“You see, the real skill of reverse swing is to have someone convinced of a likely outcome, then you deliver the opposite outcome.”
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The edge of a volcano is as good a place as any to be born. You may think that to be daring but it was mostly my mother’s doing. Right from the start, my mother supported me to do daring things.
Just because the volcano was rumoured to be extinct didn’t mean that it wouldn’t eventually try to kill me.
I was named Vaughan, after my father’s father. My mother had no say in it. Going against my father’s wishes was something even my mother dared not do.
My volcano was Ereng Balam, more commonly known as Mt Gambier and it was in the South-East corner of the state of South Australia. The town of Mt Gambier chose to build their hospital on the lip of a crater of an ‘extinct’ volcano.
Mt Gambier Hospital (indicated by arrow) – built on the lip of a crater of an ‘extinct’ volcano.
Volcanoes are symbolic of the cycle of life. An eruption will kill plant life and animal life, but the deposits of minerals it leaves make the earth fertile for new growth: for plants; for animals, for life. Volcanoes take life and give life, so it’s an appropriate place for a hospital, where, every day, people have life given to them, or taken from them. Energetically, the volcano was still taking and giving life, but doing it through the facade of the hospital.
Ereng Balam is said to be an extinct volcano but I suspect that a definition of extinction is based on past performance. And as any unscrupulous financial services organisation will avoid telling you, past performance is not a reliable indicator of future results. A man is not a thief until he’s caught stealing. Or framed for stealing. The dodo is only extinct until a live one is seen again. So excuse my past scepticism when my fellow citizens of Mt Gambier referred to the volcano as ‘extinct’. Vesuvius, anyone?
And so I started life, next to two volcanoes: Ereng Balam and my father: one historically less volatile than the other. It would be another decade before one tried to take my life.