Prologue
Wakma, a tiny town nestled amongst fifty-five kilometres of national parklands in Queensland's Tropical North. A tiny town where the excepted annual rainfall exceeds two and a half thousand millimetres and the relative humidity usually sits around sixty eight percent. A tiny town where half the time you'll have your coffee and cigarette inside because your backyard has been taken over by demonic cassowaries. A tiny town where you're automatically an outsider if you don't religiously sport blue and grey football shorts, or happen to drink anything else but XXXX. A tiny town where if you spend more than five bucks on your thongs than you're a flash wanker and deserve daily ridicule. A tiny town with a pub on every block but only one school. A tiny town with more nurses than teachers to cater to the alcohol poisoning, domestic violence, king-hits and strokes while the determined educators struggle to keep their classes above board. A tiny town where intelligence and honour is measured by how many schooners you can neck and still walk home straight, or sideways and by how many smart-asses you've dragged out of the pub and flogged. A tiny town that boasts a hidden gem of tourist attractions throughout the surrounding forest, one of which holds the region's record for most notorious suicide spot three dignity filled decades in a row. A tiny town of nine and a half thousand yockers, yobbos and cowboys; with thousands and thousands of stories, whispers and gossip.
This is my story of denial, repression and the damage that it, the whispers and the gossip caused.