Strange Times - Part 7: No Vacancies

[1977]

A childhood friend called me up today.

If those words above do not inspire in you a type of anxious apprehension, perhaps you are someone who enjoyed their childhood. If that is the case, congratulations! Please mail in and we’ll run you on the front page as the only person who enjoyed their formative years and look forward to the Australian of the Year announcement; I hear you’re quite high on the list.

He wanted to talk about our childhood, specifically the strange occurrences that we experienced in our youth. The call left me anxious. I think the vast majority of us hate revisiting our youth; for many of us, it is filled with trauma, missed connections, misplaced words, mistimed moments and mine was no exception. It should come as no surprise, given the above admissions, that my childhood was one that was not particularly pleasant but I won’t turn this column into me living my life like an open wound.

As a kid, I lived and worked in a caravan park with my mother and father handling the admin while I served as a sort of attendant and runner. The sign sat outside on Yarram Road proclaiming it as ‘Haverbrook’s Best Caravan Park’, when in fact it was the only caravan park in the town of Haverbrook, so it was by definition the best of none. My father had built the ‘caravan park’ during the caravanning craze of the 1950’s, in the days when families packed up the car and headed out for the long weekend to the rural refuges of Daylesford, Eildon, Dromana and Rosebud.

‘See here?’ he pointed a gnarled finger at a grubby, saturated photo in a photo album ‘in the 50’s, we had people pouring through town. Used to get so many people crammed in here, looked like one of those Indian slums you see on TV’

I’m visiting him and he’s leafing through all the photo books I’ve brought him, the fragile plastic sheets cracking as they vainly attempt to protect the photos. I’m in few of these photos, it’s him and my late mother standing proud in front of their proud little business.

‘Everyone stayed there, made friends, friendly sort of place’ Dad says, slurring.

It’s true, caravans and station wagons were parked like an immense meeting spot, as though they were all part of a huge convoy heading across Australia that I wasn’t a part of.

‘You, me and Mam, where is she? She’s got the kettle on…’ Dad say, sighing.

I wanted to be a part of that journey as a kid, wanderlust took me over in a type of red hot need. I grew up surrounded by strangers, pouring through the town on their way to parts unknown, what lay beyond the white wooden fence of the caravan park was a mystery to the younger me. I remember the people who used to come through; you’d see the families struggling to maintain a veneer of cheeriness, clearly crammed into a hostile space for too long. As they unfurled themselves from those long brown station wagons, unsticking the leather from skin, you’d see the exhaustion hit them like a wave, a sudden desperation to lie down and give up.

‘We earned a pretty bit of money running the place…’ and I close the photo book as Dad says this, nodding as I wipe a bit of the spittle away.

He’s losing his memory, I don’t think he remembers what it was like. He slaved away in that place but then again parents see the past for anything else than what it truly was; a demeaning grovelling place.

I didn’t really know much as a young kid other than what school taught me; and what use has that ever been to anyone? But what I did know was how to hook up gas, electricity and water, how to sign an invoice, how to call the police when things got hairy, how to apply makeup to a woman to hide a bruise, how to calm a drunken father and how to get a young chid to stop crying. I knew how to sell the best spot in the caravan park, the most expensive spot. I knew how to recommend a restaurant, how to organise a family day out. I knew how to kill a wild cat with a cricket bat and I knew how to comfort a crying divorced man.

Dad sputters into life again ‘…the police are a last resort. You call them, they come in with the lights and that painted up car, all the guests know something went wrong. You get the guests to calm down, bring them into the office, maybe convince the wife or the husband or whoever, get them to pay up a bit more.’

My father gives this bit of sage advice, head bobbing energetically as he says this from the nursing home chair. It’s like he’s back in the moment and I swear I could see him stalking the grounds again, short sleeved brown shirt and slacks as he waits for any potential trouble, shooing away the stray cats.

As the seventies rolled around, caravanning began to die down, the customers began to dry up and the weather began to do much the same as a drought set in. Dad wanted me to concentrate on studies so I could go to uni, which was an opportunity he never had.

To make more time, we placed an ad in the Haverbrook Gazette: Help Wanted the ad read.

Enter, from stage right: Matthew, the help.

Only one day after placing the ad, a car pulled into the caravan park. Two tired looking parents pulled out Matthew and by midday, he had the job. We’d had him forced on us by over eager parents, wanting to get him out of the house and into some real work.

‘He’s a good kid…hard worker’ said the Dad and they drove off.

What struck me first about Matthew was his appearance. Matthew was the whitest kid I’ve ever seen, and I say that with some years behind me. The kid was so pale, he was practically translucent like a newborn fish, with organs almost visible under milk white skin. It was like someone had covered him in white paint. Black hair didn’t help much either. He didn’t talk much for the first two weeks, just nodding as I showed him the ropes and discussed shifts.

I felt sorry for the kid, pale as a ghost and forced into the worst heatwave I can remember. The days were identical copies of the one before it: the hot dry heat, pounding down on empty dusty grounds, as I sat staring at the driveway for some hope of reprieve in the form of a customer. Dust blew in large gales across the parched earth and I fidgeted in the wooden chair. No one came through anymore, as construction had stopped on the highway near town.

I stared at Matthew across the verandah. ‘So what do you do?’ I asked him.

‘Do?’

‘Yeah, I don’t think I’ve seen you at school’

Matthew paused ‘I don’t go to school. Mum and Dad teach me stuff at home’

I nodded ‘Oh, like home schooled’

'Yes'

'What's that like?'

'Different'

'Yeah, but what do you learn about?'

'...do you know what ESP is?' Matthew asked, staring at the entrance.

'Um...wait, there's a Chinese kid at my kid who's ESL, is that similar?'

'...I don't know, what does ESL stand for?'

'English as Second Language'

'No, it's not similar'

We sat staring at the gate. Matthew was rubbing his pale arms and I noticed his veins were black, like ink. I went to say something but then a customer arrived and we had to leap to the ready.

Weird stuff happened around Matthew. One of the stray cats turned up eviscerated in the middle of the park. Metal bent towards Matthew like he was a magnet, he smelled like burning plastic at times mixed with rotten eggs and things just disappeared. First it started off small with knives and forks then vases, and culminated in a large section of the back fence just disappearing at night. I thought he might have been stealing stuff but I didn’t say anything, he struck me as one of those kids who have a bad home life.

‘Is everything alright Matt?’ I asked him, as we worked on the fence.

‘I’m alright for now’ he replied.

'Your parents...'

'I don't want to talk about that' he interuppted

'Okay...sorry'

We fell silent. Matthew began hammering in boards

'What do you want to do when you're older?' I asked Matt.

'Why are you asking me this?'

'I don't know, we work together - it's making chat is all'

We went quiet again. Matt put one of the fence boards down and looked at me.

'I'm going to be joining the army.'

I nodded and smiled 'Oh, you're signing up?'

'I already signed up. I've been signed up since birth. Mum and Dad and soldiers'

I smiled again 'So what are you going to do? Gunfighting, missiles? I know someone's brother-'

'ESP'

I nodded, pretending to know 'ESP...right...well whatever that is...'

'Do you want me to show you?'

I shook my head 'No, later, let's fix the fence' and we got back to work.

Matthew and I worked to service the few loyal customers that continued to keep us afloat as my Dad stared at bank notices and bills with worry flowing more and more over his face until it looked like he was a man drowning in it. I remember a lot about those days, sometimes I wonder how I know so much as I do. But as a kid, you don’t remember it all. You just see fragments, like different puzzle pieces that make an image if you believe it hard enough.

I can see bright hot light, cool nights, the roar of a Kingswood and the crunch of VB cans underfoot. The TV buzzing about the drought and the wonderings of when it would end. I also have an image of a single night in 1977; it’s an image that is beginning to dim and distort but it’s still with me.

Matthew and I had been placed on night watch, Dad was tired from the drive to Leongatha to talk with the bank and had surrendered to the armchair in front of Channel 99. The night buzzed with cicadas, hot and sticky, with a cool breeze our only salvation.

‘Matthew, do you know anything about the milk turning into oil?’ and he shook his head at my question

‘No.’

‘Okay, just asking’ and I settled back into the wooden chair.

The night dragged on, Channel 99 changed over from reruns of shows in Melbourne to New Starts and my eyes grew heavy. I could see Matthew out of the corner of my eye and all of a sudden, he disappeared.

I blinked hard and turned to him and he reappeared; but when I turned back to view him out of the corner of my eye, he disappeared into thin air. I shook my head, chalking that up to fatigue.

At some point I fell asleep with the cool breeze. I dreamt of a dark room with no light, no heat, no sound and in the middle was Matthew. He was holding his arm out, touching a piece of metal with his hand. His hand was still on the metal and he was moving it slightly, as though he was looking for the right place. He then pushed his hand through the metal as if it were liquid through to the other side. I saw him smile. His parents were there, clapping, army people too. All of a sudden I saw an immense black pyramid, thousands of feet tall that turned to face me with a huge angry eye.

I was woken up by a commotion at the former back fence, boys yelling in loud voices and I pelted across to find Matthew staring down a group of trespassers.

'Oi, get out of here’ I yelled and they jeered and booed only the way teenage boys can. Matthew was bearing the brunt of their insults; freak, loner, various choice words I can’t publish in this publication.

He asked them to stop and to leave the premises and he was shaking, the smell of burning plastic growing violently strong.

Then something terrible happened.

The ringleader smirked and reached forward to grab Matthew, to hit him or something and all the sound disappeared. I ran forward to intervene but I couldn’t hear my footsteps and as he reached in to punch, his hand just disappeared into thin air like it had never existed; taken away into negative space. As he pulled back his arm, the forearm just ended in a stump, covered in skin. Silent screams, no sound and Matthew’s eye went wide with panic like a spooked horse and ran for the gate. As he ran, the smell of burned plastic went with him and the sound return to panicked shrieks and the sound of my Dad running across to see the commotion.

We couldn’t answer it and nobody could find Matthew or his parents. The kid lived without his right hand for the rest of his life. We closed up the caravan park in ‘79 and moved to Melbourne but the caravan park ended on that strange night.

I think I might be one of the few people who remember this thing happening, but I doubt it myself. I'll end up joining the ranks of UFO sighters, conspiracy theorists and weirdos. This'll be all chalked up to a good story, a nice lie.

Memories end up dying with those who had them, people discard memories all the time, places just change and move on and evidence of things happening begins to disappear before your very eyes. There’s something sort of magical about the Australia of my youth; everything brighter and yet grimy, sad too. You might think I hated it all but I don’t, I think I want to go back and see it all through my old eyes. That’s probably the saddest thing of all; the fact we can’t go back.

– Mike, 56 Years Old

[Appeared in Grantland, September 6th, 2015. Mike Sunderland is a writer in Australia for The Age and the Sunday Age and for the topic of ‘'Childhood Place' he produced this piece titled ‘A Town I Once Knew’. It has been retitled here. I had spoken to him three weeks prior to the publication of the piece on the phone and he had said he did not want to contribute. However, he must have changed his mind as a link to this Grantland piece was sent to me from Mike with the note ‘For Your website’] – Pete, Editor

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