The Angel of Bang Kwang Prison (4 page)

I had started smoking cigarettes at seven and by the time I was in my early teens I was smoking before school, during the lunch break and after school—cigarettes or grass, whatever was handier. Possibly it was as much for the social aspect as it was for the nicotine; smoking was rarely done alone. I also varied my drugs with sniffing—glue, petrol, aerosols or whatever I could get my hands on. Petrol, which was easy to obtain, was a particular favourite, so much so that friends called me ‘Petrol Head’.

I nearly accidentally set myself alight one day when I confused my head with the petrol can; instead of pouring the petrol back into the can I poured it over my head and then reached for a cigarette and lighter. Thankfully my stoned friends managed to wrestle the light from me. They rushed me to the house of this much older guy who we found ourselves turning to in matters of crisis. After rolling his eyes to Heaven at the sight of my head, he patiently and laboriously washed the petrol out of my hair.

He and his house mates were real playboys and there were always lots of women hanging around there but it was a place where we crashed without bother. I never knew for sure what they did for a living. For some reason they all struck me as the sort of blokes who sold nice cars. There was always good music on no matter what time of the day or night we turned up at. They had a great record collection and the best stereo around, not to mention their bar. Money obviously wasn’t a problem. They seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time playing billiards and pool, and what made this even more interesting for the casual observer was that they played naked. They were young handsome bachelors who knew exactly how to enjoy themselves. They knew we were underage so they didn’t touch us.

It was also at their house that I ‘fixed’ a tattoo that I had given myself at a friend’s house and then didn’t like. I was determined to remove it. I had created a girl gang and we called ourselves ‘Hound Digger’—don’t ask me why. We carried knives and acted very tough; perhaps our attempt at feminism or women’s lib. I was leader and went by the name of ‘Skull’, which referred to my envied drinking skills. Anyway I had thought that a dagger would look good but it didn’t. So I soaked some cotton wool in bleach and placed it on the tattoo, then briefly set the cotton wool alight so that it would burn the top of the tattoo. It seemed like a good idea at the time! Then I let the bleach remain on my wounded arm and bandaged the whole thing up so that the bleach would continue to eat into the tattoo … and my skin.

Needless to say there were problems. The bleach did its job very well but then my arm became infected. I went around to the guy’s house and he freaked out when he saw my messy wound, saying, ‘Oh sweet Jesus you’re gonna get gangrene!’ He made me go to his house every day so he could wash out my arm and bandage it correctly. By the time it healed I then had an ugly tattoo and a scar; however, as soon as I could I had a nicer tattoo of a rose drawn over the ugly one and it all worked out fine.

I was a functional addict, though maybe ‘addict’ is not the right word. I didn’t have a drug of choice and I certainly wouldn’t have held up a pharmacy in order to get drugs. I didn’t crave drugs or alcohol. I just took them if they were there. It was more a case of, ‘Let’s live life to the max!’ mixed up with self-destructive behaviour. I was breaking all the boundaries in the hope that someone would erect some especially for me. I would walk around naked, pick a fight with someone twice my size, shoplift, drive wrecked, stolen cars and take rides on ridiculously speeding motorbikes.

I was always the entertainer and entranced an audience of friends with my one-woman shows, where I might slash myself with razor blades, burn both arms with cigarettes, pierce my body with large needles and a host of other bizarre party tricks. I would get a false sense of bravado from my friends’ amazement and it would push me further for a bigger ‘wow’ factor.

I was functional in that I could get up everyday, stoned or drunk, and go to school. Nobody seemed to notice my glassy stoned stare in class; I knew how to lay low and behave myself. I have a real instinct for that. At this point you are probably wondering about my parents and whether they had any idea of what was going on. They did.

One day I walked into my bedroom and knew instinctively that someone had been going through my things. My diary had been moved. I didn’t react; I just sort of accepted it. If my mother had read it they now knew everything. I always felt that they didn’t buy my smashing my nose against a doorpost. I waited for a row to erupt when my father came home from work but nothing happened. Everyone continued to treat me as normal. We ate our dinner and the plates were cleared away. I did my homework and went to bed. My parents had decided that a stormy confrontation wouldn’t serve any purpose; they were very wise like that. Instead, a couple of days later, my mother was giving me a lift somewhere. Just as I was about to gruffly take my leave and get out of the car she quietly said, ‘Susan, we know you’re trying and doing things that you shouldn’t be doing. But we also know how smart and intelligent you are. We trust you to know the difference between right and wrong.’

I mumbled something smart and intelligent like, ‘Yeah, yeah,’ but their strategy did leave an impression on me, and it’s a technique that I have since used with my own teenage daughter today.

When they asked me what I wanted to do with my life I would act smart and brattish and tell them that I wanted to be a garbage collector. Then they would ask me again and I told them that I wanted to be an actress. As I’ve said my grandmother had a few connections with the theatre and media world and my parents thought about trying to get me into an acting school in St Kilda’s. Nothing came of this however. I think they thought me a little young and preferred me to finish high school first.

They were never heavy-handed or forbidding with me. They always kept the lines of communication open between us—none of this banishing me to my room without supper stuff. In truth I was very stoned most of the time in the house and they never realised. I remember my poor father coming into my room one evening to talk to me about something. I don’t remember now what he said because I didn’t have a clue what he was talking about then, thanks to being completely off my face. He rested his hand on my TV, and just inches away from his fist was a massive joint, about six inches long and one inch thick, but he never saw it.

My cousins were attending a posh, co-ed, private school in Melbourne and my poor parents decided that this could be the making of me. I howled when I heard about it but they were adamant that I should, at least, try it. I was 14 years old; with my nose and face in a bloody cast which was inscribed with ‘Fuck You’. Unsurprisingly, no one rushed to befriend me on that first awful day. The school was full of rich, snobby kids who all surfed and rode horses; well that’s what it seemed like. To say I was a novelty is an understatement.

There were rules, rules and more rules that only served to push my rebellious side creatively. I was told I couldn’t pluck my eyebrows so I shaved mine off; I was told that I couldn’t wear five earrings in my ears so I put in safety pins instead; I was told that I couldn’t dye my hair so I shaved it all off too. Sometimes I would substitute the safety pins for tampons—imagine that, getting on the tram to school with tampons dangling from my ears. My outrageousness always seemed to involve public transport. I especially liked to spray my upper body with body paint and then put on a completely transparent top, just to see how uncomfortable it made passengers on the bus or tram.

My cheeks burn when I remember the party that my grandparents threw for their 50th wedding anniversary. I got chatting to this ‘hip’ pastor, who was maybe 40-ish and probably prided himself on being able to connect with young people. That sounds sarcastic and I don’t mean to mock him because he seemed like a nice guy. It’s just that he met me during my smartass period. I was wearing a colourful and mostly see-through hippie dress; what I wasn’t wearing was a bra, and I kept daring him, silently, to look at my breasts. Finally he passed some remark about my dark tan and I, brazen as you like, pointed out that I didn’t even have any white strap-marks. He smiled to himself as I pouted away in a manner I imagined to be provocative, but in hindsight probably made me look the young ignorant brat I was.

People tended to steer clear of me in school, out of fear as well as everything else. When the initial shock-factor wore off there were some muttering of distaste from the older girls. Apparently they didn’t like my attitude and thought that I needed to be brought down a peg or three. A group of them let it be known that they were going to beat me up after school.

Of all people it was
Simon
who once again saved the day for me. On the day of the arranged ‘pegging down’ he and his mate Bobby skidded up to the school fence, during recess, in a noisy pink and grey battered, stolen car. They fell out of it while swigging bottles of gin—no tonic—and started ogling the girls and calling out insults to the boys.
Simon
then yelled at the general school body to fetch Susan immediately. His demand was instantly met as 30 excited pupils came tearing through the school to tell me that my boyfriend was outside wanting to see me. I suppressed a smile and headed out to the two mean-looking hoods. Bobby just looked nasty and angry, while
Simon
had a chipped tooth, evil-looking beard, six-pack abs and an absolute foul-mouth. I felt like the Pied Piper of Hamelin as the 30 followed me back out to the fence to watch the re-union. Most of these kids had led very sheltered lives and would never have had any dealings with the likes of
Simon
. They stood gaping as I shot the breeze. Although
Simon
and I had broken up by this stage we were still good friends.

The visit worked wonders for my status in school. Now people sought me out because I was crazy and fun. A new circle of friends followed me around and I soon corrupted the lot of them. Once again I led the way in partying and encouraged them to drink and smoke grass, strip and lose their virginity. I even encouraged a few to come out of the closet. I’m sure I was the teachers’ worse nightmare, heightened considerably by my newfound popularity.

I suppose it was only a matter of time before I was suspended. I got into a fight with another girl, who was actually one of my best friends. We started ribbing one another, then pushing and shoving, then pulling hair and kicking in a frenzy. We managed to rip off each other’s uniforms, down to our panties, and I wasn’t wearing a bra. We were both sent home in a taxi to our parents, suspended for six days. I was in my gym uniform since the other one was in tatters. My parents had to pay the taxi fair and I thought it was all great fun.

After a year and a half of paying outlandish fees to the private school, my parents finally conceded defeat and I was back in public school. Strangely enough the private school never really gave me much trouble no matter what I did, until a few years later when I returned to the school to show them that I had grown into a relatively normal adult. The teachers were stunned to see the difference in me and I was acutely embarrassed when they recalled my youthful misdemeanours. I was living proof that miracles do happen. However, it was a bit of shock when the school later phoned my family and told them that I was welcome to visit any time but that they could not allow me to hand out Christian literature or talk about God to the pupils. And this was a Christian school!

Chapter Two

It was inevitable that things had to change for me. I was lost in my own little world, and I needed something to bring me back to reality and save me from myself.

I had had an epiphany. The year was 1977 and I was ready for a change. I spent the school summer break working part-time and had amassed quite a fortune. Some of my friends and I decided to pool our resources and finish the break with a couple of weeks by the sea. We got drunk and stoned every day. I did a lot of LSD and was tripping the light fantastic and having incredible revelations. One night we went to see a movie showing Jimi Hendrix in concert and I started to think about the world we lived in: why was there war and hatred? What are we here for? The more I tried to drown out these questions in booze and drugs the louder they got in my head, and the more depressed I got.

I was looking for meaning and was reviewing my belief system. I believed that everyone had a reason for being, a destiny that they had to pursue. What was mine? I was desperate for direction, to find something that I could commit to. I was looking for a cause, and had even tried being a vegetarian but after seven days I had a burger, so that wasn’t it. When I thought of another year in school, interspersed with drunken parties and my twisted social antics, it made me feel hollow. I was burnt out. And at such a young age. I cut short my beach holiday and headed home, where my depression deepened. I couldn’t even drink or enjoy a joint.

I called over to a friend one Sunday and admitted my turmoil to her; ‘I’m thinking of joining the Hari Krishnas or else I’m afraid I’m gonna kill myself!’

She hugged me and said, ‘Look let’s head out and get stoned, then if you still feel the same tomorrow you can join the Hari Krishnas next week.’

That seemed as good a plan as any. We walked out into the warm afternoon and hitchhiked over to the red light district where there was always something happening. Every Sunday there was a sort of market in St Kilda’s, with a variety of buskers and music, and hippies selling their art and handcrafts; usually I bought as much stuff as I could carry and always left wanting more. This time I could barely muster the energy to look at the paintings. I surveyed my surroundings listlessly; there were crowds of people milling around, licking ice-cream cones and drinking beer, having a good time—but no one seemed to me to be really happy. The whole scene, my life; past, present and future, just seemed pointless. I looked across to the speeding traffic on the highway and sent up a silent appeal to whatever was listening: ‘If you are real, you’d better do something quick because I can’t go on like this. I’d rather die.’

Just then I heard music and people cheering and clapping. I crossed over to see what they were looking at. It was a play that had been put on by the roadside. I found myself forgetting about my problems and I watched the players. One was a smiling hippie strumming a sitar and another was a beautiful woman doing ballet. The theatre group was an eclectic bunch of Christians, of all types and ages. They weren’t about damnation and eternal guilt and sin, but were instead about hope and creativity and meaning—all of which I was starving for. Some of them were full-time Christian Aid workers and others just did it on their days off, all hoping that they might even just reach out to one person. Well, they certainly did that day, and that person was me.

I approached them afterwards. I was in my usual hippie attire; my long flowing Indian skirt, my tiny embroidered shirt that just stopped below my breasts, the back of my jacket was emblazoned with the wise words: ‘Life is like a shit sandwich, the more dough you have the less shit you eat,’ and bird bones and feathers hung from my ears. They looked me up and down and smiled. I looked like Mary Poppins on crack. I shyly greeted them and a conversation was quickly struck up. I warmed in particular to two of the guys. One was a gentle American whose name I’m ashamed to say I cannot remember. He had come from a very religious background but he wasn’t, thankfully, religious himself. He did have this amazing knowledge of the Bible; he must have read it many times, but he wasn’t egotistical about it.

I cannot abide self-righteous people, especially when their theme is staid religion. Another guy, John, who has remained a good friend of mine, asked me my name and where I came from, what I did and if I believed in Jesus. He was a regular hippie, like myself, with a certain wisdom and calmness that literally compelled me to tell him every mad thing I had done over the previous couple of years—including wanting to kill myself out of sheer weariness.

One of them said, ‘If you’re going to throw your life away, why don’t you give it away instead?’

The hairs went up on the back of my neck and I shivered with the clarity of those words. It was like they truly recognised me and what I was going through. It all just seemed to make perfect sense. I could stop destroying my own life and start to help others with theirs. I wasn’t sure if I could be as spiritual as them though, considering my outlook, and I told them that I went to church but it bored me because I could find nothing stimulating or challenging about the weekly rituals. To my surprise they nodded in agreement and pointed out that I could be a spiritual person without organised religion and tradition. I could invite Jesus into my life in a very intimate manner, which would be more challenging and much more personal than sitting in the back of a church on a Sunday morning. I prayed with them in the middle of that crowded street. I asked for help with changing my life; for the first time ever I felt inspired and it had nothing to do with a joint. I didn’t see any bright lights, or hear a chorus of angels, but I felt profoundly moved. I could change my unsatisfactory life; I could do something and make a difference, a real positive difference. They introduced Jesus as this very real guy who wanted to take care of me and help me reach my potential. I was suddenly intoxicated by hope and love.

I stopped doing drugs from that day, and I managed it, miraculously, without needing rehab. I felt such peace in my heart that I knew my addictions were more about my emotional and mental state. Some time later I did try marijuana again, but it was horrible. It gave me such a major downer and made me paranoid—I knew that I would never touch it again. I preferred to work through my pain now instead of dosing myself with medication. I had more energy and was much livelier. I’m afraid that some of my friends didn’t appreciate my transformation and I can’t say that I blame them. I just felt so detached from my previous wild existence.

They missed the Susan who would liven up parties after skulling a bottle of hard alcohol and just didn’t know what to do with this new version of me. There didn’t seem to be any middle ground. I did continue to see them infrequently but my new outlook was like a glass barrier between us—we could see each other but just couldn’t hear one another properly.

I informed my parents that I wanted out of school. I was 16 years old. I spent ages working on a speech in my head and had to wait until the two of them were together, and in a relaxed mood. I was prepared to fight a long drawn-out battle and to beg like a child, but it wasn’t required. My parents weren’t foolish; they could see that school wasn’t stimulating me, or sending me on the path to a fulfilling career. They listened to my impassioned plea for liberation from academia, glanced quickly at one another, and by the next morning, gave me their blessings. That very afternoon they took me down to the principal’s office and she gave me permission to leave school. There was some necessary paperwork to be filled out and I needed all my teachers to sign my release. Nearly every teacher was in class and I had to interrupt them. Invariably they asked me, in front of the students, why I wanted to leave and what I planned to do, and invariably I replied, ‘I’m going to change the world!’ I was probably one of the most well-known characters in the school thanks to my wild reputation, and I could see that my answer was impressive to these staid youngsters. I felt I walked out of school that day in a blaze of glory.

My parents were more than a little dubious about my sudden change. I think they expected it to last as long as my vegetarian phase did. They were pleasantly surprised when I didn’t revert back to ‘angry young teenager’ mode after a couple of weeks and so were prepared to go along with my wanting to quit school.

I joined the Christian group and received a lot of much needed counselling and training so that I could help others. I will always be grateful to the group because they gave me direction and were pretty instrumental in helping me become who I am today. It was basic community stuff. We put on shows for kids, we visited prisoners in jail who had nobody else to talk to, and wrote letters to them. We would visit the homes of disabled people to see how we could help them and their families. We also held a Saturday night party for the local teenagers and would put on some entertainment for them. It was a rough part of town so they weren’t exactly queuing up on the street outside but still we managed to attract a few token toughies.

When I felt I was ready I began to counsel people. It always amazes me; the amount of people who don’t have life sussed and imagine that they are the only ones who are cocking up. There are so, so many of us who are terrified of making mistakes, feel lonely and isolated, and have been through some amount of shit in their lives. People seemed to trust me and wanted to tell me their worries, perhaps because I could show them my tattoos, scars, and many piercings. I could talk realistically about drugs and drink and nothing impressed me because I had already been there—I couldn’t judge people since I had made the same or even worse mistakes. I didn’t use big words because I didn’t know them myself and I couldn’t patronise anyone because I was still in my teens.

I had a new reason to get up in the morning and new friends to hang out with. I guess it was only a matter of time before a happier and healthier me attracted someone new into my life—there hadn’t been anyone serious since
Simon
. I was 17 years old when I met Peter, a gentle fun-loving hippie, who was four years older than me. There is that famous line from Charlotte Bronte’s novel
Jane Eyre
when she says, ‘Reader I married him.’ I would have to a make a slight change to that: ‘Reader I could have married him,’ because he did ask me! He was the first guy to ever propose to me but I didn’t take him up on it, although, we did have an informal ceremony, where we exchanged vows of love, in front of friends and, even, my parents. This was their compromise for not allowing us to marry. He was lovely; a long-haired hippie who wrote his own music, travelled nowhere without his guitar, shared my love for Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix, and my love for helping others. I had been about to leave Melbourne for Queensland where I had accepted a job as nanny. The family had been recommended to me. I love kids and was ready to see more of Australia so it seemed perfect, until I found myself falling for Peter. He took me out for a hot chocolate on the day I was to catch my train and quietly asked me not to go. And so I stayed!

We actually set up home together in a mobile home for a while. It was a bit of a shock living with a man. I discovered that I was still quite selfish and needed to learn how to share my life with someone else. We lived and worked together for two years, travelling around Australia and finding people who needed our help. It was a lovely two years; just living day to day and meeting all sorts of people in all sorts of places. This really opened my eyes to the world outside of the limited life I had so far experienced. When money was tight we managed to get odd jobs, though Peter frequently made a bundle busking on the streets. His good looks and warm smile usually had people reaching into their pockets for some coins.

Pete’s brother Brian was working in a uranium mine in the middle of nowhere, Jabiru, about 300km from the city of Darwin, the capital of the Northern Territory. Darwin was the scene of Australia’s worst natural disaster to date when Cyclone Tracy hit on Christmas morning in 1974. At 3am the anemometer at Darwin Airport recorded winds of 217km an hour, just before it stopped working. In all, 65 people died that day, 16 were lost at sea and never found, and 1,000 people needed medical attention. Brian got Pete a job in the mine, so we headed down there.

It was a long, dusty, stifling drive into a very desolate area—small shrubbery bushes were the only things to be seen for miles around. Jabiru got its name from the large jabiru bird, so named by the Aboriginals. The bird was also known as the ‘Police-bird’ and ‘Black-necked stork’. In 1970 uranium was discovered at Ranger in Arnhem Land, with more uranium discovered the following year at Jabiluka. Uranium is the principal ingredient for fuelling nuclear weapons and nuclear reactors—the raw material of the nuclear industry, the most lethal industrial process on earth. There were years of heated debate over whether or not to mine the uranium, but money won out in the end. There was good reason for anger and fear of the mine and the damage it could do to the environment. The Kakadu National Park was established in the area in 1979 and houses more than a third of Australia’s bird population. It’s also contains some of the country’s best preserved archaeological sites, along with extensive rock art galleries. Aboriginal people have been living here for countless years so you can only imagine the importance of the area to them.

We had to be cleared by security before we could access the camp. That was a tough life, especially for the 15 women working alongside the thousand or so highly testosteroned, boorish, loud-mouthed men. Now, this might sound like Heaven on earth to some girls out there but I tell you honestly that the place was utterly devoid of romance and sentiment! Of course there were some sweet lonely guys who quickly became favourites with me, Pete, and Brian. The three of us got on very well and kept each other sane during the hot, hot evenings when the working day was over.