In the beginning, a little Bastard was born

I was a little bastard of a kid. Not in the moral sense.. my parents were married. In the figurative sense. 

I was a natural born problem solver for a little toerag with a lazy eye that required insanely strong glasses. A 2 year old me, unsupervised and pretending to be asleep, however briefly while my mother would dive into the shower under the delusion of a brief moment of peace, had no problem of getting out of our home locked down like Fort Knox. You'd be amazed how many blocks I could get in 5 minutes.

I was an escape artist of sorts. 

I have memories of hating my glasses despite the absolute need for them, and putting them in doorways and slamming the door. 

I pulled down my fathers expensive "His Masters Voice" stereo and destroyed it. He kept the speakers and I used them years later.  He also replaced it with a really expensive Technics system that I wound up with later in life.. and still possess. Prior planning and all that. 

If something had cables that I disliked, I may have removed them. Like the speaker cables in the back of mums Torana. I don't like Holdens. Sorry mum. 

If something of mine had cables, batteries or anything that required any kind of  technology to run, I probably pulled it apart. By the time I was 5. I was always curious. If it didn't work before I pulled it apart, it definitely didn't work now, but hey, curiosity and all that.

Challenger blew up, and when I found out about it 2 years later, I was sad. Then I decided I liked space. Satellites, space shuttles and all that stuff. I also decided at that time  the concept that we aren't alone in the universe made perfect sense, and that picture of a "gray" on the front of The Sun in early 1988 was a drawing of something that I'd have to keep an eye out for. 

As a 9 year old I liked electronics as well. My first book was a "hand me down" of the Dick Smith's Funway into Electronics 3 book. Way over my head, but hey, electronics. Stern words from my father about leaving anything mains powered alone, and some rudimentary "how to not kill myself" guidance (especially as we lived in the bush by this time), and I was off.  

Dad was building me a "cubby" down the back. It was really just a shed. With the woodshed next to it. In the mean time, I took up residence in his garage. It offered shelter and a solid floor. None of this modern convenience of electricity. His tools were close at hand (I seem to recall not knowing where the 70's vintnge circular saw was for quite a long time). With the help of the old His Masters Voice speakers and a set of old wardrobe doors and some milk crates, I now had a work bench + seat. Some old punnets cleaned and repurposed become component holders. A dodgy walkman I'd picked up from somewhere, hooked into the speakers below me become my source for sound.  Anything electronic I could come across become a source for components. A  ridiculously long extension cord run down the yard.. over the leaking septic and into the garage powered the antique soldering iron I used to start stripping circuit boards. I didn't know what most of these components did mind you,  but I stripped them out regardless. 

Eventually the "cubby" was built, and I moved in. An old desk become my work bench. An old lamp shade stripped, bent and nailed to the top become my soldering iron holder. I promptly got to work on the pressing matters - light, sound and shelving. Dad happened to have a decent old battery in the garage that he'd screwed the positive terminal on. Not much good for powering a V8. Good for me. I'm not entirely sure how I carried that big bastard down there, but I did. I also requisitioned his battery charger. I managed to salvage things. Old light switches (living in a turn of the century house, a lot of the early electrical mech had started to come out) were handy. An old cassette player pulled from somewhere attached to speakers from somewhere else mounted  on a piece of masonite nailed to the wall gave me audio. The dash cluster from an old car found up at the local tip provided a heap of wire and lamps of various wattage to give me light. 

We had a lot of old timber laying around. We'd dismantled an old timber barn on the property when we moved in. It was the source of a lot of solid timber, so building the shelving was trivial. I just needed to grab the tools from the garage and get on with it. It was a solo mission - probably done during school holidays so dad wasn't about to see me knicking off with all of that gear. 

Mum never noticed. It was the time and place where kids could knick off in the morning and weren't expected home until dinner. As long as you were in hearing distance if she stood at the door and called you. No problem. The "town" (now a village after loosing that status)  is in a valley. 

Testing of the strength of the shelving was easy. I'd just climb up on it, hold on to the exposed rafters for safety and see what happened. If it held me,  it was strong enough.

The "cubby" was my workshop. My parents would wake on Saturday at 6am to find the extension cord running from the laundry, over that old leaky septic, all the way down to my workshop, getting that old battery charged up ready for to keep me going for the next week. It was also a good time to strip circuits. The soldering iron was my sole source of heat bar that time I followed some instructions to make a Coke can heater. 

Eventually we wound up with a computer,  and things changed. I'd also been purchased a bass guitar, so I had new pursuits, and they were easier to learn in the pre-Internet  age.  Despite having first touched IBM PCs in about 1985, and going to computer club in the late 80s, in 1992, I didn't really know what to do with it. I had a few games, but I was never really into them. I started playing around with QBasic because it let me do things. I did start building a dinosaur database as Jurassic Park-mania was on the rise. I'd document information on dinosaurs into my database, and I hand drew Isla Nublar - the fictitious island housing the park. 

I don't remember much about computers between 1993 and 1994. I was more interested in music. I know I used them. Except at school.