Miles Street was a definite elevation in status for snobby eight-year-old me. It was a two-storey apartment (not a flat; an apartment) with an internal staircase. Up until that point I had never seen an internal staircase in real life. I had seen plenty on the outside of homes; Queenslander houses have massive ones. But indoors?

Also pictured, some dude hoping to be captured by the Google Street View cameras, but who got more than he ever bargained for: a starring role on this website. CONGRATULATIONS DUDE, YOU ARE NOW FAMOUS TO LIKE TWENTY WHOLE PEOPLE.

Finally, I was one stop closer to living my dream of being a member of the Huxtable family. All I needed was a swinging door to the kitchen, a giant coat rack, and a door that opened up directly onto the street. And yes, they were the only differences I could perceive between me and the Huxtables.

Mum even had Claire’s hairstyle (and earrings). I’d be Theo, Lauren would be Rudy, and Cliff, Sondra, Denise and Vanessa would be…uh, imaginary.

Admittedly, the internal staircase wasn’t ideal. It wasn’t a solid staircase that curved 90 degrees at the bottom. It was a straight staircase up against a wall and you could see between each step; it was designed more like an outdoor staircase. Still, it was a step (yuk yuk) in the right direction. Even those of us destined to be Huxtables had to take our lumps; and at least here no one stole our sandwiches.

In the apartment next door to us lived a lovely old couple. At least, I assumed they were lovely. I assumed because, thus far, old people had always been lovely to me. But then, everyone was lovely to me. At this stage in my life, I’d been loved by all adults: relatives, teachers, mum’s friends; and kids our age hadn’t yet learn that cruelty that kids are known for, so I’d never actually experienced unpopularity of any kind. I was an adorable child, and I was adored.

But all that changed with the couple next door; who, for the sake of ameliorating my bitterness, we shall call Mr and Mrs Fuckshit.

One day I was playing on my back fence and I saw Mr Fuckshit walk out into his backyard. I called out “HEY MR FUCKSHIT! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?” in my friendly, adorable child-like manner.

“NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS, YOU BAD-MANNERED LITTLE BUGGER” he barked back.

Well, I never.

And this wasn’t a one-off. This old couple only ever spoke to me in that tone. Whether screeching at me to stop swinging from the clothesline (which, okay, I wasn’t allowed to do it—mum would have yelled at me too—but it wasn’t their clothesline), or muttering loudly enough for me to hear about “that bloody kid next door”, they were constantly unpleasant, to the point where I started to think maybe the horrible adults in Roald Dahl’s novels were based on real people.

Accurate likeness.

The Fuckshits next door were responsible for me feeling something I’d never felt before: resentment towards an adult. I didn’t even know such a thing was possible. So eager was I to please my elders and follow every rule ever given ever that it had never once occurred to me to be angry or upset with someone taller than me. They unlocked something dark and vile within me. It was because of what they unleashed that I became so full of pain and anguish that I ran away from home.

I didn’t pack. I didn’t leave a note. I just walked out the front door and kept going, never to look back. I don’t know how long I walked for, or how long the police were looking for me, or how many tears my mum shed over my absence. All I know is that by the time I finally looked up to see where I was, I’d made it all the way to here:

NOTE: “Cheering Bystanders” is an artist’s impression only.

Feeling like my family had learnt their lesson, I made the journey home again. Mum, ever the diplomatic one, bravely pretended like she hadn’t even noticed I’d gone. But I knew. I KNEW.

As for the Fuckshits: I don’t remember their real name, or even what they looked like, so they can’t have left too strong an imprint on my psyche. But they were my first memory of having someone actively dislike me for, as far as I could see, no apparent reason. The concept was, and remains, distressing. Not least of all because it would look bad on my application to become a Huxtable.

Mum and Aaron split up, and so mum, Lauren and I moved into a flat in Marian Street. Marian Street was located on the far side of town, and it was a side I was not too familiar with. (In hindsight, Mount Isa is not that big, and referring to “sides of town” in Mount Isa in the 1980s is a bit of a stretch, but I was still a very small child. Runty, even. So even a 2.6 horse town like Mount Isa seemed massive, if McDonaldsless.)

The apartment was a small, odd box of a thing. Painted brick inside and out, with big metal gates in front, it kind of resembled a vaguely pleasant amenities block. I don’t remember having any strong feelings against it at the time, but when I picture it in my head now, I can’t see how it could have been anything other than sad and boxy.

Sad Weird Box, Sweet Sad Weird Box

Good thing, then, that we didn’t stay there too long. We were gone within a few months.

Now, it might seem like we were being too picky. Too fussy. So it was a little small. So what? So it was a little boxy. Big deal! So it was on the “other side of town”. Who cares? You take the good, you take the bad, etc. Why not just settle down and make the most of it?

Well, because, we kept getting broken into.

Home invasion is a frightening concept. Strangers in your home: your private space, your sanctuary. How can you feel safe when you know that people­—uninvited, unwelcome people—have been inside your home while you’re not there? They could have stolen your valuables, or broken your belongings, or manhandled your most personal possessions, or say, made themselves a sandwich.

Yes, on more than one occasion, we would come home to find the bread bag half opened, a chopping board and breadknife on the counter, and the peanut butter sitting on the bench. Someone had made a peanut butter sandwich.

Now I realise the leap to “home invasion” is a stretch: Occam’s Razor suggests one of the people living in the house was responsible for leaving the mess. The thing is, nobody in our house made peanut butter sandwiches: Mum was on this crazy health-kick (every morning for breakfast, she’d have Just Right cereal with orange juice instead of milk—I thought she’d lost her mind); my sister was barely a toddler (the only meals she prepared for herself at that age were dead moth bodies she found in window sills); and, as the memory of horse ownership does NOT fade fast, I was still very much a giant snob and wouldn’t touch a peanut butter sandwich with a ten foot pole. I’d eat ham sandwiches or tomato sandwiches or tuna sandwiches, but a common SPREAD? Out of a JAR? Like some kind of ANIMAL? I would assume you were trying to poison me.

(In my defense, this commercial of the era definitely deserves to shoulder some of the blame. Gross.)

So if nobody in our house, then who? The peckish burglars turned out to be the people in the flat next door. They would break into our house, make a sandwich, and go back home. It was like finding out a stray neighbourhood cat was pilfering your own cat’s food, except nothing like that at all because PEOPLE WERE BREAKING INTO OUR HOUSE TO FIX SNACKS.

Ugh, that better not be multigrain…

What do you do when your (frequent) burglars are also your neighbours? Do you call the police? Confront them angrily? Set booby traps? Question the choices you’ve made in your life that have led to actual burglars in your actual house assessing peanut butter as being the most valuable thing in your home?

We did none of these things. Despite being fourth-generation Australians, we suddenly become very, very British, and acted like nothing at all was happening. For however many weeks between the first discovery of the opening of the Marian Street Snack Station and us finding a better place to live (preferably with a combination-lock pantry), we simply denied the existence of the frequent burglaries. We literally did NOTHING.

Well, that’s not entirely true: mum did start buying larger jars of peanut butter.

If Ruby Street was a taste of tranquil, middle-class suburban living, Erap Street in Soldiers Hill was a whole main course (even if it did lend itself a little too easily to being called “Crap Street”). Mum and my stepdad Aaron bought the house. BOUGHT. This would be the first and last time in my life that I would experience being in a family that owns property.

I do not remember it being that green. It actually looks quite lovely and welcoming. Ugh, why did we ever leave here? Oh, right, shitty divorce.

We had a red cattle dog called Rosie (because roses are red, and violets are blue, and before you ask actually yes, we also had a Violet: my grandparents’ blue heeler), an aviary with several budgerigars, and some guinea pigs, which fed on the scraps from the vegetable garden. No child-attacking cacti in this backyard, we grew actual sustenance. Like, lettuce and shit. I was given a BMX bike, and between the house and the pets and the vegetables and the bicycling, we were a picture perfect nuclear family.

By the time we would move out, Mum and Aaron would be going through a spectacularly unpleasant divorce, but for a time it was positively Family Ties-y.

The cohesive family unit, before the cracks started to show. (Surely my mullet was an omen of impending darkness, though.)

It was so idyllic, in fact, that I could barely think of a story to tell about this address. But then I remembered the time I was nearly kidnapped.

As I was now in grade three, I very bravely walked myself to and from Barkly Highway State School every day. It was a twenty minute walk, but it was practically a straight line: head straight down Urquhart, turn right onto Bougainville, boom! You’re there. (On the off chance you ever find yourself living in Erap Street and needing to get to Barkly Highway State School, you’re welcome).

So there I was, walking my little self to school one day, when a Land Rover pulled over to the side of the road next to me. The woman driving the car leaned over, opened the passenger side door and said “hey little boy, would you like a lift to school?”

Now, to say my mum had a bee in her bonnet about Stranger Danger is a massive understatement: that woman has an entire swarm of bees in her bonnet, and the bonnet itself is made of wasps. I was taught, under no circumstances, should I ever, ever, ever, ever get into a car with someone I didn’t know. In fact, even if I did know the person, mum always said she would never authorize anyone to pick me up without telling me herself with her own mouthwords.

She also warned me that she may, one day, test me. She might actually organize for someone to come along and offer me a ride just to see how I would respond. Knowing this, and fearing mum’s wrath way more than I feared being snatched by some kid-murderer, I said “NO THANK YOU. I DON’T TAKE RIDES FROM STRANGERS.”

“It’s okay,” the woman answered, “your mum said to tell you it’s okay. And I have kids going to your school too!”

Nice try, lady. My mum had in fact told me specifically that if anyone ever said “your mum says it’s okay”, that they would be lying because she would NEVER tell anyone to tell me that. NEVER EVER. She would, if she absolutely had to, give me a secret codeword. So now I knew it wasn’t legit, and I scooched a little further away from the vehicle.

“NO THANK YOU.” I said, and kept walking.

“Oh, alright” said the woman, as she swung the passenger door shut and drove off, closing the chapter on what remains the laziest, most half-assed kidnapping attempt in the history of kidnapping.

I think one of the reasons mum was so strict on the Stranger Danger rules is because she knew what an easy sell I’d be. Truth be known, I really wanted to get in that car. The seats of the Land Rover were high and comfy looking, and it was a long walk to school, and I was really tired. Had she offered me any candy I would have been in there like a shot.

When I told mum about the incident, she was so, so proud of me, and SO MAD AT THE WOMAN. Her level of freaked-out-ness led me to the conclusion that it had not been a test after all. She was furious. I suspect, had she had access to a cape or mask or some kind, she would have gone full vigilante and spent her nights prowling the rooftops of Mount Isa, looking for that Land Rover. Except Mount Isa didn’t have any tall buildings: she would have looked ridiculous in a batsuit, perched atop the spinning Kentucky Fried Chicken bucket.

The move to Mount Isa was a big one. Almost all the way to the other side of the state, and a good way north. And we were moving to a desert, where it never rains.

Despite having images of my head of being Arabian nomads, riding camels and living in tents, Mount Isa was actually a lot better than Gin Gin. As rural towns go. In terms of size alone it was a step up. Mount Isa had its own Kentucky Fried Chicken: the days of a thirty minute drive to Bundaberg just to get a hit of potato and gravy were OVER. Now, it only had one Kentucky Fried Chicken, and it did not have a McDonald’s (but then, neither did Bundaberg—in fact, I would have no idea what McDonald’s even was for another two years), but it did have several Big Roosters. I’d moved to somewhere fancy and metropolitan!

Exhibit A: Fancy and metropolitan.

We moved to number 2 Ruby Street, in the suburb of Happy Valley. The house was very old, but it did have an above-ground pool. Having recently been a horse owner, I was already snobby and pretentious enough to know that an above-ground pool was not as classy as an in-ground pool, and I did ask on more than one occasion why we couldn’t just dig a hole beneath the pool and lower it. BUT: a pool is a pool. We had a pool, and I was very grateful. One shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth. I should know, I used to own horses. Had I mentioned? Horses.

Displaying the kind of graceful elegance that would come to define me.

The backyard also had a giant mango tree in the middle of it, and an unfinished treehouse sat halfway up the tree. A neat little cactus garden near the back door completed the tableau of an almost perfect suburban backyard.

Okay, maybe “unfinished” was a tiiiny understatement.

Moving across the state at a young age may have been a huge adjustment, but between the pool, the treehouse and my tricycle I was too occupied with having fun to notice.

Ahh, my tricycle. I was too big for the stupid thing, but I was yet to upgrade to a full bike, so it was all I had. And I still loved it. I would pedal it around the house, up and down the two car-tyre-width concrete stripes that made up the driveway. There was enough concrete paving that I could make it from end of the driveway, around to the back of the house and up the ramp that led to the back door. (Nearly all houses I ever saw in Mount Isa had that same concrete ramp at the back door. Perhaps it was superbly progressive thinking in terms of domestic wheelchair access; or, more likely, those ramps were cheaper to build than stairs.)

One afternoon I was pedalling around my concrete track, loving the shit out of life. School was great: Mr Sharp, my teacher, was both friendly and scary, and was reading us Roald Dahl’s The Twits with the most spectacular array of voices you’d ever heard. I had a best friend: a girl by the name of Sheridan L., and a prerequisite nemesis, Joanne Uglyface (not her real name). Everything was just excellent. The pool was clean, the treehouse was airy, the mangoes were plentiful, and the wind tousled my flat, brown hair as my tricycle hurtled down the concrete, and up the ramp to the back door.

Well, nearly up the ramp. About three quarters of the way up I lost momentum. My hair came to rest, and the tricycle came to a teetering halt. I pushed with my little legs, but the tricycle would go no higher. I hadn’t given myself enough of a run-up.

Then gravity took hold, and the tricycle lurched backwards.

I took my feet off the pedals, intending to plant them on the ground for safety, but that released all resistance on the wheels, and suddenly the tricycle gained terrifying backwards momentum. In my panic I let go of the handlebars—a dreadful mistake, as they immediately spun and locked hard right. With no control over my speed or my direction, I had no choice but to clench my tiny buttocks and flail through the air. (SIDENOTE: I had one other choice, I could have, you know, STOOD UP. It was just a tricycle. But I have always tended towards the dramatic.)

The tricycle flew down the ramp, the locked handlebars causing it to careen out to the right. It flew off the edge of the ramp, rocketing easily between the two horizontal bars of the ramp railing, and sailed out onto the lawn, where it came to rest only after wedging its front wheel under the curvature of the above-ground pool. I, on the other hand, being significantly heavier and larger than the tricycle did not sail quite so easily. Slamming my head into the railing, I lost all momentum and dropped straight down off the edge of the ramp…

…bum first…

…into the cactus garden.