5. Shake

Moving to live in New South Wales was a pretty scary thought. I mean when you are seven years old, the last thing you need on your mind is needing to make new friends and trying to fit in again. But that was what we did.

The caravan park in Chain Valley Bay was pretty convenient for us. Doris lived around the corner and was now on good terms again with Martin, while we still had the family privacy to enjoy our own little thing. The caravan park was just awesome for kids. We had a heated swimming pool and easy access to the lake where we use to catch crabs and long-tons on handlines. New South Wales was just so much better for fishing than Victoria. You could catch 4 or 5 fish in an hour just using a handline and stale bread on a hook. Fishing was the best!

Christmas in 1989 was pretty memorable, but all for the wrong reasons. Martin had already saved my life once in 1987 when a soft-mud dam grappled my ankles and began to eat me up. Sinking in mud is probably the weirdest thing I ever experienced. The more you try to escape, the quicker you sink. I can’t remember then exactly how far under I went – all I know was that if Martin wasn’t there to pull me out, I’d still be at the bottom of that hungry dam today.

Just before Christmas I was in the caravan park pool with my sister. We were messing around with flips and turns underwater. It was extremely hot in December on the Central Coast. The pool was out best outlet to cool down and speed up those stinking hot days in the sun.

That one particular day was a day I will never forget. During an underwater flip, I totally blacked out. I can’t remember how or why I did, but I totally lost control of my body. Lucky for me, that man Martin was there again to save me. 

I had drowned.

As the story has been told to me many times, Martin jumped in fully clothed, dragged me out of the water, performed his magic Houdini tricks and just a few moments later, I was coughing up water and again breathing on Planet Earth. This guy must have been some sort of Angel sent down to protect me as a child. Twice in two years I was in a position where myself, Mum or Chantelle couldn't have saved me. Fate is a wonderful thing sometimes.

The ‘pool thing’ still gets brought up today, but we often refer to it jokingly in an effort to forget how serious that moment actually was. Martin always says that he had a winning trifecta in his back pocket paying $3,000 that he could never re-deem. The water had left everything in his wallet pretty much useless. I can’t say I ever called him a liar – what he did was amazing, so I’ll just agree that saving me cost him three big ones! The best three grand he ever spent!

On December 28^th 1989 shortly before 10:30am in the morning, we were at the local Supermarket picking up a few groceries. People often say that my memory is amazing, but sometimes you witness something that you will never forget. It gets etched onto a small part of your brain and never leaves you. I suppose at my age it was hard to understand what was happening. I remember seeing Coco Pops flying off shelves and breaking on the floor making a massive mess. Bottles of everything you could think of smashed all over the ground. It was like being in outer-space. Food was flying everywhere!

Martin had Mum and us kids hit the deck to avoid getting hit by a ‘ghosting food-fight’. Who was throwing all this food? He was leaning against a huge drink fridge to make sure it didn’t fall on top of us. It was about the only thing in the Supermarket that didn’t hit the deck.

The lady at the front counter was screaming her head off. Maybe this was the Apocalypse.

It probably lasted just one minute, but it was the longest minute I have ever lived. Sirens began echoing throughout the town and many people had walked onto the streets in total confusion. Australia was not the place in the world where this sort of thing happened.

The Newcastle earthquake killed 13 people that day and 160 others were hospitalised with injury. We didn’t live in Newcastle but we were only about 50kms away. God help the people who experienced the severity of the hit. What I saw that day in Chain Valley Bay was scary enough, let alone what the poor people in Newcastle must have seen.

Watching the news that night really was the ‘Horror Movie’ that the Skyhooks sung about in the seventies. Newcastle was torn to absolute shreds. So many buildings had cracked, crumbled and fallen to the ground. The mass of destruction really did make Newcastle look like a war-torn town. The damage was catastrophic.

We never felt the small after-shock that trembled the next day. In fact, we very rarely ever discussed this again after it had happened. Humans are amazing like that. When something bad happens, it seems to be swept under the rug and filed away for no future reference. I can’t remember the last time our family ever brought the earthquake up. Maybe it was best just to accept what had happened and be thankful that we could live to remember it. It was a better option than 13 other people had that fateful December day.

Martin had technically saved my life three times now. The dam, the pool and the unsteady fridge in the supermarket. I was only a young child, but the affect those events had on me still affect me today. I don’t swim – actually more to the fact, I can’t swim. I never took an interest in water ever again. Fear can affect the mind of even the strongest willed people in this world. I was definitely in total fear with pools, oceans and any large collection of water.

If I was a cat I’d be down to six lives already. But as a human, I was lucky to have been given three in my first 7 years of life. 

It puts a strange adage onto one of the world’s most spoken proverbs.

Life really does go on.

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4. Devil

We lived in Danks Street, South Melbourne. It may have been housing commission, but the three story town-house styled home just 200 metres from the beach, was pretty awesome. The old Arnott’s biscuit factory just up the road expelled an amazing smell every morning. Just like a bakery at 7am, with a little added sugar.

Mum and Martin had become very close. Not just that, Chantelle and I had also placed a massive trust in him as a person and potential father. This young Maltese man was showing maturity well-beyond his years.

A couple of weeks after coming back to Melbourne, Martin offered to babysit us kids and give Mum a free night out for a change. Mum was very hesitant. I knew exactly why. Chantelle was a small child, but had a tantrum and temper that would shake the broadest shoulders of any man. Her tantrums were so bad that she had to be restrained, just to stop her from seriously hurting herself. Despite what Mum was telling Martin, I’m sure he thought she was over-exaggerating. He was pretty confident that he could look after two toddlers and give Mum a break that she certainly deserved.

You have to remember that in 1987, mobile phones weren’t even heard of. In fact, I’m sure that car phones hadn’t even arrived yet – and if they had, they were way out of the price range for most individuals and families. I’m sure Martin would have loved a mobile phone in Mum’s handbag that night.

Sure enough, no more than half an hour after Mum had left, Chantelle started. This little girl could howl and scream louder than anyone. She had the punching strength of a professional boxer and her floor thuds would shake the walls of the house. Man could she throw a tantrum.

I remember Martin in a panic. He was simply in shock. Chantelle was breathing loudly and non-stop screaming and moaning. You could have sworn her head was going to do 360 degree turns and her eyes were about to start rolling around in their sockets. She had the strength to physically lift the weight of an adult male and toss them a couple of metres across the floor. I think this was what scared Martin the most.

Mum was lucky to have been gone an hour or two. By the time she had arrived home, Chantelle had exhausted herself and was snoozing away in her bed. The second Mum opened the door, Martin grabbed her by the shoulders. I think he was still shaking from what had just happened.

“Don’t you ever leave me alone with her again!” he said to Mum, with bright white eyes and a clear sense of fear. I had never seen him this frightened before.  In fact, even today I can’t recall ever seeing him in such a state of fear. Maltese men were warriors, not men of fear.

All Mum could do was frown and look down on him.

“I told you so” she muttered, “but you wouldn’t believe me, would you?”

It’s fair to say that Mum didn’t have a night to herself for a while after that. The reasons were clear. Chantelle needed Mum there to control her tantrums and make sure she didn’t hurt herself. I suppose it was a fathering lesson Martin learnt the hard way. Kids were a handful fair enough, but Chantelle was a bucket load. She was very high maintenance!

Even nowadays this topic often gets brought up. It is reflected on more jokingly than seriously, even though at the time it was definitely not a joke. For a sister who has grown up so elegantly through her twenties, is now engaged and a beautiful young woman, it is hard to imagine how she could have ever been such a brat toddler. Maybe it was a phase, or maybe the force came from a more ‘supernatural’ place. Our family all tend to believe the latter. You had to see her in action to even comprehend what she was capable of.

The Devil in a little flower dress? You be the judge.

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3. Woolombumbuck

The Woolombumbuck star was the brightest star in the sky and always the very first star to appear in the evening. It shone brightly upon the Woolombumbuck tree, where within, lived the Woolombumbuck babies. Only when the star shone bright, could the Woolombumbuck babies lay their weary heads to sleep.

Martin had some fantastic bedtime stories to tell us kids every night.  This one though, was easily our favourite. I don’t know how many times we sat outside the caravan waiting eagerly for the Woolombumbuck star to appear, knowing that those poor babies stuck in the tree couldn’t sleep until it did. The story was a classic and a fraud nonetheless, but I’m sure Martin repeated it most nights to ensure my sister and I could leave him and mum in peace. It’s hard to forget a story like that. It is magical as a 5 year old.

The morning would come and as usual, I was first awake. Sometimes it happened to be as early as 5:00am, but back then I was an early riser. The only channel we could get on the old caravan TV, was the ABC. If it was the weekend, the music show was on and I could once again re-write the countdown from when I awoke, right to number one. It was a way of filling in time before Jack High started. I was addicted to the game of bowls. Daphne Shaw and Rob Parella were in their prime back then and so were a young Cameron Curtis and Mark McMahon. It was easily the highlight of the week for me.

There is no doubt that watching big black balls rolling down a green and landing near the little white ball, was extremely weird for someone of my age. I don’t know exactly what it was that drew me to the sport, but I loved it. I knew all the top players and how the scoring worked. I understood why drives were played and why the famous block shot was played to stop Parella’s forehand drive. I wouldn’t have missed an episode for the world.

I was on such a high when the matches finished that I would get my sister up and we would go and swing on the old iron clothes line in the caravan park. This thing was a total disaster. It was crooked, had huge spider webs and was very wonky to carousel our way around. But it was fun.

Chantelle had a big stack one morning and took a huge gash out of her leg. We all jumped in the car and had her rushed to hospital where the wound was stitched and dressed. Mum and Martin made us promise not to ever mess around on the clothes line again. I can’t say exactly if we ever kept our promise, although I do know I can’t remember ever going back there.

Martin had a motor-bike and he always encouraged Mum to get on the back and go for a spin. Mum was pretty hesitant about the whole thing, but one day decided that she would go for a ride. Straddled up in a leopard skin mini skirt and a cleaning type top, Mum would have looked classic riding that bike! Well, that wasn’t how Doris Brown described it when she first saw Mum. It is pretty difficult to exit the seat on a motorbike without lifting one’s leg and yes, it’s fair to say mini skirts and motorbikes don’t mix!

Doris was Martin’s mother. The first time my future Nanna ever met my Mum and she got an image I’m sure she would rather forget.

“Hi Mum. This is Sally. She has two kids and I’m going to live with her in Melbourne”.

They were Martin’s exact words to Doris. I wonder how Mum was feeling at this stage. Embarrassed I’m sure, but probably more shocked to know that Martin had finally got her on the bike only to make a surprise stop at his Mum’s. Mum reckons the look on Doris’ face was priceless. Her jaw dropped, teeth were gritting, her garden gloves flung in the air, the shovel thrown onto the green grass, eyes wide open and a tensed, raised fist.

“Bullshit you are!” was all Doris could scream from just a few metres away. I suppose a mother’s words sometimes have to be the brutal honesty. I wish I was a fly on the wall to see that. Probably the funniest thing I have ever heard.

We found out a few weeks later that Doris had been asking around the caravan park for Martin. Little did she know, Martin had packed up his things and returned to Melbourne with Mum, Chantelle and I. Life was changing at the speed of light, but all for the good. A man around the house was something we had been lacking for a few years and even though he was just 18, he had become more of a man than my father ever was.

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2. Firefly

When Mum and Dad called it quits early in 1987, I knew life was about to change. For better or worse, I wasn’t sure, but it was something that had to happen. Pop’s car had been stolen. Mum’s car had been set on fire. Drunken rages and abuse were common. There was no doubt that Mum had gotten out in fear for the safety of herself, my 4 year old sister Chantelle and me. It was time to move on.

In early morning darkness at Spencer Street Bus Terminal, Mum and us kids along with her friend Lisa, all boarded a Firefly bus headed for Sydney. I will never forget the day we left Melbourne with nothing more than a couple of changes of clothes and the love and care we had for each other.

The bus driver looked like Ian Turpie and being a young game show geek, all I could think about was Whammies and Big Bucks from my favourite TV show, ‘Press Your Luck’. I’m not sure if Ian Turpie was a sly character like this guy, because he seemed to take a real concerted interest in Mum well before we set off towards the Hume. Despite two young kids and a clear goal of getting out of Melbourne, this guy only seemed to have his own interest at heart. The trek to Sydney would certainly be eventful.

I was pretty tired and must have slept most of the way. We stopped at the Big Ram in Goulbourn for something to eat, not surprisingly, the Ian Turpie look-a-like found his way to our table. I remember people eating tin spaghetti on toast and some eating sandwiches while just about everybody had a coffee or tea. There is no doubt that bus trips of this length are very exhausting, even though you sit on your backside for the entire trip.

A few hours later the bus pulled up in Liverpool. I don’t know why, but we ended up getting off here. Maybe it was to escape the creepy ‘Ian’ who despite being told where to go, refused to back-off. At least now he had to drive on to Sydney while we safe in Liverpool.

Mum and Lisa walked us around for a short while and we came across a caravan park. This would be a great little place within the budget to spend a few days. By this time, it was late night and the reception was manned by a busted-looking old fella. There were no vans available until the morning, so for that night we had to wait around the reception area being entertained with tales of the park and stale biscuits. Man that was one long night. The morning sun had never looked so damn good!

The van that was allocated to us was nothing short of a total disgrace. Mum refused to let my sister and I even go in until she had given it a top to bottom clean-up. In fact it wasn’t just the dust, it was the handfuls of cockroaches, silverfish and various other creepy crawlies that infested the caravan. Mum had her work cut-out!

Lunch that day in the van was unforgettable. We had KFC and I’m sure of this. It was fair to say that Lisa might have made it on ‘The Biggest Loser’ these days and she had the appetite of an elephant! Her chicken bones were so clean and her corn cob completely bare. I don’t remember what I ate, I was too transfixed on watching Lisa demolish more food than I have ever seen.

It was a wet day and Chantelle and I had found an awesome puddle of mud. We must have looked pretty ordinary returning to the van, but that mud was the best to play in. I wonder what Mum was thinking seeing her two kids head to toe in filth. Maybe she was just happy to see us having a good time, knowing we were pretty ignorant to the fact of why we were in Liverpool let alone why we had left Melbourne in the first place.

After cleaning us up, Mum was keen on cooking something up for dinner. We always ate dinner early at 5:00pm. The stove in the caravan was hopeless. Not only would it not light, Mum was unsure if it even had a gas line hooked up to it. Maybe the neighbouring van could help.

A young Maltese man in the van next to us was more than happy to help. I don’t know if at the time he was keen on helping a mother and kids have a cooked meal, or if he again was another one of those guys who was attracted to my good-looking Mum. I don’t know what he did or how he did it, but he got the stove working and Mum was able to prepare some dinner. What a great young guy for helping out.

If I remember right, Mum invited the man for dinner and we ate us a five, squished up in the tiny van. It was handy to be-friend a local who could help us out with where to find everything and areas to steer clear of. Liverpool wasn’t an area to walk down the street alone in the late 80’s. Even today you need to keep your eye out.

This Maltese man claimed to be 21 and told us all to call him Martin. He even had a whizz-bang omelette recipe that he promised to cook up in the morning. Mum placed trust in him and allowed him to visit again the next day to cook up a storm. And a storm it was! Those omelettes were the best ever! I thought it great at the time that Mum had made a new friend and that we had a Male around who would look out for us in this van park. It was nice to feel safe, even though I still wasn’t sure why we had left Melbourne.

Call it fate if you will, but let the story be told. Martin Schraner married my Mum in 1990 and had two children, Beau and Mathew. This year they will celebrate their 22^nd Wedding Anniversary and things couldn’t be better. I went from Lee Peterson to Lee Schraner in school enrolment 1991 and so did my sister.  I haven’t seen my father in over 20 years, but this is irrelevant to my life as it stands today.

I only have one Dad and despite what my Birth Certificate says, I’ll always be proud to say that my Dad is Martin Schraner.

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1. Genius

I may have only been 5 years old sitting on a prehistoric computer at school, but to hear your teacher tell your mum that you were a genius was certainly something that will remain buried deep in my mind.

Facemaker was the program I was using. Ok, when you are 5 it’s fun to build funny looking faces on a computer screen. A silly looking old woman with grey hair and a big nose, maybe some thick black glasses and a little moustache! But it just didn’t solve my crave of creation. I wanted more!

Ctrl-Alt-Del got me into the back-end of the program. From there, I casually typed in LIST and before you knew it, the program lines of Facemaker were scrolling down my screen. Thousands upon thousands of lines of computer language at a supersonic pace. I was so impressed at what I had just done.

Before I knew it a class-mate had dobbed me in and the teacher was standing behind me in hysterics. She was furious, so much so that she grabbed me by the arm and took me straight to the Principal’s office. Technology was a pretty scary thing back then. Maybe I had broken it.

She called my mum and told her that I had broken one of the school computers and that if it couldn’t be fixed, mum was going to have to cough up the dollars for a new one. You could imagine mum freaking out driving down to the school. How was she going to afford to buy a new computer if I had really destroyed it?

I wasn’t really worried. I knew what I'd done and the teacher just didn’t understand. A woman six times my age and she had no idea how to find the program list on an Apple green screen. It was pretty funny actually, listening to her preach to the Principal about me breaking a computer. I wouldn’t dare interrupt!

By the time mum had arrived, our school IT guru had stopped the list on the computer from flowing and returned Facemaker back to its normal state. Not only that, he told the Principal and my teacher that I was a clever little kid saying that someone my age shouldn’t have the skills to know how to do this.

Mum stormed into the school office. Just five years earlier she had managed to produce this 8 pound, 2 ounce baby and now I was apparently blowing up computers! Before mum could get a word in, my teacher had assured her that there had been a misunderstanding and everything was ok. She had done a complete back-flip in 15 minutes. It was then that the magic word ‘genius’ was mentioned. Mum was in shock. Just a few minutes before she was worrying about finding money for a computer, and now she was being told that her 5 year old was a genius.

1987 wasn’t a year that contained fantastic technology. The VCR was still the greatest invention and well, computers were like top of the range items. This is what sparked the excitement in my teacher. I knew how to break the barriers of basic program security and from the back-end, was able to re-program the list anyway I wanted to. I suppose the only problem was that I didn’t know how to do write computer programs at that age, so nothing serious was ever going to happen.

The days followed and Mum kept a small secret from me. Little to my knowledge at the time, she had knocked back offers from fancy places such as the “Krongold Centre – Institute for Gifted Children”. Mum didn’t want me to become the subject of doctors and removed from the reality of growing up as a normal kid, no matter how gifted or special these people thought I was at the time. It must have been a hard decision for mum to make, but a decision I’m thankful for. Being a spoilt little rich brat who thought they were better than everyone else is not something I would have been proud of in today’s world. Not the kind of legacy to leave behind.

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