Table of contents for High School

1. Slow Dancing to The Angels
2. When I First Saw Her!

This is our patch at school, the tennis courts and the seat behind the science building where we spend our breaks. Don’t go getting the wrong impression though, we’re not terrorising the school grounds, defending our patch, causing trouble. No, we are just the tennis team. A bunch of friends who spend every minute out of the classroom perfecting our ground strokes and mastering the mysteries of the overhand serve-a skill I never acquired.

Twenty foot tall chain link fence surrounds the courts to keep our wayward shots from cascading across the grounds. The balls that do leap over the cage disappear down the hill towards the basketball courts or across the adjacent road into the scrub. When we tire of tennis there is the bench to sit on and grab some lunch or a drink.

The seat is designed to stop people walking off them from bus stops, and made of heavy concrete legs with rough wooden slats to provide room for three or four growing lads to enjoy the shade and a Coke before the next game. We dragged-literally dragged because it weighed a ton-it up from the lunch area and made it ours. It even has a small brass plate to identify the new owners. That is where I am now enjoying an Paul’s Iced Coffee.

I look up as two young girls walk around the corner of the science building and stop in front of us. Apparently they know one of my friends, and start to chat about their first weeks of high school but the words are flowing around me. I’m responding to questions and joking with the girls but my mind is detached from the reality, racing recklessly into a future where one is my girlfriend.

Janet and Rhonda are typical of the grade eight kids who roam the school looking for acceptance and a sense of belonging in their new surrounds. A few weeks ago they ruled the playgrounds of their primary schools, they were the ‘big kids’ who helped or bullied the younger students. At high school they are the little kids again and need to find a safe passage through the minefield of teenage angst.

My first year of high school developed into a hellish mix of torment and attacks that left deep scars that no one sees but continue to sting years after the visible scars healed. Eventually, the bullies moved on to other prey or grew up and focused on their studies and friends. I found a niche on the tennis court and kept to myself and the small group of social outcasts that formed the tennis team.

The girls are still talking to us. Janet is a plain girl whom adolescence is yet to reshape into a woman but Rhonda’s athletic frame already reveals a stunningly beautiful young woman. Her sports uniform, a tennis dress in the school blue-grey, hugs her developing curves to about mid-thigh revealing her finely muscled legs, so perfectly proportioned Michelangelo must have carved them for her creator.

Her deep brown eyes, set perfectly above her slightly upturned nose, are alive with the sparkle of someone who is confident and strong. Her face is a perfect symmetry of delicate yet strong features that a photographer would call good structure, a face the camera loves and pulls on my heart. Then the exchange is over, they move on and I watch in awe as Rhonda walks away, her hips falling naturally into that rhythmic motion we boys find so distracting.

Now my mind is galloping through the important questions:

Did I make a good impression?

What did I say, nothing offensive or condescending?

How do I look, no sauce drops on my shirt or underarm stains?

On and on I go, my heart is beating out of control and I want to see Rhonda again but I can feel the waves of uncertainty washing over me. I have no difficulty with girls until I start to develop romantic notions then I loose my way with them. Soon follows rejection, depression and increasing insecurity. This time I have to do everything right because I think I’m in love.

Table of contents for High School

1. Slow Dancing to The Angels
2. When I First Saw Her!

Nola grabbed me as the DJ started playing Take a Long Line by The Angels, ‘Let’s slow dance to this one, it will freak out the teachers.

We swayed slowly to our own beat as the Aussie Rock Anthem blared across the hall, and everyone else jumped and gyrated to the rhythm. I looked into Nola’s eyes, and got lost in the moment.

Nola lived a teenager’s dream, her parents lived out Bush and she shared a house with her two sisters. Just around the corner from Nashville State High, it became a lunch time refuge in our Senior year. A place to chill, forget about classes, teachers and exams while we planned the weekend’s entertainment or discussed the world that so obviously revolved around us now.

Parties tended to happen more regularly at Nola’s house, without parental supervision we could indulge in the teenage vices; loud music, alcohol and cigarettes. I became partial to Blackberry Nip, a sweet liqueur that fulfilled my need for sugar and warmed me from within. Loud music became a constant companion; Led Zeppelin, Skyhooks, Alice Cooper and The Angels peppered my record collection helping to shut out Abba and the 70′s disco mania. Smoking never made sense to me so I avoided that particular vice. A relief for my lungs and wallet.

During our dance, I could see the mischievousness in Nola’s eyes, a free spirit thumbing her nose at convention. She warmed a small place in my heart but it never grew into a passionate flame before I left her behind rushing into adult life. Thirty years later only the dance is left.

Will that same wealth of knowledge exist in the future when historians try to untangle our digital world?

Who will tell your stories if you do not?

Take time each day to write down a memory and suddenly you will find your life.

Table of contents for Water Skiing Across Australiasia

1. Water Skiing Across Australasia
2. Barefoot Across the Lake

Learning to use a slalom ski seems like starting again, your balance is not as natural and feels like walking across a narrow beam. I wobbled around the lake for a few days until I found my sweet spot, and began to develop my slalom technique. Slalom involves a series of linked sharp turns that requires the skier to be constantly riding the edge of the ski. It is fast, aerobic and requires surprising amounts of upper body strength to muscle your change of direction as quick as possible.

Confident on a slalom ski, I moved on to include the various tricks that made a weekend of skiing interesting. A freeboard, a single ski with no bindings, is used to teach barefooting, so becoming used to its use is a natural progression for most club members. To develop my confidence, I rode a freeboard in the traditional way but also with the fin facing forward and upside down.

Both are remarkable stable conditions for a ski but once I emerged from an off to find the tip of the ski snapped off. I never rode one upside down again. The ultimate freeboard is a fence pailing, skiing a stick looks impressive to a novice but the real trick is to lock your knees together. This technique lowers your balance and helps stability as the boat pulls you up onto the plane.

All this fun focussed me on the next challenge, barefooting, the fastest and hardest form we practiced out on Lake Bennett. With the freeboard mastered, I started the first tentative steps to my barefoot future. The boat accelerated to about 34 knots as I moved into the sweet spot of the boat wake. A good ski boat creates a flat wake with a gentle curve formed at the edge that is great for barefoot skiing.

At 34 knots I lifted my rear foot off the board and poked it into the gentle boat wash. The water rushed across the soul of my foot and I felt the water surface as an edge against my skin. An edge so sharp that I thought it could cut my foot open. I transferred my weight slowly to the barefoot, lifted my other foot and stabbed it into the water. My foot tucked under the surface and I fell face first into the water.

At 34 knots, the water rushes into every cavity as your face impacts the surface and you tumble to a halt. The pattern is repeated until pain forces me to learn the correct way to get that other foot into the water, and then I’m skimming across the lake without skis for the first time.

Table of contents for Water Skiing Across Australiasia

1. Water Skiing Across Australasia
2. Barefoot Across the Lake

This week I am exploring my water skiing memories from Darwin to Malaysia.

We turned off the main road onto I will grudgingly call a local farm track and headed towards the river. Behind us the trailer bounced and wriggled through the ruts and bumps, threatening to flip the boat off if we moved too quickly. The local farmers looked up from their labours and gawked at the mad Australians motoring through past their paddy fields. We pressed on and found a gently sloping embankment from where we could launch and retrieve the boat without risking life and limb. The river flowed slowly through the green fields, a red-brown ribbon that hid everything beneath its calm surface. Before we started skiing, a slow reconnaissance over the river revealed no obvious logs, rocks, sunken treasure ships or other manner of obstacles. We could cut loose at full throttle and tear up the water.

I learnt to ski on Lake Bennett south of Darwin, not a massive body of water but much less confining than the river bends of Northern Malaysia where our boat sat idling that day. My first time out at Bennett’s must have looked comical from the shore. As the boat pulled my skis onto the surface, I tried to stand upright on them. My instructor, Pud, had other ideas and grabbed the back of life vest to force me back into a crouch. Once I appeared balanced over the skis, he slowly guided me upright, released his grip and I pulled on the ski rope precipitating a backwards fall into the water.

Waterskiing is a strange mix of sensations, the boat pulls the rope taunt then starts to drag the skier throught the water before accelerating to get your skis on the plane. The skier leans back against the pull or gets pulled over the skis and dragged under the water like a large live bait. The 350cubic inch V8 motor in the boat roars as it accelerates and you literally pop out of the water. My first reaction, like most first timers, drew the ski rope above my head and over I went into the boat wash. The boat circled back, laying the rope across me to have another go, and so it went around the lake. A two minute run for most skiers took nearly 15 minutes for a novice whose natural state is mild panic at best. The last fall occurred just off the launching beach and I was left to struggle in with the skis while another skier headed off.

From an in auspious start, I slowly built my confidence taking the first tentative moves out of the boat’s wake into clean water and after a couple of weeks starting ripping from left to right and back again for a complete lap of the lake. Time to try a slalom ski.

Before heading into the water, tradition holds that an old hand pushes the soon-to-be single ski novice from behind unexpectly. The foot the goes forward to stop your fall is the front foot on your slalom ski. Despite a right-footed upbringing, I came through as a goofy-footer and headed into the lake.

More water skiing stories all this week.

Table of contents for Grandfathers

1. Two Gifts From My Grandfather
2. Granddad Gave Us a Car!

Tommy, I have always thought of him this way rather than Granddad, never figured prominently in my life. A flash Harry in his younger days, he attracted a young woman whom he married. Unfortunately, his snappy dress did not reflect his income and the marriage floundered. Tommy left her, returning to his childhood sweetheart, my Grandmother. The family stories are vague about the details but it is unlikely that he bothered or could afford a legal divorce. He adopted a new family name leaving his father’s family name to history and his first wife. Dad and his brothers knew nothing of the family secret until their early adulthood. Each of his sons had to formally change their names but my Dad did not like the name as endowed by his father. So, an ‘o’ became ‘e’ and a childhood of wondering way we spell our name differently began for me and my siblings.

Happy or proud tales about Tommy do not readily come to mind and Dad was never very close to his father throughout my childhood. A tough father, a little too fond of the drink, Tommy gave his sons the short end of his temper. Dad always talked about one happy memory, a Christmas tradition of sorts that gave him a connection with his father. Tommy offered the boys a beer with Christmas dinner that Dad happily accepted, sharing a moment of camaraderie. His brothers declined the offer, fearing another walloping when Tommy drunk his quota. Dad enjoyed that beer seemingly more than any other event in his relationship with his father, and never received punishment for sharing a little Christmas cheer.

My own memories focus on two events, a beach barbeque and a visit to Tommy’s home late in his life. Once a seaside holiday resort for Brisbane’s working class families, Shorncliffe in the seventies had declined into a somewhat squalid outer suburb of the metropolitan sprawl. On a rare visit by our grandparents, we made our way down to a shoreline park to fish and enjoy a barbeque. The waves lapped at the base of the concrete seawall that extended along the shore holding  back the erosive action of the sea. The grass under our feet, coarse and sparse like a loosely woven rattan rug, burned brown under the hostile Queensland sunshine. A large Moreton Bay fig tree provided us shade, its large branches spreading across the sky, a living pergola to escape the day’s heat. The figs carpeted the ground and squished under our feet as we played our games, and climbed in its low hanging limbs.

Dad fished from the seawall with his bamboo surf rod, its long stiff construction designed for the rigors of surf fishing, looked over sized for the sheltered waters of Shorncliffe. His efforts rewarded not with fish but a large mud crab forced to swallow the bait and hook whole after loosing its claws. A Queensland delicacy normally too expensive for Dad’s meagre salary, the muddie became a fantastic dinner treat later that week.

We enjoyed a great day but what I remember is an unexpected glimpse into Dad’s childhood. Just around the corner, there stood a run down fibro house, its paint faded and yard overgrown with grass and weeds so high that they hid the low wooden stumps it sat on. An unremarkable place but Mum looked at it and said, ‘Your Dad used to live over there in that house.’ I tried to imagine Dad and his brothers running around that little yard and playing along shore like we did that day. Did he climb the Moreton Bay fig and felt the soft fruit ooze up between his toes?

Did Tommy sit on the steps with a beer cradled in his hands after work? He didn’t appear nostalgic or even aware of his former home’s but I never think he looked back or even too far forward during his life.

A few years later we visited Dad’s parents at their south side home, possibly the last time I saw my Grandma but a gift from Tommy turned that visit into a lasting memory. Under the house sat an Austin A30 sedan and unable to drive due to failing eyesight Tommy gave the little car to my brother Ross and me. Our ‘first’ car gave us a lot of pleasure, days spent sitting in its cracked red leather seats pretending to drive. Occasionally allowed to back it up and then ease it forward back into the space below our bedroom window.

It is the only present I remember receiving from Dad’s parents who never figured prominently in our Christmas or birthday celebrations. Ross and I never did drive it on the road, and Dad eventually sold it after I joined the Air Force. However, it gave me a rare happy memory of my Grandfather, a seemingly out of character act like the beer he shared with his son at Christmas.

Table of contents for Chahracter Profiles

1. Character Profile: Rock n Roll ‘Bodgie’ George

As the cream FX Holden cruised past us, the driver glanced our way before continuing his endless roll through the streets of Brisbane. With his crew cut hair slicked back and his arm resting on the door sill, Rock ‘n’ Roll George or as we knew him Bodgie George, cruised the Brisbane streets for decades, a living breathing time capsule of the fifties era.

As rock ‘n’ roll swept my parents into the fifties a new subculture emerged in the United States, Britain and Australia that personified the growing sense of self. As the youth gained more disposable income, they began to preen the appearance for the local dance or to just cruise the city streets. Called Greasers in the USA and Teddy Boys in Britain, Australians called them Bodgies because early adherents sold poor quality clothing or bodgie gear in Australian slang. They wore jeans and t-shirts initially, often sporting a cigarette packet in the sleeve but it evolved into more hip clothes to cruise the streets and dance to the wild new sounds of rock n roll.

My Mum confessed that she was a Widgie (a female bodgie), and could remember Bodgie George cruising Brisbane streets in her youth. For me, Bodgie George is just  one of those characters that we encounter throughout our lives who leave a lasting impression on our psyche. An article in People magazine, popularised him in Brisbane folklore but nobody really knows why he continued to cruise long after other Bodgies moved on to raise families.

The Bodgies and Widgies remember Rock ‘n’ Roll George sitting outside the venues where they danced but he apparently rarely danced himself. Although the Widgies thought he cut a fine figure and he gained a reputation as a ladies man.

Those days had passed by the time Bodgie George cruised past us but he remains an iconic figure in the Brisbane area, at least for us older blokes. He still drives his mother’s FX and strides along George St in his trademark purple straight-leg pants but I think his days as a ladies man are over.

Rock n Roll George represented a free spirit in my youth who showed me that growing up  does not mean giving up what you love most about life. Age appropriate music and clothes are not mandatory, so excuse me while crank up the Black Sabbath.

Character Profiles is a regular series that will introduce the bit characters around the fringes of my tales.

Geoffrey Walden wrote his thesis, It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll But I Like It : A history of the early days of rock ‘n’ roll in Brisbane… as told by some of the people who were there, on the Brisbane Rock n Roll scene, and it profiles the people, venues and style of the fifties era. You can download his thesis here.