Awakened – The Aussie With a Funny Accent

These memoirs record my life from infant to octogenarian; including traumas when my mother was widowed twice – father killed in action in World War II when I was five and stepfather struck by lightning and killed when I was twelve. Death continued as a part of living in my early adulthood when eldest child, Owen was killed age three in a household accident and favourite uncle Merle committed suicide.

My employment in the 1960s included jug hustling at an oil exploration site in the middle of winter, article student with a firm of chartered accountant, then as a payroll clerk at a construction site at Pine Point Northwest Territories (hitchhiking out by bush plane with a view of the conifer forest seen through the floorboards of the bush plane).

During my tenth year as a married man I became irresponsible and deserted my first wife and four children. The Australian phrase for that is “gone walk about”. I call this my wilderness walk. No member of my family had any idea where I was for the next three years.

Migration to New Zealand on a plane over the Pacific was the next stage of my wilderness walk, followed sixteen months later by a flight to Brisbane. I shared a taxi with an English lass to the Gold Coast after asking her “Where and what’s that?” I soon found out, employed as a night auditor, frequently sleeping on the beach during my non-working daylight hours.

Enjoy the read and discover how and when I was Awakened.