Certified - The True Story of David Harris David Harris

The windows of the stolen ute were down just enough to let our cigarette smoke escape. We sped away from where we had been stranded in Collingwood—the rough end of inner Melbourne.”

Freedom at last,’ I announced to no one in particular, as I jumped out of the warm, modest four-door sedan and took off. The drive to Ocean Grove from Ballarat was just a little over an hour. I was grateful to escape out of the car into the fresh salt air.

“I was one of thirty green recruits at Kapooka, the Army Recruit Training Centre, near the inland city of Wagga Wagga, New South Wales. All of us were inexperienced, probably more inexperienced than we could have realised, and all eager to get past the indignity of basic training in order to become soldiers.

My heart was pounding. My eyes narrowed in on the knot in the timber table in front of me. My knuckles turned white as I made a clenched fist. I tried to suppress the genuine fear that this was going to end badly. I looked up as I wiped my sweaty palms on my jeans and tried to read the almost bored look on the magistrate’s face.

Prison at night once again brought with it the ritual of the tent of filth covering the nearby bed. I found it hard to sleep with regular interruptions of sounds that would stir my fears. I didn’t wish to become a victim of some sort of weird prison behaviour.

The decision to skip bail and head interstate was a pretty easy one to make. Simon and I chose to part company for a while; Rick and I were drawn together by a driving fear. We considered lots of places to go. Something deep inside me just wanted to get as far away as I could. I just wanted to run.