The Fence-Painting Fortnight of Destiny: A memoir

by Meshel Laurie

  I’ll never forget my first day. There were about forty other first-year Drama students assembled in the foyer of the arts building, which is a really brilliant facility. It housed wannabe actors, writers, musicians, painters, sculptors, printmakers and many sub-niches in between. It was like that school in Fame, but with fewer street-smart Puerto Ricans and more kids who’d missed out on the course in Brisbane.

  Most of the actor kids seemed to know each other, either from school or eisteddfods or repertory theatre. I’d never met anyone who liked this stuff before, so I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. ‘Here are my people!’ I thought.

  True to form I found a frenemy quick-sticks. I much preferred the company of another girl—I’ll call her my ‘favourite friend’—but she was still very tightly fastened to the apron strings of her family in north Queensland. We remained friends and got up to lots of mischief over the next ten years, but like Sonia in primary school, this one had a tendency to disappear without a moment’s notice.

  The three of us girls embarked on the great university experiment together, hitting it so hard and so fast that none of us would see it through to the end.

  Have you ever lived two sides of one place? Ever felt as though you were in an entirely different place, even though you’re not at all, but like the side of that city you’ve always known has become somehow invisible to you, because you’re immersed in a different side of it?

  Oh dear. I fear I’m sounding like a drug-addled pseudo-spiritualist, which is hardly surprising, given that’s exactly what I became during my eighteen months at university. I did indeed find some colourful company, and my lifestyle became scandalous beyond my greatest hopes. I started living my Dogs in Space life early, hitting the bucket bongs for breakfast, dropping acid with gay abandon and finally developing a minor speed habit, which was really the undoing of us all.

  It felt like I was whirling around some other place, far from the daggy old town I’d grown up in. Not only did I not socialise with anyone I’d known before uni, but I didn’t even run into them around town. They were still battling the bridesmaids in Toowoomba’s two nightclubs, while I was exploring the corners of my mind like John Lennon. I was also losing weight, but for the first time in my life, I didn’t notice or care.

  I hooked up with some girls from school one night. I was a bit ‘vague’, as I tended to be at that time, but I swear they stole an overnight bag from my car (a 1972 Cortina Coupe bought for $700, half from my father). The bag contained some drug-taking paraphernalia, and I think they stole it to confirm their suspicions that I was now a ‘druggy’. I was pleased they knew, because it just proved how different I was from all of them—and to my mind, how much braver I was.

  In those days, I thought it was brave to take drugs. I knew I was tinkering with my sanity, but it’s funny how it sneaks up on you. Taking drugs was as fun as I thought it would be, without a doubt, but I sort of thought drug psychosis would be a bit glamorous too. It wasn’t. It was just really embarrassing.

  It started with my friends informing me that I hadn’t been as hilarious and gregarious the night before as I thought. On one occasion they berated me for behaving very cruelly towards a guy who’d been invited over. Apparently I’d ‘cut’ him really badly (verbally). I didn’t remember much, but I didn’t remember it that way.

  On another occasion I sat curled up in a corner of a friend’s bedroom, too terrified of her wardrobe to move. I know that sounds hilarious, but I’d been relying on drugs to make me feel powerful, not fearful of furniture!

  Other people in my circle were changing too. Relationships became physically abusive, everyone was sickly and paranoid, and some people’s imaginations were running away with them, to put it politely. I remember visiting a girl who was living with a speed dealer. I thought they were terribly sophisticated and was always quite proud to call them friends of mine. We’d had a couple of massive weekends in their flat, employing all sorts of methods to ‘bring a trip back on’, among other things. Anyway, the last time I went there it was different. She was alone, shivering in a big cardigan, pale and thin and chain-smoking Peter Jacksons. There was a microwave sitting on the couch with the front door smashed in, and most troubling of all, no drugs in the house. Her boyfriend was trying to sort something out, but for the first time, it wasn’t about fun. It was about people getting real jumpy without their gear. Eventually some drugs of particularly poor quality were found, but the whole episode ignited a sort of famine complex, whereby the hitherto generous attitude everyone had had to sharing their drugs faded. This was particularly troublesome for me, because I was surviving on Austudy for rent and petrol, and the kindness of strangers for a lot of my drugs.

  Fortunately pot was still in massive supply. One of my favourite friends’ housemates helpfully started sleeping with a weed runner, who arrived at their house every couple of weeks with at least three or four army kit bags bulging with Mullumbimby madness. He’d leave a biscuit tin full for us before delivering it to whomever it was intended for. Without him, I just don’t know what I’d have done.

  Around that time I became aware of an almost uncontrollable urge to smash my fist through a window. It was associated with this strange feeling that there was an argument raging inside my mind. I could never make out what it was about, but the intensity of the vibe was crystal clear, like when you overhear neighbours fighting furiously but you can’t quite make out why. My peripheral vision was playing tricks on me too, particularly when I drove. I’d suddenly have the impression someone was about to step out in front of me, only to realise as I passed that it was a light post or a post box. Every so often, I could’ve sworn someone called out my name, but when I turned to look there’d be no one there.

  I didn’t have much time for uni when second year rolled around, which was just as well because I was beginning to find it very difficult to read.

  The only time I felt together was when I was grinding on speed and keeping it coasting with pot. My mind was sharp, my eyes darted, and my smile was so wide it hurt. Everything was clear and I always had something to say when I had some speed. I really thought it was a miracle drug—the thing I’d been looking for all my life.

  I went to see a doctor about my strange symptoms. She sent me straight down to another bloke, who turned out to be a psychiatrist with the hospital’s drug and alcohol unit, although she was sure not to mention that when giving me directions. As I was waiting outside his office, and slowly realising where I actually was, I really wanted to put my fist through his window. I stared at the windows in the corridor outside his office, imagining my forearm smashing through them. In my imagination, the smashing and the sound it would make would shatter the wound-up feeling I had. I thought I’d probably like to scream as I did it, and really rattle all those forces that were bearing down on me. Really smash them to pieces that would fall to the ground around my feet—not to mention silence those noisy neighbours in my head.

  I told him about it as soon as I sat in his chair, in a whatcha-think-about-that kind of way. He served it straight back to me, instructing me simply to get off the drugs, particularly speed, or it would all get worse.

  I told him the speed was the only thing holding me together. He told me the speed was the reason everything was falling apart.

  It was definitely a moment. I didn’t disregard what he’d had to say. I stewed over it as I missed assessment deadlines, owed more and more rent, and pined for my favourite friend who vanished back up to north Queensland and the bosom of her family.

  I had a big fight with my drug-taking frenemies and decided I’d had enough. I locked myself in my one-bedroom flat and stopped taking speed. The thing I remember most about that was the exhaustion. I slept for two weeks straight. I was so tired and desperate, I couldn’t make it from the bedroom to the kitchen without stopping for a cry on the couch. I just felt hollow and hopeless, like I was at the bottom of a deep hole feeling pebbles raining down on me, warning me it was all about to cave in,
burying me alone.

  I asked my father to bring me some food. He did, but looked at me like I was a creature he was slightly scared of, and abused me about the fact that my flat smelt like cat urine. It was a real bollocking, which was sad, because if ever I’d needed my Dad, it was then. I was so tired, but I put the shields up and waited for him to finish. I pushed on alone and eventually crept back out into the daylight.

  Then fate intervened, in that glorious way that gives one faith in the existence of benevolent supernatural forces. (So maybe I do grab a break occasionally.)

  A guy who’d been hanging around a bucket bong I frequented mentioned something about a national Socialist convention he was heading off to. Somehow he and his Socialist mates had jagged a free bus trip down, and free accommodation when they got there, to attend a long weekend of workshops and rallies. ‘Down where?’ someone asked through the green haze. ‘Down in Melbourne,’ he coughed, eyes squinting.

  I was in the wrong place, but at just the right time for that political pot-head to hand me the opportunity of my young lifetime. I straightened up in an instant and spent the rest of the night picking his poor soft brain about how I could get a seat on that bus.

  The very next day I joined the university Socialist club, proclaimed my devotion to the cause and secured myself that seat. Then I got straight round to Mum’s and boldly hit her up for a hundred bucks with which to travel. She hadn’t seen me for a while, although I had been popping over to steal food when I knew everyone was out, but I wasn’t taking no for an answer. Somehow she scrounged up the hundred bucks and the next thing I knew, I was on one of those buses that stinks of diesel and cheap disinfectant, with a tiny toilet wedged in the back corner, on my way to Melbourne where I knew my life was waiting for me.

  The free accommodation we’d been offered was in people’s houses. We were billeted, which was something I thought only netballers did, but apparently Socialists do it too. I was sent to a two-bedroom terrace in Richmond, which was the tiniest house I’d ever seen and it was very dark inside. I’d never been out of Queensland before, where everything is really quite big and bright. I was on the steepest learning curve of my life, but put everything I had into appearing natural.

  It turned out that I was blessed among the billets as I was despatched to stay with Mick Armstrong and Sandra Bloodworth, who were superstars of the Melbourne Socialist movement, and probably still are.

  Mick, I learnt, was one of the Austudy Five. I gave every impression of being awestruck upon our introduction, but truth be told I obviously had no idea what was meant by the Austudy Five. As comical as the name sounded to me, it was only uttered with reverence around the conference, and I wasn’t game to ask anyone what it was all about because to do so would have blown my cover wide open. I gathered it had something to do with a protest, and that Mick was still facing charges over his alleged involvement in an incident in which a policeman found himself unceremoniously dismounted from his horse. Luckily, our old pal Wikipedia has been able to fill in some of the gaps. (Did I mention it’s a great time to be alive?)

  The Austudy Five were a group of five student activists arrested the year before, after a demonstration in Melbourne, where around 3000 protestors rallied against the Keating Government’s plan to abolish student Austudy payments in favour of student loans.

  Pretty rock’n’roll I guess.

  So I attended the Socialist National Conference of 1993, and I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was my first trip outside conservative, corrupt Bjelke-Peterson Queensland, and to hear people passionately espousing left-wing views was exhilarating. I think these were the first adults I’d ever met who thought there were things more important and more interesting than money. I honestly didn’t know such people existed until that trip. Everyone I’d ever met had been engaged in the pursuit of accumulating stuff, like cars, clothes and houses. Even as kids we yearned to grow up and have those things. These guys took public transport, wore second-hand clothes and rented ’til the day they died. They certainly seemed revolutionary to me.

  Not only were Mick and Sandra very highly respected, but they were also generous hosts, and didn’t bat an eyelid when I boldly asked if I could stay a few days longer. Having fulfilled my duty to Socialism, I changed my ticket home and set about exploring beautiful Melbourne. Without the aid of the internet, which had not yet been invented, I was unaware of the proximity of the Dogs in Space house, only a few kilometres from Mick and Sandra’s Richmond terrace. Not knowing what else to do, I headed straight for St Kilda, soaked up the atmosphere and plotted my next move.

  Before I’d left Toowoomba, I’d been listening intently to Triple J’s coverage of the Melbourne Comedy Festival. It was still going, but as I was four days into my hundred-dollar budget by this stage, I had to think tactically. I grabbed one of those free street papers and found an ad for a show by Lano and Woodley, at the Carlton Courthouse Theatre. Colin Lane and Frank Woodley had been two-thirds of a trio called The Found Objects until that year, when they were performing their first show as Lano and Woodley, and I adored them. I went to a phone booth, called the venue and introduced myself as a drama student from Queensland who’d like to come in and see how they do things. Cheeky? Absolutely, but totally effective. That very night found me perched beside the lighting and sound operator, in a 50-seat venue, watching Lano and Woodley, for free! I even met them before the show, and helped them set the stage, and went back and did it all again the next day.

  I’ve never mentioned it to Col or Frank since, even as Col and I spent hours sitting beside each other on the couch of The Circle on Channel 10 in 2012. I’m quite sure neither of them would remember it, although both are certainly gracious enough to have let it slide all these years if they did.

  Although only short—I think it was about a week in the end—that trip to Melbourne was obviously life-changing in many ways. I was more convinced than ever Melbourne was the place for me, but I had a lot of loose ends and debts to clear up back home. I boarded that north-bound bus full of purpose and optimism for the future. Not for the last time, I had to pull myself together, give myself a good kick up the jacksie and make this life of mine happen.

  It wasn’t going to be easy, but I had renewed faith that it was going to happen.

  BRISBANE 1.0

  I arrived back in Toowoomba to a circle of frenemies who weren’t interested in me because I was no longer interested in drugs. A few of them thought I was over-dramatising the problem I’d developed, and just attention seeking. I wasn’t— I guess I just didn’t have their constitution for the gear. Whatever it was, it was real, and I had flashbacks and anxiety for years.

  I also owed what was then a lot of money to me, to a lot of people. I owed for drugs, for rent, and that hundred to my mum who still had two kids at home and really couldn’t afford to not get it back. I was a fidgeting mess, and hadn’t the first idea when it came to the written coursework I was about to be tested on at uni. Aside from anything else, I literally could not read. The words just jumbled in front of me, and by the end of reading a paragraph, I’d forgotten how it began. I paid a visit to the head of my course, Dr Martin Buzacott.

  Martin was, and I’m sure still is, a really cool cat. He wasn’t part of the Drama program because he was a frustrated old performer, like most of the faculty. Martin was a young writer whose star was very much on the rise. He was an academic and just quietly, a bit dreamy. He was much younger than the other lecturers and wore the whiff of a man with dangerous ideas. He lurched sexily around the campus in sneakers, baggy cords and at one stage, dreadlocks. He had a lazy lisp to die for. His superior intellect hung around his shoulders like a weather-beaten old jacket he’d picked up for 50 cents in a far-flung flea market in Europe. ‘Pfft, this old thing?’ he seemed to say about his enormous brain, though he secretly loved the shit out of it.

  We didn’t know how or why he’d been unexpectedly elevated to the top job in our program at the beginning of my second year, but we
were thrilled. He’d recently written a play that was well received and performed by some important company somewhere. He was still on the ascendant in his career, like us (we boldly believed), so he seemed a much more appropriate role model than anyone else on the payroll.

  So I stuck my head into his office a couple of weeks after my Melbourne trip. I walked into his office determined to fight for my academic future and convinced that Martin would be my greatest ally. I told him my woes, professed my sobriety, and asked for some kind of extension on my assessment. I told him I didn’t know how long it would take me to pull it together, but that I was committed to doing so.

  He couldn’t have been less interested, in the best possible way. It turned out to be one of those great moments in which a problem shared is indeed a problem halved.

  ‘Why do you want to finish uni?’ he asked.

  ‘Because I want to move to Melbourne,’ I answered.

  ‘But you were just in Melbourne—why do you need to finish uni to go back?’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘You were really buzzing when you got back from there, I reckon you should just go now.’

  Wise old monkey.

  I realise now that a lot happened in a short time after I flunked out of uni. That was mid-1993. I wasn’t game to move straight to Melbourne because I was still a bit of a mess psychologically, and I still had some debts to repay, so I commenced couch surfing in Brisbane while wading through both of those processes.

  I started out on the couch of a girl I went to school with. She was a conservative bush princess who asked me how I felt about her taxes paying my dole, so I moved on, to a furnished bedroom nearby with two medical students.