When I was in Grade 4 at primary school, Dad accepted a job transfer to the Commonwealth Bank in Rockhampton. This sadly meant leaving our sun-lit family home in Lisson Grove Brisbane and moving to a high set timber house at the top of Albert Street Rockhampton. It was a dark eerie sort of house that I think could easily have been used as a set for the Adam’s Family TV sit com. The front lawn appeared quite green and lush as it swayed 3 feet off the ground in the pervading breeze. The back yard was currently being strangled by the long tentacles of some encroaching evolving exotic vine. The huge dense bottle green mango tree at the house’s side simply added to the murky gloom, as it willingly gave covering protection to all manner of flying and crawling insects. The inside of the house was now home to a diverse gang of feral cats. As they were chased from their favourite spots in the house, they would look back at you with head slightly tilted and posture upright in that Ill be back piercing stare, before disappearing into the labyrinth of darkened cavities that was our back yard. The previous occupants of the house had painted all around the inside walls. In fact, they had painted right around any of the furniture that was inconveniently placed against the walls as well. Over there is the outline of a book case, the TV stand was placed here and lounge suite was in this corner. Those objects forgone silhouette were impressed into the wall like the shadowy remains of an earlier nuclear blast. The grotesque murals on most room walls simply added to the macabre atmosphere of the place a place we were now to call, our home. Still, its one redeeming feature was the mangos a fruit too expensive to buy in the markets of Brisbane was hanging free-of-charge just off the veranda of our new home. The trick here was to get to the ripened fruit before the local troop of flying foxes arrived and partook of their regular evening indulgence. I still remember lying awake in those darkened high ceiling mural walled bedrooms, listing to the screeching squabbling sounds of those ferrous pre-historic beasts chilling! Now the mango, the fruit God must have created on that penultimate seventh day, embodies in its persona both ecstasy and calamity. Ecstasy, for its unparalleled nectar-of-the-gods taste calamity, for the fourteen yards of dental floss needed to remove its stringy fibres from between your devouring teeth. The ying exhilaration of the ravenous munching delight was matched by the yang of the gooey, gluey, gluggy gunk that would run down all over your face, arms and chest. It was not uncommon for mum to place us kids naked in the bath with our forbidden fruit ready to enjoy at will, without the dreadful repercussion of much more body and clothes washing. Yum, mangos God’s own special sweet. Now where was I? See every place has its own sweet tempting Apple of desire that distracts you from the real forces and influences at work. Well, Tom and I finally decided to go a jungle exploring in our own back yard. We crawled tentatively under the thick covering vine and into the natural realm of spiders, snakes and feral cats. It was dark, itchy and scary until we surprisingly came across some cute little kittens with lots to do. We were so excited that we took our wriggling life forms to the back door of our house. We rushed inside Dad, Dad we found some fun-active kittens in the backyard we excitedly proclaimed Dad went to the back door, looked down, picked up the three little kittens by the scruff of the neck and proceeded immediately to the laundry where he promptly drowned them all major, major shock for two poor innocent little hearts. Ok, the kittens were lying on their sides and spinning round in circles with legs thrashing and tongues hanging out when Dad picked them up and did his thing. We just thought they were being kind of playful, in a weird kitten sort of way. How were we to know that Dad was both giving a mercy solution to a cat distemper outbreak, yet mixed with a very deliberate response of No your not to their previous We’ll be back parting statements.
