Shane C Richards: The Poet

WHO IS

SHANE C RICHARDS – THE POET

IN A NUTSHELL

At twelve years of age.

Six days a week, rain hail or shine, I delivered the afternoon newspaper by push bike, around the suburbs of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.

The brakes fail; I crash into the gutter at full speed, go through the timber fruit box on the front of the bike and lay there in the rain, in the gutter. An elderly couple pick me up and take me into their home, wrap my wounds and call my father.

That morning, I had risen at 4am, packed my swimming bag; my mother had already prepared me a toasted bacon and egg sandwich and wrapped it in alfoil.

I walk the length of Swann road Taringa, in the rain, to where my primary school teacher meets me in his car, and we drive to the Olympic length training pool. I swim my heart out for two hours, have a hot shower and eat my toasted bacon and egg sandwich. To this day, I still remember savouring every bite of that sandwich.

I go to school, my eyes are blood red from the chlorine, I fall asleep at my desk, but my teacher doesn’t mind, I have trained hard for the upcoming state titles. I reach the finals, in my heat, I look over my shoulder, three metres out, and I come fourth. It didn’t matter; I had already done my best.

My father picks me up in the family station wagon; we complete my paper run and go home. I need a new bike, mine is now a wreck. My father takes me to the local bike store and I pick out a new bike. Though I must now pay for it. So I sign my first contract at twelve years of age. Every month for the next twelve months, I ride to that bike store after pay day and make my monthly repayment, until I owned that bike.

At thirteen years of age.

Every afternoon of the week and six hours of a Saturday, I would clean the local butcher shop. Eleven hours work, five dollars.

I pumped petrol at a service station. Five dollars, for five hours work, after which, I would be picked up and driven to North Kirra Surf Live Saving Club, to do my weekend duty as a volunteer life saver. This included a mid week pool training session in the Valley pool. I would catch the train in of a Wednesday night and walk through the Valley, to the pool. One night, in a dark street, a passer by pulled a knife on me and demanded money. I didn’t have any, so I just told him to go away, and kept walking.

I had lied about my date of birth in year eight at High school, so I could join the Army Cadets. By fourteen years of age, I had fired everything from a Browning pistol to a Bren machine gun and had flown in a Hercules air transport to an army exercise camp outside Rockhampton to spend two weeks in the bush. I earned the Prince of Wales Edinburgh Adventurers Award.

At fifteen years of age.

I wanted to follow in my grandfathers, fathers and eldest brothers’ footsteps, into the Australian army. My father served fifteen years, my brother twenty one years. I failed the entry test for army apprentice, carpenter. I was devastated. So I joined the Australian navy. Nine years service, three overseas deployments. I enlisted at fifteen and a half years old. One month after my eighteenth birthday, I was sailing out of Sydney harbour on a 225 foot Daring Class Destroyer for a six month south East Asian deployment.

I left as a boy and returned home too old for my age. I had already visited and seen more countries than the normal person sees in a lifetime of travel.

I contacted my High school friends and we met at the local for a beer. They were third year civilian apprentices. We drank and laughed, they told stories of the practical jokes they played on each other in the work place.

That was when it first dawned on me. We had nothing in common anymore.

What I had witnessed and experienced in my nine years in the Australian Navy, is enough to fill a novel. In fact, I felt I had already lived two lifetimes, and I was only twenty four years old.

At twenty four years of age.

I had now been writing words down for some ten years. I had carried a notebook in my pocket and jotted down what I felt, what I saw, where I was emotionally.

I would go on to work as a Harley Davidson mechanic, until the owner of the bike shop robbed his local bank and forgot to put a balaclava on. He was a heroin addict.

I then got a job with the Department of Aviation, now Air Services Australia. I would form a band, record an album and start a chain of record stores. I would buy, renovate and sell, turn of the century houses in my spare time. Collect and restore antiques.

Three years ago, come this July 2011, I unplugged from my console at my work place in front of the Air Traffic Control Tower at Brisbane airport and I resigned from my job.

Over the three preceding years, my grandmother died, my aunt died, and then my father died suddenly. My father was a great man, with a huge heart. He would have given you the shirt off his back, if you were friend, family, or just in need.

I resigned.

I had just completed a night shift, on the eleven pm to six am shift. Bob was a good friend of mine. He came up from a break from the console and complained of a sore chest. Bob had struggled with cancer for many years. I was at the hospital when he was operated on, yet again. But, he was living life to the fullest.

Bob died in his sleep.

I left my job, sold my home, and moved to be near and care for my mother on an island off the Queensland coast. Though this was not the only reason that I chose to dismantle my life, I simply needed, to find myself.

Two years finding myself.

I spent two years as a recluse writer, on this idyllic Island, that I call my home. I catalogued and published my works, words and poetry, into four self published books, because no one else in Australia would publish them.

My fourth book, ‘The Poet’, rose to number four on the Palmer Higgs Books, Bestsellers List.

I began posting my words to my ‘writer’s’ page on facebook, now with 23,000+ online readers around the world and over 40,000 page visits a month; I continue to post my words, my thoughts, and my poetry, as they come to me.

I write words.

I do not write for a living, I write because I have lived. Words, emotions, feelings and thoughts flood my mind; that in turn, become the ink with which I write.

I am a complex character, in a simple body. I have come full circle in my life. I travelled Australia in an old Ute, with my Harley Davidson in the back, a navy kit bag and a guitar.

I set out to prove, that regardless of your upbringing, your situation in life, if you had a dream, a desire, you could rise to the top, the sky is not the limit, anything is possible.

My only problem became, that having reached those heights and at long last, proven myself to a world of invisible people, I did not like who I had become.

I search for an inner peace, a place to live my life in harmony.

I make no apologies for who I am, for we are all different.

Such is the rich tapestry of this world we share.

I do not pretend to know what life is all about.

I simply write about my life and how I feel.

I am extremely grateful, for the support you have given me.

For joining me on this Poetic journey.

I hope that I may continue to share my words with you,

for many years to come.

I have placed a book of my life, on your table.

Yes, they are but words, yet they are, all that I have.

You do not have to pick up that book.

That, my friends, is the beauty of freedom.