Ask a Kid from The Coalfields

 It was probably a cold day in Cromwell. It’s usually cold in Otago, but I can’t remember. The only sensation my memory throws up is one of excitement. Mum had just asked us if we wanted to move to Australia and live with Dad again.

 

Unbeknownst to me, my parents were officially separated at the time.

 

I’d been under the impression that we’d left Bougainville because of the war and Dad stayed because his job as the wharf’s foreman was important.

 

When the situation became too dangerous for Panguna mine to continue operating Dad returned to Australia to find work, eventually ending up in Blackwater. Following his To Her Door moment, he asked Mum if we would join him. To this day I’m not sure she would have if it weren’t for the enthusiasm expressed by myself and her other child.

 

Blackwater is representative of most Queensland mining towns in so much as it is a shithole – a town so flat that the only slope suitable for a hill start when taking your driving test is the library’s driveway. The persistent dry heat was something I had no recollection of experiencing in my six years post-birth. Windows and doors were left open, provided they had fly screens on them.

 

I remember our first dinner when the kitchen screens were blanketed with flies as Mum made Spag Bol. I also recall having to run around shutting windows when the wind was blowing the wrong way and coal dust or dirt would engulf the town. Asthma was rife among the children I found myself attempting to be educated with and I wouldn’t be surprised to discover that the ground water is contaminated. Once, some genius at the water treatment plant forgot to flick the “clean the water” switch and every faucet in town was dispersing water straight from Bedford Weir similar to the colour and consistency you expel from your bowel when suffering Salmonella poisoning.

 

It wasn’t all bad. There was a BMX track until they closed it, a Drive-In until “The Thursday Storm” sent a section of the screen through the uninsured projection room and the town pool wasn’t terrible except it was shut over “winter”. Like the rest of Queensland, Blackwater folk know that anything below thirty degrees Celsius is cold and it doesn’t get hot until the mercury hits forty (if you hear a Queenslander complaining about the heat and it’s in the thirties, you just need to wait for “the temperature’s fine, it’s the fucking humidity”).

 

Aside from that there were two rugby league clubs, Aussie rules, pony, soccer, golf, tennis and all the other clubs that exist in regional towns of medium size. But there was still nothing to do. Sure, I played league for a while, soccer for a bit, Tae Kwon Do and maybe two or three rounds of golf, but Blackwater is a town that by its very nature forces children to entertain and educate themselves. Trust me, if you ever need someone to catch some yabbies, herd a peacock and his hens into your backyard or build a bomb from common household products, ask a kid from The Coalfields.

 

We were able to develop these skills because we had little parental supervision and really only saw the police if venturing near the highway.

 

It’s not like either entities were absent. Before Mum became the weekend librarian, she was a stay at home parent. On my first day of school I took the scenic route home because I had no idea which way home was. Being prone to panic Mum called the cops to report me missing. I just rode around town until I recognised some buildings Dad had driven past on our first entry to Blackwater as a family and oriented myself.

 

I was only a block away from my new abode when a marked police car pulled up beside me. The officer inside addressed me by name and instructed me to put my bike in the boot so he could drive me the hundred-odd metres to my house. Don’t start me on White Privilege, I had no idea what that was when I was six, I mention it only to demonstrate that this was the single interaction I had with the local cops in the half-dozen years I lived in Blackwater full-time. Of course we had a PCYC at which I attended events occasionally and sometimes I’d have to accompany a parent to the local station on an administrative task, but they never came after me for blowing shit up, trespassing, or any of my other indiscretions, of which there were many.

 

I won’t say that Blackwater turned me into a Hustler, but it was definitely where the foundations were laid.

 

My Mother will suggest to you that I was led astray by the company I kept. This suggestion is wrong. If anything, the opposite is true, and Mum really needs to shoulder some of the responsibility for her child’s criminality. It’s not her fault, but not to identify her as a complicit enabler would be negligent of me.

 

As I have already mentioned, Mum was the replacement librarian for a few years and because it wasn’t feasible for me to spend all my time at the houses of the two or three friends I had when both parents were working, the Library became something of a second home. This became problematic around the time I’d exhausted all of the age appropriate fiction and graduated to the sex heavy, guns and killing people section of the book depository. A literary diet of special agents, detectives, mercenaries and soldiers accompanied by a regular injection of non-fiction serial killers, war and rape is probably not the best education for a child but it served to open my eyes to the wider world and the complexity of the human condition.

 

Comic books were another medium that opened my eyes, but without many of those in the library, I had to venture to one of the newsagents to get my fix. There were two to choose from and in some strange confluence of Capitalism and Misogyny, both decided to stock the Comics next to the Porn. While the Comics appealed to a pair of my greatest loves, those being reasonable art and passable dialogue, there was always an urge to pick up the magazines to my left.

 

I can’t remember when I subversively (not subversively) started thumbing through the smut pile, but I was probably eleven or twelve when, heart pounding in a different style to what  it had ever in the past, palms sweating and ready to ride home in shame when refused service for attempting to buy pornographic material, I picked a magazine from the shelf and walked to the counter.

 

The girl behind that counter looked at the cover and asked me for the price printed there.

 

She smiled at me, this girl, only a couple of years older than myself, as I fumbled with the shrapnel in haste to pay her, worried she might change her mind, stuffing the magazine down my shorts. She smiled at me as I handed over four or five two buck coins’ I’d earned from baking cakes. She smiled at me as I scurried out the door on my way to revel in masturbatory glory before my parents got home and she smiled into the future as I swiftly became a regular consumer of pornography from that store.

 

This is the part where the blocks start falling into place. What I had figured out by this juncture is that if you don’t have to pay for anything related to produce the product supplied, you will be making one hundred percent profit. From baking cakes to peddling pictures of pussy might seem a bit of a stretch so you’ll have to bear with me as I unpack this.

 

My Father taught me how to weld, drive a car, cook savoury food, operate a drill/grinder/[insert power tool here] and swear like a sailor after smashing my thumb with a hammer, but it was my Mother who taught me how to bake.

 

It wasn’t something I’d planned, but on a whim one day I asked Mum if she would pay me two dollars to bake a cake.

 

When she agreed, I embarked on a determined campaign to bake as many cakes as I could in the shortest amount of time possible. This foray into catering funded the aforementioned purchase of my first pornographic magazine and many more, only because I wasn’t paying for anything required to bake the cakes.

 

When The Universe decided to intervene and set me on my path it was bright and sunny outside, but I was ensconced in my room with my left hand turning pages while the right was otherwise occupied. I’d taken advantage of Mum being in the backyard, hanging out the washing (At that age, five minutes is easily enough time). I was interrupted when the phone rang and stashed the magazine under the permanent pile of crap beneath my desk. Expecting the caller to be someone seeking conversation with one of my parents, I was pleasantly surprised to find one of my friends on the other end of the line asking if I wanted to go and hang out at his place. I yelled my request for permission from the kitchen and Mum granted it.

 

Deciding that the odds of her entering my room were pretty low, I left the magazine where it was, ran downstairs, jumped on my bike and headed off to Haggis’ place for air-conditioning and pay TV.

 

Cutting through the high school, I rode behind the manual arts block where inside a skip-bin I had previously found the briefcase which, after some persistence I’d managed to unlock and turned into my smut safe. It is only with hindsight that I realise the significance of this moment. At the time, I was wholly fixated on getting to my mates and watching Soft Porn dressed up as Sci-Fi/Action movies.

 

Meanwhile Mum had decided that day was ideal for cleaning my room. She must have been bored because that was a task designated as mine. There was no phone call demanding my return home, so I spent the afternoon blissfully ignorant, watching boobs bracketed by bombs in climate-controlled comfort as my Mother toiled and discovered my spoils.

 

An offer to stay for dinner was not forthcoming that night so I headed home at the regular time (for those who grew up in cities, it’s when the streetlights come on).

 

After parking my bike and checking on the Guinea Pigs, I headed upstairs with the intention of restoring my magazine to its rightful place in the briefcase only to find a spotless room, sans porn. The briefcase was still there so I wasn’t entirely bereft but the magazine in question was nowhere to be seen.

 

I’d been busted.

 

Having become quite adept at the ancient art of getting away with shit by not being caught in the act – this was a serious failure on my part. I was no stranger to punishment, which probably explains my ability to wriggle out of receiving some.

 

Anticipating the inevitable moment when Mum would confront me with the incriminating document, I scrambled to prepare a justification.

 

She appeared in the doorway with a smug look on her face and one hand behind her back.

 

As is her wont, Mum stated the bleeding obvious by informing me that my room had been cleaned before revealing the unescapable fact that in the process a magazine had been unearthed. With more flourish than was necessary she revealed her prize and began casually flicking through the pages while I mounted my defence, which was essentially that I intended to sell it to another boy at school (this was not my intention). Whether she bought the justification or not, the magazine was handed over to me with a smile and words that have stuck with me forever.

 

‘I’m glad you’re interested in girls’

 

Her tacit approval surprised me and not only because I didn’t get in trouble but because in a few months I would be shipped off to an “elite” all boys boarding school in Brisbane. This isn’t abnormal for kids in the regions but most of them are farmer’s children, whereas my Father was a miner and I’m a miner’s son. Dad was still a Diesel Fitter at this point and while my parents could pay the school fees, they couldn’t afford to.

 

Being a (relatively) poor kid in a (very) rich school forced me to diversify my entrepreneurial endeavours as I lacked the facilities to bake cakes, even though the market was definitely there. I found myself in a situation where I was receiving ten dollars a week in pocket money while my peers were averaging between fifty and a hundred.

 

I had to do something.

 

In Blackwater I’d sold personalised drawings to classmates for a dollar or two, so I tried that, but the privileged class will only support The Arts if it benefits them – which is why I decided to start writing Smut. Having always been a fan of the written word, I especially enjoyed Penthouse Forum and took to mimicking the style of their writers. I managed to sell a few before actual magazines began turning up in the dorm, usually bought from a boy in an upper grade.

 

A picture is worth a thousand words, they say.

 

With only ten bucks regular income I had to find another revenue source and Porn was clearly a commodity in a hormonally charged all-male environment. It was the obvious choice. There were a few hurdles to clear before I could get my business up and running but it wasn’t long before I had a plan in place.

 

The first thing I needed was somewhere to steal Porn from, but being forced to wear the uniform whenever we went to the shops, meant I had to acquire myself some day boy friends who could facilitate me getting the fuck out of school over the weekends. Not being recognised as being on the Asperger’s Spectrum until my mid-thirties probably explains the difficulties I experienced during my adolescence when it came to social interactions, but I managed to make a few mates.

 

With that obstacle overcome, the next was to locate a secure storage space for my product. Having been found in possession of a prohibited magazine early on in my incarceration, I was well aware that to keep the material in the boarding house would result in more lectures about morality from the reverend, possibly a caning and my parents would be informed (Not that my Mother would care, she had a Penthouse waiting for me the first time I came home on holidays. Weird, right?). The reality was that although my parents wouldn’t discipline me for something they clearly didn’t see as a serious character flaw – the school would.

 

Noticing that there were more day boy lockers than day boys. I used my meagre funds to invest in a padlock and secured an empty locker in the area allocated to the sporting house my mates were in.

 

All that was required now was to stock my shelves.

 

Shoplifting was a practice I had only dabbled in up to this point – a chocolate bar or one of those blister packs that used to be stuck on the cover of a magazine with a toy of some sort inside. Small things. Inconsequential really, but that had been my training and it was all I had. In the examples I had seen on the small and big screens, you would always be busted if you tried to stuff something down your waistband.

 

Having taken up skateboarding and the associated fashion of the time, I found myself decked out in cargo shorts that allowed me to stand next to my prize and slide the magazine up my leg into my waistband. After a few test-runs on the cheaper publications near the bottom of the racks proved successful, I upped my game and started going for the sought-after titles. While Picture and People had been easy enough to sell, they weren’t turning the profit I was after. Even though they were contraband they were considered second rate, Penthouse and particularly Hustler were highly prized, but the publications sold in sealed bags could make me a fortune.

 

With greater risk, come greater riches.

 

When the compulsory uniform rule outside school grounds was scrapped, I’d perfected my method of acquiring stock. Even took a few private jobs for kids who didn’t have the courage to steal it themselves but wanted a particular product (obviously a surcharge was applied), but The Locker was the main earner.

 

The business model was simple – cheap were two dollars, the higher shelves were two dollars less than cover price and the sealed bags were two dollars above it. Remember, this is all profit and the reason I wasn’t just charging the advertised price is because the bagged books were obviously not “used” (yes, that is the sort of language we employed), even though mine weren’t, I managed to undercut anyone else who was charging cover price for “used” porn. By the time I was in grade ten, I was the guy in the older grade that kids bought their porn from.

 

While I wouldn’t suggest I was rolling in cash I was making enough to think about diversifying again.

 

In prisons the world over, cigarettes are a commodity and this one was no different. It wasn’t too difficult finding customers willing to pay at least five bucks more per packet than I had. There was also a steady market in individual smokes for a dollar or a service. When I had been “gated” (grounded) or was too lazy to walk to Domino’s or 7-11, a couple of darts was considered fair payment to get someone else to do it.

 

By grade eleven I’d added alcohol to my repertoire to see off a severe drop in revenue from the porn sales due mainly to the internet becoming faster. I was also too busy fucking my girlfriend (who was into porn and had internet) to be overly concerned about the ejaculatory desires of others.

 

The Locker had moved locations as the terms and years ticked by. Sometimes of my own volition, on others because a locker inspection had occurred, and my stash had been discovered. Because I didn’t use a school issued lock and The Locker wasn’t allocated to anyone, the bolt cutters had to be employed. I was never present on these occasions as I would be standing next to my bed (room by this point in the narrative) but would be told the inevitable when classes resumed and wrote it off as a business expense.

 

Dad graduated Uni and got a job at the same mine, but out from under the grease. My pocket money gradually increased to the hundred dollars my peers had been receiving in grade eight. Some of them were now getting five.

 

I’d begun avoiding Blackwater and would take any opportunity not to return (excluding suspensions, two overnight train trips turned a three-day suspension into a five-day holiday).

 

My last visit to the town that had moulded me into a fat kid who could entertain himself because he was awkward around people, then turned to porn because girls weren’t interested in him was probably at the end of grade ten. I’d begrudgingly gone home for a few weeks over christmas because no one else would have me until New Year’s Eve, only to find nothing had really changed in Blackwater. Most of my friends had moved away years ago but aside from that, it was the same as the day I left when I was thirteen. It was me that had changed.

 

Taller, faster and stronger, most of my fat had turned to muscle. I would jog around town clicking my fingers in time with my footfalls. Body dysmorphia had made exercise something of a religion to me.

 

Some of the blokes I’d been friendly with in primary school rocked up to the pool one night when I was swimming laps. Being both deluded and dedicated to my regime, I reacted poorly when the son of my old league coach decided to tackle me in the shallows as I was turning to start a new lap. Kicking away from him without acknowledgement in order to finish my self-imposed kilometre, I cemented in their minds the idea that I was a privileged prick from a private school.

 

They weren’t wrong, I’d been indoctrinated but would only figure it out after I left the pool without even waving farewell, I essentially shut the door on Blackwater. I thought it offered me nothing.

 

For the rest of my stay if I wasn’t exercising or eating, I was writing something or reading a book. I existed in Blackwater but was removed from it. There were no longer calls to ask me to go yabbying or anyone to herd peahens with if they happened to turn up again. I’d given up on building bombs myself by this point but if an invitation to an explosion was forthcoming, I would have been the first to RSVP.

 

I accompanied my parents to Dad’s christmas party where I discovered that desk drivers have different parties to workers who sweat. Being the only child deemed old enough to drink mid strength beer, I stood with my Father and his co-workers until I was bored enough to walk home. For some reason, this is my last memory of Blackwater, I can’t even remember if I left by car or train when I returned to Brisbane.

 

Despite Mum giving me the option of leaving school and getting an apprenticeship, I went back and selected subjects I could pass with minimal effort. Learning has never been hard for me, but I can honestly say that coasting through the last two years of school and graduating with a mid-range final score that matched the best score achieved by Blackwater State High was somewhat satisfying. It’s also indicative of the gap between bush public schools and their private counterparts in the city. I know this because the woman with the highest score from Blackwater was smarter than me.

 

For my final two years I was granted the privilege of signing out to the unit my parents had bought, under my own volition, which was probably all that prevented me from being expelled and likely contributed to me securing the aforementioned girlfriend.

 

While The Locker had never been linked to me I was regularly in trouble for a wide range of infractions and spent those last two years on a good behaviour contract.

 

In one’s final year of boarding school it is customary to pass on the responsibilities that somehow ended up being yours to a younger child. I handed off the duty of bearing the house shield to intraschool competitions, to a farmer’s boy, which resulted in it being nicked for the first time in four years, forcing me to be involved in fisticuffs to ensure it’s safe return.

 

The Locker was my creation but warranted a transfer of ownership in the spirit of condoned traditions, despite undermining the establishment housing it.

 

Not wanting to repeat my mistake with the shield, I interviewed extensively because I realised the school needed it. The administration wouldn’t have approved but they were incompetent – I’d run a black market under their noses for almost five years and it had to remain a thorn in their side.

 

What I realised in my final days when choosing my successor was that a shithole mining town had provided me with the skill set required to operate a criminal enterprise in an authoritarian environment for half a decade. I needed a Hustler to continue operation of The Locker so I did what anyone with sense would do and asked a kid from The Coalfields.