Backyard birdcalls and a streak of summer sun crept into my room to wake me, making me squint. It was January 1993. The first day of my final year of school. I was seventeen. I kicked off my sweat-damp sheet with a sigh, rolled off my single bed onto the carpet, and started doing push-ups. In my cheap elastic jocks, elbows tucked, eyes up, arse down, counting.
More than anything, I wanted to play football under lights at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. Push-ups were going to help me get there. Often, I pictured myself running, bouncing, twisting one way then another, a record crowd standing to applaud my courage and skill. Every night I fell asleep in that room I had the same visions, only they were in silent slow-motion. This was my last chance to turn ambition into reality. Most recruits got drafted into the Australian Football League when they were seventeen. This was my big year, and I knew it. What I didn’t know was just how momentous it would be.
We lived in Seaford, two train stops from Frankston. There were plenty of nicknames for Frankston. Franger. Frangalas (after a 1980s footballer). I’m sure there were others, but my favourite was the one my little sister Kate used: Funkytown. She always said it with a cheeky smile. The city was more than forty kilometres away. Not that we cared. In Funkytown, we had it all: a Myer, two surf shops, a double-storey Macca’s, and a popcorn cinema with a magical domed ceiling that changed colour every few seconds. The ever-expanding shopping district had an American-style mall – a singular high-rise building so ugly it was quaint – a Brashs music store, a Pancake Parlour, a rotating dance floor nightclub, and an annual foreshore circus with caged African lions. Above it all was the lookout at Oliver’s Hill, where you could linger on the expanse of Port Phillip, a majestic bay with as many moods and secrets as an ocean.
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