Wednesday 28th February 1996.

Sue has found a new house for us to move, because there is a troublesome and disruptive presence living in our present home.  I am not afraid of it, it just won’t leave, however Sue if frightened of it and that is why we are leaving.  I do not like the new house that Sue has chosen for us, the street entrance is constantly blocked by the sons of the tradesman next door with their vehicles.  They also have a broken down small sedan at the bottom of the yard.

Tuesday 26th March 1996.*

I am with three of my friends, Brian C, his brother known as wombat and Boz.  We are seated on a bench outside the tavern at University of Western Australia.  Seated next to me is an attractive young girl with dark hair, she is rather short but has large breast.  I am quite enamoured by her and she with me as she sides up to me.  I call her Michelle, but this is not quite right.  I wake suddenly, it is around 3.00 am.  This is not Michelle, but a girl by the name of Leanne whom I had a brief relationship with when I was eighteen.  She was killed in a car crash a few years later.

Sue, the kids and I leave the house early in the morning to walk to the Hare Krishna centre for breakfast, our house is actually my friend Richards house.  There is a couple of small marijuana plants growing out the back and in a room another growing hydroponically under an upturned fish tank.  My two sons are not too comfortable with the Hare Krishna’s, not knowing who they are.  Two bogons are trying to steal the plants, and I warn them off, saying that I will tell Richard if they do so, they call me a dobber.

Outside are two female devotees, the one seated on the left has black patterns painted around and across the contours of her face, so as to resemble a mask.  The girl on the right of me has her face painted a Krishna blue.  From the tip of her nose protrudes a small hollow tube.  I tell one of the Hare Krishna’s that someone is stealing their plants, they do not seem to mind saying, “it is not really a Krishna Consciousness thing to be growing marijuana plants”.

Richard’s house is on the side of the hill, the highest part being the front.  Standing outside the front I see two planes high in the sky flying from east to west.  But the most amazing sight is about to come.  It is a new design of the Boeing 747 painted in Qantas colors and insignia, coming in low just above the rooftops of the houses.  The thing is that this plane is five to ten times larger than the original!  On each of the wingtips are gigantic fins.  Attached to the edge of these fins and to the fuselage are pods or compartments for carrying additional passengers.  This aircraft could carry thousands!

Above the engine noise a voice booms from the sky, “Presenting Qantas new jet to the world”.  We are all awe struck as the gigantic craft arcs slowly to the rear of the house, the bottom of the craft just disappearing behind the rooftops.  Descending, it comes to a stop and begins slowly reversing, stopping again.  Incredibly it begins to do a slow roll, it must be missing the ground by only inches.  “I fear it is going too”...........There is a most god almighty explosion, the sky immediately goes black and everything descends into darkness, incredible.  Looking out over the ocean in the dark and smoke, we can hear a rumble growing, and out of this the jet emerges, reborn like the phoenix.  Amazing.

Thursday 28th March 1996.

Sue and I arrive in Bali in Indonesia.  Bajaj takes us to a rather run down Kampong, where we change a couple or travellers cheques.  Driving down a hill I see a valley that stretches out before me, looking a lot like one of the architectural model I built many years ago.  Looking out of the window of the old car I am in, everything appears to be constructed like a life size diorama or a train set.

Going back to the village I decide to go for a walk, Sue is going to stay.  I see an old man cooking food in a pot on a ground stove.  I ask one of the locals how far it is to the capital Denpasar and are told that is about fifteen kilometres away.  I really thought there would be more temples in Bali.

Walking into a bar I begin talking to a German man who is wearing no more than a lungi, who is bragging about his sexual prowess.  I too appear to be wearing no more than a lungi.  A dark haired woman appears, she is of European descent, she lifts the Germans lungi, looking at his genitals.  “What about you?” she says, lifting my lungi.  Calling to her friend nearby, she remarks, “you have him”, directing her to the German, while looking approvingly at me.  I return to the village to get some condoms, something disturbs me and I awake.

The next dream is either a continuation of the same or is related to the previous dream, only that the characters and location have changed.

I am wandering around the suburb of Croydon near where I grew up.  I am in a rather dishevelled state.  I am walking around inside a casino with my backpack on, I am stunned that I am still in here given the filthy state that I am in.  Nearby I see a machine printing out cheques of large cash amounts, “why cannot I have one of them?”.  A very attractive Asian girl and her equally attractive blonde friend come up to me and ask, “what am I doing with the cheques?”

I try to bluff them that they are mine, somehow they don’t understand.  “Do-you-understand”, I remark sarcastically.  Sue and my two sons are with me and we are playing pool, the two girls come over to play with us.  During the course of conversation I ask the girls to a motel room.  “Hmmm, I wonder what Sue will think of this”.  The alarm goes off and I wake up.

Friday 10th May 1996.

I find myself in the inner city of Melbourne, outside a terrace house.  There is a quite attractive girl that I would like to sleep with, a male person whom I do not know and a number of seemingly disjointed scenes.  Walking around the bay area near Port Melbourne Beach, I see to one side a derelict wooden ship and a number of naval ships in dry dock in various stages of repair.  The paint job on the last one was pretty bad.  Further along is another derelict, an iron hulk being wrecked.  From where I stand I can see rubbish being ejected, scrap iron from the holes and cavities in the hull.

Walking along somewhere else we come to a crystal clear brook.  The person I am with (Shoda?), catches a fish with their hands and pulls it out of the water (I know the type of fish, but the name alludes me).  It is quite large and someone is going to eat it.  I spend a lot of time there and remark to someone how much I am enjoying my time in this place and that I have not done so for a long time.  I am free to roam in such a beautiful place.

Wandering around an interesting old house I encounter another attractive dark haired girl.  She lives here and shows me her bedroom.  I would not mind sleeping with her but the bed is not overly large.  I leave there with a friend and walking down the street notice there is an extra storey on the building.  The man I am with tells me that a gay couple live in the flat there, and that he hates homosexuals.

Monday 9th June 1996.

I stab actor Leonard Nimoy of Star Trek fame through the chest with a samurai sword.  He is wearing a blue robe and when I withdrew the sword I find there is no blood on the blade.[1]

Tuesday 18th June 1996.

I am at Abbet Park Sports Grounds at the bottom of the hill in Scarborough.  There is a barbecue here, it is a Moslem celebration.  I ride my bike down there with a couple of Scarborough friends.  At first I am flying a kite and next I am invited to this celebration.  A feast is being cooked in an old refrigerator, the amount of food being prepared is far in excess of the amount of people there.  There are two quite beautiful women there.  The older woman comes over and embraces me.  The food is served, and my mother arrives just as the food is nearly all eaten.  I feel I should introduce her.

All of a sudden we find ourselves in a space shuttle orbiting overhead, they are fixing an Omnimax camera.  I like the no gravity situation.  Documents are being printed and they float straight from the printer into the shredder and from there the scraps straight into a bin.  Now I am back on earth, having left the shuttle before re-entry.  My mother is still in there, she will have to wait until the ship enters the atmosphere to leave.

Tuesday 19th June 1996.

Bad nights sleep.  In a hypnagogic state I see myself standing in the driveway of my house. Suddenly without any warning, from out of the darkness (in bed), my shadow violently kicks me in the head with a football[2].  The shock of being hit in the head jolts me fully awake.

Monday 15th July 1996.

I am in the settlement of Yanchep north of Perth.  Driving along I remark on all the new houses that have been built here.  The road leading out of town becomes a track along the beachfront that leads to a lagoon right on the beach, separated by only a sand bar and backs onto a cliff face.  I realise that I have visited this place in a previous dream[3].  I notice that a pool nearby is full of crayfish.  Should I dive in?  The water is so clear.

Looking into the sky I see a space station hanging in a low orbit.  From its small centrifuge, three arms extend.  At the end of these is a larger structure, a short cylinder topped with a cone.  It must be two or three kilometres across.  Looking back into the pond I decide to dive in.

Tuesday 23rd July 1996.

I am with a group of friends.  One is from England, my cousin P and a couple of friends from Melbourne.  We are walking up the hill, a street from the back of Greenwood shops.  We walk past a house that has had the front removed.  Where the lounge room would have been, the ceiling has been decorated with mirrors and there is a red door facing out.  We had joked on the way to the shops that there was going to be a disco there.

I introduce someone to my cousin as we are walking back along a bush track at the back of the houses.  All of a sudden we are at the ‘disco house’, “oh well why we are here we might as well go inside”.  Everything appears normal, until we see a dark, black haired woman and her friend pull up.  These must be the owners of the house.  In a scene reminiscent of slapstick comedy we are all running around trying to get out the red front door.  However all the doors are locked and we must exit the way we came in, through the bush land out the back.

Thursday 25th July 1996.

It is Friday night in Sydney, I am with some friends and we decide to go out.  We go to this old suburban house in Randwick, which begins with the letter R.  At the top of some stairs is the front door.  This is the entry to a gay nightclub. At the bottom of the stairs, stretched across a hole in the wall is a canvas tarpaulin.  It is brightly painted in graffiti type designs and has a flap cut into it.  This leads to a lesbian nightclub.  Milling around out the front is a group of men and women.  I can’t see the point of going to a lesbian nightclub and I am not too sure that I want to go to a gay nightclub.  As they are both about to close I say to myself that since I am here I had might as well go and have a look inside the gay nightclub.

On entering the building I find it is a large spacious palace.  A building with huge halls, filled with people studying biblical works.  These text are not academic or historical but along the lines of American Evangelical.  The wooden floors are covered with men and women kneeling and prostrating.  Similar to the Buddhist ritual associated with the Tripitaka, ‘taking refuge’ in the Buddha, Dharma, Sangha.  Next to each person is a small stack of books, they are using for study.

As I walk through the people I pass through archways and along beautiful carpets.  Lining the walls are paintings representing different images of Christianity, ranging from classical, renaissance, pop, mixed media and advertising.  I continue down the halls heading in an anti-clockwise direction (always going left).  I come to a place that is almost in twilight and here I find a wooden staircase that descends below the floor.  As I approach it I ask myself, should I go any further?

Two young girls appear and tell me that I am forbidden to go any further[4].  I return back through the halls to the front entrance and out into the open.  It is late now, there is not point in standing around so I decide to leave.  Driving through Sydney, I am asked where I want to go.  I don’t know where I have just been and little idea of where I am now as we continue to drive around the city.

Sunday 1st August 1996.

We have moved back to Victoria and are living in a house in the country.  It is a big old place on the outskirts of a town.  Driving into town there is a small tree covered area, that’s where the shops are in there.  As you drive out of town that is where you find us living.  The back of the house opens onto fields.  On the back patio I have some plants growing.  A car pulls into the driveway, we have visitors but I am not too sure who they are.  It is a Lebanese man, he says that he is the owner of the property.  He want to know what we are doing there, and I tell him that we have just moved in as he examines the tree house built by the previous occupant.

I decide to go for a walk into town.  There is a garage, a couple of pubs and a few other things to see.  Walking out of town I come to an old railway yard.  Just before this I find the local swimming pool.  Looking out across the view I have of the distant landscape I can see three tornadoes on the horizon that reach up into the sky.  The local swimming pool is actually a hot mud spring in which children are playing.  More and more boys keep jumping in until there is no more room, but they keep coming, jumping onto the head of the others.  Quite bizarre.

I walk into a railway museum full of old trains and there is a man there with an old Vic-Rail jacket on and the yard is full of farming machinery.  I see an Asian man coming out of a building.  He is an employee and the owner is yelling at him, saying that he does not want him there any more.  As he is leaving I say that I need a job and he replies that I can start on Monday.  I take the long way home and find myself in the old part of town.  There is work there as a painter that I am also going for.  A guy I went to trade school with is there.  “What is the solvent mixture for airless spraying?”, he ask.  “Four to one?”  Wrong.  Naturally I did not get the job.

Thursday 7th August 1996.*

I am at a popular beachside destination that trains used to run to.  I arrive at the station with my family.  The platform is lined with a green picket fence with yellow post.  We are going to visit our friends Fred and Gina as they are moving house.  This is a semi-rural area, all of the houses are Mediterranean in design, built on very steep hillsides, crowded one against the other.  A mixture of colonnades, glass and steel with roof top gardens running high above us.  Very impressive.

While there Sue meets a man she used to go out with, somehow again getting involved with him and threatening to leave me.  I am rather ambivalent about the whole thing until I realise that he is just going to use her.  She forces me to make a decision between this man and myself.  Since I don’t want to let him have my two sons I agree to her request.  This guy has also sold her car to an Asian couple.  My golf clubs are in the back of the car and as I am about to get them out I tell him that the car is a lemon, also I know that he has been trying to sleaze onto my wife.  I am really quite mad.  There is also an archery set in the boot.  This guy is now standing behind a canvas screen with graffiti type spray paint patterns on it, very much like the Thursday, July 25 dream and he has somehow been secured close to it.

I also have a small silky terrier and it runs off into a pine forest where I go looking for it.  I find it and it sees a flock of cockatoos on the ground, it runs over grabbing one in its mouth and begins to tear it to pieces.  Trying to grab it, the dog runs off again.  Still in this Mediterranean area, I find this hillside that leads to a ‘secret magical beach’[5].  Not many people know of this place as it has only ever been told of in stories.  There is a long winding road that you must at times crawl along on your hands and knees.  One way to actually find this beach is while on the road to recite poetry.

The scene changes again to my wife and this man.  I find an old ID that indicates that in the past I worked that the cinemas in Warwick, however the photograph of me on it is from the future and I have long unkempt hair.  Back on the path I find myself on my hands and knees, crawling up this long, long road reciting poetry in search of this beach.  The road soon becomes walled on each side.  There is a madman that either lives on or guards this road.  He has piece of cardboard tied with string around his neck.  I cannot recall what was written on it.  He encourages me as I crawl along reciting.  “Good, good”, he banters, “that’s good”. (Commentary here).

As I approach the summit, the road swings to the right in a sort of spiral.  I stand up, walk around the corner and into, nothing!  There’s nothing there, it just runs it a small room, no door, no nothing.  I go back and the madman says something about reciting more poetry.  So I start again, reciting as I walk and as I turn the corner this time there is a door.  Going through it leads to the beach.  It is a misty place that exists in sort of twilight.  Running down to the waters edge I find it is quite pleasant here and in the far distance is not a city but some sort of structures.  The cloud overhead is dark and grey.

The airforce is shooting at white lights traversing in the sky.  The aircraft are World War Two P38 Lightning’s firing at these white lights high above me.  An amazing sight as the tracer’s light up the darkness.  The tide is out and somehow my wife and two sons are here.  My five year old son and I walk out into the ankle deep shallow that stretch out for one hundred metres or more through small pools.  Another family we know is also here with their two sons.  I say to my five year old not to come out any further, walking out a bit further I see a huge wave coming in.  I am running back screaming for my son to get out of the water.  The wave comes crashing down on us, as the water clears I find my eldest son and I again in the shallows, however my three year old has disappeared.  What has happened?  He was not in the water.  The police come in to search for him.  What am I going to tell my wife?

Friday 9th August 1996.

While building a shade house down the side of my residence, a Range Rover pull up out the front.  A well-dressed woman in her early forties with black hair gets out.  She remarks that she stopped when she saw me building it and would like me to also build one for her.  I cannot see any reason why not.  I continue to work, and she seems to be just hanging around.  Ok, I will offer her a cup of coffee or tea, which she accepts.

The next day I am working away and to my surprise when she turns up again, watching me work and talking to me.  I go inside and tell my wife, what should I do?  She asks, “what does she want?”  I explain about building the shade house, but I don’t know why she is hanging around.  In my own mind I think she wants more than just some work done for her.  Now I am inside and there is a commotion outside the window where I am building the shade house.  This woman has bought in a carpenter to look over my work, which he says is structurally unsound and needs further work!  I cannot believe it but she is actually paying him to correct my mistakes.

The scene changes to an amusement park, similar to Adventure World in Bibra Lake.  There are waterslides and rides.  I am there with my two sons, along with David L and his wife Donna.  Donna is a psychologist and reiterates my thoughts on this woman that she wants more than just a shade house built.  Next thing I am at the top of a waterslide with a lot of kids.  My three-year-old is with me and will go down with me as he is quite little.  A couple tries to push in front of us.  We go sliding down, Bodhi between my legs and go splashing into the pool at the bottom. (Commentary here).

Wednesday 28th August 1996.

I am in street in the suburb I grew up in.  I am actually a policeman and somewhat younger.  I am visiting neighbours in the street where I grew up and talking with them.  I visit to the B family across the road, asking Mrs B how all of her sons are going, then onto the S families house.  Their daughter who in reality is a police officer comes out.  “Look”, says my Mum, pointing to my carefully pressed light blue shirt, badge and uniform.

Looking across the road I can actually see the city of Perth behind the houses.  How come I have never been able to see this before?  I had driven there in a divisional van and I can see a lot of police running up the lane two houses up from where I grew up.  There has been an altercation between a young man and someone I can only describe as ‘a dirty old man’.  I run up to help restrain him bringing him to the ground.  “Don’t be afraid to be rough on him”, says one of the officers as I slap handcuffs on him.  Apparently he has been on the run for some years and everyone is glad to see him apprehended, and is going back to where he belongs.  He is removed from the scene and is no longer a problem.

I arrest a woman who has been spending too much on credit cards and not paying it back.  I feel sorry for her in a way, and I really don’t want to do this.  She is quite attractive, in her thirties with long black hair.  I tell her she has to be locked in the back of the divisional van.  I don’t really want to have to take her away.  The van is unusual in that the side has been cut away and is more like a panel van.

As I drive down to the bottom of Holland Road, everything for me seems fresh and rejuvenated.  Turning the corner I find that all the units built there have been torn down and the land returned to fields, albeit upturned dirt.  I am looking at this woman in the rear view mirror and she at me.  I know what she really wants and she gestures between her legs.  I would like to have sex with her but that would but that would be a conflict of interest with me being a police officer.  I end up making love to her anyway, giving it to her from behind.  At the police station she is apparently not going to be locked up, it is more of a custodial arrangement.  Have I compromised the relationship with my wife?

Wednesday 4th September 1996.

I am at the southern end on the East Ringwood shopping centre.  There is going to be an interview with the reformed Sex Pistols.  I am talking to Peter Cook, the drummer, I remark to him that they are not in their twenties any more and that it is immature to carry on the way they are.  Then I talk to John Lydon (a.k.a. Johnny Rotten).  For him it is not a problem, for he has always been what he has always been.  He has never tried to be anyone else but himself.  Being ‘grown up’ has never been an issue to him, and I don’t have a problem with this.  The old bicycle shop is still there.  There is a pretty young girl about sixteen there.  I don’t know if she is attracted to me.

The scene shifts to somewhere in the country, a town that resembles Beverley in Western Australia.  We are in the main street, on a picnic with my wife and kids.  A re-run of an old animated Kentucky Fried Chicken commercial comes out of somewhere and this becomes an oak tree on the other side of the road.  It leaves are bread rolls and its fruit are chicken pieces!  They are dropping to the ground.  People are running to pick them up, as we do, to eat.  The strange thing is the only ones that can get this food are the ones that believe it is there.

I decide to go for a walk down the street along a grassy path on the right hand side.  I come to a Lutheran Church.  Outside it is an Ashokan Pillar[6] in black marble.  My leaning on it breaks it and it crashed to the ground.  I run to the other side of the road, a policeman is there and I tell him what has happened.  He tells me this also happened along time ago, showing me the previous repairs on the pillar.  Next to me are some boulders, etched into them are snakes in coiled positions[7] done by aborigines.  They have been there since time immemorial.  Walking back to Sue and the kids a Tasmanian Devil leaps out from the undergrowth and nips me on the ankle.  It startles me, and darts back into the undergrowth.

Friday 13th September 1996.

I am arguing with the head of the department of Religion and Philosophy at my university as to whether I have the marks to do honours next year.  He says accusingly, “you are only a journalist”, and I refute this.  The scene changes and in front of me a copy of the Melbourne Herald-Sun newspaper appears.  The headline reads ‘Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping dies’, with an accompanying color picture[8].

Monday 30th September 1996.

Troubled day yesterday, something not quite right in my psyche, cant put my finger on what it is exactly.  In my dream I am in Perth City.  Across the road from the railway station in the basement of a building is a gym where self defence and Muay Thai is taught.  I go down to talk to the instructor, telling my reasons for wanting to learn self defence is more for self discipline, and anything else I get out of it is an added bonus.

Walking up the stairs out of the basement, it is evening time on the street.  Looking up into the sky, part of it is overcast and the rest is unusually smooth or strangely opaque.  This area begins to move.  It is an enormous UFO approximately one kilometre across, as it turns sideways I see colors of dark blues, purples and greys that run into one another.  It is not of any particular shape and rotates over and over.

People stop to stare at this amazing sight.  I send a young Asian girl into the gym to bring everyone out to look at this sight.  It flies off disappearing behind a billboard with the number seven[9] on it.

Saturday 21st December 1996.

I remember lying in bed sobbing profusely over the death of someone.  That someone I have a sneaking suspicion is me!  I am holding ID papers of some sort and crying and crying.  I wake up aware that I have been crying[10].

Monday 23rd December 1996.

I find myself on the way back to Victoria.  At one stage I am on my bike and next I am in a car.  I arrive at a country town, quite a beautiful place with a big hotel.  It is sort of strange to be back in familiar territory, it is somewhere on the southern coast.  Looking around, I consider this would be a nice place to live.  There are trails and mangroves to explore.  I ask directions on getting back to Melbourne.

I am in Ringwood, just down from where the Club Hotel is near Ringwood lake.  I find my parents and show them a modelling contract I have gotten.  A rather dubious offer of $222,000 per year, with a weekly take home pay of $96.00.  I am keen to catch up with some friends that I have not seen in a long time at the old hotel and I pack up my things to go.