Deep down, I was in limbo. I was very active but the pieces weren’t coming together. Was I going to keep working as a kitchen hand forever? A Labourer? I didn’t quite know why I was in Sydney any more. Vaughan was off on his own trip, which ultimately took a bad turn: he had an undiagnosed schizophrenic condition that was just coming out, with a bit of a hand from too much weed. I was starting to feel adrift.
Towards the end of the year, I decided to move back up to Dorrigo. Margaret and another auntie came down and helped pack the car and move me up. I was lucky to have that support; they’d do anything for us at the drop of a hat. The house was still there, untouched apart from a bit of maintenance Jo and Gary Beaumont had done to keep it tidy. I got my old job back with the tree-planting company, doing reforestation. Melissa moved in and we stayed until the end of 1998.
A hellish year ended in a hellish way. On New Year’s Eve, Melissa’s dad, a dairy farmer, was in a car accident and had a stroke. She was really upset. He didn’t fully recover. Melissa moved up to Lismore to be closer to her family, which made things tricky for us. I hitchhiked ridiculous distances, spending up to a couple of hours waiting for lifts, all to see Melissa. My work moved up to Grafton, which was a bit closer, but her life had taken a pretty dramatic turn and I think her focus had moved from being with me to caring for her dad, which was fair enough. We eventually called it quits, with no hard feelings either way. She’d been an essential person in my healing process, and now she was being even more important for her dad.
While I was living in Dorrigo, I linked up with an old surfer named Kelvin, who lived at Wooli. He and his wife had been friends of Mum’s, and Brent and I knew their kids. Kelvin was stumpy and brown, and we called him ‘Bilbo Baggins’. He definitely had his own way of doing things. Kelvin taught me how to surf, something I’d always wanted to do but hadn’t spent long enough at the beach to put in the commitment. It was such an amazing feeling getting a wave, a total escape, with the sea water performing its own magic, delivering its own hypnosis. Kelvin became a personal mentor too. I was obsessed with surfing and wanted to do it every day. I loved the sense of adventure in finding a wave. I’d put my board under my arm and hitchhike to Sawtell and stay at the beach all day. When you were hunting a wave, there was nothing else you needed to think about. Kelvin showed me I could heal myself by switching from unhealthy to healthy addictions.
I’d like to think some wisdom or self-awareness came with it. I could definitely feel the anger and aggression draining out of me, and saw the pointlessness in a lot of what I’d been doing. It was like a detox. Surfing taught me not to give up: when you’re getting smashed and your arms are noodles, you just have to drive yourself on. Sometimes I crammed three long sessions into a day. No half-measures! I’d hitchhike for three hours and find the surf was absolute crap; it didn’t matter, I’d still go out alone. I loved how surfing was simply me against me. The only person I was proving a point to was myself. Nobody cared whether I made a wave or not, or survived a heavy wipe-out.
The Crossroad is published by Pan Macmillan and available at all good book stores.
