In the crash aftermath, its instructive to meet someone who shows the way to a better way of life.
I went to Kerang this week and spoke at the local high school. As I'm sure you know, there was a terrible accident outside Kerang last week. I read a piece I wrote in 2002 on the Monash shooting in which a student killed two of his class mates and injured five others.
My younger daughter was in the building when that shooting occurred, my older daughter was on her way there.
On her car radio, my older daughter heard the first of the shooting in the building where she knew her sister to be and then a voice went to air saying it was a terrorist attack. She formed some pretty sharp views that day on media behaviour and how it often serves to amplify fear.
So I read this piece about growing up, about getting to know things you may not want to know, and the never-ending question of how to take the next step. The audience was pretty good. One kid said he thought I was going to be boring and I wasn't.
While I was in Kerang, a few people said there was someone I should meet- an old bloke known simply as Byron. Byron has a gym in a basement beneath a block of shops in the middle of town.
When I visited, a tall, slim young black woman was in the boxing ring. She was born in Kenya but her parents are Sudanese. Her father died 10 years ago when she was five. She says Byron is like her father now.
I spoke to four other young people in the gym. They all said similar things. Byron's something positive in their lives. He's made the footballer a better player, giving him tips. The 18-year-old golfer who comes to the gym for fitness says Byron's always happy, even when he's sick, and says, "He's not afraid to talk to young people."
Byron's particularly fond of a young women who comes in and works out, first skipping, then making the speed ball hum. Byron tells me she's off to England to study. He also taught her to drive. Byron spends his mornings teaching kids to drive. "I tell them the car is the most dangerous weapon ever invented."
Byron's work is recognised. He was Kerang Citizen of the Year in 1988. In 2001, he received a Commonwealth honour. He's also recognised as an elder by the local Aboriginal community.
Byron was born in South Melbourne on the edge of the Depression. His father, who had been gassed during World War 1, died when Byron was a boy, leaving a widow with seven kids. Byron's mother worked as an office cleaner every morning, leaving home at four and getting back at nine, and again at night. In between she cooked, washed and sewed for her family.
Byron sees most of what he has as coming from his mother. "She was real strong," he said with a grin. Byron says the only people he can't get on with are people who can't laugh. When he laughs, his body bucks and his face splits apart and this big rich sound comes out.
When he was a kid, Byron was, in his words, a cripple. He had 13 mayor and 23 minor operations on his right leg which was afflicted with osteomyelitis. His mother used to take him in a pram to the Brunswick Street Oval when it was Fitzroy's home ground and put him "with the other cripples"' soldiers blown up in World War 1.
Hayden Bunton, Fitzroy's triple Brownlow medalist, used to stop and talk to him. So did the Roy's other champions, Chicken Smallhorn and Dinny Ryan.
Byron knows alot about sport. He played footy until he was 41 and cricket until he was 53. He also had 20 professional fights as a middle weight. Byron says boxing s the best sport. What's it teach? "Self-discipline," he said.
Byron and his wife went from the city to the bush in 1960 because they thought it was better for their kids. Country life appealed to him because there was so much to learn, like concreting and building walls and shearing sheep.
His wife died 19 years ago. She was, said Byron, "the only girl i ever went out with." His children have now left home. So Byron works with the local kids. It annoys him that people his age don't pass on what they've learnt.
We met in the cafe, which is one of the three shops above his gym. He went from one shop to the next- big, cheerful, as alive as a grizzly bear, but kind and receptive. All the women are warm to him.
He growls at the kids in the gym if they do the wrong thing. Byron reckons 10 per cent are wild and 2 per cent end up bad. The last percent is getting higher because of drugs and the fact that kids start drinking so young nowadays.
Byron didn't have a glass of beer until he was 21. He sees television and the internet as further confusing young people. Byron's main message is "Slow is fast."
It hadn't been a great few days for me before I went to Kerang. In the course of that time, I'd listened to Bob Dylan's Time out of mind. It's the album of a 56-year-old man, the sort of age territory I'm entering. In one song, Bob says "I close my eyes and I wonder, if everything is as hollow as it seems." Yeah, I know that feeling, Bob.
A few songs later, he says: "Well my sense of humanity has gone down the drain, Behind every beautiful thing, there's been some kind of pain."
Yeah, but sometimes behind the pain there's beauty and that seems to me to be the moral of Byron's life. As we part, he tells me he enjoyed our meeting. I tell him I wish I had met him when I was 13.
