He is my Brother.

He is my best mate. He is one of many mates but with this bloke I've travelled further than all of them. I have lots of Brother's but we dont share the same Mother.

Something special in that. Life affirming. To the grave we have almost gone.

Protected our little Sister as best we knew.

Funny how we grow up as kids with this fully connected mind, curious, engaged, hands-on and immersed. As Brothers we did all of that - climbed trees together, threw stones together, shared girlfriends and friends who were boys.

Smoked together. Fought each others fights, verbal and physical. Looked after each other.

So, at age 10 I realised that my parents were gearing up to move home. We had outgrown the nest and with three children we packed and readied ourselves to move to Kirrawee, NSW Australia.

The Shire. Home to racist riots, Aussie ockerism, beaches, national park, wealth, big houses...

I recall at the home inspection we arrived close to the private driveway and parked the LJ Torana. The neighbours wall was made of cast concrete cylindrical blocks. Of course we got out of the car bored from waiting.

Rolled it down the road till it came to rest up against a taxi at the bottom of the hill. We weren't popular with many neighbours. We also were highly respected by many differing parents for a number of reasons that we were not aware of till much later.

Every last part of moving in happened with the help of my Father's friend. It poured rain. We ran amok in this huge three storey house. Climbed into our cubby house fort that was amongst the trees that towered over the house in the back yard.

Possums, Garraway (cockatoos), Blue Tongue Lizards, Pademelon Wallabies...the place was a zoo without fences, without cages.

By this stage I was a skinny tall kid with gangly legs that never seemed to stop running. We started at Kirrawee Primary School and what I recall mostly is the sleaze bag middle primary school teacher who had a penchant for things that he should have been adult about. Sick fucker...and again not my place to tell other's stories for them.

I let his tyres down at lunchtime in the school car park. Super glued up his classroom lock while he was in the staffroom. He deserved it. That's the only tools I knew how to use to disrupt him.

As fate would have it I did well in school on account of my being able to read, to stand up and recite poetry, to sing as a Choir boy, to debate....to run fast and swift and so I won a number of athletic awards. Loved it....that whistling of the wind as I ran through clouds of dandelion seeds scattered in the air, the sun bursting through gums, the scent of spring and dank winter climes punching into my little lungs.

A three story house that we somehow managed to afford to move into, neighbours of all professional descriptions...looking onto the Royal National Park, walking distance to the local High School.

Kirrawee Senior High School.