**Headline:** Aerial Spraying Nightmare: Farmers Allege Biological Warfare in Queensland

The Casino, Exhibition Center and the strip mall were more or less around when I was a young tyke, finding my way around life.
A bashing, a nose operation later, eventually broke my virginity, yeah, growing pains...
And just around the corner on Fifth Street was where I lived.
The large four bedroom house has been demolished and a canal had been dug, so the street could be incorporated into the swamp and renamed (Vista Waters ) and sold to Japanese investors who housed their concubines (The Miss Brazil's and Columbians.)
I got the household evicted, a group of Tasmanian who worked at the casino.
That was my claim to fame.
I was only being honest when the landlady asked me how many people were living the household.
If you included Sneaker Adam, who lived on the couch, he never took off his sneakers, the smell would have been too overpowering, 'I suppose eight,' I replied.
They were croupiers. They dealt cards for a living. And got paid very good money. A fucking boring job had to be balanced outside of work with a decadent lifestyle.
During that time, Johnny Farmer (You're the Voice) was bashing out those high tunes in the casino's hotel lobby on the tenth floor.
He was the voice of the times.
Naf hairstyles back then and the cool kids listened to the Hoodoo Guru's who played at Bryon Bay's Art Factory while I listened to Talking Heads and Air Supply.

There was a buzz back then.
The possibilities were limitless, they said.
The Sheraton had just opened up. Boy, the Gold Coast was becoming classy.
No palm trees on the strip of beach where the five star hotel had planned to open shop.
No worries, they just fucking trucked them in. Wow them with bullshit. 

And I did.
I became a barman at Sea World after doing some government funded training.
They even dressed us up in these camp sailor outfits.
Bogarts, a wino bar for singles on the wrong side of youth, decked out in African Queen paraphernalia, from posters, to a deck bar  was where Briana, an auburn haired instructor in her thirties, taught us  the finer points of fine dining. All I took away from the course, was a hangover, margaritas and bogarts being our preferred drink.

 My previous profession was a meat worker, pulling out kidney's from the carcasses of sheep. 

I was moving up in the world. I'd be serving again. Hay, nothing wrong with pulling out kidneys but the cuts I got from the sheep's rib  cage when I yanked out the organ, no they didn't supply gloves back then, and the parasites that made track marks on my retina,  meant I spent more time in the sick bay than actually working. The infections were getting so bad that my hands became puffed up and I couldn't see out of one eye.

So a course at Bogart's getting pissed with Tasmanian's and a hot instructor was a no brainer, for this 17 year old.

Our instructor  just adored us and wanted to suck our young cocks. Don't they all? I know, it's wishful thinking.
She was really making a difference. After the course, I'd be a qualified silver service waiter. The world would be my oyster, a whore at every port.
Dam, I was still a virgin.
Dimitri was the sleek one. He was going to get laid before us. He was going to be someone.

He already was someone, a first class tosser. 

I wasn't bought on his sophistication for one moment. He was a shit kicker just like me looking for work and training up to be a waiter, to serve people. I know, he wasn't happy about but nor was his father, who really was a paralegal for a law firm. That would be another blow to Dimitri when he found out.

Alex was in a league of his own. He and I became very good friends. He had wheels and I didn't. And he opened up a whole new world for me in Byron Bay, where half of Tasmania was living the hippy dream. 'Real' sun can do that to you.

He was athletic, a woman's man, with a zest for life, when he laughed, the world laughed with him. He could party with the best of them and hanging out his beach car, it seemed to run off a lawn mower motor, I have no idea what it's called nor can I find them, but it could get you around in comfort, with roof up or not.,

Alex's  blond curly hair and and gymnastic physique  and boyish good looks wasn't a look he cultivated. He had it all yet conceit  and pretension was out of his diction. We both gravitated towards each other as seekers of pleasure.  

He was far more together than me. I was a drifter, and wouldn't know the luxury of a car until many decades later. 

I was conceited and relied on my street smarts.

I didn't want to work. I didn't want to stay put. I couldn't. Once I got kicked out of the institution at 16, I was on my own, to explore. I wasn't cut out for studying. Those in power at the mad house decided I was disposable. Just like that, dreams puffed away. I was carried by that puff to the most interesting shores. I was Aladdin, on the magic carpet. Now that's what I called adventure. It had been me calling for many years. And this time, I acted on that call. And explored.

 And he had those airs of being a real man. Maybe he a virgin too. 

He was Greek and like the seven other tenants, they all came from Hobart.

Dimitri the Greek.
His father was a lawyer.
The other roomies were of Anglo Saxon stock and couldn't give a fuck about Dimitri's family connections, son of a prominent lawyer in Hobart.
Now where they fuck is Hobart?
That pond was far too small for the other boys, who wanted to crack into the big league.
Jason, the slacker, became a dish pig, gold locks, Shane, the stud of the bunch, who had a moped, was working at the Sheraton in hospitality. James, the totally understated, no definitely not the stud of the group, was a croupier who owned a fast bike he liked to take for a spin in the hinterlands, a road that winded around a hill that at it's peak, reached 200 meters above sea level.
'Great bends,' said James, who would take me for spins. He couldn't get the blonde babes just yet so I was his the next best thing.
We just got on so well.
I was the only Aussie in the house hold of Tasmanian.
They were amused by me.
They showed me respect and let me stay.
'Didn't you just invite yourself on the garage floor?'
Pipe down Dimitri, you sour puss.
It was the first time they had met a main lander.
They were insulated and stuck together.
Baby steps. Hobart could wait, they were going to rule the world.
Weren't they?
Not Dimitri. He should have been in Melbourne with his Greek cousins. Then he'd know how cool the Greek Australian were. Because he was just fucking bland. A son of a compensation lawyer.

'Why did you tell the landlord that seven of us were living in the house?' asked Dimitri. He was too polite to swear.
Why I didn't tell the landlady why I was sleeping on the floor of the garage on cardboard was another good question I couldn't be bothered answering.
This was that brief window of time that had to be gorged on. We all knew it.
We'd all eventually go our own ways. That would be sad.
Even Dimitri was getting use to my gruff country boy ways.
What Dimitri didn't realize, was that even the smallest Victorian town, the state I came from, was more sophisticated that Hobart.
'What do you mean? asked Dimitri.
It's not on the fucking mainland, it doesn't have inbreds and mutants with two heads.
He wasn't convinced.
I, the dirty non Tasmanian, was the reason why he had to move on.
For the best, I thought, because one day, Adam would take off his sneakers.

Yes, sex sells.
Under the window dressing is dirt, sleaze and an illusory dream.
There is no gold.
But that’s fine.
The Gold Coast never had any illusions of being anything else but the poor man’s Côte d'Azur.
It is supposedly the playground of the rich and very much is for the poor.
And never do the twain mix.
I loved the Gold Coast for its lack of pretension.
She will always be mutton dressed up as lamb.

It swallowed up anyone with airs and gave access to white trash to its treacherous shark patrolled coastline.
It's sands glittered and dazzled like fool's gold.
In short, the Gold Coast was my kind of place.
It didn’t change.
Buildings went up, then demolished, then even more garish buildings went up.
Built on the tradition of developing swamp land into prime beach side real estate, ‘Don’t you worry about that’ Jo had it right.
Make the cash where and when you can.
Everyone would buy into the dream.
And dream it was.
By mid-afternoon, the beach-side condominiums cast dark shadows across beach. And the treacherous rip tides kept on consuming Japanese tourists.
But that’s fine.
Nothing like the dream being exposed for what it was.
Keep it real, says Lady Glitter.
‘And we’ll still fleece you.’
The whites ruled the 80s.
The Indians and Third World Shit Hole Diaspora move in.
Just more fodder for the ogre.
Nothing changed.
You could even find the still run down Miamiesque apartments. Cracking at the base, fault lines running as thick as the San Andres fault, the Gold Coast could still boast more millionaire than Brisbane.
There.
I said.
Anyone can slag off the Gold Coast.
But the proof is in the pudding.
And mark my word, those millionaires will be paupers soon.
It’s the nature of the beast.
Boom and bust.
No one is spared.
The Gold Coast is the great equalizer.
Everyone gets a chance to be fucked over.
And royally.
Right.
Nope, not me.
I’m trailer trash.
Molded in the parks, I had my life beaten out of me in my sleep.
If you wake up and survive.
That’s street cred there.
The Gold Coast will always spare me.
I’m a bottom feeder of the swamps.
And doesn’t our sweet little lady know it.
So if anyone says they own a condominium on the Gold Coast?
Roll your eyes.