Growing up in Kambah

This doesn’t have anything to do with art, but all this reminiscing about primary school’s got me thinking about how weird it was to grow up in Kambah.

For anyone who doesn’t know, Kambah is the largest and possibly the poorest suburb in Canberra.  While I’m sure it’s level of decrepitude doesn’t rate on a global scale, it was featured in a list of the top 10 most bogan suburbs in Australia.  A great day indeed for the proud bogans of Kambah.

The Best Things about Growing Up in Kambah.

1.  Being on the very edge of Kambah.

Kambah is the kind of place that manages to bring down even the most upstanding of adjacent suburbs, which is why if you’re going to live in Kambah it’s best to live right on the edge of the actual city.  This way up to 50% of your personal radius is going to be uninhabited bushland, which becomes increasingly alluring the more you compare it with Kambah.

It’s not as though you can really avoid Kambah by being in the scrubland alongside it.  I remember that in such areas it was commonplace to encounter shreds of transvestite pornography in the dirt.  I’m not sure who it was that was buying transvestite porn magazines, taking them to the bush and then tearing them into small pieces, possibly in a misguided attempt to grow a porn tree.  But it was the possibility of encountering such a person that would transform a mundane trek through the bush into an exciting quest to avoid crack-head paedophiles.

2. Lethal Playground Equipment.

My generation will be the last to have memory of the original play-grounds of Canberra.  In the mid nineties the government replaced all existing playground equipment with a single, generic system that lamentably prioritised safety over and above the values of adventure.

Let me tell you that these original playgrounds were fucking incredible.

Of course all my memories of them are from when I was 3ft tall, and consequently they appear to have rivalled the proportions of cathedrals, but even to an impartial viewer they were a lot more fun than anything you’ll encounter nowadays.

I remember a lot of wooden towers and stone dungeons.  My primary school had one structure like the deck of a ship, which you would use a series of triangles to climb up to.  There was another one that was like a giant pile of logs, randomly bolted together, which you could climb around on.  Nowadays you can’t have wood because of splinters you can’t have stone walls because there might be paedophiles hiding behind them, you can’t have any ledge or platform without a regulation railing installed and apparently triangles are no longer seen as an acceptable way of traversing levels. 

It wasn’t all good though.  Whilst many suburbs had some very interesting and creative playgrounds, Kambah tended to have some very cheap ones.  Instead of tanbark there would often be a mixture of bleached gravel and broken glass.  There was also one place which had apparently been originally designed as a free, out-door public pool.  When this idea was discovered to be insanity they decided to just remove the water – problem solved Kambah-style.

It was actually pretty fun; you’d spend 30 seconds climbing into a large concrete hole in the ground, and then 30 minutes trying to climb out.

I think even Charles Darwin would’ve approved of the level of skill required to avoid death in some of those crazy play-grounds.  In those days reaching your 7^th birthday wasn’t the cake-walk of today. 

These days kids have to get creative to acquire even your basic-level injuries. 

But I think the main lamentable point was that a playground is no longer something that was designed with the imagination of a child in mind.  Instead, every primary school simply ordered the same identical, council-approved system of plastic platforms. 

It was also annoying that most of the playgrounds in Kambah were removed without being replaced by new ones.

3.  The wildlife.

As kids whenever we walked anywhere in Kambah we would always be sure to bring a stick. The function of the stick was to protect the user from being attacked by dogs. 

It’s a small point, but I don’t think there’s many people out there who’s earliest recollection of their mother involves walking home with her from preschool, at which point she was obliged to deal with the attack of a gigantic dog by whacking it across the face with a hefty stick. 

There are also other rich and fulfilling ways to experience the wildlife of Kambah.

One time I was walking home from the shops eating some cornchips when a bunch of magpies suddenly turned up and seemed keen to share in the feast.  I respectfully declined their request, at which point they started actually flying into my face and snatching at the bag of chips.  These are birds we’re talking about, and it wasn’t even swooping season; a designated time when magpies decide to peck the heads of passing children.  

I’ve seen the magpies from other suburbs; their idea of swooping is to fly near someone and politely titter a greeting to them.  In Kambah a friend of mine had one of those bike-helmets made of Styrofoam that was literally pecked in half by magpies.  That’s not a joke, by the way, they would land on his head and peck holes in his helmet.  Like most residents of Kambah the magpies weren’t fucking around.

4. Leaving Kambah.

Without a doubt the best thing about growing up in Kambah is when you realise that there are places that aren’t like Kambah.

You only really realise how unusual Kambah is when you eventually leave it behind.  You soon discover that it’s not a universal law that if you’re walking down a footpath and you see someone coming the other way that you should immediately use a different route.  It’s only once you’re gone that you start noticing how other places aren’t actually coated in broken glass, and plastic bottles with little bits of hose-pipe sticking out of them. 

(I’m not sure who it was that first discovered how to manufacture a bong out of rubbish, but it must’ve been some kind of bogan version of Einstein.)

When you leave Kambah you suddenly notice that not all trees have black bark and constantly ooze sap.  (What in the name of Christ is the deal with that?!)  You notice that gravel doesn’t occur naturally, and that it is counter-productive to liberally apply it to areas bordered by concrete footpaths.  You see that the point of a drainage system is to avoid swamps, rather than to create them.  You notice that not every building, wall, window, telegraph pole and cat needs to have a kind of bizarre penis-symbol spray-painted onto it.

All these epiphanies and more await any person who was lucky enough to be raised in Kambah.

Le Sime.