While living with my mother (14 years old)I yearned for some excitement and independence so very early one morning I awoke and told my younger brother that I was going to hitch-hike to the Gold Coast. "Tell Mum I'll be back in two weeks." 

I went to the corner with 4 dollars and caught a ride with the milkman, and then finally into the city, and then back through Newtown, then across the harbour bridge, and onto Highway 1 all the way to Surfers Paradise in only about 27 lifts. It was easy! I was a golden-haired, baby-faced boy that no-one feared standing there on the side of the highway with his thumb stuck out.

When I got to the Gold Coast I found my way to a friend of the family's boatyard and he gave me a job washing boats in exchange for a couch in the office and some spending money. It was great and those two weeks were some of the best times I ever had. There was an old Landover for me to tow boats down to the boatramp for 'road-tests' and to go off-roading at night out through the dunes where SeaWorld now is. Grumpy and his friend were really nice to me, they took me out to see Johnny O’Keefe, got me really drunk on brandy lime and lemonade, and raced their cars backwards all the way from Surfers, but the guy fought a lot with his wife and it really bothered me so one night when they were yelling loudly at each other I decided to go home, so again, without any money I quietly packed my little bag and slipped away to the highway in the early hours to hitch back south.

After  a fair bit of walking and quite a few short rides I was finally at Murwillumbah where I got stuck for several hours until a man about fifty in an XP Falcon stopped and gave me a ride. He was going all the way to Sydney! He drove slowly, not talking much, and during the night somewhere on the highway where there was a lot of forest with little rest areas on the sides, without explaining, and who was I to ask, he pulled off into a rest area and stopped.

It was very dark and the wind was whistling through the tall trees. I didn't know what was happening; I’d been kept in the dark all of my life. I didn’t know who I was or what rights I had, anyway, I had been taught already that I had no rights, I was only a child.

He suddenly grabbed me and I resisted, but after all, he was the same age as the authority figures in my life, the ones I was taught to obey for fear of punishment, and he was twice my size. I can't remember the exact moves because I have shut it out of my mind for so long, but I do remember his big strong fingers, and his nails pinching into the back of my neck as he forced his penis between my clenched lips and the ugly rhythm which ended with a very bad taste in my mouth.

It certainly added to my dislike and contempt for authority figures and as I remember it there were only a few teachers who deserved any sort of respect. The others were either too old, infirm, intoxicated or hung-up on the schoolgirls they were supposed to be teaching.

When he released me I flicked the handle on the car door, vomited out of it, and then pushed my body out onto the ground. I rolled away and ran into the darkness of the bushes.

The car started and the headlights came on, my bag was thrown through the window and the car disappeared onto the highway again. I felt wretched, afraid, cold and guilty! Any disagreement or dispute between a child and an adult had to be the fault of the underling. That was my experience of how it was.

I spent the rest of the night huddled in the bushes trying to keep warm, watching the lights of the cars go by. Inside I felt angry, disgusted and ashamed and I would have given anything for some water to wash away the taste of vomit and old man’s cum from my mouth. A soon as the sky lightened I started hitchhiking again so by midday I had made it back to Sydney and caught the train out to the suburbs. When I arrived home my Mum said, "Here is the prodigal son." I didn't say anything.

A week later, before the school holidays were over I was playing around in the surf with my friends and girlfriend. It was hot and sunny and we were diving off a rock close to the shore. I came up for breath and there standing against the railing on the promenade was him! He was dressed in a dark suit with his arms stretched out each side holding onto the rail staring down at me. It was the first time I had seen THE DEVIL. I was really frightened and dived back into the water. When I came up again he was gone, and there was my fresh faced girlfriend laughing at me. I didn't say a word about it.

For many years I had a very bad attitude towards the authority figures in my life but the essence of my anger, beside the original feeling that I wanted to find that man and kill him, was that I didn’t feel as though I could tell anybody about the incident and that I had been conditioned to accept abuse and cruelty from adults. That was my main source of anger. That power is so easily misused; and that also leaves a bad taste in my mouth.