Chap 1 The Shed

A hobby farm, a dried creekbed and a dream.

I have no idea how to do this so I’m going to thought dump about my weird childhood for a bit. Firstly I’d like to give credit to

Cory

for helping me have the guts to try writing this stuff out. I don’t know what my life has been like in relation to others. So I’m a little wary of coming accross ungrateful, or unbearably boring (assuming someone reads this) - if you are, thanks for reading!

I grew up on a small farm in Gerogery, 30 mins outside Albury. My father and a few of his SDA church friends built our “house” on the land. We called it “the shed” because it really was just a big shed - it had four walls, was made of corrugated steel and the floor was concrete. No walls on the inside. Thankfully it did have plumbing and hot water (which I got terribly burned by and required skin grafts but I digress).

My older brother an I slept in the caravan which fit inside the shed.

We used to love exploring in the deep creekbed nearby which was dried up. Once, when I was about 4, my mother had been upset by something we did (I dont’ remember) and she told us to “go away.”

“Do you think she meant it?” Aaron had asked sadly.

“Ofcourse not!” I said, “she still loves us.”

We had then spent the next few hours in the creekbed, just walking as far as our little legs would take us. When we were almost back home, I realised Aaron had dissappeared. The next instant, I heard a loud male voice shout “There’s one of em!” and as I looked up I saw a gun in his hand. I instantly thought we’d been caught for tresspassing until I saw mother beside him. It was just the search party that had been sent out to find us.

We had rabbits, guinea pigs, two cows and a couple of sheep which I helped dad castrate. Not really, I just passed him the rubbers when he needed them.

We lived very simply. I remember one time my mother attempted to make bread. It came out so hard that even the dog coudln’t eat it. We played footy with it.

I don’t remember much else except that around age 5, my parents began to fight pretty bad. They’d be screaming all the time. On one occasion, a knife was being held up in the air by my mother while my father had held her back.

I started to have a recurring dream about the fighting. It was a strange dream because it was just blackness that started with whispers, that then would eventually build into the sound of screaming.

Next thing I know, Dad had moved to Canberra and we were now living in Albury without him.

I’m unsure where to go from here…the story takes a pretty bad turn. I’ll try to make more sense in Chap 2.