‘We gunna do it?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I’m packin’ shit,’ said Sue, heaving the board off the train. Sue carried the fin end and I carried the nose.
‘Ya Bankie chicks!’ someone called out from the Surf Dive and Ski shop.
We went to South Cronulla first. That was Dickheadland anyway. Two more dickheads wouldn’t be that conspicuous.
‘You sure there’s no one here we know?’ Sue said, checking out the crowd.
I laughed at her. ‘Who do we know who’d hang out here?’
‘What if Danny sees me?’
‘Oh, too bad.’
I paddled out first. Sue couldn’t stop laughing at me slipping off and getting chundered. After we’d both had a few goes, it was time to show off to the boys. We carted the board up the beach past North Cronulla and Wanda. One surfie jaw dropped after another: ‘Hey, check out those chicks!’ We dragged our battered board round to Greenhills.
All our gang were there ’cause the sets were pumping. They saw us staggering along from a distance.
Seagull laughed gruffly: ‘Hah! Whose chicks are they?’
‘Dog-eat-dogs,’ moaned Johnno.
‘Bloody Towners,’ sneered Wayne.
Strack was peeling off his wetsuit. ‘Check ’em out. Deadset molls.’
Danny went pale as a shot of recognition electrocuted his face.
‘Fucken Jeezus!’ he moaned and buried his head in the sand.
We approached our gang. They gaped at us, horrified.
‘Hey Johnno,’ I asked, ‘lend us ya boardshorts?’
‘Watcha want me boardies for?’ He scowled.
‘To ride our board,’ I explained.
‘Cut the shit.’
Our gang disowned us. None of our girlfriends said hello. Sue and I surfed all day. I knelt twice. Sue giggled so much she couldn’t even make it to shore lying down. We didn’t venture very far out. If I did catch a big wave, I just clutched the sides of the board and screamed all the way in. It was unreal fun.
In between surfs, we dried in the sun with our board between us. The guys from our gang walked by on their way to the afternoon swells. Wayne and Danny completely ignored us. We were dropped. Steve Strachan paused to peer over us in his big, black wetsuit. ‘Yews chicks are bent.’ He shook his head. ‘Fuckin’ bent.’
All afternoon we splashed and squealed and nose-dived. When we were exhausted, Sue and I tried to carry the board home up the beach. The wind bashed it against our legs. We climbed the sandhill at Wanda and looked back.
And there were the boys, a mass of black specks way out to sea. The surf had dropped. They sat astride their boards in the grey, flat water; waiting. I knew they’d be talking about their chicks. They always did, way out there when the waves weren’t working.
‘Hey Deb, let’s get a milk shake.’
Sue and I walked off.
epilogue
ALL this happened a long time ago when we were very young. Some of us have turned twenty now and many of us have changed.
Jeff Basin—Heroin habit.
Bruce Board—Labourer in Caringbah. Unmarried father.
Frieda Cummins—Unknown.
Dave Deakin—Dead. Heroin overdose in Queensland.
Danny Dixon—Plumber in steady job in Sylvania Heights.
Kim Dixon—Numerous breakdowns.
Garry Hennessy—Heroin habit. Serving seven-year gaol sentence for armed robbery of a chemist.
Glen Jackson—Heroin habit. Involved in same robbery but got off. Dobbed Garry and Johnno. Father to Vicki Russell’s baby.
Johnno—Heroin habit. Serving nine-year gaol sentence for same robbery.
Tracey Little—Heroin addict, admitted to Drug Rehabilitation Centre.
Kerrie Mead—Fell pregnant, baby adopted.
Cheryl Nolan—Heroin addict, admitted to Drug Rehabilitation Centre.
Darren Peters—Heroin addict, whereabouts unknown.
Vicki Russell—Unmarried mother.
Seagull—Heroin habit and on the run.
Steve Strachan—Gave up surfing and started drinking. Hangs at local pub.
Wayne Wright—Dead. Mysterious heroin-related accident.
Susan Knight and Deborah Vickers—Ran away from school and at eighteen wrote this book.
Kathy Lette moved on from Puberty Blues to work as a newspaper columnist and television sitcom writer in Los Angeles and New York. She has subsequently written eleven international bestsellers including Girls’ Night Out, Mad Cows (the movie starred Joanna Lumley and Anna Friel), How to Kill Your Husband (recently staged by the Victorian Opera), The Boy Who Fell To Earth (soon to be a feature film, starring Emily Mortimer) and To Love, Honour and Betray (her update on Puberty Blues). Her novels are published in fourteen languages. Kathy appears regularly as a guest on the BBC and CNN News. She is an ambassador for Women and Children First, Plan International and the White Ribbon Alliance. In 2004 she was the London Savoy Hotel’s Writer in Residence, where a cocktail named after her can still be ordered. Kathy is an autodidact (a word she taught herself) but in 2010 received an honorary doctorate from Southampton Solent University.
Kathy lives in London with her husband and two children. Visit her website at kathylette.com and on twitter.com/KathyLette.
Gabrielle Carey is the author of novels, biography, autobiography, essays, articles and short stories, including Confessions of a Teenage Celebrity, about the tumultuous time surrounding the writing and publishing of Puberty Blues. Gabrielle teaches writing at the University of Technology, Sydney, where her long-standing preoccupation with James Joyce is happily tolerated. Her most recent publication was a contribution to Collaborative Dubliners: Joyce in Dialogue. Gabrielle is currently researching the life and work of Australian novelist and poet Randolph Stow. Her website is gabriellecarey.com.au
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Copyright © Kathy Lette and Gabrielle Carey, 1979
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright above, no part of this publication shall be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.
First published 1979 by McPhee Gribble, Penguin Books Australia Ltd
This edition published in 2012 by The Text Publishing Company and Random House Australia
Cover design by WH Chong
National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:
Author: Carey, Gabrielle, 1959-, Lette, Kathy, 1958-
Title: Puberty blues
ISBN: 9781742759289 (pbk.) 9781742759296 (epub)
Subjects: Teenagers—Australia—Fiction.
Australia—Social life and customs—20th century—Fiction.
Dewey Number: A823.3
The Text Publishing Company and Random House Australia use papers that are natural, renewable and recyclable products and made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The logging and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.
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*Itching and chafing of the testicles from wet boardshorts.
*Running joke: ‘What-a-moll-ah?’
*Idiot/Bankie-type.
* Dog-eat-dog—pronounced ‘doggy-dooog’ which means a daggy girl—a girl wearing too much make-up, a girl who’s too fat or with scraggy hair or just plain ugly.
* Idiot/Dubbo/Bankie type. Short for Stanley.
* When someone bogarts a joint they take more than their ration which is three drags.
* A smoke of marijuana.
† A hit of heroin.
Puberty Blues Page 9