he had had virtually identical dinners all year without noticing it before. This was the turning point of Mike's stay at the Cuskelly residence as I started to open his eyes to the things that were going on there. He had wondered why he was sick (mainly with the flu) so often. I will call her 'Cuskelly' from now on as she wasn't what I would call a lady but an old stingy bat.

After dinner I would go to the lounge room about 6:50pm to watch tv. Because all the chairs were taken in the lounge room, I would have to lie on the floor. When 7:00pm came, Cuskelly would ask me to change the tv station for her to a soapie or something as I was the closest (being on the floor). I wouldn't have minded it occasionally but not every time (she was too lazy to do it herself). So I learned to go from dinner to my room to read or listen to the radio through my walkman instead of being treated like a dog. The problem with this was that she would not allow us to have a heater in our room. It was about 2 degrees at this time outside. So I would typically turn on my desk lamp and light (each at only 25 watts) to try to warm the room up and then jump into bed under my doona. Trying to study was terrible as it was far too cold to study at the desk and very difficult to read in bed with the doona wrapped around me up to my chin. At night I would lie back and go to sleep listening to cows moo-ing in the paddocks nearby. This place was on the outskirts of the city. We were virtually surrounded by paddocks with cows, steel clanking windmills, scarecrows, and horses. The moo-ing cows were quite soothing though. One morning about 2:00am I woke up standing in my room dressed and ready to go to Uni except that I was trying to find my keys (to the post office box etc). That was a worry.

At this stage of the year about 40% of the students who started the course have left for one reason or another. I didn't do too well first semester but I was going to make sure I got through the whole course and not add to the statistics. In first semester I had done a course in computers (mainly programming in Fortran). I knew first day like most people there that the course could be either really boring or interesting. No in between. I did lots of work to make myself like it because the future would likely be full of them and I wouldn't be able to ignore them. This spurred my appetite to learn more about them especially the 'personal computer' area. I wanted to start off learning to type up assignments on them somehow. Michael had a couple of years head start on computers than me so he was in a position to teach me a lot and gave me copies of some programs to use.

Michael was very much involved with electrical gadgets. His room had an electric keyboard, an electric beat generator and all the stuff to record music. He liked to write songs and music. He also had a stereo system with a CD player which was pretty new then.

After a while I had opened his eyes to a lot of things wrong there. Actually he did notice something was a bit strange when he first arrived there as Cuskelly wanted him to- after every shower, dry down the grout between the tiles in the shower recess with a dry cloth provided to prevent mildew or mold forming! Anyway here I go with some of the problems with the place:

• No-one was allowed a copy of the front door keys. They were kept in a little vitamin bottle in a pot plant a couple of steps into the garden. This was frustrating because at night it was almost impossible to find it and then put it back. Many a night I would be cursing.

• We had the same dinner every night bar one small change every few weeks.

• When we had 'junket' for desert it was like a bowl of water with a few white splotches floating around in it.

• She would water down the tomato sauce so that if you weren't careful your dinner would drown in red water.

• The 'custard' we would sometimes have was in fact custard powder added to the uneaten ice-cream that sloshed around in the container because no-one would eat it because the fridge was too warm.

• The telephone had a padlock on it and had an STD bar. We definitely weren't allowed to use it!

• No heaters were allowed.

• No coming home after 11:00pm.

• Definitely no girls after 11:00pm.

• Only 25 Watt light globes were allowed.

• She kept a brick in the cistern (of the toilet) to save money (or so she thought) as less water was required to fill it up.

• Any soap suds left in the twin tub washing machine was taboo.

• The dog slept in the laundry and stunk it out.

• The day I had moved in I noticed she had gone through my stuff. I suspected she would so I set it up so that clues would be left behind.

• She would slam her door (which was next to mine) at 5:00am every morning before she would go and walk the dog.

• We had off-peak hot water which never had enough time to warm up in the mornings for us, so one or more of us would miss out. So it was a race in the mornings to use it. It's not much fun standing in there and 30 seconds later the hot/warm water turns into stone cold water, so you've got to get out again.

• She would make up a batch of meat patties to last about a week which we would all watch slowly turn green as it was left uncovered in an ice-cream container in the fridge.

• In the fridge would always be a dish with up to four lamb hearts left uncovered (amongst the other food) for the dog to eat.

One night I was really frustrated with the place so I asked Mike if he wanted to let down one of her car tyres. He was a bit hesitant at first but then said "What the heck... after all the things she had done to us.... ". So we went in to the garage one night which was about 2 meters from her room which was totally exposed should she wake up and look out her window, there would be us with a key and pillow. I pushed the key into the tyre valve while Mike tried to muffle the hiss. It took us about 15 minutes to get the rim to about 2 cm from the ground. The next day she drove all the way to the shopping centre before she noticed.

I was also really frustrated not having my own house key. As Cuskelly is only out briefly when she goes out the opportunity to copy them is very limited as there is only one set and she uses it as well to get in. So when she went out one day after two weeks of finding the right opportunity, I grabbed the house keys out of the bottle in the garden, jumped on my push bike and peddled like fury to the hardware store, seemed like forever to cut them, and peddled in a panic all the way back hoping she hadn't beaten me. I made it. It was a huge adrenalin rush. It was good. Mike made a copy from it shortly after.

I also got annoyed about not having a key to the phone in case of an accident (Oh sure, you say. You just wanted it to phone your friends!). It was more I think like feeling in a jail or something so I had to get it. We tried to discuss it with her with no success. So I remembered about a week earlier when she lost her key to her bedroom she went to the drawer in the dining room while we were in the lounge room not able to see what she was doing and went to her room and opened it. It didn't mean much then but it did now. I went there with Mike to hopefully find her bedroom key and the phone key. They were there in the bottom drawer under a pile of junk. She could have been a little more imaginative! I again bolted with them and made a copy of both keys. I honestly never ended up using the key but did notice that local phone calls would ring and STD calls had an STD bar. It was nice knowing I had something she didn't know I had.

One day Mike and I were again frustrated about the situation so I thought we would go into her room when she was out with the intention of busting her light bulb filament so she couldn't see in there when she came home from dancing! After all we couldn't see in our rooms with 25 Watt bulbs. Anyway I unlocked her door (hearing the button pop out on the other side) and then opened the door a little and then, suddenly, the pet cat bolted out of there! This could spell disaster should she come home! We had to get it quick. Luckily all doors and windows were shut. We had to get the stupid thing before Cuskelly got back). Leanne and the other girl knew something funny was going on as we chased the cat around the house. We got it after about 10 minutes, took it in her room and shut the door behind us. We then again tried to bust the bulb but first we had to get it out of the socket. Unfortunately we couldn't so we abandoned the idea not trying to push our luck any further, so we gave up!

I sent off 101 letters to try to find a summer vacation job in engineering as it was part of my course to have at least 12 weeks accumulated. It took a good week to find the companies in the library and to try to use the computer to run off 'tailored' letters to them individually. It also cost me a lot of money I didn't have to take this chance. I sent them mainly to Sydney because that's where I wanted to go back to after all this I've gone through in Qld. Luckily I got back two offers. One from Monier roof tiles in Brisbane and a telegram from a manufacturing company in Sydney. The one in Sydney sounded better and so I let Ven follow up the Brisbane one as he is from there. He took it. I accepted the Sydney one.

Mike applied to transfer to Queensland University and got accepted for 1988. He left this place at the end of the semester. Leanne quit her studies at this time and started working in a travel agent in Stanthorpe. Leanne's sister Robin moved in shortly afterwards. I left some of my stuff there to return to in first semester 1988. In three days after finishing the semester I would start work in Sydney.

NOVEMBER 1987 WORK EXPERIENCE - SYDNEY

That weekend I caught the bus to Sydney and Gerry met me. Gerry's parents let me stay for the three months duration with them in the spare bedroom on a fold up mattress but it was good anyway. My job was to help one of the two engineers there to design a new industrial dishwasher for use under hotel and pub counters. Unfortunately the engineer I was working with quit about a week later. So I worked on the project virtually alone for the next 11 weeks with only a few suggestions from the plant manager at what to do. The other engineer was too busy in other jobs to really help. Anyway in the last week I was there, after three prototypes, we had a sellable machine which was sold to be put on a ship in Sydney Harbour. The plant manager said they would then manufacture 20 per month from then on. They sold for about $4000 each and washed dishes in 92 seconds. I loved the job because I was always kept very busy and I could see the results of my work transpiring. Even though I was only paid $283 gross, the experience was well worth it.

While in Sydney I went to Luna Park with Gerry and Rod and a few others. I spent most of the evening on the verge of chucking up after going on the 'Pirate Ship'. Rod had fun except for losing his wallet and falling off the seat a couple of times while having dinner. I went on a harbour cruise with some of Gerry's friends where there was a live band on board. Went to a party at one of Gerry's friends place. Someone there was smoking marijuana. Went to see Rods Uni where we had a game of pool. Went to see the 'Rocky Horror Picture Show' live on stage. Took up smoking for about a week. Applied for and got a Mastercard. Saw 'Crowded House' at the Horden Pavilion and generally played a lot of ping-pong.

FEBRUARY 1988 GOOD-RIDDANCE CUSKELLY

I arrived back at the Cuskelly residence to start the new semester. The first thing on my list was to change the wretched 25 Watt bulb to a 100 Watt one. I don't think she approved of this because about a week later an electrician came into my room unexpectedly to check it out, apparently because she was worried it might cause damage to the electrical wiring through the house. What dribble. Anyway she gave me two weeks notice to leave the on the following day. She said 'I don't think we are quite getting on. I think you had better leave'. I had already started looking elsewhere the week prior to this but with no luck as this is when everybody is looking for somewhere. It wasn't looking good.

Mum suggested I talk to Jackie Bailey (the girl who I came to Toowoomba with a year ago) as she was apparently looking for a flatmate. Jackie had been asked to leave the on campus accommodation because her results weren't good enough. If you fail anything you are out. I went to Eric to find which room she was studying in so I could go and talk to her after her lecture. I was hesitant about paying rent as it may end up costing more as it involved paying electricity, phone, food, etc. After my previous experiences with boarding I had to try something different. I talked to Jackie and she thought it would be good so I moved in shortly afterwards. I used a taxi to shuttle my belongings between the two places.

MARCH 1988 FIRST SHARING ARRANGEMENT (JACKIE)

The flat was a few blocks further away from Uni than Cuskellys was. The best route to take to get to Uni on bike was twice as hilly as before unfortunately. The flat was really a semi. It looked like a cheap brick house with two drive-ways and letter boxes out the front. The flat was basically filled with her parents old unwanted furniture. We had a black and white tv which was better than none I guess. Jackie was a bit messy around the house and more so in the bathroom but maybe she thought the same about me. My room had a thin mattress on the floor and a wardrobe in it as well. There was little room for anything else in there. It was the season when fruit was cheaply available so I would buy kilos of grapes and fill up the fridge with them. I mostly cooked rump steaks for dinner there and mashed potatoes but I couldn't master avoiding the steak tasting like a thong.

On the weekends I began playing tennis with Eric Ricards. He didn't do much except for gardening then but was interested in learning to play tennis. I taught him for about 1.5 years playing most Sunday mornings on the Uni's courts. At this time I also took up playing competition tennis on Saturday mornings down the road. The team didn't do too well but we had fun anyway. We went to one of the team members house at the end of the comp and it turned into a slide night of his outback Australia adventure. I never want to go to another slide night again. It was the first and last.

I thought it was about time I had driving lessons. I wanted to have my drivers license ' P's ' before my 21 st birthday. So for this to occur I would have to pass my driving test about the time of my 20th birthday which wasn't far away. I went to the motor registry, got a traffic rules book and studied it for a few days. I then went back and did this multiple choice test and got 20 out of 20 so I passed. I then had to book a time to do the practical test but because of so many people wanting to take it the earliest booking was in 7 weeks. That unfortunately would be a week and a half after my birthday but it would give me plenty of time to practise anyway.

I phoned up two driving schools and booked a one hour lesson with each of them. This was so I could compare two of them to pick the best one for the rest of the lessons. The first lesson was embarrassing because even though I made the lesson time at 7:00am I was sure everybody in the street were looking out their windows to see me make a fool of myself for my first lesson. Well mum did give me a lesson in her old Datsun once but it was only for about 5 minutes and in the same gear around a carpark. I sat there in the car for about 10 minutes putting on my seatbelt and checking the mirrors. The street was straight so I moved away slowly. Away from all the eyes. It is very embarrassing driving around town with this huge sign on the roof saying "Driving School". That's why I took the initial lessons at 7:00 am - to avoid being seen.

I chose the better of the driving schools "Darling Downs Driving School". The car was a manual Honda Civic Hatchback or something similar with dual controls (The instructor used them abruptly twice- once the brakes, at an intersection and the accelerator at another intersection. He also used my steering wheel to try to run over a dog who was running along side the car and again to stop me changing lanes into a road-train passing through town). The cars number plate was "DDS 013". He assured me this was for good luck. I ended up having 23 lessons with them. Most people have about 4 to polish up their skills before the test after using their parents car to practise on. I had to do my practising with the driving school, that is why it sounds a lot. Also I had a few extra to be sure of passing because of the lengthy queue to book another lesson and the lessons I would need to keep in touch during this period. I'm glad I learnt to drive in Toowoomba rather than the city because of the little amount of traffic and the wide streets. Also lessons were taken in the busy heart of town, the long, fast country highways, and outback dirt and gravel tracks. This was all to gain experience in all sorts of conditions. Lessons were $13.00 each. Mum gave me for a Christmas present $130.00 for lessons.

Jackie had quite a few friends that would come over and visit. I got on well with her friends. Most would come over to help her do assignments. Her social life came before her studies I think. One evening one of her girlfriends came over and had a "crush" on one of Jackies male friends called John. She came over to build up her courage from Jackie to then phone John and ask him in a round about way for a bit of love making! She got rejected not surprisingly! This was quite funny.

It was mid semester holiday break for two weeks. I went home to mum and John's new big house in Banora Point (NSW/QLD coastal border). I never enjoyed it there. I never felt I was welcome by John. I couldn't go in the lounge room to watch tv or put on the radio even when he was out without feeling tremendously guilty that I was doing something he didn't want me to do. He would rarely speak to me, even when he did it wasn't usually pleasant. It took the most effort to be friendly with this bloke more than any one else. I tried continuously for four years with no response. If Mum was going to spend the rest of her life with this bloke I thought I should try hard to get along well. Mum said later to me he was jealous of me coming home frequently to visit her where as his children would rarely travel to visit him.

Anyway during this break Oliva Sieben (one of mums best friends from Germany) came to visit her. We went to Expo '88 in Brisbane. We bumped into Michael (from my second boarding situation) who was on his way to Uni while we were walking on the way to the Expo site. This was quite a coincidence. Expo was great except for all the queues to get into all the pavilions. There were high-tech Japanese pavilions, outback Australian ones, indoor snow skiing for the Swiss, great film in the German as well as a German beer house. We watched a open air concert at the 'Open Air River Stage' at Expo that night. Young Talent Time were playing live. It was terrible. Two year old children were standing up on the grassy area and dancing to it. Mum and I stayed in a hotel in the heart of Brisbane that night so as not having to drive back home that night. It was a strange experience to wake up in the morning on about the 15th floor and look out the window to see office towers across the road and basically a city buzzing with activity.

When I got back to our flat in Toowoomba after the holiday break the lightning must have blown up our tv because it wouldn't start up. We were too broke to fix it and besides it would have cost more than the tv was worth. It was only a few weeks earlier I spent about 4 hours trying to get onto the roof and fixing the antenna for a better reception. We then had to listen to her old portable radio/cassette player for entertainment. After a while I started to enjoy this more than watching tv as I could do things while relaxing to the music. It was more productive. I used to play her cassettes of the "Cure" which I thought was good.

I got a pleasant surprise from Jackie on my 20th birthday when she gave me a bottle of champagne. It was my first bottle of something alcoholic I was ever given so I was thrilled. We celebrated in cheap glasses.

I was in the computer room at Uni one day typing up an assignment when this really nice looking female walked in the room and sat down. Although I didn't realise it at the time she looked quite like 'Kim Wilde' the pop star who I sort of liked. A few days later I walked into the computer room and she was in there again. Luckily there was a spare computer close so I took it and began working on my assignment again. She was having problems with her program and luckily I knew it and how to fix it. We talked a fair bit and didn't get much work done. Her name is Florence and she was from Switzerland with an accent and started this semester to do a business degree. She was 5 years older than me at 25. I didn't mind because I found most girls around my age too silly and giggly anyway. In the months following we got on well doing things on the weekends like playing tennis, going to touristy things, etc. We had fun. Unfortunately later at the end of the year when she came back from a holiday in Switzerland she developed Typhoid and seemed to be really run down. We saw less of each other after that for some reason or another.

It was now the day to take the big driving test. The instructor drove over at about 2:00pm. I drove nervously to the motor registry. At 2:30pm we walked out of the motor registry with the examiner. He and I got into the car. I was now being assessed. I was extremely nervous. I nearly forgot to put on the seatbelt. I checked all the mirrors about 10 times each to make sure he noticed me checking. I started the engine, released the hand brake, and while looking over my shoulder to reverse out of the car space I pushed down on the accelerator. Thud!... I forgot to put the stupid thing in reverse! I thudded into the gutter. I nervously said "that wasn't a very good start" and he said as he looked away from me out the window "no it wasn't". He must have thought 'Oh no, not another one..'. I was doing okay until I tried to start off at traffic lights facing up a hill in third gear. The car spluttered but it managed to get going in third! Shortly after I was traveling down a one-way three laned road and all of a sudden he said turn right into this street. You guessed it, I was left stopped in the middle lane trying to change lanes to turn right with cars backing up behind me and zooming by me either side. I thought that if I hadn't failed by now I had this time. We got back. The driving instructor got in the car to see how I went. I was so disappointed with my efforts I didn't hear a word that was said. I saw though on the sheet I had lost 15 points. We got out and went into the motor registry I thought to rebook another test but it was to have a photo taken for the license. I thought someone must be having a cruel joke on me and my expression on the photo said it all. But it was for real. It took a few days to sink in. I then booked another lesson to have another drive but also to have the opportunity to give the instructor an expensive gift of a nice bottle of port.

Jackie and her friends wanted to go and see a band at college. They didn't want to drive home so Jackie told her friends that I had my provisional license. They drove the car to Uni that night and it was up to me to drive it back and get it back in one piece. They got out but I couldn't find where to adjust the seat back so Jackie came over and showed me. Luckily most of them had gone inside so I wasn't too nervous in driving off slowly. Wow... This was my first solo drive. No-one else in the car to help. It was a great feeling. I drove out of the Uni and onto the main road. It was a really cheap and bomby car - a typical student car but I didn't care to notice. I had to make this situation last a little bit longer so I took a couple of blocks detour to extend the trip. I parked it out the front of our place but when I turned the ignition off the headlights didn't go out. I spent about 5 minutes searching but then had to get our student neighbours in the other semi to help. They found it straight away. This was embarrassing.

Jackie said to me that she would like us to move in with her friends who were looking for a house somewhere. I said I would only if it was the same distance or closer to Uni because I had to ride a pushbike. But they found a place twice as far away so I had to find another accommodation situation.

She began moving her stuff out the next Friday. That Friday night while I was asleep I heard someone running down the hallway. A few minutes later Jackie's boyfriend who was staying over that night opened my door to see if I was here. He said someone had just been in their bedroom and when he woke up quietly he saw someone holding Jackie's handbag. He chased him out of the house but the thief had a car waiting down the road a bit and sped off. She didn't get it back. It had lots of stuff in it including the new house keys. Saturday morning came and I still had not found a place. They were going to finish moving out today. Jackie showed me the electricity bill and it was about $220.00 out so I lost my bond money. I hadn't made any STD calls so I think I got ripped off. I went to the newsagent and got the local paper to look for share accommodation notices. Luckily there was one there. I phoned up and went over straight away. It looked okay so I left bond money. I phoned Ven that afternoon to see if he could bring his car (that his family gave him. I must have been one of only two people at Uni without a car) and help me move out. Luckily he did which I was very grateful for.

JUNE 1988 GLEN AND THE MGB

The unit I had moved into was one of about 8 in a long row joined together. A driveway went down the side out the front of all units. Our unit was on the end at the driveway entrance off the main road. We had the Army reserve across the road. It was a couple of blocks further again from Uni but it was a pretty flat trip there so it wasn't much effort required. It took about 15 minutes to ride each way. I think if it had been a more strenuous trip it may have been better because it would have helped me to warm up as the mornings were again down to about -2 degrees.

I used to hate attending lectures in winter because the classes were not heated or heated very poorly. It would get to a stage where I would wish that the lecturer would stop talking because when he talked we would have to take notes. This meant as you wrote, part of your hand resting on the page would move across the surface of the page on to cold areas which would send chills through my whole body. I would sit there trembling in coldness.

My flatmate's name was Glen Flexman. He was doing an Associate Diploma in Electrical Engineering. He had a white MGB car. He was very much into doing weights at home and most afternoons his friend Andrew would come over and train with him. I'd mostly always beat him in arm wrestles for the right arm but I was hopeless with the left. He had a old stereo system and lots of cassettes of 70's music. He would play lots of loud Suzie Quatro eg 'Devil gate drive', 'Can the can'. I would blast away my 'Hooters' cassette eg 'And we danced'. Glen would have minimal money with him - just a few dollars at any time. A typical students finances. His dinners he would make consisted of minced meat in 101 different forms. Some dinners looked repulsive. We cooked our own dinners.

One weekend Glen went to start up his MGB but it wouldn't start. So we pushed it backwards down to the end of the driveway past all the units. We wanted to push start it. We both went behind it and began to push it. When we got close to the end of the driveway near the street he would jump over the door into it to try to start it. We needed three attempts. It was embarrassing. Luckily no car turned into the driveway while this was happening. When he got it going he asked if I wanted to come for a ride. Sure! I'd never been in a small sportscar before (or even a sports car). We drove out of Toowoomba going south. He wanted to take it for a long drive to try to recharge the battery. After about a half an hour we were well into the straight country roads. He said he had taken the car to 140 mph and would try again. I thought great! The imperial speedo slowly increased as he put his foot down. The wind was building up around my head as we had no roof on. My hair started feeling as though it was taking on the form of a bee-hive hair do. The landscape was going past very fast- I could hardly keep my eyes open due to the wind. We got up to 135 mph. It seemed really fast as you sit only inches off the road. You could feel the car bouncing from one side of the lane to the other. It was quite exhilarating. We slowed back down to normal speed of about 65 mph for a couple more hours before arriving home again.

I encouraged Ven to attend a St Johns Ambulance First Aid course held at Uni in the evenings for the community. I thought it would be interesting, hopefully being prepared for an emergency and not feeling helpless and also being an extra qualification should it make a difference for a job interview later on. It went for 6 weeks, one evening per week. It was enjoyable.

I was still feeling hurt by my experience at Cuskelly's so I finally decided instead of blowing up her letterbox or pulling out her shrubs or phoning up at all hours in the mornings I would go down to Social Security and let them know that while she is pulling in a pension she is also pulling in lots more income from her boarders which I'm sure she wasn't declaring. About two weeks later Peta and Robin told me Social Security had come into the house and looked around so something did result from this. I went over about a week after this to Cuskelly's to speak to Robin and Peta out the front. We were speaking for a while when the bat came out and told me not to step onto her property or she would call the police. Always they would come out to speak to me on the footpath anyway so there wasn't a problem. When they went back in side she told them not to speak to me out the front!

Being bored I began to practise juggling knives (blunt cutlery knives). I could juggle 3 balls okay and 3 knives were nearly as easy and it looked good. I made it a bit more daring and used 2 of Glen's butchers knives. This was pretty easy too. The next progression was to use three butchers knives. This was quite worrying as when you lost synchronisation the knives would fall to the floor nearly spearing your toes. It took nearly the same skill to get the feet out of the way in a fraction of a second. Juggling away one night while Glen was washing up I miss timed it and gashed the side of my finger. It cut into a third of my middle finger, stopping because it hit the nail or bone. We tried to stop it bleeding profusely. We even wrapped around the finger with a strip of sheet till the finger looked three times as wide but the blood oozed through it all almost straight away. We jumped into the car and drove quickly down town to the ambulance station. We quickly were taken through the place where a bloke made me put it into a tin with yellowy liquid in it. It took about 10 minutes to slow the bleeding down to a trickle. After it was bandaged we went home. No more juggling knives for me I thought. I learnt that should I ever try it again I would make sure that when spinning the blade be sure it spins so that if struck it is the back of the blade that hits not the sharp edge.

A Saturday morning shortly afterwards Glen went outside then came back inside and asked had I seen his bike. Someone came into our open garage and must of walked off with it. My bike was probably a little harder to see as it was leaning a couple of metres further inside along the wall. I was lucky not to have mine flogged as well. We spent the rest of the morning driving around our area to see if it had been dumped somewhere. We couldn't find it. He was very annoyed.

Glen told me our lease was about to run out and we had to decide whether we were going to keep it going or move out. He expected to finish at the end of the year so he didn't want to keep it going. I had no furniture and no money to risk a lease going without finding someone so we decided to leave. He moved in with Andrew and his friend in a house. After about a week of looking I saw a notice on the notice board at Uni for a place just around the corner from Uni for about $40.00 per week. I took it and Glen helped me move my stuff to the new place with a couple of trips in his MG.

SEPTEMBER 1988 ANIMAL HOUSE - PIGS INCLUDED

This place is about 30 seconds on the push bike to Uni at the end of the street. The house is only about 5 years old which is very new for Toowoomba. I am sharing with 3 other people. Craig - an Arts student, Louise - a nurse assistant at a psychiatric hospital and Karen- a hairdresser. The two girls had big rooms, Craig had a bed in the garage and I had a puny room next to the toilet. In my room there was no furniture. No bed, no cupboard no nothing. I couldn't afford anything so I slept in a sleeping on the floor. I hung my clothes (I could afford coathangers) on the curtain rail. My Uni books stacked in piles on the floor with my school bag, some weights I bought, jumpers, tee-shirts, socks etc. The room was a mess. I soon discovered that the rest of the house was kept just as messy. They must have tidied it before I came to inspect it the first time. They would leave clothes all over the floor, drink glasses all over the lounge room. The kitchen was big but they used to do very little washing up. They would wait until every plate and glass was used up before washing up. This would include about 4 complete dinner sets and about 50 glasses. They would be piled up along the sink and benchtops. I bought my own plate, cup, saucepan and frypan so I didn't have to use theirs and then get sucked into washing them all up.

I made my own dinners. So did Craig. The two girls would alternate each night between getting take-away Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pizza-Hut and McDonalds. They were very obese.

Because Louise would start work early for early morning shift she would wake me up just going to the toilet. Also banging the doors didn't help.

The property behind our house is vacant and has very long grass. I think this was a good place for animals to congregate, mainly spiders. The house every night would have Huntsmen spiders in it somewhere. They usually showed themselves at night often later at night when watching tv at about 11:00pm when they would walk between the clothes on the floor or along the skirting boards behind cupboards. I must have killed or removed about 100 of them during my stay. I often woke up in the morning with them on the floor with me, under my pillow (which was a rolled up jumper) and between and behind my books. Outside would be quite a few Redback spiders making webs on the outside walls around the window sills. One redback had an abdomen the size of a one-cent coin. One night I was watching tv and a daddy-long-legs was climbing up my chest under my shirt. Two other Huntsman were in the room as well. One on the ceiling, the other behind the tv. A mostly typical evening.

One weekend there was a frilled-neck lizard in our backyard. It didn't know how to get out as it was fenced in. It ran around the backyard on its hind legs with it's neck frilled. It looked very novel. It finally found it's way out. This was the first place where the tenants were responsible for mowing the lawn. It was good fun for a while. In the hot summer it wasn't so much fun. They had friends over all the time. I could never get to sleep before about 11:30pm. There friends used to mistake my room for the bathroom or perhaps they were just curious. This really annoyed me as I didn't have a lock on the door and it wasn't exactly what a typical room looked like. I pulled the door handle apart and figured a way to lock it by jamming coathanger wire in there. Louise had a work friend 'Kym' who was a little older at about 24 who had a white MGB also. One night they had some friends over and one of them told us about his job. It was on a farm or something where they had lots of free range chickens. His job was to round them up and put them inside in a room. He said it was hard to catch them because they could run fast and they could change direction very quickly especially when trying to reach down to grab them. So he would run after them and when he got close he would kick them up the bum and watch them fly up in the air with feathers flying then tumble along the ground. This gave him enough time to grab it and carry it away!

Because the house was close to Uni it was along way from the local store to buy food, ie milk and bread. It was about a half an hour round trip usually in the cold and wind and sometimes in the rain. One day I was burning down the street on my push bike which was long and straight and off the main road. I used to go very fast as it was slightly going down hill. I was passing by a park when I felt something funny happening to my right ear. I didn't worry for a few seconds so I kept cycling furiously. I felt something strange again happening to my ear. It was a magpie flying along next to my head tugging at my ear!! It looked huge flying with wings out being inches from my face when facing it. Its little yellow eyes looked quite big this close. It also looked mean and frightening. I reached out to swing my fist at it but it slowed back a bit just out of reach. I nearly lost control of the bike doing this and again trying to bring it to a screeching halt. I looked around to see it had flown up onto a telegraph pole behind me. I stared at it for about 5 minutes then I rode off slowly away from it looking at it over my shoulder to make sure it wasn't following.

I used to enjoy riding fast on my bike. One day I went too fast around a corner and fell and badly grazed my arm and took two chunks out of my right hand and left two pretty big scars.

The electricity bill was quite a lot and it annoyed me as both the girls had waterbeds which I'm sure used a lot of electricity to warm it. Every cent saved was worth it.

Ven and I began the second level of our St Johns First Aid course. We got through it okay. During the course though I was riding down the same street as the magpie attack when about 50 meters ahead of me a car I was behind hit another car at 90 degrees at an intersection. The crunch it made sent shivers through me. Luckily some-one came out of the nearby house straight away and began organising the situation well. It wasn't too bad but some people were carried out of the cars and lied down on the footpath. I was glad that I had taken the course because it would have made me a little more prepared than otherwise should I have been required.

On the radio they advertised a tour to Stanthorpe which is about 3 hours drive south of Toowoomba almost on the NSW border. It was to visit a winery for wine tasting, visit the Stanthorpe 'Apple and Grape ' festival and the go to an open air concert featuring a local popular band 'Alice and the Ayers Rockettes'. It was all for the price of $16.00 so this was a bargain. I told Ven about it and he was interested in it. It was a Saturday day trip. Only about 8 people turned up for the trip on the coach. A local radio celebrity also came along. We tasted lots of things. We couldn't tell the difference after 10 of them. I'm not sure about Ven but I nearly had trouble walking back to the bus. We were last to get back on. There were lots of stalls and floats going through the main street of Stanthorpe. Robin and her sister Leanne were in a stall to my surprise selling their parent's wines. I bought two out of curiosity and was also a round about way for thanking Leanne for teaching me all about wines when we were boarding together at Cuskellys. We watched grape stomping competitions on the back of trucks. It was freezing at night watching the open air band playing. The only way to keep warm was to dance around and not to stop. Robin, Leanne and Peta were there so it was good fun. Ven was a bit embarrassed about dancing but he soon enjoyed it. We got back home about 2:00 the next morning.

I got a message in class one day to pick up something from engineering reception. It was an invitation to go to Eric Ricards retirement luncheon. He had decided to go back to attending the garden at home instead of more classes at Uni. I think it was a good decision. It was mostly lecturers there and a couple of students. I felt honored. It was a nice lunch but he gave about an hour and a half speech afterwards which I could tell was boring everybody silly. I didn't see Eric much after that.

My exams had just finished and I did quite well this year. I sent off 100 more letters all over Australia for work but didn't getting anything. I wasn't really sure whether I wanted work as I thought I may study instead over summer to try to catch up on passing some subjects which I had failed in the past. At least I new in my mind I tried to get work.

It was 1989 now and my class mates were now mostly the students in the year below me because I had failed quite a few. It took me a while to fit into their pre-established social group. It worked out okay but not quite as good as the original group I was with.

Craig moved out of the garage and Fiona moved in. She was the sister of Louise. She moved in because she could not stand living at her parents place any longer. She was only about 17. They began dropping hints that I should move into the garage so she could have my room. I wasn't going to. I came here for my room not the garage. They soon asked me to move into it and then threatened to kick me out. I said I wasn't ready to go. They said one day my stuff would be in the middle of the road. I told them if they were pleasant while Mum came to visit I would move out two weeks later.

Mum was having too many fights and arguments with John and decided to go on an overseas holiday to Europe and the Maldavies. Before leaving she said she was worried about where to leave the car John gave her where John couldn't find it and where it would be used occasionally. She said she couldn't find anyone who could help. I thought this was a very good opportunity to offer my services!! She said 'Oh, I never thought about that'. Mum phoned back later saying I could use it while she was away. Yaaahooo!! It was probably the best looking car in all of Toowoomba. It was a brand new Ford Telstar TX5 Ghia. Mum came up soon after and dropped it off. She stayed over night in my hovel of a room on the floor. The next morning I drove her down town to drop her off. She walked for a few blocks to meet John who she arranged to meet for some reason. I said good-bye, and drove off to Khosrows place who said I could leave the car behind their place while John was in town so he couldn't find it. Unfortunately I hit their fence post while trying to get off the main road into their tight driveway. White paint was pressed onto the plastic bumperbar. It had only been left in my care for about 5 minutes, if that, and I pranged it! I picked it up the next day and drove it back home.

The girls at home wouldn't let me use the car port to shelter the car so I had to park it out side on the footpath. I thought it was going to hail one morning about 5:00 am so I speedily put on my contacts and drove the car to an undercover shopping centre car park in the city to shelter it. It didn't end up hailing luckily so about 7:00am I drove it back home. I used to enjoy driving this lovely car around town day or night while listening to the great stereo. I think I was in heaven. I didn't like having friends over very often as it was likely to be a bad atmosphere with flatmates watching tv or their friends over. You couldn't relax. Especially here I was too embarrassed to let anyone over as the house was kept as a pig sty, there were people everywhere and my room was embarrassing.

I checked with Student Services if there were any share accommodations going as the notice boards were pretty bare. There was one available for $20 per week which was about 30 mins on the pushbike away. It had an open fireplace. It had a few downers though. It had no electricity thus no hot water or lights and no flushing toilet so a sewage man would come. I think I'll pass thanks anyway. There was one suitable looking one. Only problem it was far away. It was about a 15 minute walk from the city where I would then have to catch that thing called a bus that took forever. I had the car for about another month so it shouldn't be a problem for a while anyway. If I couldn't cope when I had to give the car back with the transport hassles I could then move. I phoned the bloke up and arranged to meet at about 5:30pm. It was another old Queenslander type house like Mrs Cleary (the kidney lady) split in two to make a semi. The bloke introduced himself as Robert and we went in. I thought he's probably a bit old to be sharing with. I thought he was about 30. The inside of the house looked like it belonged in a museum because of the old style couch, old tv, old stereo, old table, old carpet, old wall paper. It looked like a place you would expect to find after a 90 year old woman had died and vacated. But it was kept very clean so that was good. I didn't have many options so I had to see if I could take it. Luckily I could so I moved in shortly afterwards.

MARCH 1989 SANITY SAVED

Natascha was about to start University in Gatton about 30mins drive away which was handy, to do a Business degree majoring in 'Hospitality and Tourism'.

My bedroom was very big compared to what I was used to. It was about 3.5m x 4.5m and had a very high roof. There was a big wooden wardrobe and a single bed against the wall near the window. The entire floor was covered in vinyl. The room was between the bathroom and the laundry and the kitchen to make up three sides plus window side (driveway). It was noisy on weekend mornings when the washing machine or dryer sometimes started up early. In the other half of the semi lived the owner of the house- an old Italian or Jewish lady called Mrs Creedy. She was very deaf. We could hardly hear our tv when she was trying to listen to hers. Outside we had a BBQ and a huge (15m) high avocado tree with hundreds there when in season. Our next door neighbours were Gil(bert) and Mary and they recond they were related to nearly everybody from Soapie stars to 'Bill and Ben the flower pot men'. There was a school behind the house which had tennis courts where Robert and I and occasionally Roberts friends would join us on weekends for a hit.

Robert is an orthoptist who checks peoples eyes for any problems like diseases or visual problems and then he refers them to the specialist ophthalmologists. I must say that despite my initial hesitancies, this place was the most enjoyable of all the share accommodations that I have lived in. Here I felt I could use anything in the house without Robert worrying in the slightest. It is terrible knowing that because you are so poor and have nothing to share to the household you feel as though your using the other persons situation without giving anything in return. This was a very common felt feeling in all the other places.

Robert and (later) his girlfriend Susan have become great friends to me ever since meeting them and had helped in keeping me sane in Toowoomba when prior to moving in I was very close to cracking up. I wouldn't have quit my course, I would have sooner ended up in a psychiatric ward as a fruitcake or become another statistic that would fill a hole in the ground. I seriously wasn't very far off either. I needed a different situation, a better situation. The car provided this while I had it for the two months then the friendship Rob and his friends gave dramatically helped me. I was just over two years into my course and because I had failed quite a lot I was realising that I wouldn't finish on schedule in two more years but three more and definitely more if I kept going as I was. We had to finish in less than seven years or else we don't get the degree. I was even a bit worried about not meeting this deadline. I was extremely depressed. It wasn't that the work was too difficult, it was that it was so boring nearly all the time. It was only boring because I never had a good environment in which to study to begin enjoying it. I found that I could get my best study done after about midnight when all had gone to sleep and there was quiet. This was not very practical. I will always be so grateful to Robert and Susan for all they have done for me not only during my Uni life but since leaving Uni and helping to get me on to my own two feet since.

It was a great challenge to drive the car into the narrow driveway quickly off the busy road and trying to avoid the thorns of the rose bushes that lined the driveway. Then having to drive down past the side of the house just missing the fence and the house with less than three inches to spare on each side. I would park around the back just out of range of the avocado tree! My first priority was to buy some carpet to put on my bedroom floor. I went to a carpet store and bought a large thick woolen pile offcut for $80 which was a weeks Austudy allowance. It covered most of the room. It made the room warmer and was nice to walk on in bare feet. It felt like luxury.

The eating arrangement was different to everywhere else. I had the choice to cook separately or share the cooking and expenses. I didn't want to share expenses because you would mostly feel as though you were in a no-win situation. If you ate more than your share you would feel as though you were stealing from the other person or if you had less you were getting ripped-off. Later when I had more money this thinking disappeared but then when trying to live on a third of the poverty level it was of primary importance. The price of a small tub of yogurt saved would double my end of week left over money to spend. I did end up sharing though.

I was getting between $80 and $90 per week to live on. 40-rent, 5-electricity, 10-bus to Uni, 25-food, and the 10 left over would have to cover photocopying, books, Uni fees, student services fees, clothes, stationery, presents, film developed, socialising. Mum gave me between $200 & $500 over each of the first three years. This was a very much appreciated help. I couldn't afford to buy tennis balls by about this stage so I gave up tennis. My social life was virtually non-existent and I ended up wearing the same clothes virtually everyday in the last two years of Uni while in the freezing cold winter months I had my jumper sleeves rolled up to the elbows to hide the holes in them which were bigger than the hole to put your head through. If you trimmed the strands hanging down from the holes the holes would get bigger so you left them alone. It was extremely difficult to get a casual job in a town with a huge University population and the tax system worked against students meaning if we got work we would be paying 75 cents in the dollar tax. Living like this was shit and I absolutely hated it. When I left Uni I left with $4500 in University fees debt and $3000 in loan debt and trying to enter the work force in the middle of the worst recession and highest unemployment since the 1930's depression. Job prospects were virtually hopeless especially with the University marks I got.

Anyway Robert and I would go and do our weekly shopping and I would usually push the trolley because I liked doing it except for when we bought toilet paper, sometimes a six-pack, which would nearly take up the whole trolley so everybody could see. I hadn't had to cook regularly for someone else before so I had to learn a variety of dishes quickly. While in other places I would cook for myself I would be pretty unimaginative but things had to change. I could cook steak and vegetables, roast chicken and vegies, and mashed potato with tomato sauce (which I had a lot!). I soon started cooking rissoles, spaghetti bolonaise, omelettes and curry and chili dishes. We would cook alternate nights. I could tell roughly what Rob would cook when it was his turn because it would have curry or chili or black pepper or all three in it. Curried beef on rice was good. Rob thought it was good that I liked these hot dishes as much as he did so I think I got about a years pent up frustration from his previous flatmate not liking these dishes all in a few months. So I would get these 'hot' dishes about three nights one week then four nights the next. They started off pretty hot but then got hotter and hotter as I got used to each new strength until my lips would swell so much that they would obstruct my vision whilst watching tv or I couldn't separate them anymore to get in another mouth full. He was a very good cook and I couldn't match his dinners I don't think.

Robert was very much an eighties person but his record collection indicated a strong seventies flavour. Lots of ABBA, soul music, and Partridge Family stuff. These and many more were good occasionally. The house was a bit damp in winter and mould would grow on the speaker covers. I don't think he thought this was very funny.

It was approaching the middle of semester one so I phoned Rod in Sydney to see if he wanted to come up for a week or two for a holiday now that I had the car. He thought it sounded like a good idea. Khosrow (one of the two main Uni friends I had who was about 30) was a bit concerned about my plan to drive to the Gold Coast with negligible driving experience. He virtually insisted that I take him for a drive around Toowoomba and past the city limits onto the fast highway country roads to gauge how I would cope. This was nice of him to show his genuine concern. I did drive okay although he still was a little concerned. He let me know how important it was to take extreme care.

Rod arrived on the bus in Toowoomba about 5:30 am at the McCafferties bus terminal. He was quite surprised it was a very nice car mum had left me with. We had bacon and eggs at home for breakfast and then Rod had to crash out and catch up on lost sleep. We soon had a look around Toowoomba at the Uni and the city. There wasn't much to see. The next day we got ready to go to mum and Johns place on the Gold Coast for a holiday. I told Mrs Cleary a couple of days earlier that we were going in case she wanted a lift and sure enough she did. So all three of us left Toowoomba, down the Great Dividing range on which Toowoomba is situated, and off east towards the coast. About half an hour out we arrived at Gatton Agricultural College (now part of Uni of Qld) where Natascha is studying a Business degree. We picked up Natascha at her accommodation on campus and all four of us left Gatton. We got into Brisbane about an hour later where we dropped off Mrs Cleary at her friends place. We then drove south for an hour and a half when we arrived near Johns place at the bottom end of the Gold Coast. John was apparently in Kempsey for a couple of weeks put I wasn't going to take any chances of him spotting mums car and taking it back so I parked the car a few blocks away in a dead end street.

Rod and I and sometimes Natascha did lots of things. I had to use my emergency money in the bank to finance this holiday but I think it was worth it. Because it was Rods first trip I wanted to make sure we saw most things the coast had to offer. We went to Jupiters Casino, Ripley's Believe It or Not, Surfers beach at night which was spectacular, a $50 huge hovercraft ride (capacity about 100 people) to Morton Island, Fishermans Wharf, a look around Gold Coasts marble filled luxurious Mirage Resort, a day at Sea World, a strip club with topless waitresses, and a look around Sanctuary Cove Resort. I got a $50 parking ticket (my first one- and what a beauty!) in there somewhere for parking in an ambulance parking spot. At the end of our Gold Coast trip we went back to Brisbane where we met Michael for an afternoon then that night booked in to a Backpackers (Hostel). We had dinner in the 'Pancake Manor' in Brisbane where we ate pancakes funnily enough and played chess. We then went trying to find a night club open somewhere but couldn't because it was Good Friday. We crashed out at the Hostel then next day looked around the city shops including the new billion dollar 'Myer' center. We left Brisbane about lunchtime picking up Mrs Cleary on the way through. After we got out about a half an hour out of Brisbane just past Ipswich it began to rain. It began to rain so hard that visibility was reduced to about a meter in front of the car. I would have sat it out but that Rod had to be in Toowoomba for the coach trip back to Sydney at about 2:00pm. It was the worst rain storm we had seen. I followed the car in front within about two meters barely being able to see its red lights for about half an hour. If it had accelerated a little I would have lost it or decelerated I would have cleaned it up. It was scary but necessary. I won't be doing it again. Rod said later 'it was the scariest drive he had been on'. We got to Toowoomba just in time. Rod then departed.

About a week after starting back at Uni there was a message for me in the Engineering lift that I should phone John straight away. Apparently he had driven up to Toowoomba mid-week with the intention of taking the car back from me but he couldn't find me! He was abusing the Engineering secretaries and staff that they did not know where I lived or why I wasn't in the lectures I was supposed to be in. He caused havoc and was obnoxious apparently. I had moved about 4 times since their last record of my current address because I couldn't be bothered informing them all the time and I wasn't at lectures that day because I was at home doing a major assignment that was almost due. So he had to drive back empty handed. I phoned him to find out that he knew I had the car and he wanted it now. So straight after the phone call I phoned Mum in the Netherlands for what to do. She said it was okay so I arranged for him to pick it up from me at Uni the next day so he wouldn't find where I lived. The next day I tried furiously to scrub off the white paint off the bumper bar that I scraped onto it the first minutes after I got it. It came off quite easily so that it looked undetectable but somehow he found it out anyway. I gave it back and now I was back to reality again catching buses and with nothing.

About a week later I was in the midst of my worst case of depression. I was stuffing up my studies, I was in a relatively new share accommodation again, I had just lost the car, Mum's financial future was not looking very secure, she was overseas, I was in Toowoomba not Sydney (or overseas), I lived far away from Uni and I was broke. One night I grabbed a chair and climbed onto a garbage bin and up onto the roof of the shed out the back of the house. I sat up their from about 7:00pm till midnight staring up at the stars in the freezing cold and dark and thinking what is the point of it all.

Since when I was in year 10 in high school (1984) I had been cutting my own hair. Back then I knew that after high school I would be broke when starting Uni and through Uni and also I hated waiting at the hairdressers for an hour for them to get to you and then have them do it not how you wanted. So I decided it would be much better to do it myself at home when I wanted and in a fifth of the time and at no cost. This also allowed me to keep it trimmed constantly instead of starting off with minimal hair on your head after a visit and then watch it growing and growing and growing and then in a crescendo looking like a mop head and then lopping most of it off back to the skin head look. It was going quite well until now. I was trying some new cuts but they were all going terribly wrong. For about 4 months I had about 5 major stuff-ups. It would range from the helmet look to thin hair on top punk look to indescribable ones. I would avoid the public (taking the long way home) sitting at the back of the class (last to arrive and first to leave situation) and on the back seat of the bus. I almost gave in and went to the hairdresser but I pulled out of the horror run better for the experience.

The next level of the St Johns first-aid course was being run so Ven and I enrolled and began it. It was the bronze medallion level - the top level. It was again a Friday evening course.

Our University had it's own radio station which played a large variety of music. Robert a I would often ring up and request a song but they never had what we wanted and usually it was for popular songs so we had to settle for one they had. Robert would try to be funny by pretending he was me and Requesting a song for Venerando since all the blokes usually requested songs for females. So I would get him back requesting a song for his friend Ken. When we did both of them on the same night the announcer made a comment about these requests as being "quite unconventional". It was easy to get a request through as virtually no-one listened to it let alone people ringing in. The station was good to listen to because it was amusing to listen to all the mistakes and malfunctions that happened continuously. Robert had three porcelain ducks that were to be mounted on the wall above the tv. He came home one day with three plastic hooks that stick onto the wall so he could hang them up. After positioning the hooks carefully on the wall and leaving for a while to stick, the ducks were delicately put into place. In the morning one had fallen and split in two. Soon it was back up there. The second one fell while I watched tv and smashed on the tv legs. It was soon glued and put back in place. They began falling to Earth so frequently it was as though it was duck hunting season. Rob gave up. One afternoon a large, centimeter thick glass mirror above the fireplace fell on the bricks below and exploded all over the lounge room. That was a bit worrying.

It was my 21st birthday and I hoped it would be good. It was the evening of the first-aid course but I didn't go. Khosrow came over early in the evening for which I had planned a little party. I asked if he would drive me to the Chinese take-away for food and to the bottle shop for some drinks. (Mum helped out with $100 for this). We took it all home. Khosrow gave me as a present- a picture frame and a bottle of wine from him and his wife Lucy. She couldn't come but she made me a lovely birthday cake with candles which I was stunned to receive. After the course Ven picked up Peta (who was also doing the course) and Robin and came over. I was also hoping that Stephen McArdle and Charles Greco from Uni could turn up. They did and gave me $10 between them. When your a poor student this is a generous present. I was glad they all could come because it was close to exams and lots of assignments fell due around this time. It was a bit embarrassing having Stephen picking bits of dried rice out of the table cloth and stacking them in a pile! I went home the next weekend to the coast where mum gave me my camera equipment. She asked me before she left for overseas what I wanted for my birthday so I told her because it was then or never. I was wrapped.

I took photos all over Toowoomba pretty much straight away. Sunsets at this time of year were unbelievable. We were up so high and could see it setting low inland. Mary and Gill next door would feed a family of Kookaburras most days which lived in the area. I encouraged them into our backyard with bits of mince. They were very tame and with some I could stick the camera so close that their beaks would bump into the lens. Now that I had a good camera I was going to start trying to take better quality photo's.

Also for my birthday John gave me one of his old snooker cues. This was most unexpected! I encouraged Ven to get interested in snooker which he did and then bought a cue for himself. We went every Friday night to the local just opened pool room. The place was filled with rock music junkies and petrol heads. Ven and I were the only two 'normal' people there. Almost everyone there would wear all black with steel tipped shoes, funny hair cuts, chains for belts with padlocks, wore 'MegaDeath' tee-shirts, smoking and looking as if on drugs. It was different. There was always a spare table there about 7:30pm when we would arrive. We would play 15-20 games per night working out at $7.50- $10.00 each per night. I think the people there would try to out do each other by playing the worst songs on the jukebox. Within the year we would enter a few competitions and did pretty well. Ven and I were evenly matched which was great.

Robert had an old green Alpha Romeo car. It was a bomb but had character. The boot was hanging on by a couple of bits of coathanger wire, the backseat would slide into the front seats when decelerating, you would push the window up with your hand, the blinker lights would jam sometimes and you would have to tap a switch under the dash to get it going again, the gear stick knob kept falling off and it was very rusty and sounded terrible. One day Robert decided that he was fed up with using the old washing machine which wasn't a machine, it was about 50 years old and you would stick your clothes in the tub which would vibrate a bit and then you would have to feed it through the wringer to simulate a spin dry cycle. We saw an ad in the paper for a secondhand one. We went and investigated and Rob liked it. It was about 20 years old for $50. He paid by check and the bloke was a little uneasy about this. Robert assured him it was okay. We carried it out the front and put it in the car. But the car wouldn't start so we got out and embarrassingly began to push it in the hope of starting it. We pushed it down the street past the house and it still wouldn't start until we got it around the corner. The bloke who took the cheque must have thought he got done!

I had a lot of fun staying there. Robert would borrow videos about twice a week and would also buy champagne. We would sit there watching videos while balancing glasses on our heads and pouring champagne into them and seeing who would be first to spill it. I would sit there sometimes for 10 minutes with a glass of champagne balancing until I would feel it suddenly pouring down my back or briefly obstruct my vision and land in my lap. We would have dishwashing sponge fights, put toothpaste on the under side of door handles, towel flicking and other silly things. Rob was busting to go to the loo one day but I realised this before he decided to go so I went to our bathroom with a mop and jammed it between the door and the opposite wall and climbed over the door and between the ceiling through a small rectangular gap. Rob then went but found he couldn't get in. It was funny watching a desperate person try to climb the door and through the gap where he nearly got stuck to get to the loo before popping.

I was going through a pancake making craze. I was also going through a pancake flipping phase. I would attempt to toss them through the haze, so they made between 10 and 20 revolutions and catch them in the pan but they usually ended up leaving shiny splotches on the ceiling or walls but mostly on the floor.

Mum was getting fed up with staying with John. Natascha visited one weekend and while John was out doing some electrical contracting Mum and Natascha filled up the car (a newer updated model by about a year) with all the furniture and stuff they could fit into it and drove off from the house at Banora Point (Qld/NSW border) and drove south down the highway (undoubtedly over the speed limit and not looking back) heading for Sydney. John must have arrived home to quite a surprise!

Robert was into natural health stuff like herbal toothpaste and wall charts one being a mystical garden planting chart. He also liked to burn incense sticks which I liked too. He also liked to fiddle with electronics although I wouldn't say successfully. A channel in the stereo system would keep blowing and the tv would also regularly break. He also tried to fix a fan heater by swapping motors. I heard it blow up when he tested it.

Because we lived close to a huge park (Queens Park) which I would have to walk past to get to the bus stop to get to Uni I would get attacked by the magpies on many mornings. Gee this was fun. On the way back in the evenings from the bus stop I would stop in about twice a week at the video arcade and reset the top score on a car racing game that I was good at and if feeling rich I would by an apple slice on the way home. I only had lunches at Uni about twice during the entire time I spent there probably because I couldn't afford it and also I could be bothered making it. Florence had been ignoring me at Uni for a while now and I didn't know why but I didn't want to find out why so I let it be.

Natascha came up to visit me on a couple of occasions. The second time Robert must have caught a virus and had spent one night chucking up. Two days later Natascha was chucking up then two more later it was my turn. What an enjoyable visit it was for her!. Mum arrived back at Johns a few weeks after leaving and moved back in.

A friend of Roberts (Serena) was holding a surprise birthday/cocktail party for her boyfriend - Peter. I was invited. I knew a few of Rob's friends so it was good. There was about 40 of us in his house with the lights off and when Peter came in we went 'Surprise!!!'. How radical you may say. Lots of cocktails were being made and I had quite a few. I talked mainly to Rhonda and Careena. Careena was funny to watch while having alcohol as she had dark skin but you could see in her face she was getting redder by the minute also her eyes would get really red as well. Susan - Robert's girl friend who was living in Sydney was up in Toowoomba and went to the party as well. About 10 of us were having Tequila slammer races but I was most often the slowest. I was getting really affected by the alcohol. So was Robert. He was running around sitting on all the balloons he could get his backside onto while I was having 'Southern Comfort' slammer races with myself mainly but had a couple with Rhonda for practice. I had about 8 of these. We went out and tried to play volleyball. It wasn't very successful. Shortly afterwards Susie, Rob and I were in the taxi home. We arrived home out the front. I was starting to feel bad. It was my turn to pay for the cab. I tried to put my hand in my back pocket to get the wallet. I couldn't feel my hand though. Actually I couldn't feel my face or really anything else for that matter. I sat in the cab for about 5 minutes trying to grab my wallet. I paid and got out. I got inside and fell onto my bed and fell to sleep instantly in all my clothes including my shoes.

I got up in the morning feeling just as drunk as when I got to sleep. I thought I should force myself to eat some museli and eat it in the fresh air on the veranda. I was sitting there forcing myself to eat and nearly chucking up just looking at the raisins and sultanas in the bowl. I pushed them to the side as I uncovered them. Oh I was feeling bad. The others were still asleep. Some lady opened the gate out front and walked down the path toward me. I thought to myself 'go away, please don't talk to me..., go away'. I thought if I had to say something I would puke. She said she was from McNaire Anderson and said here is a survey book for me to fill out. She sat there with me for two hours while I filled it out in agony. When I had finished she gave me another book to fill out and said she would pick it up later. I was not a happy boy. I swore I would not drink that much again and haven't since.

I wanted to get a job at the end of this year to try to gain more experience even though I had satisfied the number of days of work experience required to graduate. I also need some money to pay off about $1000 accumulated on the Mastercard. I wanted a job this time not working in design again even though I thought it was great but more to do with computers. I also was getting interested in the idea of moving to Perth for work should I end up graduating so I thought it would be a good opportunity to find work there now to see if I liked it. I rewrote my resume emphasising my computer experience and sent off about 180 out of 200 letters to Perth. The rest were to all other states. I got two phone offers. One was with Lucas Aerospace in Sydney. They said I would be involved in designing fuel pumps for an F111 or something. The other was from a medium engineering business in Perth to get their computer-aided design (CAD) computer to communicate with the million dollar machining machines in the factory. I accepted this one in Perth and let the head of Mechanical engineering know this other job was available for some other student. The student who took it said it was pretty boring afterwards. The Perth company said that they would pay for my return airfare. I got them to send all details in writing to me. The pay was only $300 but it was better than nothing plus I got Austudy as well. It was the experience I was after mainly. I was very uneasy about whether I could do it so I went to a few lecturers who tried to encourage me. I was to start work in Perth the Tuesday after last exam Thursday.

My exams went pretty bad. It was hard to study while sharing. It is unreasonable to expect quiet during exam periods. Robert though was one of the most considerate. I passed one out of five subjects. The other four I had a second chance to pass them again in Perth in February as I was 'close' to the pass mark. This was pretty much typical. I would then pass most of them over the summer breaks.

I had to leave this residence as I could not afford to keep paying rent over the 3 months holiday break. Robert allowed me to put all my stuff in the shed out the back while I was away. Two Christian people moved in to my room shortly after apparently. Robert was not impressed. They gave him a 'Steve Grace' CD of Christian songs. Rob thought he would be polite and not use it as a frisbee. I caught the bus back to the coast to mum. The pilots dispute was well underway so there was air chaos. I caught a Jukoslav Airways plane to Sydney then another to Melbourne. The seats were so close my legs were at an angle. The pilots must be used to short runways as we approached the ground at such an angle I thought we were going to crash. (It felt like we crashed). That was as far as I could go by plane. So I got on a bus in Melbourne and was bound for Perth just like Alby Mangle on an Australian Safari. Just what I wanted.

OCTOBER 1989 WORK EXPERIENCE - PERTH

We had to change buses in Adelaide. This meant I had about 2 hours to see Adelaide as I probably wouldn't be back here again for a while. So when I got off the coach I got in a taxi and asked the driver to show me the sights of Adelaide. We stopped off at a few places and looked around. The mini tour cost me about $30. I saw a few emus and rolled caravans on the way to Perth. Kalgoorlie was very interesting with a lot of the streets as wide as a city block. This was apparently so the camel trains could turn around if required in the olden days. Also the street where all the prostitutes did their stuff. The rooms were all lined in rows and had colour coded doors to avoid confusion. They were all so closely packed they looked like outback dunnies. Coming into Perth it looked quite pretty with lots of open spaces. It felt great to be there. I was met by Steve Groves the chief engineer at the company. He said I could have his flat in Fremantle until I found some accommodation as he was staying with his girlfriend. He was about 40.

Fremantle was a lovely place. I strolled down it's main streets that evening. A horse drawn cart was clip-clopping down the street with passengers and the marina was letting off fireworks. The buildings were old and made of stone and lit up nicely. They had been done up for the America's Cup 2 years earlier. It felt strange ringing up mum at a phone box in a park in Fremantle. It probably felt just as strange for mum as it must have got through at about midnight her time! Steve picked me up each morning. Work seemed like it would be good.

I spent the first week searching for share accommodation. There was heaps in the papers but there were few reasonable places. One place I saw had in the bedroom a sloping vinyl floor and louvers for the window, and in the middle of the lounge room was a truck tyre with a glass surface on it which was used as a coffee table! No thanks anyway. There was one in Victoria Park which I liked and took. It was about 5 minute drive from the city (10 mins by bus) and about 20 mins by bus to Welshpool where work was. I was sharing with a chubby girl called 'Dalys'. She worked in a coffee shop serving customers. It was a unit in a block of about 30. It had a great view of the city especially at night. We didn't have any furniture in the loungeroom. I had no furniture in my room except a walk-in wardrobe. I wasn't going to buy any furniture as my Mastercard was chock-a-block so I slept on the floor in my sleeping bag and used the jumper again for a pillow. I arrived in Perth with a back pack and my new camera gear. It was mostly put in the wardrobe. It was pretty boring at night as Dalys was usually out so I would go to the city to find things to do. Only problem she would come home at about 4:00am and bang the doors and wake me up every morning. I was at the stage with the sharing scene that wherever you go there was always something wrong.

There were markets all about in Perth and I bought 5 packets of incense sticks at one of them one Saturday morning. I spent quite a lot of nights laying back in the comfort of my room (on the floor) smelling incense and thinking about things (no not hallucinations). A lot of afternoons and evenings I would go around the city taking photographs which was good. The only problem was I wasn't meeting many people (or any people except for the people walking past me in the city or people waiting at bus stops!). I was in the city at the main railway station looking at the time table when some bloke came up to me and asked about timetables. The bloke was new to Perth and started chatting. He said he was a steward for Qantas and told me where he was staying and even what room number in case I wanted to visit!!! I said good-bye promptly and quickly departed. That wasn't a very successful first attempt at socialising.

Dalys's friends became my savior. Dalys and her friends were party animals and at first I was hesitant at going from boredom to living in the fast lane but now I was desperate. She had lots of friends. Kim and Sharon were the main ones. Kim worked with patients in a hospital who couldn't do things for themselves like turning over or going to the loo. I asked her how she coped with it and she said "I just think of them as being Barbie dolls".

I started going out with the group (Dalys, Kim, and sometimes Sharon). I soon got to know most of the night clubs in Perth. It also kept me pretty broke. I liked especially a night club about 30 minutes north of Perth on the sea. It was in a huge building called Observation City Resort. The club was very modern and played great music. I really enjoyed dancing. One night they played a popular song called 'The Bus Stop'. There was a girl there who was dancing to it extremely well which mesmerised me. I had to learn to dance better even if it meant talking lessons. If Kim was sitting out while I was dancing with Dalys I would often come back and some bloke would be trying to crack onto her. I soon got to know when she wanted to get rid of him so I would either take her away from the situation or gently give the guy the hint to disappear. It worked well. Sharon was especially nice to dance with. Other clubs we went to were "Pinnochio's" and the "Power House".

Usually before going out Kim and Dalys and Sharon or whoever else was going out would sit around our cheap table Dalys had just bought and have a few drinks of Galliano or Sambuca and coke or whatever to save money on buying drinks at the nightclubs. (They had yearly memberships to most of the clubs in Perth).

One night they had a bit too much to drink but Sharon realised she was in no condition to drive without being able to pass the breathalyser should she have to. They realised I was the most sober (as I had only about one small drink) so asked me if I could drive. I said sure I could even though it was about 9 months since I last drove Mum's automatic and about 18 months since I took my last lesson on the manual car. The three of them piled into the car and I started it. As soon as I tried to move off they realised I was hopeless as I would severely over rev the car when changing gears. I drove onto the highway going around a corner at the lights. Whenever I put on the blinker the wipers would go on as well. Someone turned it off about 5 times then gave up so we drove all the way with them going. The brakes were hopeless. I nearly crashed into a car and then a bus on another occasion waiting at lights. They were screaming and grabbing onto my seat and shaking it (and me). It was funny. We got there okay but Sharon let me know I wasn't going to drive it home though. That night we were dancing around a lot. Dalys and I had something to eat across the road and did more dancing. Later she disappeared and I was then dancing with Kim and Sharon. This was fun. It was about 2:00am and Dalys wasn't back yet and so we gave up and Sharon drove me home.

Dalys came home the following day (Sunday) afternoon. She said she had spent it in the lock-up. She said last night she was out the back of the club in the lane with some others where a friend of hers gave her a birthday present of some cannabis! A policeman spotted them and took them back to the station red handed. They set a date for her to appear in court in January. She said her brother was in jail somewhere for a similar offense.

I bought a portable stereo cassette player and radio (ghetto blaster). It was something to listen to after work and in the evenings. I found a station that was broadcasting out of Fremantle. I liked the songs they had so much so that I looked them up in the phone book just to say so. When I phoned up they answered and said would you like the cassette we're giving away. I said no not really I was just phoning to say I liked the station. They said it's a great cassette and told me what was on it. It was a compilation of the best dance tracks being played at the nightclubs currently. I said I wouldn't be able to pick it up during business hours because I worked so they said they would send it out. I said thanks then listened to the radio again. After the song finished they said "We have found a winner.. it's Steven Enders, I'm sure you'll enjoy it...." I was thrilled!

Dalys bought two kittens. They kept doing their business in the loungeroom so I would put on my contacts before leaving my room so I didn't accidentally step in anything.

When I went to work I would get off the bus and walk along a disused railway line. It would take about 15 mins walk. I would peg stones at the Telegraph poles about 40 meters parallel to the tracks. Once I hit 5 posts in a row first shot each time which was pretty amazing. Well, I thought so.

It was breakup day at work for the 10 day Christmas break. We were all given a carton of beer each as a gift. I gave mine to the draughtsman I shared the office with who was my age and married. I had just about paid off my Mastercard. How was I going to fill the time while being unpaid I thought that afternoon. I went down to a tourist place and saw a brochure for a tour up the W.A. coast. I booked straight away and got on the bus at 6:00am the next morning. I thought I didn't need to be anywhere on Christmas day and this opportunity for a trip like this may not present itself again so I thought the estimated $600 on the Mastercard would be worth it.

It was a type of tour where you could buy the ticket and get off anywhere and rejoin on the following one usually 2 days later. The tour was with 'Bus Australia'. It went to Exmouth about half way up the coast and back. We drove out of Perth through the winery areas and a couple of hours later we were at a place called the 'Pinnicals'. They looked like termite mounds but made out of stone standing in the sand about 1-5 meters tall. They were amazing. Or at least we tried to tell ourselves to justify the price of the trip. It was good though when the bus drove through the dirt tracks to get there. We drove through Geraldton looking at some of the sights and then that afternoon we arrived at Kalbarri.

It is about 700 km north of Perth just a bit further north than Brisbane on the map. It was wonderful. I left the tour and stayed two days there over Christmas. I stayed in a holiday flat. I was tossing up whether to hire a car for a day or not as the tours were closed at this time of the year. I was walking by the sea and to my amazement I found a $50 note in some grass. My mind was made up!! I went to the rent-a-car place (on 24-12-89) and drove off with a Suzuki 4-wheel drive. I spent the afternoon seeing the huge cliffs there that meet the sea. They stretched for about a kilometer. It was breath taking. I drove to the beach that night and sat there listening to the waves thinking just how far I was away from Toowoomba. I was happy. Kalbarri was a small town with about 400 locals. That night some of the locals were singing Christmas carols on a grassy area outside of a church which was next to the police station. I stood there with them. It felt great being so isolated with the locals singing carols. The next morning I left early hopefully to see some kangaroos in the Murchison Gorge - about 50 km inland. I opened a present mum had sent me earlier on top of a rocky out crop a thousand miles from civilisation. It was a thick silver chain. I was very pleased. I nearly rolled the car on the sand track leaving. Afterwards I was back on the coast but in a National park. I parked the car and walked into the bush to find the water but I got lost. It was the most dense shrub land I had seen. I was lost for about two hours in the midday sun. The shrub was so thick and everywhere. It would take about 1 minute to progress just 2-3 meters. I stopped and thought after about an hour that I had probably been going around in circles so as not to walk too far from the car but I decided this was useless so I decided to go in a straight line in any direction and hopefully I would find a track or the water or something. Soon I was weak and sort of dragging my feet in the sand. I was starting to get very worried and almost panicky. This seemed like a movie but it was happening to me. I finally found a track and followed it toward a hill. I wasn't even sure I would make it there. I was really thirsty and slowly climbed partly up the hill and saw the car in the distance. I found it and returned the car about a half an hour late. I thought it may have been a lot later. It was the most worried I had ever been. I was quite scared at a time there. The next day I rejoined the tour and arrived in Monkey Mia where the dolphins come in from the ocean to see people. I stayed 3 days in a youth hostel and saw lots of dolphins being in the water up to the thighs with them. This was wonderful as well except I got severely sun burnt on my knee caps. Soon the Bus would take me still further north to Carnarvon for the evening. I bumped into a girl who I met at the Youth Hostel at Denham (Monkey Mia) who was on her way to the Hammersley Ranges. Then it was back to Perth (nursing my knee-caps) to begin work again.

Soon after I arrived back Kim's father lost his job and couldn't afford to keep renting so Kim moved in with us. I felt as though I was getting squeezed out so I decided to leave. By this time I was getting used to moving, so much so that I had adopted a Billy Joel song that went something like "because, I'm....., moving out, Oh I'm moving out, yeah I'm moving out". I used to sing this every time I moved since. I think it help keep my sanity.

I found a place near by in East Victoria Park although it was expensive at $70 per week share. It was with a couple. The bloke 'Peter' being about 35 and the female 'April' about 26. My room was in the back part of the house which was good. This time I had a wardrobe and a double bed with a pillow so I was certainly better off than before. I could now roll up my sleeping back and put it away. They had a dog called Tina. It was a noisy little chawauwa and the best looking cat I'd ever seen. It was black with a very shiny coat. It was very fit looking and about twice the size of a normal cat. It looked like a small Puma. It was called Puss. They often had over a good friend of theirs called Janet.

At work I was taking a bit longer than they thought it necessary to get the communication between computers happening so at one stage they got me to take over for someone in the factory for a few hours making things on a machine. I wasn't impressed. I was soon back to my proper job.

The cat got hit one night by a car as we lived on a main road. Someone came to the door saying they saw it get hit and it ran into our property. I went out back and puss was there but it bolted. We found it next morning trembling to death behind the tv. We took it to the vet and they said it had lost its eye and was badly bruised. It came back not the strong confident cat it was before but very quiet and shy. It was tragic.

When I met Janet for the first time when the others were out, we got on great from the start. I wouldn't call her very attractive physically but she had a wonderful personality. Occasionally when she drove April and I somewhere she would be talking to April but teasing me by looking through the rear vision. April distributed goods for Amway and got some tickets to get a boat to Rottnest Island for a day trip. April, Peter, Janet and I went. We rode push bikes around the island. On the trip back we danced to the live band on board but I was in bare feet and there was splinters of glass on the floor. I got a few bits of glass in my feet and when we got home Janet meticulously removed them which was nice. We got on very well. April ran a fancy dress hire and singing telegram store locally. She asked if I would take photos of her wearing lots of different costumes for the photo album on the counter. The Hawaiian outfit was quite revealing! April also did a lot of singing telegrams. They included French maids, a bride which would turn up at buck's nights pretending to be an old lover, school girls and the bondage one. The latter was the most requested. I would go with April to the locations relieving Peter sometimes to do the role of finding out where the unsuspecting person was, getting the money prior to the event and making sure the outfit looked okay. It was all black leather being rather skimpy with a black cape and whip. I'd then grab my camera gear and take her near to where she had to go and then she would go in and I would follow about 10 meters behind in the midst of a lot of whistling. I also had to make sure no-one looked like they were getting too carried away so as to keep her out of harm's way. Luckily I wasn't needed for this. I would position myself squatting in the front row as that is where the best photos would be taken. The photos would end up in the album or copies were made for the customers. She was quite good at it. We ended up going to all sorts of places doing this. They included boarding houses, cafes, restaurants, mostly houses, bucks nights, the circus and once at Burswood Casino! It was great fun. They hired a really fat man and I went to his ones occasionally. He dressed usually in a huge nappy, bonnet, rattle and sucked his thumb and squawked very loudly. He had tattoos all over him. It was an awful sight!

I used to go to Janet's place a fair bit. One day I poured boiling hot water into a glass and it exploded all over the kitchen. That was fun. I took up disco dancing for 4 weeks. That was boring. I sat all four exams and failed all four. That was predictable.

At work one day I had to drive the company car somewhere. It was a manual car. I got in it and reversed into the street and it stalled. I started it and drove down the street a bit and when trying to change gears it would slow down, stall and stop. This happened a few more times down the street. It was a bit embarrassing. I discovered I hadn't released the hand brake. I noticed this while driving down the highway with the accelerator to the floor trying to get it to go faster!!!

Needing desperately to organise accommodation in Toowoomba I phoned up Mrs Cleary again (the kidney lady) as I was certain no-one would have been dumb enough to live there. No-one was so I asked if I could again and it was okay. It was impossible to organise accommodation 4000 miles away.

It was time to leave Perth. April drove Janet and I to the airport. She ran over three traffic islands on the way there and was sniffling being sad about me departing. I had only spent about 6 weeks living with them. Janet gave me a wonderful departing kiss which must have looked a bit strange and off I went. I left Perth about 11:30pm for Melbourne. The lady in the seat next to me was on her way to America to get married and she showed me all the boring photos of her husband. I then spent a couple of hours talking to a stewardess which was a bit more interesting. From Melbourne I changed on to one to Sydney then changed to Coolangatta. I got the 5 hour bus back to Toowoomba to start studying again on Monday. I finished work in Perth the Friday before.

FEBRUARY 1990 HELL REVISITED

All my stuff was at Roberts place in the shed. Robert helped me move a lot of it over to Mrs Cleary's. I was not entering into a boarding arrangement this time. Instead of paying $60 board I was going halves in the rent which worked out to be $27.50 each. This time I had a door in my room. In Perth I managed to pay off the Mastercard so I was again not in debt but still had no money except Austudy.

The first couple of months I would go to the pub and buy some beer, get on my pushy and peddle off to Rob's place to watch videos or have dinner or both. This was good fun. Afterwards at about midnight I would get on the bike a little intoxicated, scratch my arms on the rose bushes out front and ride home down the main street through Toowoomba's typically thick fog, wobbling all the way.

Rob soon was going to move to Brisbane for work. It was to be in private practice and then later at a hospital. Before he left he asked all his friends to come over for a fancy dress party. I asked if Ven could come along which was okay. We all went to a fancy dress hire store and picked out our costumes. Robert and Susie chose hippy outfits, Ven a sheik's outfit and me, well, I chose a Dame Edna Everidge costume. Ven and I got a taxi from my place. The taxi driver put the spotlight on us to embarrass us. When we drove through the city to get to Roberts place a lot of people noticed us and laughed. I wore a purple frizzy wig, big pointed sparkling glasses, a purple dress and held a gladiola. It was an enjoyable party.

Janet and April would write me letters quite often. Janet said she would come up and visit but I didn't hear much after that. She had gotten together with some bloke who was a pilot. April said she doesn't know what Janet sees in him. Oh well. Perth is a bit too far away anyway, also the way my studies were going I would be here in Toowoomba until I turned 40.

On the University radio station 4-DDB FM (DDB = Darling Downs Broadcasting but affectionately known as Dead, Dull and Boring) I heard an ad for radio announcer training. I had ignored it previously but now I was near the middle of town only a few blocks away I thought I would give it a go. I went about 4 weeks learning to use the studio equipment which was great fun. But after we did a sound test on our speaking style and heard it played back I never returned!

Ven and I decided to go horse riding up at 'Cottswold Hills Estate' which was in Toowoomba. We had to wear helmets which felt goofy. We followed other horses in a line through the bush. My horse stopped all of a sudden. It began doing its chunky business behind me. A guide told me to stand up in the stirrups to relieve some of the pressure. This was embarrassing. Later on when left to ourselves my horse wouldn't go anywhere despite my kicking it in the ribs. I sat on the horse in a paddock for about an hour hardly moving. It wasn't a very successful day.

It was mid semester break and I went to see mum on the coast. They were arguing most of the time I was there. The house was full of rifles as John liked clay pigeon shooting. One day while there, he was shooting from inside the house into a target outside to align the view piece. It was in a suburban neighborhood! I didn't enjoy the visit. It really goes without saying. I went to Brisbane for Vens birthday party at his parents' place. He is Italian and when Italians have birthday parties especially 21st ones which this was, every relative comes over. He must have got a few thousand dollars in presents and money. He was also told one of his parents' houses in Brisbane would be put in his name in about a year! I was getting depressed again!

My weight was very low. It would move between 56 and 57 kg. Being badly stressed all day every day must have kept it down. I made sure that my first priority was to keep well fed even if it meant living in more of a dump as a result. I wanted to try to put on weight even though I thought I had buckley's chance. With the lower rent I was paying I had enough money to buy more than enough food to keep me eating constantly which I did. I also was doing a bit of weights at the time as well but not too seriously. After about 2 months of this I only put on 1 kg. I gave up. I lost this precious kg. At this time I was buying a few cookbooks which was a major expenditure. I also lashed out and bought a $49 hand held blender.

When I started using the blender it put a little line through the tv screen when I used it. Mrs Cleary would yell out "turn that thing off!!" despite trying my hardest to time it to use it during the ads. I couldn't believe it when I saw the little effect it was having on the tv what she was whinging so much about. She was a tv addict from 7:00am till midnight sitting in front of it. She would come and pull it out of the wall while I was using it if she got really annoyed. I only used it about 1 minute each day!

I also bought a second-hand $100 tv because I was so frustrated having little choice (basically no choice). I had been looking on the Uni notice board for a while and finally a good priced one appeared. It was worth putting on the Mastercard I thought. One lunch break from Uni I walked to the place and inspected it. That afternoon Ven came over to my place and we drove there and picked it up.

Over the last couple of years I had been reading the Financial Review newspaper as I wanted to learn about economics. I decided to go to a stock broker in Toowoomba and asked him for information on graphs on variations in gold, silver, $A, $US, etc to see if there were any patterns. I got them but hadn't used them since.

While withdrawing some money from an Automatic Teller machine I asked for $50. It gave me $70 while only deducting me $50! A $20 note came out ahead of the $50 so it must have been caught up in the works. This was like winning lotto (almost!).

On my bedroom wall I sticky taped a piece of paper on it listing my intended career plan up till about age 65. It was to serve me as motivation to do study. I would work as an engineer for the first 6 years while doing an MBA in the last 4 of the 6, then the next 6 would be doing half engineering and the other half learning and doing some of the business/administration side while from then on the engineering would taper off to very little while getting myself into a position where I would have increased responsibility for the company's destiny! On the side I would see if I could come up with any good ideas that I could patent.

My wardrobe was now very plain. The variety of clothes I had at the start of the course was drying up very fast due to wear and tear and non-replacement due to poverty. I was now wearing basically the same clothes to Uni everyday. At the start of the course I noticed some people that were like this and couldn't understand why they would do this. After all you could buy jeans and a good jumper and a casual shirt for about $200. I knew now just how broke you could get so it had to do, whatever people said behind my back. I had two jumpers. One I got in 1986 which I took with me around Tasmania and served me so well as a pillow and a second one in 1988. They both had huge holes in the elbows so I had to roll the jumpers up my arms to make the holes (which were the size of the neck hole) disappear. It looked weird and I froze my arms (and the rest of me) in the freezing winters.

I had been at Mrs Cleary's place longer this time than last time. As it was now very cold She would have the windows and doors shut so as to keep out the cold (or keep it in!). This meant the smoke she made from two packs of cigarettes per day would fill the house during the day to greet me in the evenings when I got home. I would try to study in my room but because the smoke came over one of my walls it was disgusting. It would make my lungs ache after about an hour. I would open the back door to let some clean air in and go outside and walk around the backyard in the biting cold (about 7 degrees) for some fresh air. I stood out there some times for 4 hours in the evenings. She would come along and slam the door shut while I was out there. I couldn't stand it any longer I had to go. During a big argument I said to her "If you want me to leave, then tell me so." So she did. This is exactly what I wanted because had I said I'm leaving I would have had to give two weeks notice thus pay two weeks more rent. This way I could leave hopefully within the week saving money ie ($27.50). I spent about 5 desperate days trying to find somewhere close to Uni without success until a new notice appeared on the Uni notice board. I phoned, went over, it looked okay. The next day I phoned to see if I could take it but I got rejected! That day I bumped into the bloke at Uni who rejected me and said the other person changed their mind so I could have it. Yaahoo!!! It was a week after my 1st semester exams had finished.

Mum came through Gatton and picked up Natascha then to Toowoomba the day I was moving so they helped me move out of that place.

JUNE 1990 THE SHOE BOX

Mum and Natascha met Kevin- the chap I was now sharing with. The place was like a little shoebox but the rent was only $40 each per week and it was only 5 mins on the pushy from Uni. We drove back to the coast.

Mum had had enough with staying with John and we were there now to help her move out. Mum had a rented flat lined up to move into in Tweed Heads. It was not fun at all taking stuff out of the house under the scrutinising eyes of John. It was good though thinking that I should never be needing to go their again.

Semester 2 was about to start. My room was a good size. It had a spare single bed in it though, which took up a third of the room. The room had a wooden sliding door hanging on rollers. This easily let in light and noise at night. Both our rooms backed onto the loungeroom/kitchen. The thin strip of grass out the back of the flat (out my window) contained lots of trap door spiders or so I thought because I would occasionally see the trap doors open and close in a split second and a spider appear. The flat was part of two with Kevin's sister Helen sharing with some others in this other flat. She would come over and borrow my kitchen stuff without me knowing so I would spend half an hour looking for it. The neighbours behind us were 'hoons' tuning up their cars and blasting the radio. Ven and I were still playing snooker on Friday nights.

To go shopping I would ride my bike to Uni in the freezing cold as it was winter again (winter seemed to last from May-November), tie the bike up at the bike rack at Uni, walk to the bus stop waiting in the wind and cold, spend 45 mins on the solid plastic bus seats, walk to the supermarket, buy shopping and get all the not refrigerated stuff home delivered while carrying the refrigerated and frozen stuff in a plastic bag back to the bus stop, wait for the hourly bus, sit on the bus for another 45 mins (I had no worries the food warming up as the bus had no heating), go to the bike rack, tie the bag with frozen chook etc to the rack of the bike and freeze cycling on the way back home, then wait all day for the rest of it to arrive. I did this about every week as our fridge/freezer was too small to store any more.

Kevin would really pee me off because he was so stingy with electricity. I was prepared to put up with it because I didn't want to go through risking having an argument and getting kicked out and looking for another place again. It was cold especially at night. We would sit watching tv while we would wear everything we had in our wardrobes at once so we looked like the huge 'Michelin Man' to stop turning into an ice-block. Kevin would also be sitting on the chair (which was made of green plastic) in his sleeping bag as well to stop getting frostbite. We had a heater but we would only put it on once icicles were hanging from our eyebrows. It was only put on one time during the winter. He would also put the fridge on the lowest setting. My milk would end up going off every two days and vegetables within the week. Whenever I turned it up he would turn it back down. I would have to go to the expensive independent grocery store (about 5 mins on my bike) every second day to replace the milk. He would also have a cold 70% of the time. I ended up with more colds than usual. What a pain it was.

Peter and Serena (from that cocktail party) decided to get married. Peter (about 29) held his buck's night a week before the big day and I was invited. It was a nice, easy going atmosphere where we had a seemingly endless supply of beer and if we weren't playing volleyball we were standing around talking or resting (or relieving ourselves frequently). Peter was probably having the most to drink but not by much. Serena was very nice so he shouldn't have been worried in anyway. The sun was going down. Someone must have thought it was about time to start giving him heaps. There were no strippers or anything. But some-one decided that they should tie Peter to a big square white wooden board and prop him outside of one of the nightclubs in town as it was a Saturday night and there would be lots of people to make it embarrassing. Someone propped up the board against a tree and another moved Peter against it. A few people made sure he didn't move. Then all of a sudden I heard an electric drill start up which was quite loud as it was in the evening. They drilled either side of his arms into the board and tied him to it. Peter was not looking well at all. They drilled either side of his legs and tied him again. Then I got a shock as they drilled within an inch of his trousers at his crotch. How he didn't slip down a bit and get caught up in the drill mystifies me. Unfortunately and probably predictably at the sight of this, Peter chucked up all over the place and mostly down his front as he was leaning slightly backwards. It was not pretty. After a few minutes they let him down and he went inside the house and had a shower.

For the mid semester 2 break I went back again to the coast to see mum. She was quite happy to be away from John now. Mum had a friend who she had met at her Justice of the Peace meeting (JP) meetings. He was a funeral director. Natascha and I met him one evening. On another evening he showed us around where he worked. In the 'Funeral Directors' premises was the reception. Down the corridor behind it was a room with coffins laid out everywhere to suit every budget. Some were made of steel. Others were cheap woods or expensive woods like red cedar. Some were lined with plastic others with a silk-like material. Apparently 98% of adults fit into the one size coffin. Grossly fat people get a custom made one and infants have a small one. Further down the corridor was a room where the grieving people pay their last respects to the deceased one in the 'viewing room'. It is very dimly lit and quite a small room. The coffin is about waist height, opened and sometimes a perspex cover over the top. He lived out the back behind these rooms in a house sort of built to the back. We also saw all the black hearses in the big garage. They were very big and expensive looking with plush interiors.

Still further down the back behind the house was the morgue. It was a little building. The recently deceased people would be brought there to be tidied up (which is quite difficult if they had severe facial injuries) and had make-up put on and do lots of disgusting things to them. They would also put a mouth guard thing in the mouth and tie the lips to it so them stay shut. They also put a rough type of contact lens on the eye which grabs the eye lids and keeps them closed. On the shelf were all the implements including scalpel, jars of lots of different coloured liquids, make up tins and lipsticks. Once they have been prepared they get put into one of two freezer rooms which are about 8 feet high and about 3 feet wide each which have 3 shelves in each.

From the coast I went to Brisbane to Roberts place which he was sharing. We went that evening to 'Transformers' night club which was a pretty 'in' place to be. It was done up like a power station. We left and Rob decided he was busting to go to the loo so we kept an eye out for a night club or something. We found a place and walked in. After walking in about 20 meters I notice there weren't any females in there. I said to Rob quietly and nervously "I think we've just walked into a gay bar". Rob I think realised as soon as he walked in but wasn't going to turn around as he was busting bad. We walked all the way to the back where Rob headed off through the 'mens' door. I didn't know what to do. Either stay outside the door waiting for him to hurry and come out or go in as well (which sounded an even worse idea) or fight my way through the crowd to get outside. I decided to stay put and look down at the ground trying not to be noticed. It seemed forever then he emerged and we left quickly. On the way back to Bob's place I had a massively painful fit of the hiccups. They lasted for about 25 minutes while walking home. I could barely walk they hurt so bad. But at the same time it was quite funny.

Michael had to go to a wedding out west of Toowoomba at Dalby one Saturday afternoon. He stayed there over night and stopped in at my place on Sunday on the way back to Brisbane. We had pancakes for lunch and walked up to Uni to see how it had changed since he was there 2.5 years ago. While I passed through Brisbane I would occasionally visit him during the day to catch up on things.

At this point I felt as cash strapped as at any other point. I wasn't going out, had derelict clothes, traveled around on my pushbike, shared accommodation in a shoe box for a flat and for a week I had 1 or 2 peanut butter sandwiches for dinner each night to save money. There was an article in the local paper 'The Toowoomba Chronicle' about a derelict who was getting $140 per week from the government. I was getting $97 (58% of the poverty level) to live on. He was photographed pushing a shopping trolley with his days garbage bin collecting efforts and a photo of his cardboard box/ shed thing he lived in on a disused property. And the reporter said it was shameful that someone had to live like this on such little money!

It was hard to study at home as I didn't have a desk in my room (I couldn't afford one) with the only table being the kitchen bench. This would be difficult to study at before about 11:30pm when Kevin went to sleep because he would be watching tv or walking past me to get something from the fridge. So I would study after this time out there. While in Toowoomba I only had a desk to study at for a total of one year out of the 4.5 I was there. So I would usually study in bed or on the floor. My studies went okay this year with only failing one first semester and none second semester (this was a milestone!) I was going to stay in Toowoomba over summer to catch up on some subjects that were offered over summer (mainly business ones). I sent off 150 letters for a summer job all over Australia again but no luck. I even applied for engineering jobs in Toowoomba and numerous computing jobs at the Uni. It was probably just as well as I had a lot of studying to do. We had a mouse living in our oven. I would see it sticking it's head up out of the gaps around the elements. I would shake the oven and move it but it wouldn't come out. One day it was behind the fridge so I moved it and out it ran around the small loungeroom and into an old steel and plastic 3-seater green couch and I lost it. Another time it escaped and made it behind the oven before I could catch it. I didn't want to kill it in mouse trap just catch it and let it out in a nearby paddock. But it was very elusive.

It was now summer and Toowoomba was getting hot. It was also fly season. I don't know why but we kept our house pretty clean but still it was a breeding ground for flies. The loungeroom had about 50 flies in it during the day at any one time and about 25 sleeping on the walls or ceiling at night. It was terrible. If I was going to cook anything during the day I would have to try to shoo all of them out and close the place up tight and then cook otherwise the flies would count into the hundreds just around the stove alone. It was annoying when watching tv, flies would pass in between the tv and me. This would not have been so annoying had they flown quickly past but they were flying around, slowly, in pairs, presumably blissfully unaware of the inconvenience they were causing. To try to minimise this problem I carried a very large elastic band and flicked it to squash them in a blink of an eye. We also had a 'huge moth' plague. They were double the size of butterflies. At night they would fly into my room around my sliding 'closed' door and drive me batty while studying.

Mum went to Sea World Nara Resort with Natascha for Christmas last year when I was in Perth, so thought she would take me to a place in Maroochydore on the (Sunshine Coast) this Christmas since Natascha was staying in Sydney to get some work experience. It was a nice few days holiday on a quiet lake in bungalows which was nice and relaxing. We went up to Noosa, The Big Pineapple, The Big Cow and a few other places. This was a pleasant break. Because Austudy only pays you for the minimum duration of the course which in my case is 4 years I was almost out of it. It looked as though I would need an extra 6 months to finish Uni but Austudy wouldn't pay. So I either had to borrow money from the Uni Credit Union or get a job. I couldn't get a job while getting Austudy as after earning a small amount you would then be taxed effectively at 75% there after. Even though there were never any casual or part-time jobs available in the papers I was going to try very hard to get something. Getting a loan to cover me for 6 months had a pretty low stigma attached and to be seen applying for it. I had been on the Uni's register for looking for work since arriving in 1987 with no luck. The only job that I had heard of that sounded okay was packing groceries at supermarkets in the evenings as the pay was at time-and-a half and wouldn't take up too much time. So I sent off a resume and references to all supermarkets and department stores in Toowoomba. I just hoped I didn't have to ride my push bike across town and back each night to the stores located far away. Luckily I got an interview and the job with the closest one only 10 mins on the pushy away although I had to climb a hill, like Mount Everest to get back home. I was going to work very hard as I couldn't afford to lose it.

I worked there for 6 months about 3-4 nights a week for about 4 hours each night. This averaged out at about $150 per week so this was great. I worked 2 weeks full time during the holiday break which helped out greatly. It was very hard work slashing open boxes and packing the contents onto shelves. If you were unsure of where the product was for even a second. The supervisor would be hurrying you up. I usually worked in the Laundry goods Isle. Crushing the garbage and the boxes out the pack was the best part because it was less strenuous. One chap there I talked to worked during the day at 'K R Darling Downs' which is Australia's largest ham product manufacturers. His job was to stand at the back of the building where deliveries of carcasses from the trucks would occur and he would push them along supported by hooks into the chopping up room. What a terrible job! I would sweat like a pig while I worked and I think they appreciated my efforts working there.

Ven and I went to a mountain next to Toowoomba called 'Table Top' because it looked so flat on top. It took about an hour to walk up from the nearest vehicle access. It was a rugged walk and at times near horizontal rock walls to climb. I heard on the radio a couple of days before a couple of bushwalkers fell a fair distance and had to be taken to hospital. The walk was well worth it as it was like a scene from 'The Sound of Music' where she is singing 'The Hills are Alive.....'etc as there was a lot of long wheat like grass and no trees. A nice cool breeze blew up the side of the mountain from the direction of Brisbane. It was wonderful.

It was the end of summer and I had passed all my subjects again... amazing. So did Ven. Now he had graduated. Khosrow got a job as a site supervisor while studying during the first semester.

Robert had moved back to Toowoomba from Brisbane to share with Ken- a friend of his, close to where I was staying. He was still working in Brisbane most days during the week so he would drive back and forth each day. They would have lots of parties or BBQ's over there on the weekends and play volleyball or watch videos. Robert also had friends that I knew over the past couple of years either from going to restaurants, nightclubs or their place. They were- Wendy, Al, Anna, Al, Tracy, and Careena all being about 25. We would also go to their place and play Pictionary, have BBQ or dinners. One night Al and Tracy cooked a lovely big red fish and prawns which must have cost a fortune. Another night we played a funny game on their floor. We sat on the floor in a circle spaced out. We then lay down laying our head on the persons stomach to our right still forming a sort of circle. Each person would say something silly and every body would try not laugh. The first person to laugh would have to take off something. If someone did laugh their head would unavoidably move a little thus cause a funny sensation on the next person's tummy causing them to laugh and so on around the circle. I didn't lose much luckily (I was to frightened of losing to laugh!).

Robert decided to hold a 'Dag' party. All his friends were invited. We all went to St Vincent de Paul to buy our clothes. My outfit of brown trousers and bright light blue 1940's shirt, old shoes, multicoloured socks and thick black glasses looked quite conservative. We danced around the house to ABBA, the Village People etc. It was lots of fun.

It was time for the mouse in our oven and I to part company. I set a trap of a upside down ice cream container with a spaghetti stick propping it up with a piece of cheese attached at its base. It got trapped about an hour later and I put it in the laundry tub till the morning. It could only have jumped out by the morning when I checked on it! I caught it again but Kevin had killed it by the morning. Another mouse stuck its head up to my amazement a few nights later. I caught it as well and another one a few days later. There must have been 3 mice living in our oven! I let them go into the paddock up the street.

Rob asked if I wanted to go to the drag car races near Brisbane. I thought I'd try it out. While going there we were about to overtake a three-tiered cattle truck. Robert said we had better shut the sun-roof because they sometimes pee onto cars as they pass! The races were good. When the cars went past I would vibrate like a human jack hammer into the earth. My ears rang for a week after.

So far after 4 years I was starting to get a sore back from all the terrible beds and floors I had slept and studied on. Some mattresses you get in and disappear in or take on the form of a very bent banana because the springs were so bad. So I would try to pad out the middle section with text books or clothes (it was mostly books because I had hardly any clothes) to make a more level sleep. But during the day it had a big lump in the middle because of it. It's also not fun thinking other people had slept there before you and some beds had confirmed histories of being used for bonking.

I had a horror day one day. It started in the morning while having a shower. I fell over in the shower and made a huge racket and injured my noggin and my rear end. At college I ran over my calculator with my chair and inked out the screen display busting it. I cut myself at home at lunch time and burnt myself making dinner. Only one of these usually happens only once a year to me not four in a day! Mum and Natascha came to Toowoomba and we spent a day north of Toowoomba at "Crows Nest' in a national park. I was going through a pizza making phase including the base. They would take about 2.25 hours. Natascha came up with her boyfriend Robert and her friend Bronwyn from Gatton. We went to Sizzlers restaurant where Bronwyn was working. I decided to buy a lumberjacks flannel coat. I tried to survive for 4.5 years without buying a flanny like most other people but I had to give in to it. It was lovely and warm to sit in our lounge watching the box, especially with my moccasins.

In the mail was a letter to me to attend Jury Duty for a trial expected to last for two weeks! I quickly sent a letter back saying I was living from day to day on money from Coles and couldn't afford being without money and it was almost exam time as well. On the letter was about 50 other excuses- it was a classic. I should have kept a copy. Luckily they didn't write back.

Mum would phone me up every weekend up until she left John which was great and then we rang alternatively since then. During this semester I was feeling very lethargic and frustrated at not yet having finished the course and being broke, etc, etc.. Mum said later she though I was about to have a nervous breakdown after recent phone conversations. I was a lot worse two years ago when I was not a happy chappy.

What were hopefully to be my final set of exams for the course were now under way. I was terribly nervous. If I failed some that would mean coming back again next year! The way I had been going that was the more likely situation. My first scheduled exam was a business one. It was held in an indoor basketball court at the back of the Uni. I sat there watching everyone come in and take their seats around me. Suddenly I felt ill. My glands under my tongue began to feel sour. I knew what this meant! My motions indicated a chuck up but nothing came out. Oh dear, I was not feeling good. Soon the ill feeling went down while beginning the paper. It was okay after that. Most exams I had I didn't feel too good but this was a bit worse. I ended up passing 3 out of 4 exams. This was tragic. I got a "supp" for Dynamics 2 which meant I could sit the exam again in February for a second chance. After an endless supply of whingeing and hassling I got the exam put forward to August 30. This would have meant I would appear to be unemployable until February. Not passing this first go was a big blow. Two thirds of the class failed so I was not alone.

Ven had read a job in the paper for a Civil Engineering graduate. He had applied for many jobs before this. This one, the employer interviewed him and next day he was flown to Mount Isa in the employer's plane and began work shortly after. The pay isn't that great but with the overtime he does and the company car he's doing okay. The job is with a road building company. Should I have been offered a job up there I would have rejected it. I wouldn't have minded a couple of years ago but after spending 4.5 years in the country that is plenty for me! I need a city fix ... and bad.

I had to hand my project in 3 weeks after my last exam. Lots of work was still left to do. It was to design a "Photographic Spray System". It would spray photographs (for a photographic studio in town) with lacquer via a spraygun. It would operate automatically. The operator would just have to position the photo underneath the contraption and press start and the spray gun would come on automatically and it would zig-zag across the print till it reached the bottom. It was very beneficial to me as it taught me more about electronics and how to select the right motors for the right circumstance and other exciting things! It was one of my 4 favorite subjects at Uni. The other three were computing subjects! I did about 30 other subjects throughout the course as well. The project was scheduled to be a semester 2 subject but I organised to do it in semester 1.

There were now four days before the project was due. The typing of the entire project (the size of an average hardback book) was left to do and the drawing plans to suitable quality also remained. Madly I typed away all day till midnight when I had to leave the computer room courtesy of the security guard. So I went to the 5th floor of engineering where the drawing boards were and began doing my drawings. There was no time to sleep. I tried to get a quick nap by getting my school bag and stuffing it with scrunched up paper to make a pillow but was too uncomfortable. It didn't work. It was the middle of winter and I was freezing. I knew a way to lever the door open to the central computer room for the Engineering building. This room I thought may be a bit warmer. I tried to squat behind the main computer but not enough heat was being emitted to be useful. It was about 3:30am. I had the code to get into this 5th floor door and a key for the 3rd floor. I went to the third floor to see if I could find a heater. It was hopeless. I looked for more computers without luck. After an hour I discovered a hot water tap which I let water run over my wrists for 20 minutes to warm me up. Every 40 minutes or so I would come back down to 3rd floor to warm up. The next morning I bought some sweets for breakfast and went to the original computer room in another part of the Uni and went in when it was being opened to begin typing up more of it. I typed away again till midnight in a zombie like state. At midnight I went over to do more drawings. It was quite a lot easier to stay awake the second night probably because the deadline was closer and the adrenalin was pumping. I constantly warmed myself up downstairs when the cold was getting too bad. I watched the sun come up which was wonderful as the crows were calling, and Galahs flying around. Around about 3:30pm on the third day I finished typing in the whole project. It took me until midnight to finish getting one printout of it suitably. That night was the easiest of all to stay awake because the project was due the next day and I was panicking very bad. I finished the drawings to about 80% complete by about 10:00am. I was now suffering from a lot of symptoms. My head was aching. I felt like I had been drinking because of "a slightly removed from it all" feeling I had, my eyes were flashing white lights internally which was a bit worrying and my eyes were hurting a little. Khosrow gave me a lift to the K-Mart Plaza where I got a shop to photocopy the book to make 4 copies. As I waited I walked slowly around the shopping center almost dragging my feet. I had never walked so slowly before. I was in another world. An hour later they were ready to pick up. I took them back to Uni and inked in and highlighted the relevant areas. It was close to completion. My brain was saying your nearly there! My head was starting to get heavy. I had to stop it falling and sending me to sleep. I bundled all 4 copies together and took them to the book binders on campus. I handed them in for marking five minutes before the five o'clock deadline. Phew!! I went home for the first time in 4 days and crashed out. I had been awake for 82 hours straight without even a nap.

I finished work and applied for unemployment benefits which I got. Two weeks prior to finishing my project I left a note out to Kevin complaining about a few things including the no heater policy. He said it would be better I left then so gave me two weeks' notice. I had planned to leave now anyway so I had nothing to lose in doing so. Mum drove up to pick up all my accumulated books and stuff. I rode my push bike to McCafferties coaches and sent it to the coast with them for $5.00. We stopped in on the way out of Toowoomba at Khosrow and Lucy's place to say goodbye and for Mum to meet them at long last. We also saw Natascha in Gatton on the way through to the coast.

JULY 1991 JOB HUNTING

Now I was in a position where I could look for work as I didn't have any subjects left, only an exam in August. The first few days in Tweed Heads I spent recovering. Then I caught a coach to Brisbane to buy stationery to do another mass mailing campaign to find work. I looked all over Brisbane for stores that sold good quality paper. In the end I bought a beige coloured parchment paper which cost $80.00 for 1000 sheets. It was a bad recession outside and jobs are few and the ones that are around want you to have multiple skills. I had to give it my best shot as I was broke and was starting to build up my Mastercard quite fast again. My strategy was to send out 200 letters to any-one who I thought might have the slightest chance of offering a job. To do this I had to get a hold of a computer. One typed copy and the others photocopied wasn't going to be good enough.

So I went back to Toowoomba on the coach again for three days and two nights having short naps in the early hours of the mornings and freezing, trying to get it done as quick as possible. When I arrived back at Tweed Heads I bought 200 pre-stamped envelopes, stapled the three sheets together for each, signed them, folded and packed them and shoved them in the mail box. I sent most to Sydney, some to Brisbane and some to the Gold Coast (locally). I also went to Surfers Paradise trying to leave my resume with employment agencies but only one took it. The others said they already had too many people on their books at the moment...sorry. The next week I spent studying for the exam that would happen soon. In my resume I emphisised my computer skills. I received a reply from a Brisbane company who said they needed me desperately for a three month period helping their staff to use to different CAD systems they had, which I would have found pretty easy. I hesitantly rejected it. Another call came from Drake Personnel in Sydney which sounded interesting and another for an interview out near Parramatta in Sydney as well. I bought a plane ticket to Sydney. My Mastercard was now full at $1000 and I needed more. I had no option but to go to the University Credit Union which I had resisted for so long. Within two days of catching coaches from Tweed Heads to Toowoomba to Tweed Heads to Brisbane to Tweed Heads to Brisbane to Tweed Heads I had a loan for $1000. I then went to Pacific Fair and bought a suit, shoes, socks, a couple of shirts and two ties within an hour. My debts now were worse than my worst nightmare. I hadn't finished my last exam let alone graduated, had no assets, no job, just rapidly accumulating debt. It was scary. I felt as though I was taking a very big gamble.

AUGUST 1991 SYDNEY JOB HUNTING

Robert had moved to Sydney about 2 months ago and said I could stay with him and Susie until I found a job. This was fabulous! They met me at the airport on a Sunday night. The interview Monday morning was unsuccessful with the employment agency. They said they needed someone with more business skills. The taxi trip there and back hurt my pocket as I didn't know my way about. My next interview was near Parramatta at North Rocks. Rob and Susie both work in Parramatta so gave me a lift most of the way one morning. The company was with "Lever and Kitchen / Rexona" It went okay but he was not too sure about me not having sat my final exam yet. The job was to reduce inefficiencies in the production lines. They phoned up later to say they would not employ anybody now due to the recession and had changed their mind.

I was so excited to be back in Sydney. Gerry had spent the last 4 years studying at Sydney University for a Science Degree and majored in genetics. Now he has got a job as a ballroom dancing instructor! Rod is still studying and working part time in alternate semesters. I wanted to see them both so Gerry thought it good to have us both over to the dance studio in Cremorne for a "Party Night". At 7:45pm I arrived there after catching the bus, and the party began. The guys and girls (about 7 each) stood in two rows. We began learning to do "Dirty Dancing" which was fun! Rod and I got sucked into paying $20 for 4 lessons from the instructors who strongly encouraged us. The instructors Jenny(25) and Raylene(21) were very nice indeed. The girls there weren't bad either! It didn't take much persuading at all to sign up for the lessons! "Where's the dotted line...where's the dotted line..... I asked impatiently!

My room at Roberts was a sort of sunroom with a mattress on the floor. This was quite comfortable. The house was a one story terrace in Annandale. I practiced my new learned dance steps to Prince's "When You Were Mine" song. This was my favorite at the time even though it was years old.

Mum phoned up one day and said Grampa had Meningitis and was in hospital in Taree quite unconscious. She wanted me to come up there to meet her and drive his car up to Tweed Heads while he was in hospital as it was the only safe place for his documents which were in the car. He was traveling around dodging the tax man. Uncle Brandon is also in a similar situation and I think is in Perth somewhere! I caught the next train up that way that afternoon. I met mum about 11:00pm that evening at Taree railway station after catching the XPT train. After staying over night at a motel we visited Gramps in hospital. It was sad to see him there. We gave his car (an 8 year old Commodore) a car wash and then I was on my way at lunchtime. It took 7 hours straight to get their. Luckily it was an automatic which is a bit easier for me. This was my first long drive. It was great.

I studied at Tweed Heads for a couple of days and then drove it to Toowoomba to do my exam. The exam was even harder than the first one. But I think I did better than the first one but not by much. Others there were more confident than I. I prayed hard. On the way out of Toowoomba I stopped off to see Khosrow who had just got a job as a site supervisor for an architect. I also stopped in to see Lucy at a nursery where she was working. At Gatton I picked up Natascha and we drove back to Tweed Heads. Two days later we got up at 5:00am to drive the car down to Kempsey where gramps was now recovering. It took about 6 hours. Natascha didn't like my driving particularly as I went about 140km/h all the way. Just before we dropped the car off I wanted to fill it up with $5.00 worth of petrol. The attendant over filled it to $20.00 worth so we got it cheap!. We dropped the car off and caught the bus. Natascha was going to Newcastle to find a job and see her boyfriend Robby and I went back to Sydney.

I arrived at about 11:00pm. No-one was home. Being bored with sitting in the bus all day I caught a bus to the city. There was a new movie called "Terminator 2" showing at midnight which I saw till 1:30am.It was great except it was hard to keep my eyes open.

The letter replies (or more precisely rejections) were now only trickling in so it was time to begin another vigorous job searching episode. I decided to write to virtually every engineering job that appeared in the newspapers. The letters had to have a personal touch at least with the company name typed on it so this meant finding a computer. I bought more parchment paper and took my disks to "The University of Technology" trying to find a computer room. Luckily I found one and didn't get caught using it. I applied to jobs all over Sydney and up towards Newcastle. I frequented the University to type up more of them and visited lots of CES offices for jobs on their boards.

At home (Roberts place) one morning I made some museli. After reaching for the brown sugar jar I sprinkled some of the contents on it and began to eat. I nearly broke my teeth trying to do so. I had poured uncooked rice over it! I wasn't wearing my contact lenses and grabbed the wrong jar! This was very embarrassing. It took about 20 minutes to pick the bits of rice out.

The dance lessons were going real good. I was on a new program now which cost $250 for 4 lessons plus as many group lessons as I liked. Almost every night I went for nearly three months. After each evening there almost everybody would go across the road to "Steps" night club and danced the night and early hours away. We would do Latin American Dancing or normal pop style. I was very happy and content. I was also getting further into debt. One night we went to Kings Cross and danced away till 7:00am alternating between night clubs.

At about 10:00am one morning I got a call to turn up for an interview in North Sydney the next day. Being in my cheap suit and clothes (the best I had) I attended the interview. The bloke who interviewed me was the "Chief Engineer" Peter Doyle. The interview style was quite strange. A couple of questions were asked whether I had done much work with pumps and I said "No...not much at all". Are you a smoker. "No". And then I was told a little about the company. He didn't ask to see my degree which I said I had on my resume or some references. It seemed as though he had previously decided he wanted me and just made sure I wasn't a dork with 4 legs or a back-the-front head or something. Or was it he decided he didn't want me after seeing an earlier interview?? He phoned up two days later and said "You've got the job if your still interested" and of course I said yes and he then told me the salary details and I almost fainted. After I put the phone down, I went and had a shower and yelled out "Yaahooo!". I came in the next morning and signed papers and met the directors. That was Friday. I started the following Tuesday (1st October). My Uni results still hadn't come through and hoped the employers wouldn't ask. Three weeks later I phoned Uni and they said I had passed the exam. I had finished my Engineering degree....JOY....JOY!!!

Within a week of starting work I ended going to dance lessons. Rod still kept going for a few more weeks. My attitude to the way I had been living had suddenly changed. I had wanted to move out to relieve some of the pressure on Robert and Susie. My debts most of all had to be consolidated. This was now an important turning point in my life. I had to leave the past behind now as fast as I could and begin a different one that now lays ahead. This meant first of all making sure I was working very hard. Thus no turning up in the morning zonked out from partying or no female distractions on my mind to start off with at least. My plan now was to pay off my debts, start saving for furniture to move out and get a flat and then a car. Going to dance lessons all dressed up catching buses from the inner suburbs of Sydney was not fun. The thought of taking a girl out on a bus was not very exciting and because I was quite self conscious about being thin and underweight I didn't feel much in a socialising mood. So I was sort of avoiding everything.

On one weekend Robert and I drove to his parents place to do something on his computer and see his father for fathers' day. When he drove out of a shopping center carpark after buying a fathers' day card he scrapped the side of the car on a concrete column. When we arrived at his parents he got out and swung his backpack over his shoulder and sheered of the cars antennae which went flying. The next day the car didn't start. All this was quite funny but not for Rob I expect.

To do an MBA I had to do an exam in Brisbane on October 19. It was organised earlier in the year and I thought I would be more likely nearer Brisy than Sydney. I was there and back in the one weekend.

I was starting to get a strange skin infection around my jaw line. A gland then under my tongue swelled up then contracted . Very weird. There was two public transport strikes which cost me quite a bit in taxi fares. I shortly moved out to a town house in North Sydney 5 minutes walk from work.

NOVEMBER 1991 CLIVE JAMES TWINS

Now I wouldn't have any transport problems and I could get up later. I was sharing with two other people who looked like Clive James (fat and nearly bald). Before my Tassie trip I lived in Sydney 10 years prior to this. My high school was in North Sydney and I lived around this area most of the time so it was a good location to live and work. Bond for the place was $500 so this was again put on the card. The place ponged of something bad but I didn't know of what. Rent is $110 per week each. This was the best in the area and close to work so that's why I took it. I've got better taste though. The place was full of fish tanks and I think that is what smelt bad. One bloke has his two kids to visit for the Saturday and Sunday every second weekend and they seem to take over the whole house which is annoying. At about 2:00am a swarm of mosquitoes comes in my window and bites me all over. Normally I would wake up when I hear one but because of the Harbour Bridge expressway just houses away, their buzz would be disguised by the drone of the traffic.

Robert invited me to a party at a friend's place where he and Susie shared when he arrived in Sydney. We bought a carton of the little type of stubbies and sat around talking and drinking. While I was talking to someone in the group of people there, I was picking off the label of the stubbie like I usually did and tapping it or whatever. Some how I got my right pointing finger pushed in the neck of the bottle. No one had noticed yet. I kept talking as if nothing had happened while trying to twist the bottle off my finger without raising suspicions. If I had told Robert next to me he would have laughed hysterically and publicised it! I kept talking although my mind wasn't there. The finger just wouldn't budge. The only thing to do was to leave the crowd before it became known. I stood up grabbing the bottle by the top concealing my stuck finger. (I couldn't grab it any where else). With it I walked out of the house, past the people outside, through the garage, opened the roller door, and then I was out in the laneway behind the house. It was quieter now, the party was in the distance. The stupid thing had to come off. I tried to give it a good yank, twists and more twists but nothing happened, only my finger was starting to swell! There must be a brick around where I could smash it off. It was hard to see anything in the dimly lit laneway. At the least I could smash the bottle against the gutter which I did so that only the neck of the bottle remained around it. This was better but could still be embarrassing if I went back to the party! There was no bricks around just a little lump of concrete at the end of the laneway. I squatted in the gutter resting the bottle neck over the edge of the gutter and slowly tapping it with the concrete lump until I heard it make a little cracking noise. After wiggling my finger a bit it broke off! Yee haaa! Off I went back to the party and grabbed another stubbie.

I applied for a second credit card and got it with a $2000 limit now I had two of them. Should I lose the job now I should be able to use them as a back-up but hopefully I won't need to. It was Natascha's 21st birthday on the coming weekend so I had to look around for a present. Mum was cash strapped at the moment so Natascha wasn't looking like getting a good present for her birthday like I got for mine (a camera) and I wanted her to have something nice. She had a tinny radio for years so I thought she would like a nice new portable stereo radio/cassette/cd player. I know I would like it for a gift! Mum organised to pick it up on the coast. I flew up that weekend for her birthday. The stereo cost me $500 and mum about $30. Natascha didn't seem too interested in it but a couple of months later she did. This cost went onto my card again. I now owed $2000 on my credit card and $1000 for the Uni loan. Natascha gave me a "MAD" magazine for my 21st birthday and a $5 lottery ticket! I said previously that's what she was going to get for hers! Now was the time to start paying it off just in case the job didn't last for much longer. Mum helped to organise her 21st birthday party at a themed spooky restraunt.

The company held a Christmas party on a boat they hired to cruise Sydney Harbour in the evening. Rod and Natascha (who was down from Newcastle) came along. We mainly talked to David the Company Secretary and Tony the new student engineer who started that day. The food, mainly seafood, was tremendous. I filled myself with prawns and smoked salmon till I was popping. The company also held another party at a restaurant just for employees. Both were free. They were great. A few days later we had an office Christmas lunch at work the day before most of us left for our holiday break. I had to leave early at 4:30 pm to get the plane back to the coast.

My skin infection had flared up again and now my neck was very badly swollen so I got some antibiotics for it just before leaving. When I got up there Natascha wanted her Christmas gift to mum to be a family portrait. I was looking quite grotesque which was very embarrassing but I decided to go as we mightn't be all together again for a long time. Mum had just bought a cheaper new car (Nissan Pulsar) so had a few thousand dollars to pay off her bills with a little left over. I had a drive of it and it seemed okay but it was a lot smaller than the Telstar.

When I arrived back to Sydney I got a reply in the mail saying I didn't get into the MBA course at Deakin University. It cost me $300 to go to Brisbane and do the test but it was worth the chance. I went to a new Years eve dinner at a restaurant with Robert, Susie and their friends and then to a nightclub which had a very partying atmosphere.

In the city was a small independent cinema which showed 3-D movies. Rod, Tony, David and I saw "Sexy Stewardesses" which was very funny in places, and I saw Frankenstein with David on another occasion.

On Australia Day I made a bet with Rod as to who would first find Raylene and take her out to a restaurant. The bet was for $100. I'm sure that whoever wins will be too happy to want the cash! Raylene had left dancing and now had moved back home somewhere near Campbelltown. Rod considered all the most gorgeous girls he could think of and then considered Raylene. He put her in the 'Goddess' category. There was no doubt about this.

One of the chaps at home moved out and a Korean girl about 3 foot high and 2 foot wide moved in. She can't speakel Engwish very well. Natascha's back at Gatton for hopefully her last semester.

At night while I sleep I do strange things. I've been doing strange things for years but they have increased lately. Usually (about every 2-3 months) I would do things like getting out of bed (while asleep) and pulling everything out from under the bed into the middle of the room and then going back to sleep again, only to find a mess there in the morning. Or I would pull the plugs out of the power points in my room or movie objects around obviously not finding what I was looking for. I also usually talk in my sleep for long periods most nights (so I've been told). But over the past few weeks about every two days or so more things would happen. Since starting Uni I've been going to sleep naked but lately I've been going to sleep naked but waking up clothed. I've always had a very warm doona which has never let me get cold even in Toowoomba's freezing cold nights. I wasn't putting them on because I was cold. I would wake up in the morning to my surprise wearing just a tee-shirt or a sock or jeans or any combination of the above. Luckily I haven't succeeded in waking up with my shoes on yet. But surely that is not far off. I never remember any of this occuring. Maybe a ghost or somebody comes into my room, drugs me, and does strange things to me, gets bored then goes away. Maybe the new Korean girl is responsible or maybe her friends are. The mind boggles. I think evidently its been boggling for a while now without any further help. Other mornings I would find clothes gathered from the floor and piled at some location around my room. Very weird.

Now it was April and I have paid off my $3000 debt. Wahooo! I still had $4500 of Uni fees to pay but could pay over the next 10 years through the taxation system. I tried to take out a small loan for $6000 to see if it would be possible. I didn't know whether I was going to spend it on audio-visual equipment or just pay it back to try to get a better credit rating. The Commonwealth Bank rejected me because they said I hadn't shown the ability to save. If I can't get a small loan on my income, it must be tough for a lot of others. I couldn't believe it!

My graduation ceremony was about to occur. I flew up to the coast on the Friday night and drove up to Toowoomba on the Saturday morning with mum and Natascha. It was great to see the other students you studied with, now dressed up in their graduation gowns instead of jeans and tee-shirts (although some graduated wearing Hawian shirts). Only three other Mechanical Engineering students out of the class of about 17 had jobs and they had them in Toowoomba Yuk!. I didn't trip on stage or anything but it was nerve racking. It was nice to see a smiling person on stage to present the degree to you though. The chicken and champagne luncheon was great afterwards. I only saw Khosrow briefly there, being presented with the degree and for a couple of minutes outside afterwards. We drove back down to Gatton to drop Natascha back home then continued back to Tweed Heads where I got the plane back to Sydney that evening. It was a great day.

APPENDIX A

FUTURE PLANS/OUTLOOK

My six-month plan from now is to go to a nutritionist to find out the best way to but on weight (as I weigh only 58kg) and most probably start going to the Gym. Pay off the expensive suit I bought for graduation. I will probably do something else like restarting Ballroom and Latin-American dancing again. The latter being much better than Ballroom. Then start saving as much as I can and reapply for a bigger loan for a car. I've also got to learn to look more confident by not looking down all the time and smile more instead of looking so serious.

SUMMARY

University years are supposed to be some of the best years spent of your life. Over those years I had lots of great memorable experiences which will be hard for me to forget. On the other hand I had a lot more worse experiences and if it wasn't for getting my degree at the end of this period I would regard it as being a horrible 5 years. This diary was written in a jovial way but I never want to go through it again. Now I have to work my way out of the rut I feel I am in by putting on some weight and exercise, saving some money towards a car and moving out of the sharing scene and start living.

APPENDIX B MAP OF SOUTH-EAST QUEENSLAND

APPENDIX C THE TRAUMA IN COLOUR

A family portrait taken just hours after discovering I had passed my final University exam. and realising I didn't have to go to Toowoomba ever again! It was too overwhelming for me. This was our last family portrait before being consigned to the mental asylum.

They let me out though to go to graduation but no-one would come near me in fear of catching my condition.

APPENDIX D

SUMMARY OF PAST RESIDENCES