A lot of the things I’ve done in my life have been as a result of being swept along in Merc’s current. I can happily just drift, quietly whiling away the hours daydreaming, drawing or watching TV. A day like that would send Merc crazy. She knows how to use time wisely and likes to get the maximum out of each day. She’s dynamic, always on the go, creating things to do and encouraging me along with her.
I should stress here that I’d often go with the flow but would never do anything I didn’t actually want to do. I was always good at digging my heels in and not budging. I can be stubborn. Nobody, for instance, could have convinced me to put that marijuana in my boogie-board bag.
After Merc and I quit our ballet lessons, she booked us into taekwondo classes. Then, when I was about fifteen, I followed Merc and Michael into the local surf club, which is where I fatefully discovered my love for boogie-boarding.
To me, boogie-boarding was the perfect compromise between the thrill of riding the waves and the danger of being slashed by a sharp surfboard fin: it was still challenging and fun, but not too scary. Merc was into surfboarding, though, and was totally fearless; often her feet didn’t even touch the board – she’d catch a wave so fierce that she’d be wiped out. The three of us also trained as lifeguards, and every weekend we’d put on our uniforms and patrol the beaches. I didn’t rescue anyone, but Michael, who became a full-time council lifeguard, saved a man and his son from drowning after they were dragged far out to sea in a rip.
I’ve always had a passion for sport and at school was much more successful outside the classroom than in it. Despite my projects being beautifully presented, I wasn’t exactly a straight-A student. But on the sports field, it was blue ribbons all the way. All through my school years, I could outrun the wind.
During my first-ever race day, in grade one, I flew past the finish line so many lengths ahead of the other girls that I was put in the boys’ race and won that, too. The excited sports teacher, who was keen to test my limits, then raced me against girls a year older, followed by the boys from the same age group. I kept winning. My limit was finally reached when I was narrowly beaten by a boy two years older than me. My mum was cheering from the sidelines and says that it was one of the proudest days of her life. I was invited to join Little Athletics when I was a bit older, but didn’t. I also really loved touch football and was team captain every year in high school.
I was placid, easy-going and usually laughing at something, so much so that in primary school, teachers nicknamed me ‘Giggling Gertie’. I’ve always found little things in daily life funny, although it’s getting harder to see them these days. One of my primary school teachers wrote to me recently, saying I was the student she least expected to ever get into trouble.
I was good, but I wasn’t perfect. In high school, for instance, I did have the occasional puff on a cigarette and the occasional beer, although Mum was strictly against me doing either. And though it may now hold significance in some people’s minds, like many teenagers I tried smoking marijuana. It’s hard for me to write about this because of what marijuana has done to my life and the judgements some people will make, but I feel I shouldn’t have to hide it. A bit of teenage experimentation doesn’t make me guilty of smuggling marijuana ten or so years later. I’ve got absolutely nothing to hide, and from the very start of all this, in an interview with 60 Minutes just a couple of weeks after I was arrested, I readily admitted to having experimented with marijuana.
I first tried it when I was about fourteen years old and had gone down to the Gold Coast for the weekend with a group of friends from the surf club. There were around eight of us and everyone wanted to try it, so we each chipped in $5. On the Saturday afternoon, we walked down to the beach, sat in a circle between the rocks, for a windbreak, and prepared to smoke the dope through a Coke can. As we talked and laughed, we started taking turns and passing it on, usually with a lot of coughing and spluttering. I was feeling pretty curious but also awkward and shy because I didn’t know how to do it. I watched carefully as the can was passed around, so when it was my turn, I just put my mouth over the can and drew back. It was harder than it looked, and the thick smoke sent me into a coughing fit. I tried a couple more times and soon my coughing fits were followed by fits of uncontrollable laughter.
When everyone had had a couple of turns, we packed up and walked up the hill, still laughing away at absolutely anything. That night I had a great sleep. We tried it a couple more times the following day, but I didn’t seem to laugh as much as before. Instead, I just felt lazy and extremely hungry, and each time I’d end up in a takeaway shop.
I was bored with it and after that weekend didn’t try it again until I was eighteen. I had maybe one or two puffs at a couple of parties, but I soon learnt that dope wasn’t good for me. It had such a weird effect on my mind. It made me feel so paranoid that I wouldn’t even speak to my friends, and afterwards I’d lock myself in my room, not wanting to answer the phone or the door. I was left with a horrible feeling of self-loathing and a depressing, distorted way of looking at the world.
I’ve known since then that I can’t smoke pot, because it doesn’t agree with the chemicals in my brain. I didn’t touch it again after I was eighteen, and became quite anti marijuana-smoking. I refused to even talk to anyone who was stoned, because they would usually be so out of it, with those sad red eyes.
Although I did like school, I decided to quit when I was sixteen so I could earn my own money. I can now see that that was a big mistake, as I’ve come to understand the importance of education and will urge my kids – because I will have some one way or another – to finish school. But at the time, Mum didn’t fight with me, as she thought I’d want to return to school as soon as I’d discovered work wasn’t that much fun. She just said, ‘OK, darl, what do you want to do?’ I didn’t really know what I wanted to do at that stage, so I just started working at the local supermarket as a checkout girl.
Not long after this I had a bit of a teenage identity crisis. I gave up wearing my usual colourful dresses and skirts and started wearing a lot of black. There was no specific reason for my radical style change, and my attitude and personality didn’t alter with it, but it worried Mum enough for her to send me to live with Dad at Middle Mount, the coalmining town where he was based.
Wow, it was boring . . . even for me, who rarely feels bored. There’s nothing in Middle Mount but mines, and living there would make living inside a cardboard box seem interesting. Everyone who lives there works in the mines. The whole town is owned by the mines, and it looks a bit like Lego Land, because there are only three styles of house. You could only tell the difference between them by the car in the driveway or the kids on the dry front lawn.
For all the years that Dad had worked there, he’d lived in his single room in the men’s quarters. But now he had a daughter moving in, so he was allowed to rent one of the houses; and out of a selection of three identical vacant homes, he made his choice by the distinguishing feature of kids. We moved into a house that was across the road from a family with a daughter about my age. They’d also just moved up to Middle Mount from civilisation. Jay and I got along really well, and it was good to have another outsider with me, although I vaguely knew some of the local teenagers from our school-holiday sojourns, and they were very welcoming.
But there was just so little to do. It’s hard to describe the nothingness of that town. It’s so small that if you wanted to shop for anything other than basic groceries, you had to make a day of it and drive 500 kilometres to the next town of Emerald, which was only slightly better. And if you wanted a swim to escape the oppressive heat, it was a three-hour drive to the closest crocodile-infested mangrove.
I would hang out with Jay, go for walks, do a bit of gardening and watch the one TV channel we could pick up, but I was so bored. I made a few bus trips back to Brisbane because I also missed home.
Despite all this, most of the time I didn’t mind Middle Mount. It gave me the chance to spend time with m
y dad, just the two of us. Some nights we’d drive along the straight road out of town until there was nothing but bush and wildlife surrounding us. He’d stop the car and turn the headlights off, and I’d sit up on the bonnetas we gazed up at the night sky. The stars were magnificent from that spot: no city lights, no streetlights, no lights at all to interrupt their brightness.
I could see every star; the entire sky was covered with twinkling diamonds. I miss that sky. I would always pick out the brightest star of the night and think of Grandpa, my dad’s dad, who died when I was very young. I’ve always believed he’s the brightest star shining down, looking over me. I remember having a hard time understanding why Grandpa had to die, and Mum took us kids outside when we were all upset and crying and pointed up to that brightest star and said, ‘There’s Grandpa.’ On some nights now I can just catch a glimpse of the stars through the bars of my little cell window, and I still look up for the brightest star, to see if Grandpa is there. It’s nice for me to feel he’s here, and it keeps his spirit going.
I liked those nights with just Dad and me. On his days off, we’d also go driving along the open roads with the windows down, listening and singing along to his favourite songs. We’d drive into other towns and down to his beach property at Sarina. I had my learner’s permit by this time, and sometimes Dad would pull over and we’d swap seats for a bit, but soon enough I’d be asking him to drive again. Our drives were just something to do, and I really loved hanging out with my dad.
One day out of the blue, I got a call from Merc, asking if I wanted to take a holiday with her and Michael in Bali. She was living in Japan at this point, on a working-holiday visa, and was returning to Japan from a break at home. Bali was a stopover from Australia to Tokyo on Garuda Airlines. I’d never been overseas before, and Merc thought it would be fun for me – and a break from Middle Mount. I jumped at the chance, never imagining that in just a matter of years this little island paradise would grant me my childhood wish in the most hellish of ways.
3
Travel
THE MERE THOUGHT OF GETTING ON AN AEROPLANE now makes my hands tremble and my eyes fill with tears. I’ve got such an acute fear of flying that I’m pretty sure when I do finally go home, I’ll be sailing back. My last flight ripped apart my life and is still causing me so much grief and pain that the simple travel routine of packing bags, driving to the airport and checking in petrifies me. Although I may not have to worry for a while, I can’t imagine ever doing it again. I guess it’s like falling off a horse: you’ve got to jump straight back on before the fear becomes part of you. For me, it’s already been too long.
But rewinding to my first-ever plane flight, back in 1995, a flight that took me to the same place as my last, I had no such fears. Quite the opposite. I was relaxed, carefree and excited as I stepped onto the plane for my first overseas holiday. It’s ironic that the country I picked for my initial taste of freedom and independence was the country that would ultimately slam the cell door shut on those two precious things.
I didn’t fall in love with Bali; in fact, I was pretty unimpressed. It was dirty, with stinky open sewers along the sides of the roads, and we were constantly hassled by hawkers crooning, ‘Plait your hair, me plait your hair’, or trying to sell us fake Gucci sunglasses.
The tourist hot spots were so full of poverty – crammed with beggars, homeless children, hairless skinny dogs and cigarette-smoking monkeys. We drove out of the hustle and bustle to lots of remote beaches, and those beaches, in my opinion, were its only saving grace. I loved tracking single file through the jungle, with our boards under our arms, until the wilderness opened up to reveal crystal-clear waters as far as the eye could see. But I didn’t imagine that after that holiday Bali would make any further imprint on my life.
On that first visit, I took my boogie board, as I was already pretty serious about surfing. Merc had won it in a motorised surfboard competition in a Gold Coast bar, as part of the bigger prize of a trip to Bali. That was her first trip to the island, in 1992. She was seventeen at the time, and it blazed the way for her and consequently my connections with Bali and Asia.
I waved goodbye to Merc after our holiday together, not knowing when I’d see her again, as she was flying back to Japan. She’d moved there on an eighteen-month working-holiday visa to experience another language and culture, as she’s always hungry to taste life. Michael and I had another week of surfing before he flew back to Brisbane and I went home to Lego Land.
Life in Middle Mount didn’t change much when you were there, but it had changed a little while I was away – it seemed to have become duller! I guess Bali’s strong colours and culture really highlighted Middle Mount’s lack of both. Although I’d spent just six months in the town, it felt much longer, and my life was really going nowhere. So when Merc phoned about two months after I’d returned from Bali and invited me to go to live with her in Japan for a couple of months, it was great news.
‘Oh, really?’
‘Yeah, get your passport and come.’ Merc thought it would be good for me and she even paid for my flight. I was seventeen.
I guess we rarely know what huge impact a little step in the short term might have on our life in the long term – that one small step can change the whole direction of our life. Going to Japan for two months was the catalyst for a whole new chapter in my life: my ‘secret life’, as one of the women’s magazines bizarrely headlined it. But it was no secret to anyone who knew me.
Merc was excitedly waiting for me at Tokyo’s Narita International Airport, and it wasn’t hard to spot her blonde head among the dark-haired crowd as I went through customs. She was living about 600 kilometres away, in a seaside town called Toyama, and had taken an overnight train in order to meet me. After hugs and tears, we took a taxi to a city hotel she’d booked, where we shared a very small but expensive room and bed for the night. It was nice but so small that there was only just enough space to walk around the bed sideways breathing in. I guess in a city with 22 million people, space is an expensive luxury. Early the next morning, we took a cab back to Narita and flew to Toyama.
I’ve got a crystal-clear memory of that flight. We must have gone too high too fast for my body to adjust to the altitude, and I seized up. I literally couldn’t move. My head was cocked at a weird angle. Merc was sleeping soundly beside me, and despite my desperate attempts for almost the entire one-and-a-half-hour flight, I failed to wake her. My body freed up just as we started descending and naturally just as Merc woke up, stretching like a contented cat and purring about what a great sleep she’d had. I was an exhausted wreck. She was oblivious.
The ten weeks in Toyama passed quickly. Just as I’d done as a kid, I followed Merc around like a shadow. We took judo classes and a Japanese language course together, although Merc had been there for almost six months by then and was close to fluent. She was working several casual jobs, including serving in a noodle bar, hostessing in a restaurant and teaching English conversation to old Japanese women in a combined language–cooking class. It was amusing to watch. Merc would simply describe in English what the cooking teacher was doing, like, ‘Crack the egg and put it in the bowl.’
Some days Merc’s Japanese friends would take me sightseeing when she went to work. Japan was an eye-opening, awesome experience and a wonderful place to visit but, as I discovered a few years later, not to live in.
I returned to Australia and moved to the Gold Coast, unsure of what I’d do next and unaware that my connection with Japan was about to intensify. I’d been home for about two months when I spotted a cute Japanese boy standing in front of a huge triangular stack of oranges in the fruit section of the supermarket at Pacific Fair. If I hadn’t have just been to Japan I wouldn’t have given him a second glance, as I’d never found Japanese guys attractive before. But I thought, Mmm, he’s cute . . . Cool, I’ll go and speak some Japanese. During the whole ten weeks I really only learnt to say ‘Hi, my name is Schapelle. How are you?’ and ‘123456789’, but I sti
ll thought I was pretty smart.
So I went up to this guy and said in Japanese, ‘Hi, how are you?’
‘Ah, who . . . is it me you talk to?’ he replied, pointing at his nose.
I just thought, Oh, my God, that’s so Japanese . . . Of course I’m talking to you, but I’m not sure I want to any more!
I said goodbye, and as I turned to walk away, I saw him pull an orange from the very bottom of the stack. My first thought was Noooo! – but it was too late and he sent them flying, like a scene straight out of a Ben Stiller movie.
I confess I didn’t help him pick them up, because by this point I was thinking, What an idiot. I walked off to finish my shopping. But as I stood in line to pay, he approached me, wanting to continue our abruptly ended conversation. His name was Kimi and, incredibly, he came from Toyama. He’d spent just one month in Australia on a twelve-month working-holiday visa.
He seemed nice enough, but after I’d paid for my groceries I said goodbye again and went to catch my bus. A few minutes later as I was about to board, he came running over and asked for my phone number. As I’m not used to saying ‘no’ and still thought he was kind of cute-looking, I gave it to him.
When he called me two weeks later, I invited him to come to my eighteenth birthday party the following night. After that, he shadowed me almost everywhere, every day, just as I used to do to Merc. I liked him and really enjoyed his constant company, but it took almost six months before we became boyfriend and girlfriend. By the time his visa ran out a few months later, we were in love.
He was my first love and I guess my first real boyfriend. I’d had a boyfriend in high school, but we didn’t actually even kiss because I had braces on my teeth.
No More Tomorrows Page 3