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Strange Times - Part 9: Recollections

Various Authors
Aug 19, 2016
7 min read

Haverbrook was founded in 1844. I remember that from a school project I did, a town founded on logging, farming, even a mine or two.

I think the mines are shut down, just like the railway to Leongatha.

They were going to build a bypass around Haverbrook – Victoria State Route Zero – but plans fell through. Things sort of stalled in town after that, most of the 70’s and 80’s the town just sat in neutral. Everyone left for Melbourne.

Town got shook up in ‘89 by those two boys dying in that accident at the school, got the Mayor started on trying to revitalise the town. If you went back there now Pete, I doubt you’d recognise it. New offices, mobile phone towers, even a taxi or two.

Still haven’t fixed that damn public telephone on Carnvaon Street though, ringing at all hours.

- Jeffrey, age 32

I was seven years old when this happened. One day my uncle came to town, but he wasn’t my uncle. I knew my uncle as the big jolly man with the salt and pepper beard. All of a sudden this tall pale man showed up at my house, calling himself my uncle. But I was the only one in the family who seemed to notice.

He ate dinner with us, my mum and dad acting like it was regular uncle the whole time, my brother and sister joking around and asking about life in the city. I kept asking who he was and where my uncle was. He stared at me constantly, like he was surprised that I knew he wasn’t my uncle.

On the final day, as he said goodbye to us, he leaned in close to me and said ‘They’ll never believe you. I’m coming back for you and I’m bringing friends with me too’ and he smiled this big smile with eyes way too wide to be possible and far more teeth than anyone could have.

- Tom, age 39

Haverbrook actually used to be called Haver’s Brook up until the late 1940’s or so. They changed the name not long after the comet passed…the comet…you’d have to ask Johnny Halbot about that, he was crazy about it (laughs), I think he knows more about it, real historian he was…

I remember when that we elected that dog as Mayor, got the whole town roped up in a conspiracy. Never did solve what happened there…story for another time though.

- Edith, age 71

Strange? Hmmm…remember the fence transfer thing?

I had the front room in the house so I used to hear the garbage truck go past in the morning, low sort of rumble. Then one morning, I heard another garbage truck go past and in my sleepy daze, I thought I’d just missed the first one. I woke up and as I went out to get the post, I saw part of our low brick fence just missing. Gone.

Someone had taken a bit of our fence.

It was the same with the house up the road and a few other places around town had it happen to them too. Then a few weeks later, someone had grafted the neighbour’s fence onto our fence and our fence appeared on the neighbours; it was a fence transfer. Took us ages to get the fence back to normal.

- Geoff, age 49

All of this, it’s all because of the comet you see…it was 1949 when it appeared, this bright blue thing slowly moving across the sky. It was so bright, you could see at night without a torch. Caused everything in the house to look blue [laughs]. It was in the sky for a few days, it was coming apart [coughs] I think, you’d see blue parts falling to the ground. One landed near the old schoolhouse but the kids never found it. The primary school is there now.

Everything changed after that…and I think I might be the only person who connected it all you see. Nobody else noticed the water getting an oily coating on it, or the plants shaking wildly like they were having fits. They were twitching in that blue light. I don’t think Haver’s Brook [Haverbrook] was ever the same again after that

- Johnny, age 85

I don’t know if anyone else remembers this but out near Swallow’s Creek, there was all these big rocks, piled up, like a cliff had fallen down or something. Just out of sight of the path and shit - like you had to know where to look - in between the rocks was this huge hole, like all jagged and stuff, like a rip in the ground and it went down into the earth, down and down for a couple of feet.

The bottom of the hole was black with like stars.

Although it couldn’t have been stars, stars are in the sky above you, so like it didn’t make sense there was this hole into the sky or space. When you got near it, you felt like you were being choked or something, no air and everything was really quiet, not moving like. Birds didn’t go near it, Danny took his dog out there once and it didn’t stop barking once.

We went up there after that big storm, the one that broke the drought, me, Tim and Kev. Kev gets real close to the edge, looking down into the stars in the hole and he’s spitting into it and we’re throwing cans of Solo into it, pissing ourselves laughing.

Next minute, Kev’s just gone, slipped on the wet stone or something. Didn’t even scream, he just fell down into the stars and that, never saw him again after that.

- Thomas, age 29

Jenny: Yeah, I mean something happened.

Peter: Happened?

J: The town was weird, I mean yeah, we all know that. It’s why you’re writing this thing, right Pete? But something happened that caused it to get…evil.

P: What do you mean?

J: Well…[sighs]…everything really. You had those people disappearing from their houses and never coming back. You had animals turning up gored, plants shaking like they had epilepsy. Drain Guy going around talking about things in the sewers

P: Yeah?

J: Yeah. Even New Starts. You remember that right? The show with our dopplegangers. Like, just before it went off the air, the storylines were getting real dark. Suicide, rape, they kept hinting that something was coming towards Haverbrook. There were these moments when the characters in the show – you know, us – would look right towards the screen and stare at us.

P: ...

J: But they looked at us like they were sorry or something. As if they didn’t want to do what they were doing. Sometimes during the show, you’d hear muttered voices, strange bursts of static, hissing. And the worst part is, I don’t know if that terrible thing is here already or if it’s still coming for us. How will I know when it happens?

- Jenny, age 46

Yeah hello…Pete…how are you mate? …yeah, not bad, Lily’s gone down to shops…I…yeah? Okay…(long pause)…I-uh look Pete, sorry let me just turn the radio down

…look Pete, I get what you’re trying to do here, I do, but I don’t want to talk about it. Really, I don’t want to talk about it at all, it happened and we’re all trying to move on okay? …(pause)

Well, if Ralph wants to talk about it, he can, I don’t have anything to say, we were stupid kids…no, we were Peter, we were dumb kids, all that shit happened but here we are. Okay? I’m hanging up now Pete…no no I’m hanging up now, I’d appreciate if you don’t call about that again…okay? Bye Pete…

- Mark, age 43

So you called Johnny, so what did he say?…well…yeah, but Johnny’s wrong about the comet causing it all, I reckon it started…(exhale)… started when they began building Victoria State Route Zero. Supposed to be a freeway linking Gippsland with Melbourne, you know, cause of all the coal mining and forestry, oil wells off the coast, big money in it you know. They brought in all these construction workers through town, all of them caused a fuss; drinking all hours, trying to get it on with the women.

They started building it…I want to say ’68 but…god it was years ago. They were in town for about two years when one day, they all just disappeared. And I do mean disappeared, Cheryl Martin who ran the motel goes to clean one of their rooms and their beds are empty, bags and tools still there, pile of clothes. And Johnny Halbot reckons he saw of a group of them just disappear out of their own clothes but he was always making up stuff like that for a joke. Never told a single true thing in his life

Everything after that just closed up, construction stoped and we assumed all the contractors went back to Melbourne. I reckon if you’re wondering where all this weirdness started, it starts with that road. I reckon whatever they did when they were building it brought something foul onto Haverbrook.

- Harold, age 77

Yeah, uh, there was this time when the school tried to scare some sense into us. They brought in a bunch of people, ex-drug addicts, criminals, tried to scare us straight with stories and shit.

Anyway, there was this really sort of like fat girl…wait, can I say fat girl? (response from me)…oh Overweight is it? Fucking political correctness gone mad, alright, overweight girl, there was this overweight girl in like full leopard print track suit. And I’m already trying not to piss myself laughing at all them, especially her, because they said to us before hand not to laugh, and when you get told you can’t laugh, you want to do it even more in some fucked up way.

So she’s talking about being addicted to heroin and shit and how she got addicted to weight loss routines. So this fat, sorry, overweight girl is talking about her attempts to lose weight and I’ll never forget this, she says “I had an exercise bike in my room which I rode every night, but it wasn’t getting me anywhere".

I stood up, ran from the room and fucking exploded with laughter in the hallway, I was laughing so fucking hard I couldn’t breathe, I was getting red in the face. Thought I was going to have a heart attack.

Wait, you wanted a strange story? Um, nah, nothing much man.

- Damien, age 33.

That road they were building, that State Route Zero, never happened. Everyone knew about it, it was like an urban legend. I mean, if they were building this freeway, we’d have had some proof of it. You can’t just have a road disappear from existence, that doesn’t happen…

- Brendan, age 42

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