littlehampton

On 3 February 1979 I drive the Kombi out of Childers in the Strzelecki Ranges for the last time. School resumes but I’m no longer employed by the Victorian Education Department, after three years teaching my resignation effective from 1 February.

The Kombi is pregnant with worldly goods, a pregnant woman, two dogs and a cat, and tows a trailer with goat, milking stand and bags of goat fodder. We drive to Adelaide in 42 degree heat that kills the Kombi.

Rock and Kate, formerly of Bemboka Road, live in a large old house on what is now the old Princes Highway at Littlehampton, behind the Adelaide Hills. We plan to make a little commune, live off our wits and talents. I set up two trestle tables under the eastern verandah where I make leather bags and sandals. Marilyn prepares to have a baby.

Almost on the day we arrive, Rock gets a contract teaching job at Gilles Plains. Kate’s two boys attend the local primary school. She waitresses evenings in a dirndl at The Old Mill in Hahndorf. The commune concept is dead before delivery.

My super payout buys a new engine for the Kombi. I drive to Summertown each day to be a builder’s labourer for a hippy couple. Vivienne lectures in astrology, herbalism and the occult at Adelaide University; Stuart, master mathematician, makes mud-bricks and constructs a dodecagonal  zodiac house, the slab a twelve-slice pizza of geometric art.

Each afternoon Marilyn and I bake bread for the six hungry mouths in our communal house. Rock and I start pre-season training at Mt Barker footy club. Kate might or might not be having an affair with Werner, an ugly little waiter at the Mill.

Eccentric people populate Littlehampton. Thommo unzips and pisses at the men’s urinals in the local pub: interesting young woman. Eckermann smokes wads of dope, breaks into houses, has a coffee, does the housework, leaves nice notes. His domestic philanthropy doesn’t amuse local police.

Our communal togetherness spirals downhill from March into June. One morning Kate and Marilyn stir rival porridge pots on rival gas rings. Things erupt. Marilyn retreats to Melbourne for the sake of the baby due soon. I look for somewhere for us to live, find nothing, know despair for the first time.

A truculent Kate can’t abide my rational responses to her verbal attacks on me. She turns me out of the house. I pedal away at midnight in an overcoat, sleeping bag under one arm. Eckermann provides floor space and a commiseration joint.

Stuart and Vivienne rescue us by taking an end-of-semester Sydney holiday to see family. Marilyn and I move into their octagonal mud-brick barn for a week and set about mastering macrobiotics.

Rock on.