Chapter 3: trying on lives

TEACHERS COLLEGE

I’d scraped into teachers college, not because I had a burning desire to teach, but because it was the only training I could get into with my marks. My grades weren’t much to write home about, and it felt more like a ticket out of town than a vocation. I don’t remember having any grand plan beyond not wanting to stay where I was. It became clear pretty quickly I was never destined for academic glory. I did enough to hang in there, but nothing about it felt like a calling.

Odd Jobs

In the background there were always odd jobs, because I never seemed to have just one thing on the go. The most memorable of those was mineral exploration work out in the Woomera Restricted Area, long hot days, red dirt, not a lot of safety briefings. The kind of job you fall into when you’re young enough not to ask too many questions.

The other main one from that time was Mister Minit. Cutting keys and mending shoes in Adelaide, Salisbury, Elizabeth and Whyalla. Standing at those little booths in shopping centres, fixing other people’s broken bits and pieces..

The Big Lobster

Somewhere in the middle of all that, I went along to a judo tournament. Not as an athlete my role was to “assist the team with the drinking.” On the way back we stopped to help at a breakdown on the side of the road. There were a couple of young women from the tournament on the bus. At the time it was just another stop on another trip, but that roadside pause would end up changing quite a bit.

What followed were many trips back and forth between Adelaide and Melbourne on The Overland. Long overnight rides, vinyl seats and that strange in-between feeling of not really belonging at either end yet. Before too long, Melbourne started to pull harder than Adelaide.

Melbourne

In 1980 I moved to Melbourne to live with a mate I knew from the communities. I moved I with him. These days that old house is a Seven Eleven next to a pub.

Work-wise, I ended up in a factory making wine casks. Not exactly glamourous, but it was a job and at that stage that was enough. Somewhere in among conveyor belts and shift work I got myself engaged. It all felt fairly normal at the time – that’s what people did. You got a job, you partnered up, and you kept moving.

Eventually I transferred back to Adelaide with the company. Same work, different city. Back on more familiar streets but with things moving quickly now.

Married

In January 1981 I got married. Twenty-one and two days old. Just kids really. At the time I thought I was an adult married, working, doing what adults do. Looking back, it’s obvious we were still working out who we were, let alone what we wanted our lives to look like. But like a lot of people that age, we just got on with it. No big strategy, just the next step in front of us.

University

By 1983–84 I’d somehow found my way into welfare studies in Adelaide. One day I just decided to enrol. I had worked for a year to ensure my wife finished her final University studies in Adelaide and we lived at beachside Semaphore.. I’d always had one foot in and around people doing it tough and possibly working in welfare seemed like a way of making some sense of that. Or maybe I was just following in my fathers footsteps

We lived in Semaphore for a while, then Modbury. Renting, moving, doing the usual shuffle of suburbs that goes with being young and not particularly cashed up. Semaphore had the sea and a kind of faded charm. Modbury was more suburban, more routine. Both were just stages to pass through.

I studied enough to get by, but it didn’t come naturally. I’d never been one of those people who glided through assessments or treated study as a pleasure. I turned up, did the work as best I could, and hoped it would be enough. In the end, I passed – just. No honours, no fanfare, but a result all the same.

That pass mattered more than it probably looked from the outside. It was the first time I’d finished anything of note. Up until then it had mostly been half-started bits and pieces – courses, jobs, ideas – that I’d drifted into and out of. Welfare studies was the first thing I could point to and say, “I actually saw that through.”