A Bad Moon

I feel like I've revisited half my life over the past three weeks and it's left me drained. A mood change swamped me like a wave as summer ended. The weather turned on cue. I've felt most unsettled. With the change of season and two weeks off I had plenty of time to think, and haven't yet settled into a new work routine.

In the first week of our holiday at Lakes Entrance it struck me that my first visit to the Lakes house was our honeymoon in February 1981. It was a relatively new holiday house then. Lib and her dad Bill pegged the house site out in the early seventies. Bill died in 2000. The house now is approaching forty years old and has rotting timber to show for it.

Our drive across Victoria to South Australia in the second week of March was nostalgic. As we passed towns and turnoffs with signs to other towns I recalled the camping holiday with young kids in the Grampians, picking up a load of bees at Lillimur Sth for Norm Redpath, working in the mallee one summer for the Tonkins. Memories flooded me. All the way I told stories to Lib, one after another. I think she was asleep most of the time, her eyes were shut, I'm sure she's heard them before, but I kept talking anyway.

After a stop at Horsham the first night, we arrived at Normanville on the west side of the Fleurieu peninsula around 6.00pm. Going through Yankalilla only minutes earlier I noticed a second hand book shop. I knew I'd find my way back there for a browse. It was little Sis Meredith's 55th birthday the next week, maybe I'd find something.

Except for the coastal tourist playground towns of Victor Harbour and Port Elliot which have a 'developed', 'yuppie' feel as Lib described, and were consequently avoided by us after our initial drive through, the Flourieu peninsula is rural (olde) with stone farmhouses and ruins of farmhouses. A 'blast from the past', you could say, consistent with the powerful nostalgia I'd been experiencing.

On our second day at Normanville while Lib was having an afternoon nap in our cabin at the Beachside caravan park, I went into town to get a steak for tea, not having been able to catch a fish. I ducked first into the bookshop which turned out to have all sorts of odd bric-a-brac for sale. A walk down memory lane itself.

On the top of a stack of books was one 'Skyhooks', about the pop music group of the seventies. I never liked their music but I flicked to the chapter on Graeme 'Shirley' Strachan who lived a few doors up in the same street as us in Mt.Waverley, and was the same age as me. We went through primary school together. There was a picture of 'Shirley' in grade 1C. I wasn't in the class photo, I must have been in another grade 1, but after 50 years I recognized many kids, like Billy Edwards, Tony Smith and Michael Sullivan, and girls Gail Beaton, Robyn Hudson, Pauline Mathews and Gay Elliot. I hadn't seen most of these kids for probably 45 years but there they were, and names sprang to me. Those of us still alive, of course, would all be the same age now. 'Strachany' died in a helicopter crash in a storm near where he lived in Queensland some years ago. The last time I saw him was outside Swinburne tech. in 1971. I was on my way up the road to the Governor Hotham hotel where I spent most of my time, when a voice called my name. He was doing his 'school day' as part of his carpentry apprenticeship and he was always the warm friendly person glad to see you.

We drove home from Warrnambool last Saturday week, through cold and rain. We gave Meredith a book on cottage gardens and an oldish cup and saucer I'd found in Yankalilla, for her birthday on March 18. That night I was in the bath reading the death notices in the Herald Sun. A cousin of Lib's had dropped dead suddenly on the weekend. I don't buy Rupe's rag but Gord brought one home so Lib could check the notices. I saw a notice for Geoff Lamb, another friend from Mt. Waverley days who had died on the 27th of Feb. There was only one notice, by his brother and sister, who were both younger.

Lamby's family moved to Mt. Waverley in the mid sixties and he attended Syndal tech. where a lot of my friends went. I met him through them and we were close friends, despite me being a grammar school boy, through the turbulent years from about 15-20 years of age. Geoff was a 'sharpie' and had a reputation for being a good fighter, the toughest bloke in his year at a tough school, with the exception probably of 'Peaky', though the two never fought it out. The sharpies looked for trouble with the 'mods' and street brawls were not uncommon. Bro Jod and his mates also went to Syndal tech and our house was a bit of a meeting place. We had a games room with a 3/4 size billiard table, and as mum worked there was no parent to cramp anyone's style, Saturdays also.

Geoff left school after year 10 and worked for a good while at Radio Rentals as a junior storeman until he could stand it no more. He was unemployed for a long time and drank heavily and suffered long periods during which he was morose and lacking motivation. Other times he was full of energy, chasing after girls with whom he had extraordinary success, and looking to fight rivals. We knew he was prescribed medication although we had no understanding. He was Lamby, wild, and someone to be careful of, but a loyal friend. An urban warrior who needed time out now and again to recharge his batteries. He had an electric guitar and amplifier and saw himself as a rock star about to be discovered. He gathered a group of young blokes around him to form a band. We could here them practising loudly from our house a couple of hundred metres away. Of course Geoff was the lead singer. To this day I can't hear a 'Credence Clearwater' song without thinking of him. His father, an ex Japanese POW, invalid and half blind resulting from the years of malnutrition, was found dead one day outside the post office having collapsed on his evening walk.

When I told Jod that Geoff had died, he told me he remembered coming home from work and seeing someone lying prostrate on the nature strip of the church opposite our house. It was Geoff, pissed paraletic so Jod thought, so he tipped water on his head to try to revive him. He didn't wake up, made gurgling noises and groaned which put the wind up Jod so he went and got Mrs Lamb. She got an ambulance and Geoff ended up in hospital, and had a stint in Larundel. When he mixed alcohol with his medication he could quickly lose it. The pills made him feel good so he'd take more than he was supposed to.

Many nights while I was doing year 12, most in fact, when I was supposed to be studying, Geoff would come round to our house and sneak through the garden and down the side of the house to my bedroom window. He'd knock gently. For countless hours that year we talked. He didn't want to come in, he was happy to sit outside chainsmoking. At those times times he was quiet and peaceful. He'd fathered a child to a girl that lived round the corner. He needed to talk.

His funeral was today. There were 10 people. His brother and sister, their three children, three cousins, an aunt, and myself. It was well over 30 years since I last saw Geoff. He was well. He'd had bought a car, '66 Holden that was spotless, and was working part time cleaning up building sites for an uncle. Ricky Ralph and I often wondered together about Geoff's later life when we had a chin wag. His birthday was 7days before Rick's. We looked through the Melbourne phone book once and rang around without success.

Geoff's brother Robert told me today that Geoff had a sad life. He suffered mental illness, misdiagnosed early on so he never had appropriate treatment. He deteriorated over time and lived the solitary life of a recluse. Bob hadn't seen him for a long time before he died. He lived with his mother until she died eleven years ago, then moved into a flat in the same area. It wasn't known what was the cause of death, possibly a massive stroke or heart attack, he wasn't found for quite a while. Whatever it was, it was the mental illness that caused the premature death, even if something else was the agent. He didn't think Geoff planned to go, he loved fishing and had recently bought a small outboard motor. Bob found it when he went to the flat to clean it out, along with the old electric guitar and amplifier. He had the same car and had been seen driving it fairly recently by neighbours. The flat was not a pretty site.

The celebrant told me he was a friend of Bob's, before the service, having been a teacher at the same school and a pastor to boot, before retirement. He conducted Bob's wife's funeral four years earlier. She died of cancer. In the service he said Geoff lived a life of isolation in his later years. He encouraged the small congregation not to feel guilt at Geoff's passing. He quoted Ecclesiastes and Jesus Christ and stressed that there is a kingdom and an afterlife. He did a wonderful job.

I don't usually cry at funerals, but as the small group followed the hearse out of the Simplicity Funerals chapel into Koornang Rd. and watched it drive away, tears came. Too late. I just wish I hadn't lost contact with Geoff. We left Mt. Waverley first, in 1971. I called in to see Geoff again, or his mum, one day, maybe 20 years ago. The house was gone, replaced by professional suites.

Where the Strachan house used to be was by then part of a Safeway carpark. Our old house survived a few more years, but it is now long gone, replaced by swisho apartments.

I now must get back to living and thinking in the present. For my sake. Dwelling too much in the past can bring a bad moon on the rise.