The burning desire to write a book has been with me for as long as I can remember.  As a child I was an avid consumer of books and by the time I reached high school had read all the classics.  Dickens, Swift, the Bronte sisters, Tolkien, as well as a plethora of children's authors popular at the time.  My imagination was fired with the exploits of exotic characters in far off lands who did things I could only dream of.

I excelled in story writing at school and often wrote stories purely for my own enjoyment.  I had numerous works published in various school magazines and always achieved top marks in English classes. The only time I failed an English exam was when I once spent the whole allotted 2 hours writing a story based on Edvard Munch's painting, 'The Scream'.  I earned top marks for the story but because I ran out of time and didn't even start on the grammar section of the exam I was given a 'fail'.  I was devastated.

Over the years I have been motivated to pick up my pen and write.  So many stories have drifted in and out of my mind that I wanted to write but never did.  There was no 'writers block' to blame for my reluctance to write.  Rather it was always a fear of rejection which always stopped me.  Not only a rejection of my talent, but also a rejection of my words and ideas.  I seem to have always worried about  people condemning my work because it wasn't credible.  That the images, setting and even the characters would lack validity.

When I finally decided to write I was still haunted by this fear.  The story was loosely formed, it was supposed to be the story I started writing when I was eighteen, and I only needed a setting to get started.  This is where I stumbled.  My story was always going to be set in Sydney.  My original story was to be set in Sydney's red light district of Kings Cross.  A place I was very well acquainted with from my time living on the streets as a teenager.  However I needed a setting for the introduction.  Kings Cross is not a place where people grow up.  It is a place where people arrive at, for many reasons, and from many different places.

Deciding on a suburb where my character would originate from provided me with my first stumbling block.  I came up with a number of locations, but with each of them, I worried that my intimate knowledge of these areas would not be sufficient enough to make them seem credible. That I wouldn't know every street, every park, every corner.  This was enough to delay me in writing for a few more months while I agonized over where to set my introduction.

Finally I decided to 'write about what I know'.  Or in this case, to write about where I know.  The setting is based upon the neighbourhood where I grew up.  This gave me the confidence to put pen to paper and commence my life dream.  It was a decision that proved fruitful in more than one way.  Not only did I feel confident in writing about the area, but I was also able to use many of my childhood impressions and experiences and incorporate them in the story.

More importantly, once I had the setting established, then the ideas just started flowing.  Every aspect of the book, from the characters to their experiences is largely based upon my recollections of people, places and events from my childhood.

The setting is located in Sydney's northern suburbs, where I spent the first 17 years of my life.  This is an area blessed with geographical beauty which is not found in many cities in the world.  Of course as teenagers growing up there in the 1970's we thought it was the end of the world, which it pretty much was.  The bushland valleys and ridges which had provided us with so much adventure as young children suddenly became a prison.  We were trapped by distance from the happening world of Sydney City and the wonderful beaches which Sydney is also graced with.

My neighbourhood was an absolute wonderland to grow up in.  The suburb itself is set on the edge of Kur-rin-gai Chase National Park on it's eastern fringe and on the western and northern edges by the endless bushland of Berowra Valley National Park.  The roads and house mostly sit atop the sandstone ridges which form the valley tops and look out across unending vistas of bushland.  

Our neighbourhood differed slightly in that it was one of the few streets which ran down partially into the valley.  We were surrounded by steep sandstone ridges on all sides where houses clung precariously  to the steep sides of the cliffs, or sat along the valley floor amid a sea of gum trees.  

We had creeks to play in, bushland tracks to both create and explore, Tarzan swings set dangerously above sandstone boulders where we would swing back and forth for hours, caves to hide in ( and also where many of us experimented with sex at both an early, inquisitive age and also later when we began to feel the natural teenage urges).  There were waterfalls to clamber down, sandstone river beds which provided wonderful natural water slides, and waterholes where we could fish for eels or yabbies (crayfish).   The aboriginal carvings which Ben shows Michael in the story are real.  They were carved into the sandstone river bed just above the waterfall and are just one of many I knew as a child.

It truly was a magical environment.

Further afield we had the spectacular Hawkesbury River Estuary at our feet.  A magnificent drowned river valley which boasts some of the best bushwalking tracks and fishing spots in all of Sydney.  It was only a 30 minute drive away, or about the same time on the train and only 5 stations away.  A little closer was the recreational area of Bobbin Head.  Still part of the Hawkesbury but on our suburb doorstep.  We could actually walk here,  Granted it was a long hour walk down the winding valley road and an even longer walk back up, but we often ventured down with our friends to spend the day swimming or fishing in this idyllic spot.

The High School which the boys attend is, of course, based upon my own school.  Again the characters and events I write about are a largely based upon my own experiences and recollection of events from my time there. As is the 'Gateway Shopping Centre'.  It was based upon the last of the shopping complexes to be built in our area at the end of the 1970's.  One of my school friend's father was the architect who designed the centre.

Feeling confident in the credibility of my setting I commenced writing what was supposed to be the introduction to my original story.  However from this start the story began to digress from my original plot as both the setting and the characters which emerged created whole new story lines which I began exploring.  This took me down a path which I had intended to be only a brief background but which instead, became a wonderfully, creative and familiar topic to write about.



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