REPORTS this week about teenage gang violence in Sydney took me back to my teenage years in western in Sydney, before I escaped for the more pacific climate of Newcastle.
And it was calmer than the west even when pre-lockout Hunter Street was in full swing.
Violence was never far away in the west.
There were a few pubs that didn't have reputations as "blood baths", but it didn't take much to get into a scrap.
Fighting is well down the list of whatever capabilities I possess.
I've never started a fight but sometimes they find you.
My first response when reading this week's gang stories was to think: "I know how to calm things down. Build the western suburbs a wave pool."
Once they discover the joys of surfing, they'll be too tired at night to fight.
I'm not joking. I'm not saying surfers don't get in fights, but violence is not part of surfing culture in the way it was where I grew up in Dundas.
Even if I was in the better part of Dundas, well away from the infamous Dundas Valley.
When I discovered surfing at 15, and started travelling to Sydney's northern beaches with a bunch of mates who were old enough to drive, I found a different world.
The great Australian singer-songwriter Richard Clapton (Girls on the Avenue, Goodbye Tiger etc) said he loved playing to surfers because they came to listen, not to fight.
He was about as far away from a surfer as you could imagine - pale and overweight - but his Highway One album, the soundtrack to a surf film of the same name with Capricorn Dancer as its single, was like waves breaking on the turntable.
As tough as Parramatta could be at night, it was my home patch, and I usually felt safe enough, even if I did get into the odd sketchy situation before escaping Sydney at 22.
But Blacktown, 14 kilometres away, was another world, a good few shades darker than Parra, and not a place I liked to visit. But then I met a girl from there, and one thing led to another, as they do.
It was a Friday night and may have been the first time I'd met her parents.
I was minus a car for a reason that escapes me now, so when it was time to go home, sometime after 11, I had to walk to Blacktown station for the seven-stop ride to Parramatta.
Off I went. I found the main road I'd been directed to, but as suburbia gave way to five-acre lots, I realised I had gone the wrong way.
It was winter 1981, a few months after my 21st.
I was in jeans and a checked flannelette shirt, and it was cold. I was an experienced hitchhiker and while wary, saw no real dramas. So I put my arm out.
A few minutes later a panel van pulls over. I go to get in the passenger door but there are three blokes on the bench seat.
"You'll have to get in the back," the driver says through the open window, getting out to lift the tailgate.
There's two blokes in there, and it smells like a brewery.
"They're asleep, don't worry," he says.
I do worry, but I get in because, like I said, it's cold and I'm in the middle of nowhere.
We take off, driver starts talking to me and I ease into the situation.
Then without warning, he puts the pedal to the floor, the two sleeping souls beside me jump up and start laying into me.
The van careens around a corner onto a dirt road and slides to a stop.
The three in the front jump out and grab my legs, dragging them over the tailgate as the two inside with me keep hoeing in.
I'm on my back and the ones outside have me by the legs, and they're slamming one repeatedly against the upright tailgate.
When they pull-push me out of the van I go to run but I collapse. Dead-legged.
Fewer punches now but a full-on kicking.
One kick breaks my nose and it opens like a fire hose, blood everywhere.
I'd realise later that a rib was cracked.
As well as kicking me, they were trying to strip me, telling me they were going to "f--- me".
My shirt was gone and I'm trying to fend with one arm and hold my strides with the other.
The oldest had a few years on me. The youngest is 16 or so, and begins to panic, yelling: "He's had enough, we're going to kill him!": I reckon he was all that saved me.
They eased off, then stopped, got back into the van and took off.
They took the $20 I had on me and the sheet music to Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks, an ironic thing to be carrying, in the circumstances.
I tried to hitchhike out of there - the right way, this time - but armed with a large lump of wood in case they came back, and shirtless and covered in blood, no-one was stopping.
I was hurt, but I figured I'd survive, so when I saw an old car parked in a farm front paddock and it was open, I got inside, wrapped the terry towelling seat covers around me, and slept fitfully til dawn.
I waited until a reasonable hour, then knocked on the farm door.
The woman screamed in fright. There'd been no mirror in the car. I had no skin on one side of my face.
The next day it was one brown scab.
They let me have a bath and called my parents.
My mum arrived, and we drove to Parramatta police station.
They sent us back to Blacktown station because it happened there.
I gave them a pretty detailed description and they said they had a fair idea who it was and would be in touch. I'm still waiting for the call.
It took a while, but I kept hitching, eventually going north to Cairns and ending up here, the long way around.
Well away from Blacktown.
And as I finish this, I notice that the Urbnsurf wave pool brand expects to expand from Melbourne to open at Olympic Park in early 2024.
Rhodes isn't quite the wild west, but it's a start.
