Women, music and embroidered denims. The summer time of 1968 after we lower unfastened.

Barely greater than an hour down the monitor we met up. A employed caravan and tent awaited us on the No 1 tenting park within the seaside city of Warrnambool.

Freedom was ours.

It was, in fact, a good method wanting San Francisco, the place, we had been fairly positive, the centre of a brand new world existed, and the place everybody knew that in case you had been going, you’d greatest put on flowers in your hair.

You didn’t see lots of flowers in blokes’ hair in Warrnambool and district. Fact was, what grew to become often called the ’60s in America wouldn’t occur, actually, till the ’70s in Australia.

However having examine hippies – free love! – and listened to the music, we had been decided to take a crack at turning into pioneers on this first summer time of our independence.

The No 1 park, a stretch of garden between hedges, had advantages past the obvious, which was that our households weren’t round.

The seaside, the important ingredient of any summer time, was proper behind the hedges and a dune.

The Woman Bay Resort – lengthy gone now, however bands performed there these days and nobody requested whether or not you had been sufficiently old to purchase a drink – was a stroll in a single route.

The Warrnambool Surf Life Saving Membership was a saunter the other method, the place better-known bands thundered at night time and furtive sorts hung within the shadows, providing “bennies” and “purple haze” that had been presumably fat burners pilfered from rest room cupboards, or perhaps dyed aspirin.

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No matter, we went together with the sham. In the event you had been going to be a pioneer bush hippy, you needed to look the half, even in case you had been faking it.

Most significantly, the number one park was teeming with ladies. They’d stroll by on their technique to the seaside or the Woman Bay Resort or the surf membership, or they had been really staying on the park.

The very day we checked in to our caravan, a household from Melbourne arrange camp proper throughout the garden. Mom, father …

Daughter. And she or he’d introduced a buddy. They wore braids of their hair. And flowers.

Thanks, Krishna, we breathed.

We cranked up the report participant. Don’t Go Me By bounced throughout the garden. Pricey Prudence begged its method between tents, imploring “received’t you come out to play”.

The ladies tossed their hair and set off in the direction of the surf membership. Whereas My Guitar Gently Weeps adopted them. Our ambition was not so simply crushed.

We launched ourselves to the dad and mom and provided to assist hoist their tents. The outdated boy turned out to be Irish-born and previously a Dublin policeman. We introduced beers. The ladies returned and disappeared into their tent. The outdated boy smiled knowingly and hoisted his beer.

One in all us, most likely Jack, the arty one, hit on the thought of displaying our delicate natures.

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There was a little bit of a factor that 12 months for including embroidery to your denims. Very Haight-Ashbury.

Quickly we might be seen sitting cross-legged on the grass exterior our caravan wielding needles and multi-coloured thread, self-consciously embroidering our flares.

The report participant belted out Rocky Racoon, presumably as a result of we felt in want of a suitably sardonic soundtrack regarding manliness to trace at our underlying sophistication.

The ladies lined their mouths with their palms and hurried out of sight. Howls of mirth issued past the hedge.

We loaded Otis Redding’s Sittin’ on the Dock of the Bay on the report participant and purposefully put away our embroidery.

Quickly we might be seen sitting cross-legged on the grass exterior our caravan wielding needles and multi-coloured thread, self-consciously embroidering our flares.

Quickly we realized one thing concerning the pecking order of cool.

Doug Parkinson, a chubby rock singer with an afro and a voice large enough to carry down a storm cloud, was – together with his band In Focus – the headline act on the surf membership. Fairly quickly he’d pinch Pricey Prudence from The Beatles and switch it into successful of his personal. It took some time for us to forgive him.

Parkinson and his band spent their days within the tenting park close to the surf membership lolling beneath an open-sided, carpeted tent that wouldn’t have been misplaced in a Bedouin encampment. We didn’t should be instructed you’d want a particular invitation to even method.

Inside had been the ladies from No 1 caravan park, hanging on each phrase uttered by the singer, serving drinks to the band, gaily smoking cigarettes and twirling the braid of their hair.

We knew then the place we stood.

Nowhere.

We mooched away to the Woman Bay Resort and commenced ordering compensation for our humiliation, ranging from the highest shelf and transferring south.

A while later I awoke in a close-by amusement park, mendacity nauseous and thump-headed in an earthen pit beneath trampolines which had been laid flush with the bottom. My mates had disappeared. I by no means did work out how or why I’d fallen via the springs, or how I managed to flee.

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It appeared time to hunt recommendation.

A former Dublin policeman might certainly supply knowledge, even when it was the midnight.

I toppled via the wall of one of many tents arrange for his household. He sat me in a camp chair and plied me with black espresso and sandwiches, although I couldn’t hold something down.

“The issue,” this beneficiant fellow defined after I was acutely aware sufficient to pay attention, “Is you’re attempting too onerous. I’ve been watching you. You’ve obtained to be taught to take issues straightforward. All the pieces will end up all proper.”

He was packed up and gone the following day together with his spouse and his unreachable daughter and her buddy.

We 4 high quality younger idiots tramped over the dune and provided ourselves to the therapeutic waters of the ocean. And as I floated, headache easing, I mirrored on the Irishman’s phrases.

“You’re attempting too onerous.”

Exactly. We knew one thing was taking place however we didn’t fairly know what it was.

What we knew for sure, nonetheless, was that one of the best of occasions, unspecified, had been at all times simply up the street, so shut you might virtually style it.

We obtained the report participant screaming Again within the USSR and the carefree silliness of Obla Di Obla Da and headed again as much as the surf membership.

We had been 17. We’d lower unfastened. Freedom was ours.

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