In One Lifetime

By Graham Forlonge

This book is an autobiography of a man who had over 50 mostly major PTSD events in his life. It recounts the trials, struggles, and lessons learned over a life span of 67 years. It recalls his childhood, time as lifesaver, police diver, police driving instructor, member of SWOS, professional NRL footballer, running Police Citizens Youth Clubs (PCYC), Security Manager of the world renowned Porgera Gold Mine in PNG and world record holder of going around Australia in under 10 days on a motorcycle. The events accounted whilst a police diver as well as a Highway Patrol Officer includes plane crashes, train accidents, body recoveries and numerous fatal road accidents, some of which are major historic events in Australian history. It also includes native raids, murders, abuse and many more traumatic events while working in PNG. Some of the accounts are captivating and others highly emotional. His life and determination to succeed was mostly driven as a result of having been sexually abused over many years at the hand of his tutor as a child. It is a true Australian story and displays considerable endurance and survival skills.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tellwell Talent
• Release date: Jan 28, 2020
• ISBN: 9780228823377

Graham Forlonge

GRAHAM FORLONGE is a father, footballer, policeman, diver, security officer and now Author, writing his book over the course of 10+ years. He now works as a part time Counsellor for underprivileged.

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COPYRIGHT

In One Lifetime

Copyright © 2019 by Graham Forlonge

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Tellwell Talent

www.tellwell.ca

ISBN

978-0-2288-2336-0 (Hardcover)

978-0-2288-2335-3 (Paperback)

978-0-2288-2337-7 (eBook)

In one lifetime, how many people can say they have driven through a crowd of angry, rioting natives, had their vehicle hacked to shreds by axes and bush knives, and survived the ordeal? I can! It happened to me twice, and I lived to tell the tale!"

Graham Forlonge, 2019

Got a trifecta today, went out to get a tape measure and returned with the washing, went back out to get the tape measure and fed the chooks, returned with no tape measure again so this time I just thought tape measure, tape measure…. I got it and as I was walking in I placed it on the outside table and threw the ball to my dog Missy a couple of times and then walked inside without the tape measure. But this time I didn’t have far to go to get it …. on the fourth trip!

Now, what did I want the tape measure for????

Text to my brother Stuart from Baffle Creek on March 20th, 2017

FOREWORD

I spent a total of just over forty years as a policeman with the New South Wales (NSW) Police Force as well as a reserve police instructor, security instructor, superintendent and project security manager in Papua New Guinea (PNG) in addition to a mixture of other employments.

I have been diagnosed with severe Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. This book is an account of my life and the accumulation of numerous traumatic events that eventually resulted in this diagnosis.

Although I do not call myself an author, I have very proudly put together some manuals for ‘Certificate II in Security Training’ and ‘Community Policing Manual’, both of which were acknowledged and initiated into practice by the Queensland Tafe. I was also responsible for the security management and evacuation plans for Porgera Gold Mine in PNG. However, I discovered that writing manuals and plans are completely different, and a lot easier, than writing one’s own life story.

I started writing these pages at 1 pm on Friday, July 29th, 2005. The editing of my initial draft began in 2016 and was completed in 2018. Many of the details outlined in this book are quite gruesome. I make no apology for that, but warn the reader in advance that some events may not be pleasant to read. The PTSD was seeded in gruesomeness and trauma where it remained firmly rooted for many years.

All of the stories contained within these pages are true events. I have tried to present the incidents outlined in this book as factually correct as my memory has permitted. The PTSD, of course, plays havoc with memory. If some of the dates are wrong, if events are not in correct chronological order or if readers who were there remember things slightly differently, I hope it can be accepted and forgiven. Nothing is intentionally falsified.

I have committed my life story to print for the following three reasons:

1.As part of my own therapy. That is, to help me come to terms with what I have experienced; to help me deal with flashbacks and nightmares.

2.To give my children and other members of my family an insight into what caused my erratic behaviour over the years; to have them understand that despite my need for isolation, I never stopped loving them and never stopped needing them.

3.To give hope to other sufferers of PTSD who might read this book. To help them realise that they are not alone, that there is hope and that there is a future; but most importantly, that help is available and that there is nothing to be ashamed of in seeking that help.

CHAPTER 1

I was born at the Royal Women’s Hospital, Sydney on March 30th, 1952. My first memories are of Number 4 Windsor Street, Paddington. Paddington is a suburb in the eastern suburbs of Sydney. In the fifties, Paddington was an average working-class suburb, not the classy area it is today. I lived in a small terrace house with my father (Norman), mother (Iris), older brother (Stuart) and our maternal grandfather.

Dad was a hard-working man, born in Dunedoo, NSW on May 11th, 1920. He did what little schooling he could get at Kenebri, but left early to help support the family. He caught rabbits for food and earned pocket money from the sale of the pelts. At the age of seventeen, he moved to Gwabegar in the Pilliga Scrub area in the central-west region of NSW. His early working life corresponded with the depression years when work and food were scarce. When we were youngsters, he entertained us with dozens of great old bush stories of his life when, as a young man, he chased and caught brumbies and cut railway sleepers the hard way with a two-man saw and an axe.

Dad had a great love for sports, all sorts of sports. For a time, he was a professional boxer in the tents that used to circulate around the country areas; he was also a jockey and raced horses in the country circuit. He apparently could run well in bare feet and made the final of the richest footrace in Australia, the Woolworths Stawell Gift. I have no doubt that he instilled in me my great love for sports. He was posted to PNG towards the end of World War II, although like many servicemen, he didn’t talk much about it and we didn’t push him. For many years Stuart and I (and later on, our sister Carol, ten years younger than I) would ask him to write down his stories. They would have made great reading, but unfortunately, he never got around to it. He sadly passed away in the early hours of Christmas Day, 2009.

My parents met on a dance floor at Paddington Town Hall while Dad was down in Sydney preparing to go into the army. They were married on the October 6th, 1947 and in typical Dad-fashion he used to say, I can always remember our anniversary as it was on Metropolitan Cup Day at the races

Real smooth, Dad!

Soon after marrying Mum, Dad took his new young wife out to Gwabegar where they lived with Dad’s mother. They moved to Sydney after about 18 months, though, apparently, because Mum, a city girl through and through, was unable to cope with the harsh conditions of the bush in the late forties.

Dad worked in the city for the rest of his working life, frequently working two jobs to help keep his family. Although basically unskilled in occupations to be found in the city, he did secure a job with a small local electrical company, repairing vacuum cleaners, and was for many years employed by Electrolux as Mr. Jolly, a travelling door-to-door vacuum cleaner repairman. A compulsive gambler, he won and lost a lot of money, nevertheless, I have no recollection of going without. We never went hungry; he kept the bread on the table. I suppose that was the important thing. He was an excellent provider. He wanted to give us the lifestyle that he never had when he was young.

Dad was the great-grandson of Eliza Forlonge, ‘the sheep woman of Australia’ who, back in the late 1820s, imported into Australia some of the finest Saxon Merino sheep after trekking through Saxony twice to collect the strongest and best flocks she could. Eliza was given a grant of land in Tasmania and established the Kenilworth station, which today boasts a continuation of the bloodline of Eliza’s original flocks.

Eliza moved her operation to Euroa in 1835, establishing Seven Creeks, which still runs as a sheep station. There is now an Eliza Forlonge museum and monument at Euroa in Victoria as well as a statue that was erected in her honour in Campbell Town, Tasmania. The monument was dedicated on Friday, April 19th, 2013.

Mum was born Iris Lillian Smart in Birmingham, England on April 16th, 1924. She came to Australia when she was four years old and eventually settled into the Windsor St, Paddington house with her parents and three siblings, an older sister and two younger brothers. Unfortunately, my mother’s mother died when Mum was only sixteen years old, so Mum shouldered much of the responsibility of raising her two younger brothers. This prepared her well for she was, and still is, a devoted and loving mother to her two sons and her daughter. (To this day she remembers not only her children’s birthdays but also those of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren).

Our home at 4 Windsor Street, Paddington was situated next door to a well-known landmark in that area, Warwick Castle on the corner of Cascade Street and Windsor Street. It is called a castle because that is exactly what it looks like, a miniature castle. When I say miniature, it was a lot bigger than our terrace house but a lot smaller than what a young kid thought a castle should be. I can’t remember ever seeing anyone leaving or coming to that castle, but Mum assured me that a family did live in it. Paddington is now one of the most sought-after suburbs in Sydney and I often wish we still owned that little terrace house.

In the fifties, cars were few and far between in the Paddington area and we used to play cricket in the street using the telegraph poles on opposite sides of the street as wickets. Our little house also backed onto Windsor Lane and we neighbourhood kids claimed it as ‘our playground’. I can remember playing touch football in that lane with a future Eastern Suburbs rugby league legend, Kevin Junee, who lived nearby. It is funny how things work out: some years later, as Kevin was nearing the end of his football career and I was coming up through the ranks of North Sydney Bears, I got to play with Kevin one more time. This time it was on the Sydney Cricket Ground and we were on opposite sides in a battle of the Big League, 1st Grade in the NRL.

I think I had a normal childhood living in Paddington up to the age of nine. I attended school at, what was then called, Paddington Central School on Oxford Street. I was a member of a number of clubs including a junior cubs group (one step below being a scout) and the local police boys club, and, of course as mentioned, I played in the streets like everybody else. I started my career in rugby league with a Clovelly Junior Rugby League side in 1959 at the ripe old age of seven. I played on my brother’s team who is 3 years older than I because there was no team for my age group in those days. This was the beginning of my lifelong love for footy.

I’ve been told that I was a typical, normal naughty little boy who, from the very tender age of five, hated school. Mum often told the story of my first day at school. She walked me from home to school, a distance of about 1 kilometer, but as she was leaving, I put on a right royal performance: screaming, yelling and crying. The teacher apparently said to Mum, He will be alright. Just leave him with me.

WRONG! The teacher probably regretted that statement. As soon as Mum disappeared from sight, I swung around and kicked the teacher on the shin as hard as I could and bolted out of the school. I took a short cut through one of the many back lanes in that area and was sitting on the old gas box at our front door when Mum arrived home. Boy, did I cop it! I received a scolding and a whack on the butt and was reluctantly dragged back to school. I don’t think I caused much trouble after that!

I had my first close call with death at a very young age, a preschool toddler. Dad didn’t have a car at that time but my uncle, who was living with us at the time, did. Dad heard me choking. I had apparently vomited and then inhaled it, and Dad, not knowing what to do, stuck his thumb in my mouth to keep my windpipe open as my uncle raced us to nearby St Vincent’s Hospital. I had struggled to breathe for a good length of time so I was blue by the time they got me to the hospital. My pre-adult teeth had bitten deeply into Dad’s thumb the whole time as well. He loved showing me the scar!

I was a very active child. I liked walking on my hands and became very good at it. Every morning Mum would come to the front gate to see us off to school and I would be walking on my hands out on the footpath. She tells me how she used to hook my school bag over my feet and I would walk around with it hanging off my legs, but I didn’t walk on my hands all the way to school. My easily embarrassed brother Stuart would walk on as if he didn’t know me. I can’t blame him because now doing that seems weird even to me. Did I say I had a normal childhood?

Early in 1961, our aging grandfather, for whom my Mum had been caring for many years, passed away. Mum and Dad took the opportunity to sell the house that grandfather had lived in for decades and make a new start across the harbour. So, in the late summer of 1961, when I was nine years old, we moved from Paddington to Lane Cove, on Sydney’s North Shore. We exchanged concrete for grass! The house had a grassy, two-level backyard to play in. I thought it was heaven! Even though our new house had only three bedrooms, it seemed enormous compared to the Paddington terrace. There was a grassy backyard and there were two toilets! Stuart and I had a bedroom each, at least for a short time, as our little sister, Carol, came along in April 1962.

I had started up a habit of carrying a tennis ball with me and everywhere I went I bounced it off objects, scoring myself if I was successful. I was reminded of this story recently when I walked my mum who is 94 years old down to the shopping centre. We walked past some kids throwing a tennis ball against a wall and catching it. She started to laugh, telling me how she used to watch me from the kitchen window playing cricket on my own in the backyard.

I never liked playing cricket as a sport as I thought the game was too slow for me but my one-man cricket was an extremely fast game, testing my reactions and reflexes to its limit. I used to throw the ball with my right hand against the concrete side wall of the back steps while holding the bat in my left hand in a ready position and then I had to grab the bat with my right hand as well to try and hit the ball on its speedy return and try to place it where I selected it to go. I had a garbage bin behind me as a wicket and if the ball hit it I was out. I kept score on a piece of paper. To my direct right was the toilet and if I managed to hit the ball through the toilet door I scored 4 runs. If I placed the ball in the toilet itself I scored 6 runs. The downside was that I then had to retrieve the ball from the toilet and dry it off. Next to the toilet was the laundry and that was an easier target to the right and only worth 3 runs.

Mum said she was amazed that I never broke the laundry window. I placed cardboard boxes, buckets and whatever else I could find all over the yard to my left, an easier shot for a right-hander. Should I hit any of those objects they were only worth 1 or 2 runs depending on the angle I had to hit the ball. I became very good at directing the ball to wherever I wanted to place it and my reflexes became very fast. Of course, I was not successful all the time and I had to retrieve it from some not so good places, like the roof. A good one though was when it landed in the next door neighbour’s swimming pool as I had to strip off and dive in to retrieve it and after footy swimming was my next favourite sport. I only ever used these skills in competition cricket twice in my life, once when I played cricket for Crow’s Nest Boys High and again at James Ruse High School.

Although I did play some backyard cricket from time to time, my passion was always rugby league. This was a passion my Dad encouraged as he also had a great love for the sport. I used to go down to the park behind our house almost daily and place-kick a football over the swings. This came to good stead in later years when I finally got the opportunity to goal kick in rugby league competitions and on from there to First Grade for North Sydney Bears in the NRL (National Rugby League) competition.

I was given a male rabbit so I decided to buy a female rabbit with the money I earned from my Sunday morning newspaper run. This allowed me to start breeding. I sold them to the local pet shop owner for about 50 pence a rabbit. I had by then also started breeding Guinee pigs for which I got 20 pence. This provided me with good pocket money.

I used to spend many hours at the Lane Cove Swimming Pool, training before and after school on most days during the swimming season. I used to run everywhere and became very fit and fairly fast. During the weekdays, I would get up at about 5 am, run to the swimming pool, swim my laps and then run home to eat breakfast. I then ran all the way to school only to repeat this sequence in the afternoon. I would then run all the way home before it got dark, a distance of about two kilometers. It kept me very fit.

I was never going to be a class swimmer, but I used to win my age-group medal at school each year and come in around halfway in the zone. I never made it to the State Titles except for the one year when I somehow managed to be selected for the State Schools’ Diving Titles. I had never had any diving training and was in competition with kids who were expertly performing dives with titles that I couldn’t even pronounce let alone perform, so I vowed that that competition would be my first and last embarrassing foray into State Diving. I did get a 9/10 for my handstand walk and pike from the high board, but the others were very ordinary, very ordinary indeed!

One fine Saturday, when I was about twelve years old, I was doing some laps at the pool when I developed excruciating pain in my stomach. I struggled to the edge and some of my friends helped me out of the pool. One of the pool inspectors, whom I had seen at the pool but had not spoken to, told my friends to carry me into the dressing shed and lay me down on a couple of towels. He told me he was trained in First Aid so knew what to do. He rubbed my stomach and legs for about ten minutes and it eased the pain. I thanked him, and then went home.

The country blood was in my veins, also from my Dad’s side. I loved being in the open fields. Dad’s mother, Olive (Nan) had moved from Gwabegar to the central western NSW town of Binnaway. Dad’s father had died way back before Dad was married and our Nan now lived with ‘Uncle Ken’, as we knew him, a few kilometers outside Binnaway, on a 10-acre pig farm. We visited her quite often as a family, but on a couple of occasions, Dad allowed me to go on my own when the whole family could not join. He put me on a train at Central Railway station in Sydney and I would get off at Werris Creek station where I was met by my Uncle Ernie, Dad’s brother, who was a country train driver and who also lived in Binnaway with his family. I can’t remember if he ever drove steam trains, but I do remember him allowing me to sit up front with him in the engine room of the motor rails (diesel) he drove on the Binnaway – Coonabarabran – Gwabegar line. I thought I was so special!

To be allowed to travel by myself at that young age was an amazing feeling of freedom, which I relished. I’m not so sure I’d be happy with my young grandchildren being allowed to do that these days! Times were simpler and safer then.

However, on one occasion, when my brother and I were in our primary school years, we were given permission to walk across the country from Nan’s farm to Uncle Ernie’s house in town. This route took us across the railway lines near Binnaway station. As we did so, we saw a steam train slowly approaching on one of the many tracks and we decided to hop into a service pit under the tracks so that we could watch the train drive over us. As it got closer, I got scared and begged my brother to get out. He agreed and we hid behind a nearby points box to watch the train go past. This turned out to be a safer option as the engine stopped right over the pit and let out a mass of steam, which would have cooked us alive. Times were simpler then, but maybe not always so safe!

On another occasion, I went on a train by myself to Melbourne to spend some time with my Uncle Bill and Aunty Vera who managed an apple farm. Vera was one of Dad’s aunties. The owner of the farm had two boys who I used to play with; riding on the farm trail bikes all over the farm. The best fun though was riding over the massive fertilizer heap that was used for fertilizing the apple trees. We would spend hours riding over that heap with our bikes, unknowingly compacting the fertilizer in doing so. We were sitting down for lunch one day when Uncle Bill said in his slow country drawl, You’d better be a bit careful riding over that fertilizer heap.

I looked up at him and asked: Why?

The next moment there was a massive explosion that rattled the windows. He looked back at me and said, That’s why!

He could not have asked for better timing to prove his point that compacting fertilizer in the heat of the summer generates heat within it that creates spontaneous combustion, thereby making it explosive. That incident stood me to good stead many years later in Papua New Guinea when calling on that knowledge resulted in many lives being saved.

A statement my Uncle Ken made that I did not pay much attention to at the time but always remembered was when I was about twelve years old. I was playing catch the ball with some of my mates out in the street and as the ball went over my head, I leant backward to catch it and accidentally scraped my hand down an old paling fence. A large and long splinter of wood embedded itself all the way under my nail right down to the base of the nail and the quick. It hurt like hell. I ran back to the house and into the kitchen where my dad was talking to Uncle Ken, calling out, Get it out. Just get it out!

They both looked at my finger and decided I needed to get to the hospital to have it removed. I shook my head, No, get it out here.

My Dad got a pair of longnose pliers and proceeded to pull the splinter out while Uncle Ken held my hand tightly. After he managed to pull the splinter out, I turned to go to the bathroom. As I was leaving the kitchen, I overheard Uncle Ken say to my Dad, You have one tough nut there.

This always stuck in my mind. In later years, I often thought about what he had said and it helped me get through difficult times.

After completing my primary school years, I attended Crow’s Nest Boys High School where I made some long-term friends, like Mick Healy who went on to play Rugby League with North Sydney Bears with me in the Sydney Premiership League. Although Mick was very strong and solid, built like a front rower, he could run like a deer, so his strength was as a winger. He was subsequently signed by Manly as First Grade’s winger. I was also offered a contract with Manly and subsequently with Balmain Tigers, but due to my Dad’s passionate love for the North Sydney Bears, I could not bring myself to change clubs.

When my Dad passed away, the North Sydney Officials donated a North Sydney Bears flag to put over his coffin. I still have that flag. This was a great love to share with my Dad. Mick and I are still close friends and I call in to see him on my way to Sydney when I go down to see dear old Mum or with our North Sydney Bears Reunion.

Sydney’s North Shore is well known as the habitat of the Sydney Funnel Web, one of the most aggressive and dangerous spiders in the world. One weekend Dad asked me if I would like to earn some pocket money. I was about thirteen at the time and, of course, I said, Yes.

My job was to clean out underneath the back veranda where some old timber and other left-over building materials were being stored. Dad wanted to concrete the floor and use the space more practicably. I can remember him telling me to watch out for funnel webs under there. I worked hard for hours clearing out the junk and was down to the last couple of boards that were sitting directly on the dirt floor. When I lifted up the last board, there she was: a huge Funnel Web with the half-eaten male beside her and her tribe of babies running around! I forget how many but there was a heap of them! I quickly ran up to Mum and asked her if she had a box and she gave me an old shoebox asking, Why do you want it?

I replied, Just to put some stuff in.

I went back down, grabbed a shovel, dug up the ground around the nest and lowered the entire nest into the shoe box. The mother was not to pleased to be uprooted and raised her front legs exposing her long poison-filled fangs at me. I quickly put the lid on the box and taped it up. I stored the box in my bedroom overnight and I took it with me on the bus to school the next morning. In Willoughby Road, just up from Crow’s Nest Boys High, there was a CSIRO research centre where spiders and other animals could be taken for research purposes. At the time the antivenin for the Funnel Web was still being developed. When I presented the box to the woman who attended to me, she opened it and was amazed to see a complete in-tact Funnel Web nest! I received $2 for my troubles, a lot of money in those days, and the complete nest was subsequently placed into a glass display case in the front window of the facility with an accreditation: Donated by Graham Forlonge – Crow’s Nest Boys High. I didn’t tell my brother Stuart that he had been sitting next to me on the bus while I was holding a cardboard shoebox with probably 20 or more Funnel Web spiders in it, until many years later. When I eventually did tell him he just looked at me, shook his head and slapped me gently on the back of the head saying Idiot!

While at Crown’s Nest Boys High, I was given an opportunity to apply the cricket skills I acquired in our back yard. Allen Anderson, our then school captain, who later went on to play first-grade cricket for North Sydney, asked me to fill in one day for the senior school cricket team as they were short of a player. They were all about two years older than me but I could never knock back a challenge. I was sent in to bat halfway through the game and I scored 23 runs, not out and bowled 2 out. Later, Alan and the sports master asked me why I was not playing cricket, as they wanted me to play for the school first-grade team. Alan also invited me to play for his team on weekends. I liked cricket but the game was too slow for me. My summers had also become tied up with surf lifesaving.

I was always interested in all things country, especially agriculture and for my last two years of school (Fifth and Sixth Forms), I was lucky enough to attend James Ruse Agricultural College in Sydney’s northwest. Rugby Union was the sport-of-choice for boys at James Ruse and I played my way into the trials for the Junior Wallabies trip to England! The Deputy Headmaster, Mr. Bill Toft, who just happened to be the Junior Wallabies Coach that year, told me I only had to play a normal game and that I was a certainty to be selected for the side. Unfortunately, the weekend before the main selection trial, I hurt my knee and didn’t play very well at all on the day of the selections. Mr. Toft told me that they decided to take a young back by the name of Russell Fairfax instead of me!

Although I was disappointed at the time, I was very pleased for Russell when later on he was selected to play for both the Wallabies and the Kangaroos. He became a legend. I did manage to play against Russell later in life when I was playing for North Sydney. We played Eastern Suburbs Roosters (Easts) at the Sydney Cricket Ground; Russell was the fullback for Easts and I was playing lock for the North Sydney Bears.

While at James Ruse I was suspended twice, once for knocking the Math teacher over with a beautiful shoulder charge and the other time for leading the same Math teacher on a wild goose chase around Parramatta on my bike. Apart from these two shows of aggression, I was generally very well behaved. I was fortunate enough to be the captain of the team Mr. Toft coached and we got on very well. He used to say to me, I like the little bit of roughness you have brought into the team from Rugby League.

I am sure it was Mr. Toft’s doing that I was not dismissed that year. To this day, I believe the Math teacher caused the first incident in the classroom. Every Friday morning during assembly, Mr. Toft would call me to his office under some pretense. The only problem was that everyone knew that that was also the time that he picked the Rugby League selections for the NRL (National Rugby League).

Unfortunately for me, we had Math the first period on Fridays and this Math teacher got a bit jealous of my interaction with the deputy headmaster. I would usually walk into the class about fifteen minutes late with a note from Mr. Toft, place the note on the table and then walk over to my seat.

One day, the teacher decided to interject and as I was walking past him in class, he jumped back quickly, which took me by surprise. The problem was that I did not stop and walked straight through him and knocked him to the floor with my shoulder. Needless to say, this did not make for a good working relationship between us for the rest of the year. I was suspended for a few days over this incident but Mr. Toft made sure I was back before the next footy game!

The second time I was suspended, I was entirely at fault. I did not want to play cricket so I told a friend that I was going to wag sports, a heinous offence in those days! The problem was that the Math teacher overheard me and followed me out to the car park. Luckily, I caught sight of him out of the corner of my eye as I left the school grounds on my bike. I thought to myself, I ‘ve been caught now so I may just as well give him a run for his money.

I went down to Parramatta shopping centre where I circumnavigated the block a couple of times making sure he was still following me at a safe distance. I then turned up a side street and saw two four-wheel drive vehicles parked closely together. I slipped my bike in-between them and bent down as low as I could get. I saw him sail past me and waited until he was out of sight, then high-tailed it back to school. I marked my name onto the cricket book. I had 16 runs on the board before he got back into the schoolyard.

The next morning, he had me before the headmaster but unfortunately for him I had proof that I had not skipped sports. After all, 22 runs, not out, and 2 catches were rather compounding evidence!

The only problem was that I liked the headmaster as much as I liked the deputy and when he looked me in the eye and asked if I gave the Math teacher a run around Parramatta, I could not lie to him. I said, Yes!

This lead to another short-lived suspension as we had an important game coming up against Epping Boys High School.

I did go on to win the JJ Johnson award for the best player that year!

4 Windsor Street, Paddington (today)

6th October 1947

18th April 1999 Opening of the Eliza Forlonge Memorial, Euroa

Eliza Forlonge Statue, Campbell Town, Tasmania

My rabbits I bred

Photo of me in James Ruse Uniform standing at the wall I used to hit the tennis ball against when practicing my cricket skills.

North Sydney Junior representative team which I captained

CHAPTER 2

During my very early teens, I had become obsessed with filling my days with as many activities as I could possibly muster. As a means of being as active as possible, I became devoted to Surf Life Saving in the summer and rugby league in the winter.

My winter weekends were taken up with representative rugby league and junior rugby league. I went through all the representative grades for North Sydney, SG Ball, Jersey Flegg, and Presidents Cup. All of these representative games were played on Saturdays. On Sunday, I played for Lane Cove Junior Rugby League Club. Dad and Mum would come to watch just about every game and that always made me very happy. I would play for my team and then quite often stay back and ask if I could play in the next game for the team above my age group. Had there been more games available, I would have played in them all. I ended up playing 196 games for Lane Cove Junior Rugby League. At that time, it was the second highest number of games played for the club by any player. Jack Hanley was the only one who had played more games than me.

This diversion kept my mind active and my body tired, which meant I would sleep better that night. The downside was that I received many hard knocks as all of these boys were a year older and a much bigger than me. In one game, when I was a reserve playing for the older group, there were only a few minutes left and we received a penalty right in front of the post. A successful kick would put us on equal points resulting in a draw. The captain knew me well and knew that I could successfully kick the goal, so he threw me the ball and said, Let’s go for the draw, that’s better than a loss.

I lined up the ball centered in front of the posts ten meters out, came in and kicked. The ball hit the crossbar and came back like a bullet. It hit me hard in the chest but somehow I managed to hang onto it and run through to place the ball down under the post! Both teams had not moved a limb and the referee looked at me in amazement and said, Well, I suppose that’s a try.

And I said, Yes!

Of course, I then had to set up the ball on the same mound of sand and kick the goal. The captain also looked at me in utter amazement and said, Only you could do that Forlonge!

I scored the try and kicked the goal.

We won the game by three points.

When I was about 14 or 15, I joined the Bilgola Surf Life Saving Club. I had body-surfed at Bilgola Beach and had friends who were club members. Bilgola Beach was a long way from home and by the time I got there, did my training and patrols, and then got back home, I had packed in a full day. I had to walk about 2km from our house to Lane Cove to catch a bus along Epping Rd that took me to the Mona Vale Rd intersection where I then caught another bus to Newport. I would then have to walk up a hill, over a headland and down to the beach. This one-way trip took me about an hour and a half and sometimes even two hours depending on the buses. On some occasions, I stayed overnight in the clubhouse and doubled up for patrol the next day. This filled the whole weekend with sports in the summer months, which I thought was perfect. Mum and Dad thought surf lifesaving was a clean healthy sport for me, and it was. It was the start of a long association with it and also the start of a very exciting, adventurous and sometimes dangerous time for me. There were also many fun times.

I will relate here one such ‘fun time’, even though I am the one who was held up to ridicule. After a day at the surf club one Sunday, a mate and I decided to have a beer at the local pub before driving home. My mate was old enough to drive and had a car but I was still only sixteen! After our beer, we were driving along Wakehurst Parkway, Narrabeen heading back towards Lane Cove, when I developed an urgent need to pee. My mate pulled the car over where there was plenty of screening bushes beside the road. I walked a few paces into the bush, relieved myself and walked back to the car to find my mate laughing hysterically.

As we drove away, I asked him why he was laughing but he was laughing so hard it was a good few minutes before he could compose himself enough to get the words out. He eventually said, I can’t tell you; I’ll have to show you!

He turned the car around and drove back to the spot where had I just emptied my bladder. When we stopped, my mate pointed out a couple of army personnel standing nearby whom I hadn’t noticed earlier. At the time, the army used this area for camouflage training. When we stopped and looked around I saw the small bunches of bush moving around and a couple of army personnel standing underneath the tree guiding the trainees by radio. In my haste, I had not observed a single one of them. As I stood there dumbfounded, they laughingly waved at us. I waved back to them and called out, Hope I didn’t get anyone.

Once I earned my life-saving bronze medallion, I made many minor rescues near the shoreline while on patrol, but probably my first major rescue involved a young boy in a blow-up boat. He was sitting in it paddling just outside the break. I noticed that he was paddling hard against the current but getting nowhere. He seemed to be getting distressed and started to paddle very quickly. I advised the patrol captain who replied, Yeah, we need to get to him, he’s going back out to sea despite his paddling. You saw him, you go get him.

I did not need prompting. I stepped into the surf belt on the rescue reel, which is a length of rope wrapped around a cylinder that rotates on a solid stand, and ran into the surf. I seemed to be swimming for quite a long time, but as I slowly gained on him, I felt a huge tug on my line that pulled me under the water for a short while. I resurfaced, kept swimming and finally caught up to the boy, who was about seven years old and very scared. It was then that I noticed that we were out well beyond the headland!

Fully aware of the danger of the sharks on the reef, I grabbed the blow-up boat, which was too small for two people. The best I could do was to wrap my arms and legs over the sides of the boat from underneath. But while my arms and legs were out of the water, most of my body was still immersed. I gave the signal for us to be hauled in. We now had a situation with a seven-year-old terrified kid in the boat and his sixteen-year-old rescuer desperately clinging onto the boat from underneath, hoping not to become shark dinner!

I was very glad to feel the sand on my feet. The warm reception from beach onlookers took my mind off what I had just completed and after making my epic journey back home to Lane Cove that evening, I didn’t have any worries about getting to sleep. I crashed!

I later asked the captain about the tug on the line that had dragged me under the water and he informed me that he had had to tie on another life-saving reel as I had swum out so far that I was beyond the length of one reel!

I loved the constant activity. I needed diversions and adventure to keep me going and to keep my mind occupied. I didn’t want to sail the seas in a wooden carved canoe, scale the Himalayas or trek through the Outback. It was a different type of quest for me. I became aware of one thing and that was that I did not appear to fear anything. I don’t mean that in a ‘tough guy’ way. I was not an aggressive young man, but I did stand up for myself, and, when I had to, for other people who couldn’t stand up for themselves.

I did not realise at the time that this driving force inside me would lead me into a life in which I had to endure numerous life-threatening situations. I had an acute awareness of a deep-seated need to escape. The pressure to follow and sustain this driven way of life, in any way I could, would gradually create other pressures that would eventually reach critical overload later in my life. I would willingly place myself in positions that were well above the call of duty. For decades to come, in surf lifesaving, rugby league, the police force and security work in Papua New Guinea, I would find plenty of opportunities to fulfill this need for constant activity, some of which turned out to involve elements of danger

In fact, danger seemed to come looking for me!

Earning my Bronze Medallion at Bilgola SLSC

Best and Fairest Lane Cove Junior Rugby League trophy

Lane Cove Tigers the year I left to become Beach Inspector with coach Bob Saunders

CHAPTER 3

When I was seventeen years old, I told my parents that I wanted to become a police officer once I was old enough, which would be at nineteen years of age. My father wasn’t too pleased about this announcement, but I was adamant. After completing the Higher School Certificate in 1969, I decided to get away to be by myself and to escape the pressures that I felt from just being in Sydney. With nothing but what I could stuff into a backpack, I jumped on the 250cc motorbike I had purchased with money saved from my rabbit /Guinee pig sales and my newspaper run, and rode up to the Entrance, near Gosford on the Central Coast.

I stayed at a friend’s house for a couple of days before hearing about a job as the Beach Inspector at Toowoon Bay Surf Life Saving Club, which would include my own little room in the Surf Club. The minimum age requirement to be an inspector was twenty-one, but I was a strong, although not particularly fast, swimmer, so I applied. However, at the swimming test, age did not even come into the equation. I surpassed the expectations of the examiners and, as they were possibly desperate to fill the position, I landed the job. So here I was a beach inspector living alone miles away from home and not yet eighteen.

It took only a matter of weeks before I was to experience a loss of life whilst on duty. As usual, I was sitting on the surf reel looking out over the water. The reel is very useful for life-saving but not much good when you are by yourself, as it requires about three people to handle it properly. I was watching some young swimmers in the water when I heard a woman screaming behind me. I turned and noticed that a young girl had collapsed on the sand up near the Surf Club. I ran to the girl, who looked to be about fourteen. She did not seem to be breathing and I could not feel a pulse. The woman who had screamed for help said that she had just fallen over.

I gave the girl five quick breaths before carrying her into the nearby Surf Club Medical Room where I placed her on a bench and began CPR. I asked the woman to ring 000 for help but instead, she rang the girl’s doctor who took nearly 35 minutes to get to the scene. When he arrived he asked me to move aside, which I was very happy about as I had been performing CPR the whole time; my arms felt very heavy and tired by then.

The doctor gave the girl a quick examination and turned to me and said, You did a good job, son, you should be proud, but she’s gone. Let her rest now.

I was devastated. I just sat on a chair staring at the young girl on the bench until the ambulance arrived. I watched as the girl was carried out, placed in it and driven away. Eventually, the doctor came to me, put his hand on my shoulder and told me that she had been his patient. She apparently had a severe medical condition and the expectation was that she would have died well before