Chapter 7: It’s Just a Casual Encounter

Don’t ask me what my name is
I know what your game is

It’s just a casual encounter
It’s just a casual encounter
It’s just a casual encounter

Christina Amphlett & Mack McEntee

Free Falling

Late September, 1982

I landed with a hard thump on the ground, knocking all the air out of my lungs. I felt a stabbing pain in my shoulder, and then more pain as my foot slammed against the back wall of the house. I heard Lisa scream, and come running towards me.

“Everyone! Help, please! Will’s fallen off the roof!”

She wrenched open the back door, and yelled for the others to come out and help. I felt a bit disorientated; I didn’t want to move in case there was some serious damage done from the fall. The others came running out from the house, along with Stewie and Traci, who must have just arrived for the afternoon’s rehearsal.

“Don’t move him!” Traci commanded. “What happened, Will? Where are you hurting?”

“I think I fell from where I was cleaning the gutters,” I said. “My shoulder, the right one, hurts like buggery, and my left foot and ankle hurts, too.”

“Anywhere else? Can you follow my finger with your eyes? Don’t move your head, just the eyes.”

She held a finger up over my face, and moved it from one side to the other, and up and down. I did my best to follow her movement with my eyes.

“Now, try and move your fingers, right hand, and left. Good. Can you wiggle your toes?”

I did just as she told me to, although moving the toes on my left foot hurt my ankle.

“Lisa, go inside, get a basin of warm water, a bottle of Dettol, some cotton balls, and an old, clean towel or face cloths. Fiona, can you go and call triple zero, get an ambulance here, and tell them a person fell from the roof. Will, are you particularly fond of the tee shirt you are wearing?”

“No, it’s just an old tee shirt, nothing special,” I replied, not sure what she was going on about.

“Mary Beth, get me a pair of large scissors, quickly.”

At least Traci knew what to do in a medical emergency; she had quickly taken charge. I tried to raise my upper body, but she held me down, pushing against my chest.

“Don’t move, wait for the ambos to get here,” she said. “Is there pain anywhere else? Does it hurt when I press or touch here?”

She started feeling all over my body, my ribs, arms, stomach and legs. The only places that were really sore was my shoulder and foot. Lisa had returned with the items Traci had requested, and Mary Beth gave her the scissors.

“Now, just move his arm out a little, so I can get to his shoulder.”

I winced in pain as she moved my arm; she snipped away at the sleeve of my tee shirt, exposing the shoulder and upper arm.

“Now this might sting a bit,” she said, and started using the cotton balls to clean around the wound on my arm.

“Oh fuck!” I exclaimed, as something stung me, I assume it was the antiseptic.

“God, stop being such a baby,” she said. “I’m being as gentle as I can! But I need to clean this, and get it bandaged.”

I could feel the pressure of her fingers on my upper arm; she was being rather gentle as she wiped the dirt and blood away. I turned my face away once I saw what she was doing, there was a long, jagged slash on my bicep, maybe two inches long at least, and lots of blood around it. She then cut the towel up, folding part of it into a pad, and using the remaining part to make a bandage holding the pad against the wound.

A minute or two later, the Ambulance guys arrived, there were two of them, one crouched down next to me.

“Okay, Mate, I assume you’re not lying here having a rest, can you tell me what happened?”

“I was up on the ladder, cleaning the gutters, and it slipped from underneath me, and I hit the ground,” I said. “Traci there, she’s a nurse, she bandaged up my shoulder, I think the garden fork took objections to me landing on top of it.”

He then asked Traci what she had done, she ran through how she checked my responses, bandaged up my shoulder, but made sure I didn’t move.

“I couldn’t see any indications of neurological damage,” she said. “He could track my finger with his eyes, and move his fingers and toes. I cleaned the shoulder wound as good as I could without rolling him over, but given what caused it, he’ll probably need a tetanus shot.”

“Okay, let’s get a spinal board under him; Pete, can you get a neck brace and we’ll get that on before we move him. Can’t be too careful,” he said. “Okay, mate, while we’re getting that, can I get some details? Your name, age, all that stuff.”

I gave the information to him, and he filled out a form on his clipboard. The other paramedic had returned with the stretcher, a wooden board, and another bag, and the two of them put this stiff foam collar around my neck, and then got the back board underneath my body, and strapped me to it. They then lifted me up onto the stretcher, put some straps around me, and started wheeling me to the ambulance.

“We’ll take him to North Shore, to the ER. One of you can come in the ambulance with us, anyone else will have to drive. How about you, Miss Nurse? You can give the staff there full details.”

“You go with him, Traci,” Lisa said. “I’ll follow, with Fiona, and whoever else wants to come up.”

It didn’t take more than a few minutes to get to the hospital, I could hear one of them advising the ER about my details, once we got there, they unloaded me from the ambulance, and I was wheeled into the hospital. Traci was by my side; and she was giving details to the emergency nurses as I was put into an examination room. They kept me on the back board, and some of the staff transferred me from the ambulance stretcher to the bed. Once in that bed, they unstrapped me from the wooden board, and replaced that and the neck brace with what I assumed were hospital owned ones. The two paramedics left with their stretcher, telling me that they hoped I would feel better soon. I thanked them for their assistance.

“Okay, I’ll just get a drip in your arm here,” one of the nurses said.

I felt a sting as the IV line was inserted; they then removed the remnants of my tee shirt and my jeans, put ECG stickers on my body, connected me to various bits of equipment, and one of them removed the temporary bandage Traci had applied. She told the ER nurse how she had cleaned the wound and bandaged it.

“That’s going to need some sutures,” the other nurse said.

“And it was a dirty, manky garden fork that caused it,” Traci said. “I don’t know when his last tetanus shot was, but he should get one.”

Traci then told the ER nurse that she was also a nurse, and described just what she did to me, making sure I wasn’t moved until the paramedics arrived.

“You were Janelle Ward’s boyfriend, fiancé, weren’t you?” the nurse asked me. “I thought the name was familiar. We were so sad about what happened to her; anyway, the doctor will be in to see you in a minute or two, don’t worry, we’ll take great care of you.”

She placed a warm blanket over my body, pulled the privacy curtain around my bed, and left the room, just as Lisa and Fiona arrived. Traci gave them an update of what had been done to me, and what she expected would be the next steps.

“They will x-ray his foot, and make sure there’s no damage elsewhere,” she said. “The main concern is spinal damage, but I’m pretty sure there isn’t any, but that’s why he’s strapped to that back board. Once they’ve cleared all that, the doctor will stitch up the cut on his shoulder, give him a tetanus shot, and see what needs to be done with the ankle.”

“God, Will, you gave me such a scare, falling like that!” Lisa said. “Why didn’t you ask me to hold the ladder steady for you, or something?”

I was about to answer her when the doctor came in, he introduced himself to me, and asked what happened. I gave him a brief rundown of how I fell, and Traci told him what she had done.

“Well, Mr. Morris, the main concern is the possibility of damage to the spinal cord; which could lead to paralysis, either paraplegia or quadriplegia. But the fact that you can move your fingers and toes is a good sign that there’s no damage. We don’t want to take any chances; so we’ll get you to radiology, see if there’s any damage to the vertebrae, and also see if that ankle is broken. I’ll just examine it, tell me where things hurt.”

He felt around my left foot and ankle; it seemed the most swollen and painful around the actual ankle itself. It was starting to swell, and I could see some discolouration from bruising.

“I think you’ve just sprained the ankle, but the x-ray will show for sure,” he said.

He then looked at the wound on my shoulder, pressing around where the cut was.

“Hmm, this will need stitching, so that it heals properly. Do you remember when you had your last tetanus shot?”

“I’m sure I had one as a kid, but we are talking fifteen or more years ago,” I said.

“Okay, let’s get you to radiology first, so we know what we are dealing with. Then we’ll worry about the other cuts and scrapes.”

An hour or so later I had been x-rayed, and the results showed no spinal damage, which was great, and no broken bones in my ankle. They unstrapped me from the back board, jabbed me in the arse cheek for the tetanus shot, and the doctor was about to stitch up the wound in my shoulder. Lisa, Fiona and Traci waited outside as one of the nurses gave me a local anaesthetic, the doctor stitched up the wound, and the nurse then covered it with a dressing.

“Well, we seem to have patched you up as well as we could,” Doctor Ramsay said. “The ankle is only sprained, so you’ll need to keep your weight off it for at least a week, we’ll put a compression bandage on it now, and keep that on until you can put weight on it without hurting. We’ll give you a set of crutches, do you know how to use them?”

“Yeah, I’ve used them before,” I said.

“And the wound on your shoulder, you should change the dressing every 12 hours, put some antiseptic cream on it, keep it clean and dry. Don’t lift anything heavy with your arms for a week at least, and those stitches can be removed after that. Just come up here next Saturday and we’ll get them out for you, see how it’s all healing. Now, that tetanus shot should prevent you getting that from the cut, but I’ll write out a prescription for some general antibiotics to prevent infection there. And I’ll write a prescription for some good painkillers, just be careful taking them. Read the instructions, and follow them. You should be right, but better to be careful. Make sure that you complete the whole course of the tablets.”

He had a few other instructions for me, including not climbing up on ladders without having someone hold it steady. Then they fitted me with a set of crutches, gave me some spare dressings for the cut on my shoulder, and we headed back to Fiona’s car, via the hospital pharmacy to fill my prescriptions. When we got home, Lisa told me that I wasn’t to try to climb the stairs to the studio with my crutches, and I was to rest in the living room. She berated me for not getting her, or someone, to steady the ladder while I was up on the roof.

“What if you had damaged your spine, and ended up in a wheelchair?” she said. “How do you think you would be able to perform on stage? You need to be more careful, not to do such stupid things!”

I let her talk and vent, I’m sure it must have been very scary for her to see me fall, and she was right; at least partially. I shouldn’t have been so silly as to try to reach across to get what was out of reach, I should have gone done the ladder, moved it across, and done it that way. I put the TV on; the Melbourne Aussie Rules grand final was on, not that I was a huge Aussie rules fan, but it was something to watch. Carlton were playing Richmond; I was hoping the Tigers would win, they were leading at half time, but Carlton pulled ahead in the third quarter, winning 103 to 85. But to me one of the highlights was the streaker who ran onto the field during the third quarter, to try to embrace the ‘flying doormat’, Bruce Doull. She looked pretty cute, too! Despite that interruption, it was a great match; some of the minor aspects of the game were beyond me, but it was fast, exciting, and Carlton deserved their victory.

I told Lisa that I wouldn’t be able to go sailing tomorrow; but if she wanted to go, I was sure Don would be appreciative. She wasn’t completely sure, until I told her that I would be perfectly fine at home, I wouldn’t try to get back up on the roof. She called Don to let him know that I wouldn’t be there, but if he still needed her to crew, she would turn up.

“What will you do tomorrow if I go sailing?” she asked.

“Well, the rugby league final is on, I want to see the Sea Eagles beat Parramatta,” I said. “Plus there’s still a lot of the gutters that need to be cleaned ... Ow, that’s my sore shoulder!”

Lisa had hit my playfully on my uninjured shoulder, telling me not to be a dickhead, and she knew that my left hand shoulder wasn’t the one that had been injured.

“You had better not go anywhere near that ladder,” she said. “If I hear you’ve been doing that, then no sex for a month!”

“Punishing yourself as well?” I said.

“I can get what I want from Fiona,” Lisa replied. “But I’ll tell her that you’re off limits! Did you hear that, Fiona?”

Fiona had come into the living room, I guess the rehearsal session was over.

“Yes, I’ll make sure he doesn’t do anything silly,” Fiona said. “If he does, then we’ll both cut him off!”

“Damn, you two are CRUEL!” I said, “No sympathy from either of you. I thought you would take pity on me in my wounded state.”

“We will take pity on you, but only if you behave yourself!” Lisa said.

After dinner, we watched TV for a while, then Lisa, Fiona and I went to bed. I placed my crutches against the wall, and they helped me get into the bed. My whole body was aching; not just the sprained ankle and the cut to my arm, but when I got undressed, both Lisa and Fiona commented on the purple bruises beginning to appear on my back. Our love making was rather subdued that evening; the only way I could lie in bed with any degree of comfort was to lie flat on my back. Not that it was all that bad, both Lisa and Fiona attended to my body in very nice ways.

When I woke up on the Sunday morning, my body was aching, my muscles stiff. The other two helped me to sit up on the edge of the bed, Lisa removed the elastic bandage from my ankle, and I hobbled up the hallway to the shower on my crutches. The other two helped me wash myself; and I let the hot water cascade over my body, easing some of the aches and stiffness from my muscles. After I had got dressed, and the bandage reapplied to my ankle, it was time for breakfast. Lisa was heading up to Clareville for the day’s sailing, and I planned to do some more work on the NTP user documentation, before watching the Sydney rugby league grand final; where Manly (my team!) was taking on the minor premiers, Parramatta.

I told Lisa to have a fun day sailing; the weather looked like it would be a great day for sailing, a steady breeze from the north-east, plenty of sun, and, more importantly, no rain. After she left, I went downstairs to the study and pulled out the working drafts of the NTP documentation; one for the server install, the other for the client program. Despite my arm and shoulder hurting me after a while of writing, I managed to get most of what I wanted written before lunchtime.

For lunch, we had toasted ham and cheese sandwiches; Fiona saw me flexing my shoulders, and asked if my arm was sore where the stitches had been put it. She got me one of the panadeine forte tablets that the hospital had given me, and I had that with a glass of water. With lunch out of the way, we retired to the living room to watch the football match. Mary Beth had made some snacks for us to munch on while we watched the game; some small party pies, sausage rolls, and some small cocktail franks; or ‘little boys”, as we called them. Fiona bought me a glass of lemonade, telling me that I shouldn’t have any alcohol while I’m taking the pain pills.

We watched the opening hoop-la; some army commandos parachuted into the centre of the SCG, a musical performance by some group that I hadn’t heard of, and then it was time for the coin toss, and the actual game to start. The referee, John Gocher, once he was happy with how the two teams had lined up, blew his whistle and the game was on. Manly scored the first try, Phil Blake touched down right under the posts, but Parramatta replied, with Brett Kenny flicking a pass to Steve Ella, who touched down in the corner. The first half ground on, until close to half time, Manly seemed to go to sleep, allowing Parramatta to cross for three tries. We all groaned at the incompetence of the Manly defence, dropping the ball to let Kenny pick it up and cross the try line. A 16 to 3 score line didn’t look all that promising. Despite Les Boyd crossing for a try after what looked like a pretty dodgy movement, and Graham Eadie easily converting it for the additional two points, Kenny scored his second try for the match, and Parramatta won 21 to 8. I was hoping for a repeat of the semi-final, where Manly won 20 to nil, but it wasn’t to be.

Feeling a bit despondent, I made my way down to the study. I thought to myself whether there was a verb called “crutched”? If so, I crutched my way down the hallway to the study. I continued to work on the NTP documentation until Lisa returned from sailing. I could see from the colour of her face that she had got plenty of sun; and she was excited to tell me the results.

“We were first over the line, and got first on handicap,” she said. “Don had me on the mainsheet, and when we had the spinnaker up, he and Ian took the sheet and brace, and I was steering. It was so much fun, I’m really sorry you missed it. But they both were sorry to hear of your fall, and hope you get better soon.”

“So what did you think about being on the helm?” I asked.

“It was so much fun, once I got the hang of working the tiller; it is counter-intuitive. I mean, you pull it towards you to move the bow away from you, and vice versa. But downwind, I could feel the power of the boat moving through the water. When I pushed the tiller across, or pulled it towards me, I could hear the water rushing around it, and the force of the water moving around the tiller was really strong. I didn’t do anything really wrong, at least nothing that caused Don to yell at me!”

“So, do we have a new helmsperson coming up?” I asked. “I’m not sure how often Don is likely to relinquish the tiller to you.”

“He told me that before each race, he will let me helm the boat, just to get some practice,” she replied. “And then there’s the Crew’s Race coming up in January, he wants me to steer for that. Tell me, what would you think about us getting our own boat one day?”

“I’ve thought about it from time to time,” I said. “Maybe we could get one in about a year’s time, I’m thinking that once I’ve finished the PhD thesis, I would have more time to put into it. Every so often, I get that classified publication, ‘Boat Trader’, and look through it, and drool!”

“Any thoughts on what we might get? Would you want something like ‘Koolong’, or one with a cabin?”

“I guess that depends on what we would really like to do. If we just want to race, then we could go for an open keelboat, like an Etchells, or a Soling, or even an old Star Class. But then if we wanted to stay on it overnight, we would want something with a cabin, and bunks, like a J24, or similar. There are plenty of designs around that would be good for staying on board for a few days, or even a week, and in good weather conditions, we could cruise down to the Harbour, or up to Port Stephens.”

“That would be so cool,” she said. “Would something like that be expensive?”

“Depends on the condition of the boat, what the sails are like, electrics, motor and so on. I’ve seen some as low as five grand, but they look like they were just about ready to sink. We could get something reasonable for maybe eight or ten thousand; we would probably need to do some work on something like that, get some new sails, replace the running rigging, stuff like that.”

“So if we got something like that, where could we go for a few days? Are there places up Broken Bay? And where would we keep it?”

“We should be able to get one of the club moorings, just off the clubhouse,” I said. “There’s a waiting list to rent one of the permanent MSB moorings, but that would be a better long term option. Regarding places to go for a few days, I know some nice little bays around some of the triubutaries, it wouldn’t take us long to sail there. Somewhere I have a chart of Pittwater and Broken Bay, let me find it.”

We headed into the study, and I rummaged around in the filing cabinets until I found what I was looking for, the MSB chart of the Broken Bay area. I spread it out on my desk, holding the corners down with some books. I showed her where the sailing club was, and some of the familiar locations around Pittwater, and Juno Point where we raced up to for the Quartet Bowl.

“We can sail down Cowan Creek,” I said, “and there’s all these little bays; Castle Lagoon is a nice one, and there’s a National Parks mooring buoy that we could tie up to. There’s a neat waterfall on one side of the little bay there, too.”

“That sounds so neat,” she said. “We could have a morning shower underneath the waterfall.”

“Cold water though.”

“Yeah. Now, how is your ankle feeling? Have you been resting it today? I should change that dressing on your shoulder, too ... come on, up to the bathroom so I can fix you up. I need to have a shower, wash the salt spray out of my hair”

I made my way up the stairs, with Lisa’s assistance, to the bathroom. I had a shower with her, then she took the bandage off my shoulder, checked where the cut had been stitched. She put some Dettol and a fresh dressing on it, and we got dressed to have dinner. Mary Beth asked me if I felt I would be recovered enough for our Hordern Pavilion gig next weekend on the Saturday of long weekend. We were book do a triple-header concert to start 2SM’s ‘Rocktober’ celebrations; we would be appearing with Cold Chisel and the Divinyls. I said that I should be fine, considering it was almost a week away, provided I took things easy on my ankle everything should be fine.

After dinner, we watched TV for a while – ‘Countdown’ was mandatory Sunday night viewing – and then to bed, where Lisa and Fiona were both very tender and loving.

On Monday, I was getting a new computer – well, a surplus DEC PDP-11/35 from the School of Mathematics. Their old machine had been replaced by a new PDP-11/70, and I was going to use the older one for our Usenet server. It came with a TU11 9 track tape drive, and two 10 MB RL02 removable disk drives. It already had an Ethernet adapter, since it had been connected into the campus network, all I needed to do was replace the RSTS operating system with our standard Unix system. By lunchtime, the equipment rack had been moved into the computer room next to our offices, and the DEC engineers had verified that the hardware was working correctly.

“It’s all yours, Will,” one of them said to me. “Take care of our baby, this was one of the first machines that we installed here at UNSW.”

The Unix installation process – which I was now very familiar with – would take several hours, so I loaded the installation tape, keyed in the ‘boot from tape drive’ commands on the front console, and waited ... When I returned from giving the usual Monday afternoon programming clinic, it was waiting for me to enter some startup commands. By the time I had to leave for the Computing I tutorial, the installation was well under way, and when I returned, the final tasks were done. I set the new IP address, connected it to the network, and tested connectivity. That was probably enough for one day; tomorrow I would install the ‘B News’ news server software, and then let the server gradually sync with the rest of the Usenet network.

Of course, my injuries didn’t go without comment from my co-workers; Michelle was the first to ask me what had happened, when she came in and saw me with the crutches. I got lots of sympathy from her; but not so much from David and Claude; they laughed at me, and told me I was a dickhead for trying to fly. The students in my Computing I class were more sympathetic, and at the end of the lecture, two of the (attractive!) female students offered to help me carry my lecture notes back up to my office with me. It was nice of them; carrying a folder of notes while using my crutches wasn’t easy. That was about the extent of sympathy; my classmates in Communications Theory were much like David and Claude, laughing at me for managing to fall off a ladder.

Every evening this week we were rehearsing for the big concert on the weekend; the format was the Divinyls would open with a sixty minute set, then Chisel, for another sixty minutes, and we would close out the show, with a two hour set. Then all three of us would be on stage for the final, ‘blow their socks off’ encore to close it out. What we needed to work out between all three groups was to come up with a list of four or five songs for that final encore. Mark from the Divinyls had suggested ‘Make You Happy’, since we had done that with them earlier, and Don Walker from the Chisels suggested ‘Bow River’ and ‘Rising Sun’. We had chosen ‘Nutbush’ and ‘Fast Woman on a Slow Train’. The other two groups had sent over cassettes of their songs for us to work with; Saturday morning once we had set things up at the Pavillion we would all work through the final encore set.

On Monday night, we all sat down in the studio, and started to plan our sets. We came up with something that we thought would be a crowd-pleaser, merging some of the sets from recent gigs; highlighting songs on the latest album, plus what we knew were popular live songs.

“They are all pretty high energy songs,” Stewie said. “Does anyone think maybe in the middle we should have a few slower songs, even if only to give us a breather? Any thoughts?”

He was right; from the opening number – ‘Time is Tight’ segueing into ‘Good Time’ it was all pretty full on, high energy.

“What about we do Sam Cooke’s ‘Another Saturday Night’? Paul suggested. “We’ve done that before, a few years ago. Maybe get some reggae feeling to it?”

We all thought it was a good suggestion, after a few minutes discussing possible arrangements, we tried it out. We were pretty rusty, it had been quite a while since we had played it, and I needed to refer to the song sheet so I didn’t forget the words. I tried not laugh at the words ‘She had a strange resemblance to a cat named Frankenstein’.

“I think try it without the keyboard, Will,” Phil said. “We now have plenty of music backing you up, just concentrate on singing.”

We played it a second time, this time it sounded much better, everyone had the timing right, and the words flowed better, as I wasn’t concentrating on playing the music.

“Now we just have to get you all moving properly to the music,” Lisa said. “Traci, Fiona, Allison, I think you need to move something like this. Play it again, guys, and I’ll show you what I think would look good.”

She stood at the front of our stage, facing the rest of us, and did a slow motion shimmy, I guess was the only way to describe it. After every eight bars, she would do a quarter turn, repeating the movements.

“I think we’ve got it,” Phil said. “Great work on the choreography, Lisa. We need another slower song like that to put in there as well. Any thoughts, people?”

“There’s one we haven’t done for a while, off the ‘Songs of Injustice’ album,” Andrew said. “That ‘Pay Me My Money Down’, that always went over well. What do you think?”

We all agreed that it was worth doing; the live arrangement we had previously played gave everyone a chance to play a solo; so we pulled out the music sheets, and dusted off the cobwebs of that song.

We ran through both songs a few more times that evening, and they were officially added to the set list. We also practiced the songs that we would be doing for the encore set; on the actual day we would work out with the others how we would fit into their playing, but by Friday we felt we were pretty solid on all of the songs.

With all the excitement of me falling off the roof, and preparing for the Rocktober concert we had forgotten that Lisa’s photos had come back from being processed. They turned up on Friday, but we didn’t get around to looking at them until we went to bed on Monday night. The three of us were sitting up in out bed, and Lisa passed the photos to Fiona and me. I thought they were pretty good; very erotic, but Lisa wasn’t all that happy with them, at least from a technical perspective.

“The flash spoiled some of them,” she said. “Having the one flash gun on top of the camera give those stark shadows, and it washes out the details. I should see if I can get a better flash system, with multiple flash heads. They will need a diffuser on each of the heads, too.”