The Struggle – Part I
I was born to a single, alcoholic mother, we lived in the Western Suburbs of Sydney, I had an adopted sister, who was the daughter of a small time biker group and she also had a few mental disabilities.
When I was about three years old, my mother met a man named Tony, who, at first, seemed like a nice guy, from as much as a 3 year old could gather.
Over the years, Tony started becoming quite violent, my mother started drinking more and given that we lived on five acres of land, my mother and Tony thought it was the perfect opportunity to make our place the party place every Saturday night.
Tammy, my adopted sister, didn’t quite mind it, as she was a few years older than me and every Saturday party, her dad, named Animal, would rock up with the rest of “the boys” on their motorbikes.
Some of those nights were enjoyable, others, not so much, there would frequently be fist fights, bottles broken over people’s heads, and just general chaos, at those times I would run off to my tree house in the next paddock, sometimes I’d stay there for a few days at a time, just sneaking into the house to get food, but I always managed to get caught at some point and then came the beating for disappearing, handed out by Tony as my mother watched.
Over the years Tony’s beatings progressed, he never hit Tammy or Michelle, who was his daughter, but I’m sure my beatings got worse as his way of getting out his anger from them as well.
One day I was down in the back paddock, I found one of Tony’s spirit levels, there was also a hammer, so being a kid, about nine years old at the time, I started tapping the hammer on the glass part of the level, needless to say it broke and the second it did, I felt myself being lifted from the ground by my head and tossed about a metre, Tony must have been watching me the whole time!
After he threw me,I got up an ran, into the house, worst place possible, he caught me in the loungeroom and chucked his massive boot at my face, hitting me square in the nose, as you can imagine I screamed, which I guess made him even more angry and the fists and kicks just kept coming until I’d drooped down to the floor, the fists stopped at that point and he decided he’d just stomp on me repeatedly.
By now, my mother had come running from wherever she had been and seen him stomping on me in the corner of the loungeroom, she did her best to pull him away and so he hit her, the way he did it, with such force, woke a drive in me, I got to my feet, ran at him and kicked him right between his legs and then I ran!
Tony chased me around the paddocks for a while until he got tired and left me be, probably knowing he could catch me again when I go back in the house.
Later that night he went out and my mother gathered myself, Tammy and our things and we left, we had our own Housing Commission house in Whalan but we spent most of our time at Tony’s property.
My mum sat us down the next day, she and I both bruised and cut from the attack the day before, asking us if we wanted to go back to the “farm”, that’s what we called Tony’s place. I said no, I said we would be better off in Whalan, Tammy didn’t really care, though I think secretly she’d have preferred to go back.
We stayed in Whalan from that point, my mothers drinking got worse, she started getting abusive to Tammy and I, Tony called threatening to shoot us, to which my mum said drunkenly “come on then ya bastard!”, he turned up two days later, got out of the car with his rifle and just stood there outside his car on the road staring at the house, was pretty scary, but he eventually left and we didn’t hear much from him after that.
The next few years is what started shaping my life….i’ll put up Part II shortly