Fragments of a Typewritten Young Life

I went to my storage unit in Fyshwick today looking for something else - some small typewriters - and instead found some small typewritten fragments of a young life.

In 1965, aged 17, I was in my last year at high school and writing a weekly magazine for my mates on the Underwood Universal portable my father had given me in 1957 (I drew the cartoons, too!):

The magazine was considered good enough to be put in the school library:

In April 1966, just after my 18th birthday, my sister married and moved with her husband from Greymouth to Auckland.

I missed her, but by the time I wrote this letter to her in August (on my then still brand-new Olivetti Lettera 32), someone else was filling the gap in my life:

They say the first love is the one great love of your life. This was most certainly the case with me:

It lasted a lot longer than a month or so. Reading this letter today really moved me, especially the story of the letters Margot wrote to me back then in French, which I had to get a colleague to translate - much to everyone's amusement ( I won't go into details):

In 1969, aged 21, I moved from New Zealand to Sydney, Australia, and found a new love, Frances Avis Houlihan, a ballet dancer:

I bought myself a Smith-Corona electric portable, and Fran and I used it to write poetry to one another.

I'll only show you one of my immature efforts (Fran's are much better, but a little closer to the bone):

In late 1972, aged 24, I moved to Ireland, yet again armed with an Olivetti Lettera 32:

Me, far right, at Okara Park, Whangarei, New Zealand, May 1976, covering an Ireland rugby team tour match with Ned Van Esbeck and the late Sean Diffley.

From 1975, every chance I got I went to Spain, following in Hemingway's footsteps, from Madrid to the Costa del Sol:

Mijas, 1977

Fremantle, Western Australia, 1979