Those were the days part 1

I'm married with 2 children, we have 2 cars, a mortgage and all the stuff that goes with living the life we live, but my life hasn't always been this way... I though I might fill you in on what some of those years were like. I’ll do it in instalments, or you’ll be reading forever, so here’s part 1.

I moved out of home 1 month after I turned 18 in 1985 (after being shunted from parent to youth hostel to parent) into a terrace house in Cleveland St, Redfern in Sydney with a girlfriend, her ex-con boyfriend and my boyfriend, whom I'd known for a month. We didn't stay there long - the downstairs windows wouldn't shut, let alone lock.

One of my 'girlfriend’s' stay-overs (her boyfriend was often 'away') couldn't be woken one morning, she had already gone for work, and I had to get going too; so he was left there. I came home to a cleaned-out house. Being my first place all that there pretty much was for him to take was my cassette collection, but it scared the s*** out of me and I broke the lease after 4 months to get out of there. Apparently the reason we hadn't been able to get rid of him was because he was too stoned on heroin.

My girlfriends and I used to visit her boyfriend (before we shared the house) in Silverwater Gaol (interesting experience). Me, being the nice person that I am, decided someone needed to give him a go, and it may as well be me! During our short stay in Redfern (which they called Surrey Hills on the real estate ad, just so it'd look better - Surry Hills was actually the other side of Cleveland St) we were raided by the police one weekday morning at 6am. They were looking for the boyfriend on suspicion of having done an armed robbery! As they stormed up the stairs and into our bedroom, my boyfriend and I were busily trying to get rid of the evidence of dope – bong, bowl of mix, lighters everywhere etc. I stuffed the bong into the bag I used to take to tech (I was a 1st year apprentice) and it spilled everywhere. For those of you who don’t know, dirty bong water smells very strongly, and this one reeked, and was all through the bag. Good thing the police were intent on looking for this guy, or we could have been in deep doodoo. In the short time we lived there, this very intelligent guy my girlfriend had hooked up with robbed the petrol station that we just so happened to live right next door to. The best thing about living there was my discovery of Lebanese pizza.

The second place certainly looked better than its predecessor and the windows all locked. My boyfriend moved with me and we got a guy in to share the rent – my girlfriend had moved back home. I'm always the one who has held the leases, no matter where I've lived; it has always made me feel more secure. We stayed in this town house in Ashfield, Sydney for a year. The guy who stayed with us was a bit strange, my boyfriend and I used to sneak into his room and look through his collection of swinger's mags!

The friends my boyfriend had hung out with for years were in our lives in a big way during our year here. RSL clubs were the go, and live bands were what we went there for – the Radiators and Angels were big then. We’d all get stoned and then drive to Bankstown RSL, where we’d dance all night, get pissed, throw up, and then go home to get stoned again and play board games all night. The only variation to this was when speed was added to the mix and we’d play board games all night, and the next day. I only tried speed once, made me throw up – didn’t do it again. My boyfriend was (and probably still is) a waxhead and every weekend saw us at Cronulla beach, me frying in the sun or shivering in the car while I watched him turn blue out in the water. I was a cone heads back then, (along with my boyfriend who introduced me to it), smoking before work, and all afternoon and night. We had some good times while living there. I was 18 and 19.
part 2