In the early 80s, before I was born, my dad was renting the house that I now own with a couple of his best friends from uni, Ian and Graeme. After he met my mum, the house went up for sale and he bought it, soon after I was born. I've stayed in contact with a few of his closest friends, namely Ian - who sent me this email last night, and I love the story so much I wanted to share it here!
Hi Kitty
The following story is one Andrew told me a long, long time ago. I said at the time he should write it down as a short story. He eventually wrote it as a song lyric for that teachers' band he was involved with that included characters like Graham Ashmore and Steve Terry (don't know if you ever met Steve). The lyric was great, but a song lyric doesn't amount to a short story because you have to leave out most of the detail. What follows is the full story Andrew told me that night, as well as I can remember it. The narrator here is your Dad, not me.
Surfin’ Johnny
The friendship group had held together since primary school. As we turned eighteen we acquired wheels, and the tentacles of our previously constricted lives reached out in all directions. Our newfound mobility invited a blitzkrieg of adventures, most of them questionable and many downright dangerous.
But not Johnny. He used his freedom to devote his life to a single purpose. While the rest of us bought FC Holdens for raw power on the highways or VW Beetles for off-road bush bashing, Johnny bought an old van and a new surfboard. Every weekend, and many weeknights as well, he headed south from Melbourne to the surf coast. It quickly became apparent that he was a natural. Within two years he was beating off stiff competition from all over Australia.
Then came that stunning afternoon at Bells Beach when Johnny went head to head with the mighty Midge Farrelly, the father of modern surfing. Midge used every weapon in his arsenal to demolish his upstart rival. He employed his Drop Knee style, putting all his weight on his front foot, sacrificing stability for manoeuvrability. He’d won the title of World Champion in 1964 at Manly Beach in Sydney using the same tactic. At Bells Beach, Midge mixed it up with strong turns and Cutbacks, Top-Turns and Floaters for the smaller waves. But Johnny matched or exceeded him in every move. That day at Bells, Johnny made Midge Farrelly, who was the most graceful of surfers, look clumsy.
Johnny was on the brink of international fame in a sport many of my generation held above all others. Surfin’ Johnny, as we called him, became our hero. The whole friendship group basked in his glory.
Then Johnny’s number came up in the national service ballot. He was conscripted into the Australian Army. They put him in an infantry battalion, the fate of most conscripts. He completed a year’s training in Australia, then spent the following year fighting for his life in the jungles of Vietnam.
When he returned from Vietnam, Johnny wasn’t the guy we’d known before he went away. He used to be young. He used to be sociable. He used to enjoy life like the rest of us. Now all he wanted was to get away from everything: his family, his friends and his future. He’d even lost interest in surfing. He holed up in a caravan in the backyard of his folks’ place.
I went to see him. He didn’t answer my knock so I opened the door, climbed the step and entered the caravan. He was sitting on the edge of the bed in his underwear, staring at the floor.
“How they hangin’, buddy?” I asked him. It was high summer and the caravan was like a sauna.
“Hangin’ where they oughta be hangin,” he said, without looking up.
The cigarette smoke in the van made it difficult to see.
“You want a smoke?”
“Sure.”
I lit one up for myself and passed him the packet and matches.
“How’re your folks?”
“Same.”
“Gonna do some surfin’?”
His eyes briefly met mine, and then resumed their study of the linoleum.
“Weather’s good. Big waves at Bells.”
“Fuck Bells,” he said softly.
We smoked in silence.
“Let’s go to the pub. Down a few coldies.”
“Why not?” he said.
Not long after, Johnny disappeared. I tried the caravan, and then knocked on the back door of his folks’ house. His mum appeared behind the flywire screen. She looked old and scared. “He took off in his van three days ago. No explanation. Just left. We don’t know where he is.” She paused. “He didn’t take his surfboard,” she whispered. “Only his army kit.” Then she cried.
I never saw him again. It was the mid-seventies and I’d moved from Melbourne to Sydney, working as a builders’ labourer, renting a dog-box terrace in Glebe. There was a pub at the end of the street that I went to after work. One night I got talking to Geoff, a bloke also in the labouring game though I got the impression he only worked off and on. At one point he mentioned he’d done a tour of Vietnam. In those days a tour of Vietnam didn’t mean a soft holiday in an air-conditioned bus. I asked him what outfit he’d been with and he said 4th Battalion, Johnny’s unit, so I asked Geoff if he knew Johnny. Geoff said, sure, he knew him. He looked at his beer for a moment, and then at my reflection in the mirror in back of the bar. He seemed to be making up his mind about something. Finally, he said he knew what happened to Johnny. Then he told me the story. Once he started, the story poured out of him like water from a bucket with a hole in the bottom.
When he left his folks’ place Johnny drove his van north, all the way to Noosa Heads, at that time a sleepy hollow a few hours beyond Brisbane. He took up in the campsite that stretched along the beachfront, sleeping in the van. He spent his days lying on the beach, his evenings in the old timber pub on the hill above the town. There he met other Vietnam veterans, including Geoff, half a dozen of them, all doing the same thing: recovering. They were a family who sought each other’s company because nobody else understood where they’d been or what had happened to them there.
According to Geoff, their routine was military. Muster at 11am in the café with the foxy waitresses. Nobody was interested in cracking on to the waitresses because nobody wanted any complications. They just liked looking at them. They were tired all the time, Geoff said. It was like they’d spent a lifetime of sleep deprivation and needed a lifetime to catch up. The team would reconvene at the pub at 5pm and stay 'till stumps. That was the daily drill for soldiers home.
One day Geoff and Johnny drove down to Brisbane. Brisbane was Geoff’s hometown and he wanted to show Johnny the sights. Johnny expected a pub-crawl, but Geoff had other ideas. He parked the car across the road from Brisbane University.
“What’s this?” Johnny said.
“Paradise,” Geoff said.
They lay in autumn sunlight on lush grass surrounded by the old stones of the university: towers, arches, stained glass windows, paved paths leading to undisclosed wonders. Star-scattered on the grass were the students, fresh faced and untouched by a single care in the world. Girls walked by with books under their arms or lay languidly on the grass. Every one of them radiated contentment and wellbeing, so different from the scrubber waitresses at Noosa Heads, or the whores of Vung Tau.
“Ya know what?” Geoff said to Johnny, “In a different life, I’d have come to a place like this.”
It was late at night and Geoff was slurring his words. So was I.
“I’ll tell ya how it finished,” he said, looking at my reflection in the mirror. “Ya wouldn’t read about it.”
“Tell me how it finished.”
“So, one afternoon, Johnny turns up at the beach. Bastard’s in full military rig, ya know? Dress uniform, campaign medals, the lot. Got himself a surfboard from some place.”
“I thought he didn’t surf anymore.”
“Didn’t. But he got hold of one.”
“Go on.”
“I’m on the beach myself. I see Johnny, maybe 100 metres away. Could’ve yelled to him. Didn’t. Don’t know why. He walks a straight line down the sand to the waterline. He strips off his fuckin’ uniform, right down to his undies. I’m watchin’ this, see?”
“So what happens?”
“What happens? Man, he picks up that board and heads into the surf. Good waves that day. His uniform is a pile on the sand; gettin’ soaked an’ pulled apart by the swells comin’ up the beach. He paddles through the breakers and into the clear water behind. He keeps goin’, ‘till I lose sight of him.”
“And?”
“And he never comes back.”
Geoff turned from the mirror to look at me directly. “D’ya understand? He never came back!”
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