Choices. Jeff Edwards
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seamen and airmen. My school expenses were paid for, and sometimes one of the men would come around to take me away for the weekend. I’d go camping or fishing with him and his family, and I looked forward to these outings as an opportunity to escape the daily grind of making sure that my mother was fed and the house cleaned. She often overlooked these necessities in favour of downing more alcohol.
I had walked in the door after one such outing when my Legacy ‘uncle’ and I found my mother propped up in front of our television, her eyes were wide open but she was as dead as a doornail.
I was told later that she had always suffered from a congenital heart defect and that assisted by the alcohol it had finally given out on her.
So it was that I was sent to live with dad’s brother and my only living relative, Uncle Bill. Unfortunately, Uncle Bill was not the sort of person who took easily to instant parenthood, particularly a gangling pubescent thirteen-year-old.
He lived in a war veterans home unit in Maroubra, and if he was not working out on the roads for the Roads and Traffic Authority then he could be found propping up the bar in the Maroubra RSL.
Uncle Bill had never married, and was never likely to do so. He had the attitude that women were useful for some minor duties such as working behind the bar at the RSL, or in its kitchen where he ate most of his evening meals, but any contact with a woman on a personal level was totally beyond him.
As a result I found myself once again spending most of my time at home, alone and fending for myself.
I had to change schools and was now enrolled at Maroubra Boys High School where I immediately found that, as an outsider, I was never going to be accepted on an equal footing by my peers. Most of the boys had grown up in the area, and being a beach suburb, had been engaged in the Surf Life Saving movement from the time they could walk. Through the Nippers programme these boys had progressed to earning their bronze medallions and graduated to full lifesavers, protecting the many visitors to Maroubra Beach from drowning. They patrolled the sand, ordering bathers to swim between the flags, and keeping the surfboard riders well out of the protected areas.
Without having qualified for the bronze medallion I was automatically designated as not surf club material and therefore not worth knowing by my fellow classmates. However, being a social outcast opened up a whole new life to me.
I gravitated to an area further down the beach to where the board riders congregated. Here, I came to make a nodding acquaintance with a couple of other boys from high school. Unlike the heavily regimented surf lifesavers, these boys had long, sun bleached hair and a very laid-back attitude to life, and when one of them offered to lend me his surfboard, I knew I had found my niche in the beach scene.
After many futile attempts, and much derision from my new friends, I finally caught my first wave. The feelings of joy and triumph I experienced made those short few seconds the most important of my life so far, and I craved more.
‘You can’t keep borrowing my board,’ said my new friend Bob. ‘Get your own.’
‘I’m sorry, but I can’t afford to buy my own. I’ll have to get a job. Where did you get your money from?’ I asked, knowing he didn’t work, and that his parents were as short of money as my Uncle Bill.
‘I found it,’ he smiled.
‘Bull!’ I exclaimed. ‘No one loses that sort of money.’
‘I’ll show you,’ he winked, as he stood up and picked up his towel. ‘Follow me, but don’t come too close. Watch what I do.’
I kept a few paces behind as he swung the towel around his neck and strolled casually toward the crowded area of the beach between the flags. Here, he moved slowly amongst the crowd, apparently looking for a spot where he could spread his towel and sunbake. I noticed a young family stand up and tiptoe gingerly through the hot sand toward the water.
Seeing his opportunity, Bob spread his towel on the sand close to their bags, and lay down making himself comfortable. He remained there, scanning the bathers at the water edge, until he saw the family coming out of the surf. While they were still some way off he stood up, picked up his towel, and wandered back down the beach with me close behind.
Back at our usual spot, he unwrapped his towel to reveal a wallet and a woman’s purse. ‘Take only the cash,’ he warned me. ‘Leave the rest either on the beach or stick it in a garbage bin, but whatever you do make sure you are not seen.’
I was both shocked and excited at what he had done. I nodded my head. ‘I’d never be able to do something like that.’
‘Of course you can. Start small. Pick a kid that’s come to the beach by themselves. They won’t have much but it’ll give you a chance to practice.’
‘I don’t really think I could.’
‘It’s easy,’ he grinned. ‘You want that board, don’t you?’
I looked out to sea and could make out the rideable sets forming out the back. I could almost feel the waxed deck of my very own board beneath my feet.
‘Tell you what,’ Bob said offering me a ten dollar note from amongst his booty, ‘I’ll give you this if you take the wallet and purse up to the road and drop them in a bin for me.’
‘They must be worth something.’
‘It’s not worth getting caught with them on you. Now take this money and go and ditch the booty.’
Without really thinking about what I was doing I took the note from his hand, and with my heart beating against my rib cage and feeling that every person within a radius of a kilometre was watching, I went about disposing of the evidence. At any moment I expected to feel the heavy hand of the law fall on my shoulder.
But it didn’t, and I now had ten dollars in my pocket.
I nearly pissed myself with excitement the first time I stole a wallet. The victim was a boy about my age, and the wallet itself was battered and scarred and contained only five dollars. Hardly enough for his fares, but I was ecstatic. I had done it!
Greed overcame my conscience and it was not long before I became the proud owner of my very first surfboard.
But once I had the board I found that there were other things that I ‘needed’, and so I continued to steal.
I also found my Uncle Bill to be a source of much needed funds. When he arrived home drunk from the RSL I would wait until he was asleep, and then remove half the money from his wallet. Most of the time he didn’t miss the money, and when he did realise that there was not as much money in his wallet as there should have been he instantly placed the blame on ‘those thieving bitches’ who worked behind the bar and refused to pay him the respect that his being a returned serviceman deserved.
My easy lifestyle came to a sudden halt when I was eventually caught by a policeman who happened to be enjoying the beach with his family and noticed my activities.
He took me by the scruff of the neck and frogmarched me down to his mates at the local police station. They, in turn, called Uncle Bill.
Not knowing what to do, my uncle passed the problem on to Legacy. Those good men paid for a solicitor to represent me, and as this was my first offence, the judge dumped a speech of utter disdain upon me and let me go home with a further warning of dire consequences if I should ever reappear before him.
When we stepped inside the front door of his home unit Uncle Bill gave me a clip behind the ears and then left me to look after myself while he went down to the RSL. There he drank himself into oblivion while complaining to his friends about the ingratitude of his thieving nephew.
I attempted to learn from my mistake, but was soon back on the beach with my towel around my neck and an eye out for a ready mark.
This time I swore to myself that I would be more careful, and I would never get caught again.
I was fortunate, and it was not until I was seventeen that the cold hand of the law was once again