You don’t really think straight when you suffer bipolar disorder and you are in a distressed or anxious state. I was a dangerous person if you put me in this state for any reason, but particularly if you were my wife or girlfriend and you dishonoured me and my family by rooting around behind my back. My first wife did this and she suffered the consequences. Most of the time I was running around in a manic state, bipolar is also known as manic-depressive, it was rare that I was ever depressed but I did occasionally get a bit down. You see I did not know I had this disease until I was 45. I spent most of my life on a destrucive, manic binge, with occasional lengthy periods of sanity and lucidity. You are about to venture into the realm of a bi-polar sufferer and the things they do to appease that feeling within when they just haven’t been treated right.
It all started like this; I was travelling around Australia in 1981 on a motorbike with my affable and garrulous mate, Gary Goyne, when I accidently got a job as a Graphic Designer on a Gold Coast newspaper. We had run out of money, we were waiting for our next dole cheque which would arrive the next day, as that day, we had physically handed our forms in, probably in Goondiwindi or Warwick, as we had passed through both those towns earlier. I was riding a brand new, 1982 full fairing Honda CB750F2c, Goynie was pillion. It was about 1 a.m. in the morning and Goynie and I were both dog tired. Not too tired though to watch porn though as you will soon see. We were looking for a motel to stay in but as I said we were broke, we did have a little money but we had decided to spend that on goon and wander the streets of Tweed Heads talking to anybody silly enough to be out on the streets that late on a week night. Goynie and I were talking to some old wino in a local park when the cops approached us, of course in those days the Queensland police had a Joh Bjelke Petersen reputation for bashing first, questions and charges later, that’s if there were to be any questions. So we ran. Running away from Queensland cops has always been my strict policy, self preservation being at the top of my agenda. I ran one way and Goynie the other, no mobile phone gadget type thingies in those days.
Goynie and I lost each other in a State and town we had never been to. I wasn’t real worried though, as we had been heading to Goynie’s sister Jane’s place in Brisbane and I knew the address. I would meet him there in a couple of day’s time. So that night I decided that I would get a room. They looked inviting, the neon sign out the front said “FREE PORN CHANNEL” , that won me. I banged loudly on the door of the seedy motel which was closed. A female head poked out from a second story window and asked me in a rather terse tone what the fuck I wanted at 2 a.m. in the morning. Porn and sleep obviously, but not necessarily in that order. Suddenly it dawned on me, the person talking to me was a girl I knew from Bacchus Marsh High School, what a coincidence, and what a bummer. This girl was a bore, she was a plain Jane, but insisted on telling me one night at the Royal while I was pissed that she was a high fashion model, like fuck I thought at the time, you’re a facetious cunt whom I have the right not to like very much, as a matter of fact I despised her.
Good one Trev, you chose a cunt you don’t like from Bacchus Marsh to hire a room from, at three in the morning in Tweed Heads. Of course recognising me, she told me to fuck off. I can’t for the life of me remember her name, but it’s not important anyway, as far as I know there are no famous fashion models from Bacchus Marsh, so eat shit whoever you were. I moved on to the next motel a few hundred metres up the road, it was open and the bloke that served me at the counter was a man’s man, he was about thirty. When he saw how pissed I was he laughed, he reminded me of a Darley Football Club player. He was friendly and understanding, he must have been, I convinced him to let me stay the night to wait for payment when I got my dole cheque the next day. The only thing he asked is that I leave my ID with him. I gave him my Melbourne College of Printing and Graphic Arts card. When he saw it his eyes bugged out. It turned out his best mate was Colin Speirs, the founder of the Australian Newspaper in England. Colin was looking for a talented newspaper compositor, of which I was one, as he had started up a newspaper in Nerang called the Gold Coast Hinterlander. The motel manager kindly and generously let me have the room for free, as long as I went to see his mate Colin in Nerang as soon as possible. I did the next day and I started work as a newspaper paste-up artist, come typesetter the same day.
The secretary at this newspaper was named Corinne. She was blonde, slim, bubbly and attractive. We got on well, her husband to be was an SAS soldier who was away six months at a time. He was training soldiers in Jungle Warfare at the Canungra Army Warfare Centre. While the cats away, the mice will play, and of course I started rooting her behind her fiancé Jim's back. It was ok for me to root around but nobody could do it to me, or maybe at my young age, I simply lacked morals. I was 21. One day while engaged in a compromising oral activity with Jim’s fiance’ in a caravan at Nerang Caravan Park rented for the purpose, we got caught red-handed by Jim, he didn’t try to bash me he just left without saying a word. I went on to marry his fiancé and after five years in Nerang moved to Perth to be with her family. What a fucking mistake, or what a learning experience. I like to see the glass half full, or maybe I was half full, I don’t know.
We got married in a simple back yard ceremony in Kenwick and I was taken into the family fold. Corinne had parents and two brothers, Ray and Neil. After marrying we settled down into our boring little jobs. I worked as graphic artist in a commercial printing business, she was a shipping clerk with Coles head office. We brought a house and paid it off, every weekend on a Sunday we would head off to Fremantle and have lunch with the in-laws. The mother in law was a neurotic old fuss pot and the father was a Dutchman who could barely speak a word of English. Cornelius was his name, sounds like a box of fucking cornflakes I know but I just called him Cor for short. Cor was an interesting man, he collected stamps and he had a lot of valuable ones. He kept his prized stamps in an amazing old sideboard. He had built the two identical side boards himself fifty years prior, and they held pride of place in the small dingy lounge room, you see Cor was a master craftsman. The cabinets were made out of solid Jarrah, a wood both notoriously expensive and difficult to work with. They measured 2 metres high by 3 metres wide and were just exquisite. They were topped off with custom made lead light windows in the cupboard doors. They were valued then at $12,000 each.
One day, as happens to all of us, Cor died and the cabinets were left in the will to Corinne and me. Now they held pride of place in our dining room in our home in Thornlie. Around this time Corinne introduced me to her female cousin, her name escapes me too, but her husband was Paul. Both of these people were tip rats in my view and boring in the extreme. I didn’t like either of them. To give you an example, Paul had a beard but no moustache, a definite fashion faux par. At my wedding, this couple gave me a set of steak knives that they had bought from an op shop, the op shop sticker was still on the old sun faded box with the dollar price on it. Corinne started going to her cousin’s place every Friday night, I did not participate obviously. I didn’t know it at the time but Corinne was rooting a bloke named Frank Farrell from Hyden with the full knowledge and encouragement of her cousin and her husband Paul who both came to my wedding. They would pay for this though later.
Corinne and I had both started doing our own thing and drifting apart. I needed constant excitement so I had chucked my job in as a Graphic Designer and became an antique dealer. I had been interested in collectibles and antiques since doing my apprenticeship at the Bacchus Marsh Express which was a working museum, having been established in 1866. I would buy antiques at auction during the week, put them in my house as if they were my own furniture, and then advertise in the paper that I was going overseas and clearing out my house. It worked a treat I was making $5000 profit per week.
Corinne was struggling with her own demons. Not of course forgetting the fact that she was having an affair at her cousin’s place. Since seeing her much older brother Neil again, she had started to recall the fact that he used to rape her regularly as a little girl, she despised him but we had been invited to his wedding. She wanted to tell her parents and Neil’s fiance’ what Neil had done, but didn’t have the courage, and thought she wouldn’t be believed. I wanted to confront him and bash him straight out but managed to restrain myself. I was actually amazed at my self control when it came to Neil, I had been molested myself at age six by two of my cousins, one male one female, after my Dad was killed and I don’t have much time for rock spiders, believing they should be executed. That story will be told in detail another time.
I didn’t realise it but we were living separate lives. I was flush with money and had raced road bikes in Queensland, so I wanted to see the World Champion Aussie Grand Prix racer, Wayne Gardner racing at Phillip Island. The Grand Prix circus was coming to Australia and I would be there to see Wayne Rainey, Kevin Schwantz, Robbie Phillis, Michael Doohan and Randy Mamola amongst others, trying to kill themselves with ridiculous speeds. Not content with just watching the bike racing, I had 1000 T-shirts printed up with Michael Doohan on the front and “Australian Motorcycle Grand Prix” in large Fluoro letters. It was a professionally designed T-shirt and I sold the lot in one day. I paid $5 per unit and sold them for $25- you work it out. Corinne of course stayed home. She wanted to root Frank Farrell. I have not used her maiden name here of course, to save her family extreme embarrassment.
The bike trip went well. I caught up with a lot of bloke’s from Bacchus Marsh. Wayne Holmquest, Bronc Sullivan, Simon Jones, Jamie Wilson, Michael Clarke, and my brother Martin and all the rest of the scallywags from the Marsh who loved rude women, taking illicit substances, drinking and partying. Oh and not to mention motorbike racing, I almost forgot, that’s what we were there for.
After two weeks in Melbourne I flew back to Perth well hung over and arrived at 11 p.m. My wife was not at the airport to pick me up, so I caught a taxi home. When I got home she wasn’t there. I went to bed absolutely buggered. She arrived home around 1 a.m. She was all dressed up and had her face fully made up. At this point I knew something was amiss, she claimed she was at a girl’s night out, I thought differently. We had sex. In the morning when we woke up she confronted me at the kitchen table while I was eating breakfast with a demand that she wanted her own car to get around in rather than sharing a car. I told her that I believed she was playing up on me. I also told her that I didn’t like her disturbing me while I was eating. Like any good actress, she broke down sobbing and crying, asking me how I could possibly accuse such a virginal being as her good self of playing up. Like any good husband I told her to fuck off and went out to play a round of golf with my cousin Steven Stewart.
When I got home later that afternoon Corinne’s clothes and personal effects were gone, she had cleared out, no note or anything, and not only that, Stewie had beaten me at golf. That same day I got my telephone bill and fuck me it was two grand. Somebody, I assume my wife, had been ringing this out of town number every night at 6 p.m. until 8 p.m. for the whole two weeks I was away. I knew that the Detective in me would have to investigate further. I would find the culprit rooting my wife and there would be a severe penalty to pay. I checked with Telstra to make sure it was not an error and also found out that the number was in Hyden near Kalgoorlie. This was where Frank Farrell, Corinne’s cousins friend lived. I decided to catch the prick out and I had a devious plan. I purposely waited until 2 a.m. in the morning and rang the suspicious number. A male answered, obviously waking himself from his slumber. I explained to him that somebody had been ringing his number from my home for the last two weeks, he feigned innocence. I asked if he was Frank Farrell I also asked him if he was rooting my wife, like a good little boy he denied all, explaining that it was probably a Telstra error.
I hung the phone up and waited thirty seconds and then rang the number back. Bingo, it was engaged. I rang the number continuously for about an hour at intervals of five minutes until eventually the line was free and Frank Farrell answered again. I said “Frank, when I rang you the first time and you hung up, you immediately rang my wife Corinne and told her I was on to you both, you have been talking for the last hour”. He was amazed, he wanted to know how I knew that, what a fucking dick head. Who else would he be talking to for an hour at two in the morning? He then told me that he and my wife wanted to get married and he asked me when I could get my house on the market so they could have “their” half! By this time steam was coming out of my ears. I told Frank that he would be lucky if I decided to let him live let alone give him my house.
The next day Corinne rang me. She wanted to sell the house and move on, she also wanted her family heirlooms, the two valuable sideboards her Dad had made. She told me not to try and find her as she had chucked her job in and was working elsewhere. What she did not know is that one of her loyal friends had already told me where her new place of employment was. Later in the afternoon the police delivered a restraining order stopping me from contacting her. The day after that I got a solicitors letter formalising the break-up and the request to sell the house and a demand that the cabinets be returned. She also wanted a valuation on the house.
Time to act in a devious revengeful manner I thought. My cousin Steve had a couple of young mates looking for a place to live. Scotty was an alcoholic and his mate Mark Benetto was a chick magnet, both were party animals, they were only 18 years old. I told them to mess my house up good and proper and I let the garden die by not watering it. You see the restraining order prevented my wife from having her own agent value the house, she would have to rely on my agent. Once I had got the house in a suitably horrible state I had it valued and it came in about 20% less than it normally would have been in a presentable state. Next I decided to deal with the sideboard issue.
I hired a large caged box trailer and parked it in my driveway, I then asked my newfound mate Mark to help me carry the cabinets out onto the driveway. Once we got them there Mark asked me if we should lift them into the trailer. Not yet I told him, I just have to make a few adjustments and then we can proceed. Off I went down to the garden shed where I grabbed a shovel and my favourite axe, of which I had sharpened and honed the blade to razor like perfection. I love working with tools and now I would show Mark my handyman skills. As I approached the cabinets with the aforementioned axe I screamed Cuuuuunt!!! I then spent the next fifteen minutes in a blind but determined rage, chopping the cabinets up into little pieces no bigger than a matchbox.
Once my handiwork was finished I informed my frightened and confused assistant that we were now free to shovel the sideboards into the trailer. When that was done we proceeded to drive to my wife’s workplace, a shipping company in Kewdale. It had a huge car park out the front of the building. The front of the building itself consisted of mirrored windows looking straight out into the car park and behind those windows was my wife and about three hundred of her work mates. They were in for a bit of excitement and a treat. We pulled into the car park and I proceed to shovel the broken wood into a large pile in the car park. While I was doing this Corinne’s boss, a snivelling little man with no backbone named Terry, came prancing up to me with his hands on his hips in his cheap suit, demanding to know what the hell I was doing. My reply was simple and to the point. “Cunt, if you don’t fuck off out of my sight right now I will wrap this shovel around your fucking pin head, I am doing the right thing and delivering my wife’s furniture, now disappear, dick head”!!! He took off like a rocket mumbling something about ringing the police.
The police got me a couple of days later and I spent a few hours in the East Perth lock-up. They charged me with breaching the restraining order but couldn’t get me for destroying the cabinets as they were half mine. I got a $100 fine. While I was in the cells a kindly officer who was also suffering the same fate with his wife came in to talk to me, he gave me his phone number and told me that if I needed to talk I could ring him. I felt that was a terrific gesture but I never rang him. He also asked that I not chop anything more up. Fair request I reckon.
Still I wasn’t finished. I was pissed off that Corinne’s cousin had allowed this Frank Farrell to root my wife at her place in Spearwood near Fremantle and I decided an attitude adjustment was necessary. After all they were both at my wedding. I felt that the instrument of marriage was just not being respected by this scurrilous pair. Despite my housemates Scotty and Mark trying to convince me otherwise I grabbed a baseball bat and headed of to the culprits house. When I got there I leapt out of the car with my sporting equipment and ran up to the front door. A tradesman was doing some work on the front veranda, he took one look at me, dropped his tools and ran away. The cousin and her husband Paul also saw me coming through the screen door and took off out the back door. Bugger, all dressed up with nobody to hit.
Next target was Corinne’s mother. She had been ringing me demanding some personal effects my wife had left at the house. I walked in her front door and gave her the stuff she wanted. I said to her, “Mary, did you know that your son Neil raped your daughter Corinne many, many times when Corinne was a kid, what do you propose to do about that”? Her eyes almost popped out of her head, trying to process this horrific information, her bottom lip started quivering and she burst into tears. Obviously I was not going to get a cup of tea and a Tim Tam so I left.
It all worked out good in the end. The devious cousin and her husband Paul ended up ringing me and apologising for encouraging the affair, they also tried to elicit a promise that I would not hurt them in the future, being a big softy I agreed. I brought my own house back for a reasonable sum and I never saw Corinne again. She went to live with Frank Farrell who was twenty years older than her and an alcoholic. Corinne still lives in Hyden and has a couple of kids with Frank. I am not sure if she is still with Frank but I couldn’t care less anyway. He probably died of old age. I met a nice loyal girl and had three beautiful kids to her. We split up in the end too, but as Ned Kelly said “Such is Life”.
