It will be about a week before I can provide video and full documentation of my Sydney patrols, so I thought in the meantime I would bring my life story up to the point where I decide to become Captain Australia. In the next journal entry, I will tell the story of my Sydney patrols, which covers a Quest that I have accepted to try and clean up part of Kings Cross.
For now, more of My Story.
http://www.captainaustralia.net/we-dont-need-another-hero-the-captain-australia-story-chapter-one/
http://www.captainaustralia.net/we-dont-need-another-hero-the-captain-australia-story-chapter-two/
http://www.captainaustralia.net/we-dont-need-another-hero-the-captain-australia-story-chapter-three/
http://www.captainaustralia.net/we-dont-need-another-hero-the-captain-australia-story-chapter-four/
http://www.captainaustralia.net/we-dont-need-another-hero-the-captain-australia-story-chapter-five/
Footnote & Disclaimer
All elements of this story reflect the true experiences of Captain Australia, without embellishment. Certain facts, identities and timelines have been distorted in the interest of preventing the criminal underworld from piecing together my secret identity, and targeting my family for reprisals. Although many of the details you are about to read have been distorted to protect my identity and those that I love, please understand that this is my life, and not a work of fiction. This story is not for children or recommended for anyone under the age of 18 years.
Your friend,
Captain Australia
Chapter Six: A Quest for Love
And so, we are starting to get closer to the birth of our bold hero, Captain Australia, although we are still a few years away.
At this point in my life, I was in my early 30s. I had a successful career in corporate Australia, and resolved that my primary goal in life after the barren and fruitless relationship with Kate was simple: I wanted to find my one-true-love.
(I know, get off my back, will you ?)
I approached it like a science project – I outlined the core qualities that were essential in my partner and gave them a weighting, then I began the lengthy research process of measuring people against those qualities.
Training became much less of an emphasis at this point in my life. I stopped the martial arts, and focussed on work and love. So, inevitably, like Elvis in the latter days, I began to balloon out, my midsection slowly expanding with each passing year. I honestly didn’t even realise I had gotten fat until I donned the mask of Captain Australia. But we can talk about that later – how I slowly and progressively dropped out of shape and what I am doing to remedy the problem.
The first one-true-love candidate was a fiery Japanese woman. Powerful, passionate, driven. She knew what she wanted and knew how to get it. (I’ll call her Mika). She was beautiful, but her beauty was skin-deep and plastic. Quite literally, in fact, she had enormous breasts as a result of plastic surgery. She was deeply intelligent, insightful and inspiring.
The problem ? She was crazier than a man fucking a potato. (Sorry, sad but true).
I don’t make the same mistake twice, so I ended the relationship and continued my search. Since I had success meeting women online back in the 80s, I naively tried an online dating site, took my profile & my logic and applied it on a mass scale to thousands of potential candidate women.
It turned out to be the smartest thing I could have done, because I ended up short-listing a girl who lived in the Philippines (lets call her Judy). Part Chinese, Part Filipina, she scored well on my ‘compatibility card’, at least an 88%, so I resolved to travel to the Philippines and meet her. I organised holiday time, took a month off from my work, and off I went on my Quest for Love.
Judy is one of the finest people that I’ve met in my life, and I am lucky to have her. Honest, diligent, kind, warm, giving – I think back to my initial score-card with a puzzled smile, because although I initially appraised her as at least 88% compatable with me, in retrospect by some strange magic of math I’d sit her at 150%. She’s more suitable for me than I know, and filled holes in me that I didnt know were there.
It wasn’t just meeting Judy that changed me – the trip to the Philippines marked me quite deeply, and irrevocably.
I had never seen true poverty and suffering before I visited that country. I saw families living in slums, or worse, on the street. I had a ‘holiday fund’ of about AUD$10,000, and I spent more than half of it helping people, families who had nothing, not even surety of their next meal. Although my visit was committed to Judy, she had to manage her day-job, so I had stretches of time where I ‘went native’, and learned some of the local language, and set about travelling around trying to help people.
This is where I really learned how fulfilling it is to help others. I had no goal for reward or recognition, in fact, I was as stealthy and anonymous as possible when handing out cash or food to families. I focussed especially on families with infants and hungry children. It was deeply fulfilling to give a few months worth of food to a family living on the street, knowing that the stick-thin children would be assured of food .. at least for a while.
This taught me that even the little gestures are important. Just because I can’t help everyone doesn’t mean that I should walk past the person in front of me.
All that aside, I fell in love with Judy, and at the end of the month, we agreed that she would give notice at her workplace, and follow me back to Australia. She organised her visa, but unfortunately it was only granted on a temporary 3mth basis.
While in Australia, we married, and also became pregnant. Unfortunately immigration rules required her to return to the Philippines while we applied for permanent spousal residency, and as heartbreaking as it was, she went back home. Although I resolved that we would be reunited and never to be parted from her again in this lifetime.
Months passed (painfully slowly) and it became clear that the visa would not be granted in time for my son to be born in Australia. (I cant describe the feeling that flooded through me when I saw his first 3D ultrasound – I fell in love with him even before he was born). I ended up having to go to the Philippines again, organising a lengthy leave of absence from work so I could attend to the birth of my son and bring them both back with me as a family.
Leading up to the birth, I continued my discreet charitable acts, just travelling to some of the more run-down areas of Manila and its outlying towns offering help where I could. I knowingly went to places known to be unsafe to foreigners, but at this point in my life I believed (and continue to believe) that a life lived in fear is a life not lived at all.
At one point I was walking through a slum area when a small group of Filipino men approached me. Most were shirtless, they had a friendly manner, but you could tell that had some deadly serious intent. I sensed violence waiting for me, and resolved to avoid it if I could. I counted the men (five in total), and conducted a threat assessment, determining my course of action if things did become violent.
The youngest man smiled at me and spoke, “Hello Sir, my friend has a gun and you must give us your money”.
I looked him over slowly, then ran eyes over the rest of the group (one of the older men was wearing a shirt and it did indeed look as though he were holding a concealed pistol underneath it).
I turned my gaze back to the young man who had addressed me, and said simply “No”.
He blinked, puzzled. “I am sorry, I have good English than others, but not great, you mean what ?”
“I mean ..”, I continued calmly, “ .. that I will not give you my money.”
By the furtive sideways glance that he gave his companions, I could tell he was becoming afraid (not of me, but of the possibility of bloodshed generally). He said “your life not worth money, we will shoot and take it anyway, please sir you will give ?”
(In retrospect, I smile: this young man was probably the most polite robber on the planet).
I spoke more loudly, looking at all five men, “You will have to kill me. I am here to help you, and you turn a gun on me ? How dare you ! Would your family not be ashamed of you ? Why do you do this ? Is this who you want to be in life ? Are you catholic ? Is your God watching you now ? What does he think !?”
It was a risky gambit, trying to shame them – the smarter play would have been to go for the skinny old guy with the gun while it was still tangled under his shirt – but I could tell by their awkward postures that they were ashamed and reluctant, and trying this out of necessity rather than choice. They muttered to themselves in Tagalog, their native language.
The young man spoke again, “okay we not rob, but you will give us money yes ? Two thousand peso only, okay ?”
I smiled at him, and shook my head. “No, but I will buy you lunch”
We shook hands, and went to local markets to purchase meat and vegetables, then went back to the old gunslingers home where his wife and daughters prepared the food. It was the strangest meal in my life, sitting at the honoured place at the table. They clearly lived in poverty, and yet made do with everything that they could.
I didn’t give those families any money (it would have felt like rewarding them for crime and thuggish behaviour), but I think that by taking food together, and trusting them not to poison or attack me, I gave them back something more valuable .. their dignity and self respect.
And I gained something myself: a sense that violence can be thwarted, that politics can be a weapon more powerful than fists, feet or knives.
-o0o–o0o–o0o-
I described before the sense of clarity that flooded into my life when my son was born. You see, when you hold your infant child for the first time, you suddenly understand what love is, what it means – and you’re then equipped to apply that powerful new understanding into all your loving relationships.
When my son was born (lets call him Clive), I felt this deep change in me. This sense of beauty, joy and love that even now I struggle to find words to describe. I knew instantly in my heart-of-hearts that I would lay my life down for him in a second, even more: I would commit to any suffering for him to spare him pain.
Later, it occurred to me: I’d die for him. I’d suffer for him. And … more poignantly: I’d live for him.
That was a Zen moment for me.
I realised that up until that moment, I had not been truly, completely alive. I’d been restrained, watchful, blocked off to life. I know that probably sounds strange, but it’s completely true, and I think the vast majority of people live this way: somehow fearful of life.
I had an obligation to my son to live. To be the best person I could be.
I realised, inspired by the relationship with my beautiful little boy, that I would live without fear, love without hesitation, give without thought of reward. In that one moment, I became a better man. Much like someone discovering religion later in life, I was born again.
Cool, eh ?
I’ll leave it there – the final part of my story will cover becoming Captain Australia, at which point this online journal picks up on documenting my experiences.
