Annette, Peter and I moved from our
first share place at 151a Riley Street, Darlinghurst to 432 Bourke Street in
leafy Surry Hills in 1979. Even though 151a was formative, energetic and full of
people, 432 seemed (at least to me) like the first real home away from home. We
even had a lovely little dog named Bonnie. After 12-18 months of living without
Mum's cooking we'd mastered the art of making Spag Bol and so decided to have an
'Italian Day' serving lashings of spaghetti, heaps of wine and a modicum of fun.
Needless to say we got very drunk - a perennial disposition.
In 1983, the Adelaide Festival was
putting on a few Samuel Beckett plays by the San Quentin group (personally loved
by Mr B). So Pat, Nivek, Annette and I travelled down by bus to see them. It was
a fractious week all round completed by a nightmare ride home as the bus
careened onto an unpaved section of the highway with a 2 foot drop. I never
wanted to ride in the front seat again. The plays were good although Waiting For
Godot was staged at an old, old theatre without air conditioning on a sweltering
night: hard seats and the sounds of snoring.
Lindsay attended Wollongong University
in 1978(?) and, basically, changed our group of friends forever. He met up with
Tim, Stephen and Paul, Annette and Sue and Drosma and so on and these poeple
became my closest confidants over the eighties and beyond.
No matter what year it was, massive
groups formed to go on picnic lunches. The Botanical Gardens and Observatory
Hill were the favourites but others also got a shoe in.
![Anne, Philip and Tony(?)[from No-V-Bleet], 1986(?)](images/other-leave-10.jpg){kind=link}
