paul used up all his emotional energy to keep it together on camp, then he was spent and had to go home.

1984

I’m in Grade 4 at South George Town Primary School. I’m yet to turn 10, and I have never spent a night away from family.

I’m selected, with my best mate Bryce, to attend the Maths-Science Camp at Hagley Farm Primary School. Two students from each Northern Tasmanian primary school are invited to attend a two day immersive learning experience. I’m keen, but concerned about being away over night. Mum supports me, explaining that I will be with Bryce and the teachers will look after me. I accept the challenge and on the morning of the event, Mum drops us off at Hagley, an hour and half’s drive from home.

Mum was right, again. The fast paced exercises keep us busy. Before lunch, we measure the area of a paddock, calculate the distribution of cow shit, and chart our results on graph paper while standing in a field. I have a very firm memory of that exercise given the maths teacher, Mr Pattie, was directing me to back up into the corner of the paddock with the surveyor’s trundle wheel to get an exact boundary measurement. He knew that if I kept walking backwards my arse would touch the fence and I would “learn” a fun lesson about the science of electrical conduction. I ran into Mr “Cow” Pattie 35 years later and reminded him of the incident. He accepted that it sounded like something he would do; and then laughed at the memory of his own prank.

The evening session included a demonstration of computer programming on a bank of Acorn BBC computers. I didn’t have a home computer at this point, and I found this session interesting. There was one BBC computer at our school, on a trolley, but it was shared across the Grade 5-6 classes and, being in Grade 4, I’d only admired it from a distance. I found the session fun, and stored away the idea that one day I might have a computer to play with. What wasn’t fun was the teacher, a man well into his senior years, was farting his way through the entire class. He showed no outward sign that he cared about his flatulence and proceeded to talk  even though the class was in hysterics each time he reached up to draw on the black board he would drop his guts. I’m glad I wasn’t seated on the mat in the front row, at arse height, for that session.

As the evening drew to a close there was a disco arranged. Byrce ate something dodgy and fell ill after tea. He went back to our room, took the top bunk, and went to sleep early. I hung around with my new male friends, circling the dance floor, watching the girls but never attempting to talk, let alone dance with them. I struck up a bond with Jonathon and we got into some mischief (we would reunite 10 years later at University and get up to mischief). I think we popped a bunch of balloons right behind a group of girls at the drink station. This led to the girls spilling fizzy cordial everywhere, which led to other bottles being knocked off the table and there being an ocean of sticky cordial on the dance floor. Strangely enough I was too slow to vacate the scene and got pinged for the crime. No adult would listen to my unconvincing argument that we were conducting a ’cause and effect’ experiment. In my defence we were on a maths science camp. Anyway, an overzealous teacher led me back to my room as a form of punishment. I didn’t respond well to having my evening cut short, and I let the unfamiliar teacher know about it with my stink eye. To underline my petulance, I grabbed the ladder that was in the way of me accessing my bed and I flung it on to the top bunk. It hit poor Bryce in the head and the ladder hooks landed on his back. For that I was sincerely sorry. I had forgotten Bryce had retired early, and he now had a head ache to go with his stomach ache.

I went to bed angry but not home sick. I woke the next morning and enjoyed the rest of the camp with a fully recovered Bryce. His Mum arrived in the early afternoon to take us home . The plan coordinated between our parents had been for me to stay an additional night with Bryce at Hillwood (25km from George Town), and catch the bus to school with him the next day. We played on his farm and had tea, but as soon as bed time rolled around I became really homesick. I pined for my parents. I desperately wanted to go home. I was so desperate that I even contemplated walking in the dark (after all, I had run home from school previously to see my Mum). My anxiety peaked to the point of tears and a tantrum, and it was at that point Bryce’s Mum delivered me home.

Upon reflection, it’s not unusual for kids to experience homesickness. What I now know, however, is that in that moment at Bryce’s place I was experiencing a full blown ‘panic attack’. My amygdala had taken over, and I was in flight mode. As much as I tried to hide it earlier in the evening, I could feel it bubbling up. When it hit there was nothing I could draw upon to calm myself nor regulate my emotions. I’d spent one night away from home, and I had no additional reserves to survive another. I can still tune into to the depth of feeling – that feeling of dread – and the only thing that was going to fix it was to be deposited back with my parents – in my safe place.