Were you a Teenage Hooligan?

What would you tell your teenage self?

Are there things that you did as a teenager that, looking back, you would say to yourself: “You boofhead! Why did you do that?”

Thankfully, I did not do too many of these things, but this event does fall into this category…

A friend and I were having a sleepover at another friend’s house, in the outer Melbourne suburb of Diamond Creek.

After a day of listening to band Kiss on his 3-in-one stereo (my mother hated them — I have written about this in my article “Did your parents deprive you of Fun?”), we decided to trek down to the railway line, to do some exploring.

After walking down the steep slope of his street (he lived at the top of a hill), we entered the bushland near where the Melbourne railway line went over Diamond Creek, over four bridges.

We then went into explorer mode.

We found the remains of an abandoned campsite, with charred logs and pieces of scrap metal, where someone had stayed, maybe sleeping rough.

Then we decided to walk on the railway, a single line which had far less traffic on it on weekends (which this was) than on weekdays.

Two of the railway bridges were like the one above, with a nice steep view between the sleepers to the Creek, far below.

We had just started on our journey across the second such railway bridge, when we heard that dreaded sound: the sound of a train horn from a train about to leave Diamond Creek Railway Station, about 800 metres away.

The train was a Tait “Red Rattler”, pictured above, which were still doing the rounds during the 1980s.

I don’t think that we have ever crossed a railway bridge so fast! Even though the distance does not look far, with the sound of a train engine getting louder by the second made it look FAR!

We had almost reached the other side when the Red Rattler came into view.

Now to get out of the way!

Unfortunately, now we were on an embankment, with uninviting blackberry bushes on both sides…

We headed off into the blackberries, to get as far from the train as we could.

Then, waist-deep in the prickles, we saw that to our horror, the train was slowing down.

The driver, anger on his face, leant out of his window and yelled “What are you doing? Go to the police station!”

Needless to say, we didn’t heed his wise, advice, but decided that that was enough high adventure for one day, and we headed back to my friend’s house, to listen to more Kiss.

We didn’t tell his parents, and I made sure that I never told my father, who had a lifelong career as a train driver on the Victorian Railways. (The trains he drove included the Red Rattler, and no, he wasn’t the driver of the above train!)

Hooligan? No.

Boofhead? At times, yes…

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