Debbie and I are sitting on our beds, singing loudly. “One day growin' restless, the next day growin' old...in the Summer of 81.” There’s a portable cassette player and thankfully, a stash of batteries. We are excitedly planning our trip to Sydney, just days away.
Brett and Shaun are dead-set spunks. They have just been to Byron Bay for our friend’s eighteenth. Shaun has ocean-blue eyes and is forever tossing salty blonde hair off his face. Debbie crosses Wayne off her ruler and writes ‘SHAUN 4 DEBBIE’ in black Texta.
I’m crushing on dark-haired Brett with enviable eyelashes and an Erik Estrada smile. We have written letters and are stoked when they write back, inviting us to Sydney for the summer holidays. “Mum says it’s cool”, writes Brett. “You can stay in my sister’s old room.”
Both sixteen and nine months, we are the proud holders of new, neatly folded learner’s permits. Debbie is the pretty one. With wavy blonde locks and boobs, she is the head-turner. I am slim, with fair skin and freckles, but blessed with big blue eyes and a quick wit. I am the funny one.
Debbie is living with my family. Her parents separated, and her mother moved to Townsville with her young sister. Her father works on the local trawlers. He is at sea a lot, so, probably over a beer at the pub. My father says she should live with us until she finishes high school. He is generous like that. Once it was a kitten. This time it’s a sister. (I have two younger brothers.)
It’s Saturday afternoon, and by the time the Motorail pulls into the station, the hash cookie Juanita has given us is kicking in. We are giggling, wondering if Mr. Ryan, the Station Master, can tell we are stoned. He hole-punches our tickets. We don’t do drugs, or even drink – yet. But Juanita is worldly at nineteen. Apparently, the cookie will make the twelve-hour train trip more bearable. Seated in a carriage filled with boy scouts heading to a jamboree, we laugh and ‘Ging Gang Goolee, Goolee’ all the way to Central Station.
A giant clock with Roman numerals floats above the polished concourse, suspended like a trapeze artist. The teller of time for quotidian commuters. It is seven-thirty Sunday morning.
We drag our floral tapestry suitcase – no wheels or handles back then – to the cloakroom. The attendant pays us too much attention. His greasy combover is Brylcreemed to his forehead (like Norman Gunston we later joke) and he is sweating profusely. When he hands me the locker ticket, it is like wiping a wet fish. “Where ’a you girls from?” he quizzes, leaning forward on the wooden counter.
“Near Lismore”, Debbie offers politely. Byron Bay has not been discovered yet – except by surfers like Brett and Shaun. I tug her arm.
“We have to go,” I urge, keen to ride the famous Manly Ferry, and equally keen to get away from creepy ‘Norman’. “What if he opens our bag? I’ll spew if I find out he’s touched my undies”, I say, once out of earshot.
Belmore Park’s canopy of London Planes is standing tall, ready to dutifully offer shade as the city’s concrete warms. The old ornate bandstand is home to a man, grey-bearded and weathered. He is chastising himself, occasionally swearing at a grey pigeon hell-bent on bothering him. The scene is oddly disquieting, but as country teens are rarely exposed to city hardship, we stop…and stare. “Rack off!” he commands, spitting in our direction and waving his arms like a madman. A hundred pigeons take flight. We run. Away from the homeless man and away from the pigeons.
The newly completed Centrepoint Tower is an architectural masterpiece, dominating the skyline and making a mockery of Australia Square and the AMP Building. Art in Architecture is one of my HSC subjects, and it annoys Debbie no end when I point out, “Harry Seidler. There. That one too.”
Where the business district had been quiet, Circular Quay is alive with tourists. Families queuing for boats to Taronga Zoo and Luna Park. Laughing children. Screaming children. We have time for iced coffees and a shared jaffle. I love that we love the same food.
‘North Head’ is a grand old ferry that looks the same from the front as it does from the back. We find a sunny bench and stretch our lean teen legs. Carefree and seeing the world through fashionable Jonathan Sceats. Seaspray dusts our arms with fine salt.
Manly Beach is nice, but there are so many people. We can’t imagine Byron Bay like that – ever!
Back at Central, we collect our bag and find the platform for the short ride to Hornsby, but we miss our stop, finding ourselves at Berowra. It is an unremarkable station bordered by the Ku-ring-gai National Park. Sydney blue gums offer some relief from the afternoon sun. The heat rises from the platform’s tar like a desert mirage. “Refraction”, I hear Mr. Floyd’s voice reminding me. I hate Science.
The station master has gone. We are alone. Almost alone. A man is leaning against a white ute. Watching. Fit and tanned in khaki Stubbies and desert boots, his navy singlet hugs his chest. He is in his late thirties and reminds us of Debbie’s uncle, who is a brickie.
There’s a Telecom pay phone. Brett’s mother answers and tells us there are probably no more trains, being Sunday. She gives us directions to a nearby bus stop. “I think there is another bus back to Hornsby. I will meet you off the bus and walk you to our house,” she tells us.
As we hang up the phone, the stranger calls out, “You girls need a lift somewhere?”
He is cheery. Charismatic.
“We’re just walking up to the bus stop. All good,” I reply.
He moves a little closer. “The next bus is a good hour away,” he begins, then lowers his voice “and I don’t reckon you girls should be sitting up there by yourselves. A gang raped some girls in the Chase,” he points, in the direction of the tall trees. “And one of them is missing. They think she’s been killed.”
We don’t get city news back home. A murder. Rapes. We stand in silent disbelief.
“I live in Hornsby and I’m heading there now” he offers.
Debbie and I look at each other. I shrug.
“I don’t think I want to wait at that bus stop”, Debbie says quietly to me.
 “OK, sure”, I respond to the man.
He moves swiftly towards our suitcase, lifting it into the tray of his car. It’s propped against a large grey toolbox. There are a couple of shovels and other work tools sitting on a folded tarpaulin.
He opens the passenger door. “In ya get,” he offers. Debbie slides along to the middle of the bench seat.
“Smells like tar,” I whisper to Debbie.
He climbs in and looks us over, smiling, as though he won a raffle at the local pub.
I wind the window down as the smell of bitumen is strong. “Roads,” he offers up, sensing my discomfort, “I work on the road gangs. Did some overtime up north yesterday. It’s probably on my boots.”
He’s looking at Debbie’s legs. Her pink mini skirt has ridden up getting into the seat. It’s a manual vehicle, so there’s a gear stick, and it’s not long before his left arm brushes her skin. She inches slightly closer to me.
Tall gums flank both sides of the road. The setting sun flickers through the branches.
He rests his hand on the seat, pinky finger extending again to her leg. “Boyfriends?” he asks. We shake our heads, wishing we had said yes. Debbie edges even closer to me.
We haven’t passed another car. There are so many trees. Light flickers faster. Mum’s travel warnings are whirlpooling in my head.  “Don’t go near Kings Cross and don’t eat Chinese food. It could be cats or dogs.”
“Virgins?” he half asks, half hopes. We don’t answer. “I’ve broken in a few virgins”, he laughs. It’s the first time we hear the laugh. It scares me. Even more than the episode of Matlock Police where that little girl is singing “Frère Jacques” on the squeaky swing. Debbie is squeezing my hand tight.
The afternoon breeze is warm, blowing through the open window. “Don’t ride the trains at night and for goodness sake, don’t hitchhike!”
He pulls into a roadside caravan park with a small general store. “Just need a couple of things,” he tells us. There’s an elderly couple sitting on camp chairs in front of a van, looking in our direction. Their eyes follow the man as he opens the screen door to the shop.
“What if he’s the rapist?”, I suddenly blurt out to Debbie.
We get out of the car, struggling to reach the suitcase. I haul it awkwardly over the side and onto the gravel. The stranger is leaving the store. The elderly man stands, says nothing, and walks toward us, taking the bag. We follow him. The stranger sees us. He stops, momentarily, and laughs - that lurid laugh - then drives off, wheels grinding on the gravel.
“My shoulder bag!” I yell, “It’s on the floor in the front of his car.” I’m bawling. Both our wallets are both in the bag, along with our tickets home and our newly acquired licences.
The elderly woman pours water. She has a soft, kind voice. “You are safe. Bags can be replaced.” She walks with us to the shop’s pay phone, and I call Brett’s mother. Through sobs, I explain what has happened. She arranges for her daughter to collect us. We wave to the couple as we drive off, grateful.
The following day, we file a report at the Hornsby police station.
In the late 1980s, I am living and working in the Whitsundays. It is a backpacker’s ‘must-do’ destination. News is circulating abroad about several missing travellers, but it rates little mention here.
By the early nineties, a slew of bodies is found in the Belangalo State Forest near Sydney. The reports are graphic, and there’s talk of a serial killer.
May 22, 1994, Ivan Milat is arrested. “Teams of armed police dressed in bulletproof vests surrounded the perimeter while, according to Small, Milat laughed and mocked the lead negotiator as if all of it was a joke.”
The horror of the World Trade Centre towers collapsing is indelibly etched on televisions around the world. I’m now married – to a police officer – and mother to an infant. I’ve recently returned to work, and we’re staying at my mother’s house while we build our new home. Working in media often means sample CDs and books. The editor hands me Sins of The Brother.
I’m reading the words ‘road worker’. Smells like tar… I hear myself say. I can smell it. The images. Milat is standing there in a singlet, smirking, like… I feel sick. I binge the book over the next few days, going back over the details and the pictures. I have not shared the story with my husband. Debbie has moved away, and I have not been in contact with her for many years. Pictures showing Milat’s propensity to collect victims’ belongings as trophies are especially unnerving. What if my bag is in his house?
A decade later, at a swimming carnival, my ten-year-old narrowly defeats a boy to win a regional competition. His mother, to my astonishment, is Debbie - Deb as she now prefers. We spend the next hour catching up on ‘life’, when she randomly asks, “Do you remember that trip to Sydney? We were sixteen.”
I nod.
“I told Dad about it a few years ago, and you won’t believe what he said,” she begins.
“Ivan,” I blurt “, Milat!” Then, more quietly, “Do you remember that smell?
“Like tar...” Deb’s voice trails off…