bemboka

Late in 1974 Ro, Rock, Robyn and I leave Kendall Street behind Ringwood Station and move into an old farmhouse in Warranwood, ruined apple orchard country. Bemboka Road snakes its dusty pot-holed way from Kalinda Road at the Ringwood end to the power pylons in Wonga Park. It’s a dream.

I claim a tacked-on room with louvered verandah, sink and shower in the covered gap between house and extension. I come and go as I please, cook my own meals, point the shower-nozzle out the window and soap up under a mountain fern overhanging the verandah in hot weather.

Robyn’s horses Ben and Zack (Isaac) pootle around on five acres and are floated elsewhere each weekend to jump hurdles and prance around on sawdust. Eccentric Ro nurses her motorbike-accident-riven body in the sun around the side of the house. She has bad body odour.

Rock teaches remedial English at Yarra Valley Grammar where our road meets Kalinda Road. He immediately decamps next door to live with randy Kate and her two young sons. They fuck day and night, and at recess too if he has a spare the period after.

Hidden in the bush a kilometre further down Bemboka Road is a large lily-padded dam. Over summer we swim naked, loll about toking joints on the grassy verge. We and our dogs know no boundaries. The Pod produces a pod, eight puppies born under a bench in an old laundry at the back of the house. Grogan, son of Pod, joins us while the others all find owners.

I become Sailor after my character in John Arden’s Live like pigs, and complete my teacher training as a double drama major. End-of-year tours presenting OCERITs (observed community experiences re-interpreted in theatre) to secondary schools around Victoria highlight my callow existence.

Carlton United Breweries employ me at their hop research station on Maroondah Highway on Fridays when I have no lectures. I have long deep-and-meaningfuls with the young researcher over cups of tea in the laboratory, weed acres of hop garden, train runners up strings, water the seedlings and ventilate the glasshouses over weekends.

On Saturdays I man the back flank for Ringwood. Four times we come up short against our arch-enemy East Ringwood, by two points each time in home and away games, three points in the second semi, and eight in the grand final.

Donnybrooks blot Eastern District League games. After a final against Ferntree Gully I escort several team mates from the field and we wait in the sheds until the rest of the team and bloodied club officials arrive. Opposition WAGs pillory my refusal to assault their husbands and boyfriends.

I finish third in the club best and fairest; the word fairest is important to me. The spirit of the game means as much to me as the skills and the fierce desire to beat an opponent.

Rock on.