The windows of the stolen ute were down just enough to let our cigarette smoke escape. We sped away from where we had been stranded in Collingwood—the rough end of inner Melbourne.”

Freedom at last,’ I announced to no one in particular, as I jumped out of the warm, modest four-door sedan and took off. The drive to Ocean Grove from Ballarat was just a little over an hour. I was grateful to escape out of the car into the fresh salt air.

“I was one of thirty green recruits at Kapooka, the Army Recruit Training Centre, near the inland city of Wagga Wagga, New South Wales. All of us were inexperienced, probably more inexperienced than we could have realised, and all eager to get past the indignity of basic training in order to become soldiers.

My heart was pounding. My eyes narrowed in on the knot in the timber table in front of me. My knuckles turned white as I made a clenched fist. I tried to suppress the genuine fear that this was going to end badly. I looked up as I wiped my sweaty palms on my jeans and tried to read the almost bored look on the magistrate’s face.

Prison at night once again brought with it the ritual of the tent of filth covering the nearby bed. I found it hard to sleep with regular interruptions of sounds that would stir my fears. I didn’t wish to become a victim of some sort of weird prison behaviour.

The decision to skip bail and head interstate was a pretty easy one to make. Simon and I chose to part company for a while; Rick and I were drawn together by a driving fear. We considered lots of places to go. Something deep inside me just wanted to get as far away as I could. I just wanted to run.

Hard drugs were difficult to get in Perth. We were poorly connected and without a regular supply, so we used whatever drugs we could score. When we couldn’t get speed we would smoke dope, and when dope was short we drank whatever alcohol took our fancy. We went through a lot of alcohol.

My case came to trial after three long months on remand. The evidence against me was pretty much watertight, so I figured the best thing I could do was plead guilty, try to be co-operative and hope the judge would go easy on me. A guilty plea meant no real trial, and no jury. The arguments from prosecution and defence were over the severity of the sentence.

I had little around me to give me hope for anything more than the ongoing purposeless life that I had, day in, day out. As the months rolled by the inner despair set in. Every night the unrelenting nagging of the voices in my head continued. It was always the same thing that I heard—‘Kill yourself!’ so I could join ‘them’ on the other side. I knew I had to resist. I deeply wanted to live and find peace

Lock up was four pm. That’s sixteen hours of self-time. Everything slowed down once again, but this time it was not chemical, rather just the long slow hours with limited ways to fill the time. Reading, writing, television and sleeping were common activities. The tedium of boredom was never far from sight.”