Strange Times - Prologue

The town where I grew up was a strange place Haverbrook was the name, east of Melbourne in deep, mysterious Gippsland. It wasn’t quite right. All of us knew it wasn’t quite right, all the teenagers knew it, but it didn’t start being weird during puberty; it’s always been weird.

You probably know my town now as the site of controversy: a coal fired power station, a desalination plant only miles away, a grisly murder or two. We didn’t know Haverbrook for that, we knew it for things like Hell Coach, the strange TV station, the disappearance of Phil Collins and the other weird occurrences.

That weirdness plagues me to this day. As I enter my mid-life and suffer the accompanying crisis, I’ve gotten in touch with the other teenagers who grew up in Haverbrook during that same time. Sure enough, they felt what I felt. That strange tingling sensation and creeping hot worry that boiled underneath us all during those days. The feeling that something had never been quite right with our childhoods has manifested itself now and we’ve decided to tell our stories.

I’ve collected stories from a few people who chose to speak. The contributors wrote most stories here in their own hand, some I edited for them. A number of past residents I spoke to didn’t see the point in talking, some didn’t want me to write it at all. The stories here are the ones I feel capture the town of Haverbrook perfectly.

Maybe I’m not the right person to write this compilation. I haven’t been back to Haverbrook since I left twenty three years ago. I’ll never go back there. I’m no great writer, although I’ve read a lot of books, and I feel any attempt by me to chronicle our stories of Haverbrook will only be lacking in the sole reason we chose to write this: I wouldn’t capture the weirdness. However, I’ve taken up this duty, it’s up to you to decide if it was worth it or not.

- Pete, Editor, 42 Years Old.

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