I was born in the 70s, and experienced my teenage years during the 80s. Because of this I got to experience the kind of childhood many people now romanticise. We lived in a suburb called Gordon, on the North Shore of Sydney. My house was located at the end of a long street, which marked the entrance to the Lane Cove National Park which surrounded the whole area. It was here where my heart felt a freedom it has never really felt since. I was friends with the family that lived behind my house, and there were three brothers all around my age. We met when we moved in and I was about five years old. After that time we would go out playing in the local bush together where we made cubby houses, explored caves, rode our BMX bikes, looked for frogs and tadpoles amid other fun things. On the weekends I would leave at breakfast and be back at lunch. Then it was out again until dinner.

One of the things I most enjoyed was making spears and bows and arrows from tree branches we cut down. Other weapons were slingshots and blowpipes. We also used to play soldiers in the meadow on the hill in the middle of the national park. Running around with sticks as guns and making machine gun noises when we shot each other I found a lot of fun.

Roaming and exploring areas of the bush and creeks was something I loved, and I have always enjoyed “bush bashing” my way through dense bush that had no trail or path to follow. I guess this might be a metaphor for my approach to life.

Opposite my house on the other side of the street was a vacant lot which was grassed over. We used it to play cricket or kick the football on. The edge of it conected straight on to Gordon Golf Course, which was another important area I roamed. There was a big creek which ran through the centre of it, and we often would walk up the creek with no shoes on, feeling with our feet for the golf balls which had been left there by golfers. This was fun and we sometimes set up a stall on the edge of the golf course to sell the used golf balls to golfers passing by. I remember there were a few memorable occaions when the whole gold course flooded and we had a great time slipping and sliding down the hills in the wild flowing water.

Once a year we celebrated Firecracker night. During this time we usually got packets of what were called “Throw Downs”, which were small pellets with a target symbol on one side, which were thrown on to the ground, ending in a bang. We also got packs of small intertwined crackers. We would separate them and then you could light them individually and throw them into the air, where they whooshed off in various colours into the night sky. On a few occasions i remember the street having a Fire Cracker night for everyone. To prepare for this all of the kids in the street would gather logs and brush from the nearby bush and build a bonfire in the middle of the dead end area. Even though the celebration was supposed to be the Queen’s Birthday, we would build a Guy Fawkes figure stuffed with bracken and straw to burn at the stake on top of the bonfire.

This land of my childhood and the house I lived in left an imprint on my soul, and in the many years since that time it has been an inner dream locale I visit when I am connected to my heart space.

I learned during this time that I needed to compartmentalize myself, tailoring the way I spoke and acted to suit the environment I was in. I went to a quality primary school called Sydney Grammar, which was very prim and proper. After I got home from school and on the weekends I was playing with the local kids who didn’t go to fancy private schools, but the local state schools. It was from and with them that I learned swear words, dirty jokes and other such things and would run around the bush swearing like a trooper. When I got home I switched to a different mode where I was polite and well mannered again, although my parents may dispute that claim.

This compartmentalisation became a big factor of my life, especially after my parents and I started going to a Hindu ashram in Sydney. I will tell the story of that soon. With that I found myself attending Anglican Christian schools, where I attended “chapel” once a week, while goig the the evening programs at the Hindu ashram twice a week. This didn’t seem like an unusual thing for me, and throughout my life it has been a theme, where I am a member of a spiritual group of one sort or another (with all of their belief systems and practices) whilst also participating in the normal daily life of an Australian guy.

My narcolepsy, my spiritual interests and early activity with a Hindu organisation occurred with this idyllic setting as the backdrop. At the time I was not aware that all was not actually idyllic and my family was in danger of being torn apart. I will write about this soon.