ringwood

1974. Two blokes, two dogs. Rock finishes his teacher training at Mercer House, the place where teachers for the independent sector train. He gets an outdoor education position at Yarra Valley Grammar. We move out of the Caulfield Grammar boarding house and look for a place to live in the eastern suburbs.

Kendall Street is a dead-end on the south side of Ringwood railway station; number 34 is the last house in the street, a run-down weatherboard opposite the back gate of Ringwood Primary School. The place has an old milk bar attached, the former tuck shop for the school. A milkman’s horse and cart still clip-clop past in the early hours.

Rock paints his room navy blue. I move into the shop. Furniture is minimalist—packing crates for clothes storage. Robyn and Ro move in to help pay the rent. Rob’s a primary phys ed teacher and master horsewoman. Ro studies phys ed at the same teachers college where I now study drama, having fallen out with the phys ed department. They don’t like my beanies and bare feet.

The dogs romp endlessly. I bake bread on Monday nights in the old Rayburn in the kitchen. Rock and I smoke dope when we can. The girls do their own things—Robyn show-jumping, Ro dancing. Rock alternates between Ringwood and Yarra Valley’s outdoor ed centre at Lake Glenmaggie. He brings two feral cats, Sodom and Gomorrah, home from the Heyfield tip.

Life is carefree, great fun. No one is married or has a mortgage. We pile the dogs into a four-wheel drive and explore the Avon wilderness and the Macalister River behind Lake Glenmaggie. I play on the half-back flank for Ringwood in the tough bruising EDFL. I rekindle my relationship with Cate, my first girlfriend.

My dog, The Pod, disappears one day and for the following 23 days. Finally I track her down via a local vet, a day from death at the North Melbourne lost dogs’ home. She has a broken leg set in a huge plaster. The vet tells me the local ranger brought her in after she was hit by a car. He pulled his gun but couldn’t pull the trigger. She lives another 16 years.

One night in third term Rob tells us that an old farmhouse next to the property where she agists her horses at Warranwood is coming up for rent: five acres, sheds that could be stables, set among abandoned apple orchards. We break our lease on Kendall Street and somehow get our bond back despite the navy blue walls.

Bemboka Road, here we come.

Rock on.