I was born in Kirton Point Hospital, Port Lincoln, South Australia 1960. It was a much smaller fishing town back then, tuna fishing was still by pole, there were no tuna farms.
We moved to Adelaide in 1967. Before we left I remember my friends in Port Lincoln telling me stories of the "dirty old men that liked young boys", but I thought they were just like ghost stories that were meant to scare me. A few years later I learned I was wrong.
We moved to a fairly rough area, where we lived there was a very varied group of people from everywhere. There were Aboriginals, Australian born and people from all over Europe. The Europeans were mainly fresh immigrants, they seemed to clump them together back then. My first day there I took a ride on my bike to explore my new home. I was about a mile away from our new house when I heard someone screaming behind me and getting closer. Then a teenage boy came running around the corner running towards me, behind him came a man with a rifle. I knew about guns, I rode like hell. Then I heard a shot, then the whirring sound of the bullet passing to the side of me a little above my head. The teenager then overtook me, still screaming, and I went straight home. I found out years later the man was his father. That was my first day in Adelaide.
I learned to be careful and aware of everything going on around me, quick.
When I started Primary School they wanted to give me a test first day as they said that students from country schools often needed to be held back a year to catch up. After the test, they jumped me forward a year based on my test results. I hated it, I was always the youngest and that was a good enough reason to be picked on.
I didnt have any friends at that stage so I joined a "radio club" at the High School I would be going to later. The teacher was good, he went beyond the basic radio stuff, I was the youngest there too as I recall. When I went to TAFE years later I was shocked to find I had already done the entire TAFE course at the radio club, the tests were word for word. More on that later.
The last summer before High School we went to the beach at Brighton. My sister and I went to the shops for icecream, on the way we went past the Brighton Surf Club. I got interested in the surf boats as they were different to any of the boats I was familiar with back in Port Lincoln. My sister left me there looking at the boats, she told me to stay there and not to bother her as she wanted to talk with "the boys", she was a little older than me. She actually said "if you bother me I will punch you in the head", I knew she meant it.
While I was looking at the boats and equipment, 2 men started talking to me. One was named Peter, the other was a police officer named Steve. The way Peter talked to me and how pushy he got trying to get me to go along on his "camping" trips made me recall the dirty old man stories. When he said "I cant wait until I get his knees over my shoulders" while looking at Steve, the expression on both faces made me RUN. My sister kept her word, she punched me in the head. My sister died from leukemia later that year, she was 15, I was 13.
When I got home that day, I cut myself for the first time to swear a blood oath to get them if I ever got the chance.
At High School I heard lots of stories about these 2 men and 3 others. Peter, was Peter Liddy, now known as the pedophile Judge who assaulted over 400 boys. The other 4 were SAPOL officers that ran the Seacliff Hotel south of the Brighton Surf Club, giving free or cheap booze to young boys only. Steve was one of those officers. I wondered how they arranged that as officers went allowed a liquor license. One time I wanted booze I got talking to one of them I had not met before and he laughed when I asked, then he said the license was in their kids names.
Peter Liddy was in the Police Complaints Authority back then, that explained a lot. But later when he left the PCA and became a Judge, the 4 SAPOL officers disappeared from the Seacliff Hotel at the same time. They obviously lost their "protection".