Chapter 32: Party Games

Lake Macquarie

August 23rd – 26th, 1986

After our overnight cruise to Castle Lagoon, we discussed where we might take our next cruise. One option was to go up to Lake Macquarie, we could go up for a few days at the start of the mid-semester break; I would have to be back in time to take the midday train to Canberra for my Labor Party policy steering committee meeting. But with some planning, we could sail up on the Friday afternoon, reach the Swansea bridge at high tide, spend the next three days exploring the lake, and return to Pittwater on the Tuesday. One of the cruising group members at the sailing club said that there was a good chance of getting a mooring at the Lake Macquarie Yacht Club, at Belmont; it was only a few miles in from the Bridge. I was given a phone number of their club president, and I called him to make arrangements for an overnight mooring on the Friday evening.

The club president was particularly helpful, as well as reserving a space in their floating marina dock for me, he asked what time we planned on going through the Swansea bridge channel. He said the best time to go through would be just before full high tide, which on that Friday would be around 4:00 p.m. He told me that it’s far better to drop the sails on the approach to the channel, and to motor through what is a pretty tight stretch, through the bridge and then to the main part of the lake. In fact, we arranged to stay on the mooring every night; spending the days cruising around the lake, and returning where we had a secure mooring, and the on-shore facilities and electric power connection for each night.

“Make sure you follow the channel markers and stick to the left of the channel, the western side where it’s deepest,” he said. “Have you got the MSB chart of Lake Macquarie? That’s a pretty good one, shows all the navigational marks, the leads for Swansea channel, depths, all that you will need to know to get around the lake.”

I thanked him for his assistance, then called ‘Boat Books’ to see if they had a copy of the MSB chart, which I would pick up on the way home from work. But right now, I had a large pile of assignments to grade, these were the first assignment for 6.633 Data Bases and Networks. Of all the subjects I taught, that was probably my favourite, particularly the Computer Networks part of the subject. Second would be the Data Structures part of 6.641, Computing IIC. Of course in the next few years these subjects would change as we transitioned to the ‘Computer Engineering’ course.

I had also found the first ‘target’ file format for my experiments with steganography; the computer graphics lab had a number of ‘Apollo’ workstations, together with a high resolution flatbed scanner, I would be able to have files of scanned images that could be displayed on those workstations. The image file format was suitable for what I wanted to do; each pixel of the source picture was converted to three bytes, one each for red, green and blue colour value. I felt that I could embed the file data to be hidden by replacing the least significant bit of each of those RGB bytes, that should make a negligible different to the resulting image. A quick visual check showed that this was the case.

I started the detailed design specification for how each ‘codec’ should work, I decided that before the actual ‘hidden data’ would be embedded into the target file, there should be some sort of header / metadata information, including the total data size in bytes, the type and version of the codec used, and the date it was embedded. This would add a little bit if overhead, but would make decoding the data easier. Each ‘codec’ would have a number of methods associated with it, including a ‘read metadata’, ‘check available space’, ‘encode’ and ‘decode’. These were fairly self-explanatory, the ‘check available space’ would analyse the target file and return the maximum data file size that could be hidden within that file, based on how the encoding was done for that target file type. For the raw rgb image file, that would be the number of individual colour bytes, as the total ‘data bits’ that could be squeezed into the target. Dividing that number by eight would convert it to bytes; this way the encoding program could quickly make sure that the target file was large enough to contain the source data.

It didn’t take me all that long to write the codec for the image file; I then scanned some sample test images, and tested the process. After a few trivial programming errors were corrected (no program ever works perfectly on the first try!), I could do some subjective ‘before and after’ visual comparisons on the quality of the image, to make sure the steganography process didn’t degrade the image too much. To my eyes, I was unable to tell any difference, I asked David and Michelle to look at both sets of images, and they couldn’t detect any difference, either. I felt that so far, the work was a success; I would need to find more suitable target file types; there was some information on digital audio files that I was looking at. I got a copy of the ‘CD Audio’ file specification from what they called the ‘Redbook’, I initially thought it might be a suitable candidate, but the actual audio data bytes were stored in frames of twenty-four bytes, which are subject to error correction codes, to allow for read errors to be corrected. I wasn’t sure whether the resulting data file would be suitable for ‘tampering with’, to allow the file to be encoded to be inserted into the data stream. I would have to spend more time looking into the actual data stream that the ‘Read CD’ program returned from an actual audio CD. That would be the next stage of the project; but at least now I had the framework of the program written and proven. As more suitable ‘target’ file formats became available and popular, I would write a codec for that file format, using the same design outline as I did for the raw image file format, and the same programming interface as was designed for the raw image file. I was happy with the progress so far, I felt I had come up with a fairly solid and extensible architecture.

On the next Saturday, during a break in our rehearsals, I told Rose what I had been working on. As I described how the raw data stream would be modified to have the source file secretly embedded in it; I noticed she was getting more and more ‘uncomfortable’, squirming in her seat.

“I’m not boring you, am I?” I asked.

“No ... but...”

“Ohhh ... so my little girl is starting to get a little needy? Are you starting to get all messy?”

“Uh huh ... I’m sorry, do I disgust you?” she said, still squirming.

“No, but I think you and I need to have some time to play after our rehearsal is finished,” I said. “There’s a lot more I want to tell you about my encryption program, and how I’m designing the codecs, and that will only make you more needy. If I keep going on now, everybody will be able to tell that you are all messy and needy.”

“Ohh ... yes, please ... master,” she said, meekly. “I’m sorry that I got all ... all messy now. I think you need to punish me for that...”

“Yes, I think I do. After the rehearsal session, I’ll meet you in my bedroom...”

Rose had her head down, and her face was red, but she was smiling as she walked away, no doubt looking forward to some playtime later. When we finished the session, I led her to the bedroom, and told her to undress, and sit on the chair – I put an old towel down first – facing me with her legs spread. I then described, in minute technical details, the structure of the raw image file, how I would set up the metadata, how each byte would have its least significant bit stripped and replaced with the next bit of the data file. She was getting more and more aroused; squirming, opening and closing her legs. At one stage she went to reach down to touch herself.

“Just what do you think you are doing?” I said sharply. “Did I say you could touch yourself, pleasure yourself? Take your hands away, right now!”

“I’m sorry master,” she said, meekly. “I won’t do it again.”

I continued on with my description of the file formats, and I could see Rose getting more and more aroused, her labia were fully engorged, spread apart, showing the wetness of her opening; her clit was now erect, pushing the hood away from it. I finally decided I couldn’t keep teasing her, as I kept talking, I moved from the bed, and knelt down in front of her, and gradually pushed her legs wider apart. She moaned softly as I planted my lips on her pussy, licking between her labia with my tongue. Rose was incredibly wet, and I shifted my position so I could bring a hand up, and slide two fingers inside her as I kept on licking.

I could hear the squelching sounds as my fingers plunged in and out, forcing her juices out over my hand. She was moaning constantly, and when I bit gently on her swollen clit, she groaned loudly.

“Oh my God, keep doing that! Harder, bite on my clit!”

I kept my teeth around her clit while I fingered and licked her, and was soon rewarded with her having a loud and vigorous orgasm. As she came, more of her juices gushed out over my hands and face.

“Do you want me to breed you, Baby Girl?” I asked her.

“Oh yes, please, I want you inside me...”

I picked her up, and laid her on the bed, her legs hanging over the side. I moved in between them, my prick right at her pussy, and guide myself into her. She sighed loudly as I entered her, and could feel her wet, slick walls sliding around my knob. I reached forward, grabbing her breasts as I pumped in and out. Rose was moaning continuously, she wrapped her legs around my thighs, pulling my body into her. I increased my speed; it wasn’t a ‘hard, fast and furious’ fuck, but it wasn’t slow and gentle, either. My hands on her breasts stopped them from bouncing back and forward with my thrusts, and I played with her hard nipples.

“Fuck me, Master,” Rose moaned, just as she started to come. “Fill me with your seed!”

I felt my own orgasm was close, only a few more strokes ... Rose’s moans were exciting, and also helping me to get close; I pushed in hard, deep, and felt myself erupt inside her, on in her words, ‘taking my seed’. Not that there was any actual ‘seed’ in what I was spurting into her, but...

“Take my hot seed, Baby Girl,” I said to her, and she moaned with pleasure.

“Fill me, master,” she replied. “Fill me with your seed!”

I finished, and kept my prick deep inside her, feeling the contractions of her vagina as she had another orgasm. We were both breathing heavily, and I leant down to plant a kiss on each of her nipples.

“I love being inside you, Rose,” I said, when we had settled down.

“I love you being inside me, too,” she replied. “What do the westies say? You’re a good root, love!” she said, in a rough ‘ocker’ voice.

I laughed at her comments, she could pick the accent of the stereotypical western suburbs, uneducated Aussie yobbo ‘westie’. I couldn’t do accents anywhere as good as her, but I gave it a try.

“Yeah, luv, you’re a much better root than Cheryl,” I said, imitating her accent. “Now, can ya get me a pack of Winnies? I need a smoke after that!”

She burst out laughing, and I started laughing too; I had to sit down, so I pulled out of her, and sat on the bed next to her.

“God, I would hate to be called Cheryl,” she said. “Same as a guy being called ‘Wayne’, those names seem to have that negative connotation. Seriously, making love with you is pretty damn good though, I love how you know just how to play the roles that I want.”

“I enjoy playing those roles with you,” I said.

“Now, when you were licking me, no one else was in the room? Not Lisa, or Fiona?” she asked. “I thought I could feel some hands on my breasts.”

“No, it was just us alone in the room.”

“I must have been imagining it; what with your tongue on my clit, and your fingers inside me, then when you bit ... I was in ecstasy, I lost all sense of what was going on, I have no idea what my mind was doing, all the thoughts rushing through my head!”

I wondered to myself if it was somehow Jillian checking up on things; I wished there was some way that I was able to contact her when I wanted to speak with her, but I was totally dependent on her timetable, she would see me when it was convenient to her, when she wanted to see me. I didn’t say that to Rose, I still had no idea how to tell other people about Jillian, and her continued presence in my life. With our ‘playtime’ over, we showered, got dressed and joined the others for dinner.

The next day, Sunday the 17th was the ‘Annual General Meeting’ at the sailing club; after the official part of the meeting was done, a number of the other members asked us about ‘Young Lovers’. We said that next weekend we would be sailing up to Lake Macquarie for a few days; one of the other couples in the cruising group suggested that we make sure we have at least one meal in the dining room of the Lake Macquarie Sailing Club. Since we planned mooring at the club dock on the Friday night, we would see about eating there. Others recommended the best time – relative to the tides – to go through the bar and the bridge, making sure I followed the leads through the heads, and to look out for the crossover leads, showing when to turn to starboard to follow the channel to the bridge. Lots of good advice from those who had sailed up there before.

During the week, the Federal Budget was handed down on Tuesday night, I wasn’t impressed with it at all. I could see the hand of some of the right wing cabinet members in it; it proposed significant cuts to the Federal Public Service, along with increasing government charges, in an attempt to slash the deficit. I hope to address some of those at the policy steering committee meeting the following week; along with the caucus vote to resume uranium sales to France, which had been suspended following the French Government attack on the ‘Rainbow Warrior’ in Auckland Harbour, in July of last year. Just about all of the members of the left faction voted against the decision, but they didn’t have the numbers to kill the decision.

On Friday, I left after giving my Computing IIC tutorial, drove home, picked up Lisa and our supplies for the weekend, and drove up to the Sailing Club. We had the boat packed, and were under way just before noon, the wind had shifted to just south of east, probably an ideal direction for the run up the coast. Once we had cleared Barrenjoey headland, we set the sails for a broad starboard reach; we headed out to sea on a bearing of 65 degrees, until we were clear of the northern headland to Broken Bay, then turned more to the north, 25 degrees magnetic, past Terrigal, The Entrance, Norah Head, until we were opposite the entrance to the lake as Swansea. We turned around Moon Island, and spotted the entrance leads to give a line into the bay. Once we had entered between the two breakwalls, I dropped the sails, started the engine and we followed the channel to a mooring buoy just before the bridge. I called up the bridge control on their radio channel to let them know we were waiting for the next opening, and they said it would open at 1600 hours – in fifteen minutes time.

“That was a really nice sail up the coast,” Lisa said. “I enjoyed taking the compass readings, and plotting our course on the chart. I guess I should have paid more attention to my math classes at school, all of those calculations with the magnetic variation, but you showed me how to work it out.”

“Well, we got here, and with time to spare,” I said.

Just after 4 p.m., the bridge opened, and we got the call to go through, staying to the left side of the channel, which wasn’t very wide. We followed the markers, through the bridge, up past the airport at Pelican, and into the main body of the lake. It wasn’t that far to the yacht club, not worth hoisting the sails for what would be a few minutes’ sail, so we motored up to the club jetties, tied up at the dock that had been arranged for us, shut down the motor, and headed up to the main club office. We paid the rental fee for the mooring, and enquired about having dinner in the club dining room. We were given keys to the changing rooms and the electrical power lock box. Back at the boat, we ran a power cable to the external 240 volt plug, and I switched the refrigerator over to 240 volt operation. The cabin lights were also switched over to the 240 volt power supply, rather than using the main battery. We then had our showers and dressed for dinner.

The dining room lived up to the expectations that some of the others had set; I had some grilled flathead, it had probably been caught earlier that day in the lake; Lisa had the barbequed prawns. Both meals were excellent, the service was attentive without being overbearing; all in all, one of the best club meals we had experienced. Back on the boat, we cleaned things up a little before retiring to bed, and some more shipboard love-making.

When we woke, we had a quick breakfast, and finished straightening things up, my cousin Dianne and her husband were meeting us at the club, and we would be going fishing – Graham had promised to bring his fishing gear, and some for Lisa and I to use. He was going to take us to one of his secret fishing locations, and said we were almost guaranteed to reel in plenty of bream and whiting, and if we were lucky, a good flattie or two. They arrived just after 7:30, after quickly showing them around the boat, Graham showed the location he wanted us to go, in Chain Valley Bay. We prepared the sails, and when Graham untied the mooring lines, Lisa motored us away from the dock. Once in the main part of the lake, clear of the sailing club jetties, I hoisted the sails, and we headed down, past Wangi Wangi Point, and to the fishing location. It was a lovely day to be out on the water; Dianne and Graham pointed out various locations as we sailed past.

He directed us to a location that he felt would be good for fishing, once we were at that point, I dropped the sails, and Graham threw the anchor overboard. I stowed the sails, and we started fishing. It didn’t take long before the fish started biting; several were too small, and they were tossed back in, but by lunchtime we had four nice sized whiting in the icebox, along with three bream.

“I told you we would get some here,” he said. “But after we have lunch, we should move cross to the other side of Wyee Point, that’s usually better in the afternoon.”

We temporarily put our rods away, and we brought lunch up to the cockpit. Graham had brought some bottles of beer, and we enjoyed a drink with the cold chicken and salad that Dianne had provided. The afternoon fish spot proved to be just as good as where we had been in the morning, and we added another eight nice sized fish to the catch. When we decided we had done enough fishing, I raised the sails, and we returned to the club dock.

“Did you want to take any of those fish?” Dianne asked us. “We’ll take them home, clean them, and drop some around here for you if you want.”

“That would be good; if you can freeze them, and get them to the club before we have to go back home on Tuesday, that would work,” Lisa suggested.

“This might sound silly, but could you keep the heads frozen for us, too?” I said. “Fred might like a treat, and what he doesn’t want, I’ll bury them under the tomato plants when I put them in next month. That’s what Nanna Morris would always do.”

“Not a problem, Will,” Graham said. “I’ll drop them off here on Monday afternoon, after work. Do you want bream, whiting, or a mix of both?”

“Just some whiting, I think,” I replied. “They are nice eating fish, and the ones we caught look like a good size.”

“As Pop Morris used to say, we threw the squeakers back,” Dianne said.

“Squeakers?” Lisa asked.

“The small ones, because in his words, they would squeak when you put them in the frypan to cook them!” I answered. “He was a funny guy, I have no idea how Nan put up with him all those years.”

“Yes, as lovely as she is, she has no sense of humour,” Dianne replied. “Anyway, Lisa, Will, thanks for the lovely day out on the lake, you’ve got a really nice boat, we had a lot of fun, didn’t we Graham?”

“Yeah, it was pretty good, I like the boat, even though it does have sails. It must have been fun sailing up here from Sydney, out in the ocean.”

“Yeah, we wanted something large enough to cruise up and down the coast; the guy who we bought it from sailed it across from New Zealand, so it’s pretty strong. But it’s also good in club races, we’ve got a crew together for the coming season, so we’ll see how she goes.”

After they left, we decided to eat in the club dining room again for dinner, so we had our showers over in the club facilities, then had a light dinner before returning to our boat. Since we were using the 240 volt shore power for the lighting, we had all of the cabin lights on; we didn’t have to worry about the battery capacity powering them and the fridge. I pulled out the material for the Policy Steering Committee meeting, I wanted to read over everything again, and prepare notes for my comments.

There were several items up for discussion; one was a proposed restructuring of the Federal public service, another was the quasi-privatization of Telecom, making it a government-owned company, with shares made available to the general public. There was also one close to my heart, changes to the Federal funding of universities and the tertiary education sector, with a ‘student loan’ scheme, called the ‘Higher Education Contribution Scheme’, and allowing universities to attract foreign students who would have to pay a full fee for their courses. I already knew a fair bit about the ‘HECS’ proposal, an economics lecturer at the ANU, Bruce Chapman had been pushing this idea for several years.

I knew I would be up against strong opposition to keep tertiary education free, both major parties were of the view that because more and more students were undertaking tertiary education, maintaining ‘free’ courses was becoming economically untenable. It wasn’t that there was no money in the federal budget to cover the cost of running the universities and colleges of advanced education, it was just that other areas of the budget were seen as ‘more important’. However, the ‘full fee paying student’ proposal was, in my mind, even more dangerous; it could quickly degenerate into an expectation that someone was ‘buying’ a degree. While the initial proposal was for overseas students, I could see that there would be strong pressure on the government to all local students who didn’t qualify for a government-funded place to bypass the entrance requirements by paying a full fee. Of course, these were generally students who didn’t meet the academic requirements for a course, and would probably not do well at university – but what would happen when they were failed out of the course? There would be a huge outcry – ‘I paid for my degree, and now you’re not letting me get it’. I suspect there was also a sense of ‘the wrong people – those who are underserving – are taking up places in our tertiary education system’ behind some of this. I’m sure the opposition parties would support these changes, since they felt that the system that had been in place since the Whitlam reforms, abolishing fees back in 1974 was a bad move. That meant that courses were now available to anyone who met the academic requirements, not just those who could afford the fees. And those who could afford the fees were generally from the well-off families; owners of large rural properties, and the upper classes of society. Meanwhile, those without the money had to rely on scholarships or cadetships, and often the most capable students had missed out on the chance of a university education.

I spent about an hour working on my comments to the tertiary education proposals; there were also proposals to merge institutions, where in the same regional location there was both a university and a CAE – like the University of New England and the Northern Rivers College of Advanced Education, and the ANU with the Canberra CAE. I was unsure how successful that would be, given the very different environments of those institutions. I knew that staff at the affected institutions would not be happy about it, the university staff would feel that there would be a ‘dumbing down’ of the university courses, while the CAE staff would be unhappy about being combined with what they felt were the ‘snobby and elitist’ university academics.

With that out of the way, I read through the public service restructuring papers. The main premise was to reorganize the current Federal Government departments and statutory authorities into three broad types; core ‘policy’ entities, basically the same as the current Departments, to provide policy advice to the government and assist with the drafting of legislation. There would be regulatory and monitoring agencies; they would carry out tasks like issuing licenses and permits, monitor compliance with laws and regulations, and tasks of a similar nature. Then there would be ‘service delivery’ agencies; those that provided a direct service to the public, like paying pensions or benefits, operating a ‘government business enterprise’, like Telecom, Australia Post, the Snowy Mountains Authority; anything which had a whiff of a ‘commercial operation’ about it.

I had a sneaking suspicion that this would be the first stage in a massive government privatization process, these ‘service delivery’ agencies – Social Security, the Commonwealth Employment Service, Air Traffic Control and Airport Operations – would be prime candidates to be sold off to private interests. The regulatory agencies would be headed up by a board of directors, no doubt packed with ‘industry representatives’, giving control of regulating industry sectors to the big players in that area themselves. All in all, it was a very depressing proposal, I could see the hand of the anti-government, libertarian groups behind it. These were the people who had a fundamental objection to governments doing any functions that could be done (even at a greater cost to the public) by the private sector; the less government organization and regulation there was in society, the better, in their opinion.

I looked through some of the material I had collected, including some comments on ‘libertarianism’, I’m sure that was the philosophy driving some of these policies. I was curious as to why policies like these were being pushed by the party, I suspected it was some of the major players in the right faction flexing their muscles. There were a few people I suspected were behind this, probably led by Senator Peter Walsh – and I was number one on his list of enemies. Other cabinet members behind it would be Kim Beasley, Michael Duffy, John Button, and Barry Jones, the latter three prominent ‘anti-left’ members from Victoria, all members of the group ‘the participants’ who worked hard during the 1960’s to reduce the influence of the left in the Victorian branch of the party.

I was starting to get a stiff back; I stood up to stretch.

“Fucking libertarians in the right wing!” I said out loud.

“What’s the problem?” Lisa said, looking up from where she was reading a book.

I gave her a brief summary of the proposal, and who I thought was behind it. I explained how there was a faction who wanted to reduce government activity across the whole economic sector. They reject the premise of Keynesian economics, which is that in times of economic downturn, the government should stimulate demand, managing the fluctuations that cause recessions and inflation.

“I can recall my Economics lecturer talking about ‘Supply and Demand’, and said ‘If you can teach a parrot to say ‘Supply and Demand’, then you have made an economist,” she said. “So these people reject the foundation of Keynesian economics, the concepts that helped pull the world out of the Great Depression, and the expansion of the economy in post-war years?”

“Pretty much so,” I said. “They claim the oil crisis and resulting stagflation of the 1970s showed that the theory didn’t hold water.”

“But don’t they realize that the oil crisis was caused by political actions, in particular the West’s support of Israel over the Palestinians?” she replied. “When you get the price of one of the most important resources in the economy jumping by several hundred percent almost overnight, no system could take that in its stride.”

“True, but these people don’t want to admit that the west’s support – particular the US’s support – of Israel had any impact. The same as the Iranian revolution, kicking out the Shah, and the strong anti-American, anti-western views, they have nothing to do with the US and US engineering a military coup, ousting their democratically elected prime minister. All to maintain the monopoly of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, with profits going to Britain. The American’s didn’t like the idea of a democratically elected country that had vast oil reserves that wasn’t closely allied with them, they thought Iran would fall into communism. Hence the US – who in theory supports democracy world-wide – participated in deposing a democratically elected government.”

“No wonder the Iranians hate the Americans,” Lisa said. “But, of course, you won’t hear political leaders in the west saying that was the cause of the revolution, they won’t admit they were behind the coup, and what a disaster it was.”