This one I always look back on as a turning point in my life, because had psychiatry been more advanced, this whole thing could have been avoided.

1974 was Grade Four for me. I'd come off Grade Three at Donvale Primary School smelling like roses, and off a great teacher in Mr. Maher. I needed it after two years of a bitch called Mrs. Easton, who even my mother wanted to deck one time. I don't bear her as much of a grudge however as I do of Mr. Knight.

The moron had decided to take me as being a bit thick, and treated me accordingly. I hated that and it scared the daylights out of me because at the time it was something new to me. Being treated like this by an adult. Even Easton didn't do that. For example when I was doing something wrong he hit me on the head with a blackboard duster.

I wanted nothing to do with this fool. I couldn't handle him and frankly he scared me - and badly. Even though I'd done it when I was struggling with Mrs. Easton, I got into the habit of running away from school - playing truant. And this time I was doing it pretty consistently. I estimate that I spent something approaching 50 percent of the first term (in the days of three term school years) playing truant, and most of it was spent on Melbourne's train system - usually hanging around Flinders Street station.

My parents started having me come home for lunch to try and stem the problem, but they struggled with the school executive. I didn't know this at the time and I felt they weren't protecting me from this idiot. But I was wrong - they were busting their rear ends. At one point the principal accused them of being bad parents, trying to shift the blame for the problem from the school to them. That got him a fire and brimstone broadside from my father - and it resulted in a letter to the education department.

Finally a solution was found. My mother was the librarian at Ruskin Park Primary School, and I spent the last week of term 1 there with her. It was working out, and I was shifted there at the start of term 2.

This experience plays a major part in my present attitude to stand and fight, and not run (or walk) away. Running away has no benefit. I thought it did at the time, and it led to a continuation of the habit in 1979, 1980 and 1981 before I finally stopped doing it.