a story from my childhood.

Currarong. January 1996 (possibly)
My parents owned a house in Currarong on the NSW south coast. so we spent all our holidays there which was pretty fun at the time apart the fact that the hole outside of the house had been painted pink.
Sometimes we were allowed to bring friends with us. I never did at this point but this year Dale had his friend John with him, Matthew may have had a friend with him also but I haven’t got a story about that.
One morning after breakfast Mum said that we should get ready because we are going over to Culburra to shop and have lunch, at this time Culburra was the best set of shops around without having to go all the way into Nowra, at this point the school in Callala bay had not been built yet and there was only some small shops there.
When we got to Culburra we all had a look in the shops and bought something small. John used the money his parents gave him to buy a small pocket knife.
This was the coolest thing to happen to us all holidays. Naturally we kept it quiet.
For days we would be finding things to cut and even carving out names into the wood down at the round house, the round house was pretty much a wooden gazebo down near the Currarong shops, towards the beach. It was absolutely covered in graffiti so what we were doing didn’t seem so bad.
A young girl started yelling at us, she was about our age maybe older. I suppose she was yelling at us about the graffiti but I can’t remember. In retaliation to her yelling John waved the knife and told her to fuck off.
The girl disappeared for about 2 minutes and before we knew it we were swarmed with adults trying to take the knife and stop us from “threatening” anybody else with it.
Obviously we started running.
We run up and around the shops, one of the adults was saying something about knowing our grandfather or uncle or something, which was probably true given that our hole extended family holiday in Currarong, dad and his brothers went there as children, their parents also visited it when they were younger and ended up living out their retirement in the house down the road from the one we owned.
We split up near the tennis courts. All the parents followed John and Dale because the knife was with them.
I ran down to the grass above the rockpool using the entrance from the street near Uncle Jonos place. Uncle Jono also has a place in Currarong.
Ran the length of the grass near the rockpool and came out in the gravelly entrance to Abraham’s bosom beach. I continued to sprint up the street and on till I got home.
When I got home it looked like my mother already knew, perhaps she received a phone call from somebody, I guess word travels very fast in a town like that.
She asked me if I was hanging with Dale and John.
Puffed, I answered, told her I was earlier but had not seen them in a while, that I was down at the beach, she believed me. Although i doubt she truly did, at least she knew I didn’t really have anything to do with waving the knife around at people.
When the boys got home she confronted them and confiscated the knife straight away.
She wanted to know their side of the story, although most of the time our side of the story is just a complete fabrication designed to make us look like innocent people that were just in the wrong place at the wrong time and somebody over reacted. This was definitely one of those times.
Their story was that they were cutting bottles and a girl walked up to them, John put the knife in his pocket without retracting the blade. During the conversation with the girl the blade started to poke him so he pulled it out to retract the blade. The girl freaked and ran off telling all these adults.
I don’t think we really got in any trouble but the knife was gone forever.
Such a shame, how were we supposed have fun without a knife?