A Street Cat Named Bob

The biggest pro, obviously, was that I’d get to see my mother again. No matter what ups and downs we’d had over the years, she was my mother and I missed her.

We’d been in contact a couple of times since I’d fallen through the cracks and ended up on the streets but I’d never been honest with her about what had really happened. We’d met once in the past ten years, when she’d come to England briefly. I’d gone to meet her in a pub near Epping Forest. I’d taken the District Line up there and spent three or four hours with her. When I’d not returned as expected after six months, I’d spun her a story about having formed a band in London and said I wasn’t going to come back to Australia while we were ‘trying to make it big’.

I stuck to that story when I met her in the pub.

I hadn’t felt great about telling her a pack of lies, but I didn’t have the courage or the strength to tell her that I was sleeping rough, hooked on heroin and basically wasting my life away.

I had no idea whether she believed me or not. At that point in my life, I really didn’t care.

We’d talked occasionally after that, but frequently I would go for months on end without making contact, which had obviously caused her a lot of grief.

She’d gone to amazing lengths to get hold of me at times. I hadn’t thought to ring her when the 7/7 bombings happened in London in July 2005, I was – thankfully – nowhere near the blasts, but - stuck on the other side of the world - my mother had no idea that I was all right. Nick, whom she was still with, was serving in the police force in Tasmania at the time. Somehow he managed to persuade a member of the Met to do him and my mum a favour. They looked me up on their records and sent a couple of cops round to my B&B in Dalston one morning.

They scared the living daylights out of me when they arrived banging on the doors.

‘Don’t worry mate, you haven’t done anything wrong,’ one of them said when I opened the door, looking petrified probably. ‘There are just a couple of people on the other side of the world who want to know you are alive.’

I had been tempted to make a joke and say that they’d almost given me a heart attack but I decided against it. They didn’t look like they were that pleased to have been given the job of checking up on me.

I contacted Mum and reassured her that I was OK. Again, I hadn’t even considered that somebody else might have been concerned about me. I didn’t think that way at that time. I was on my own and concerned only with my own survival. But now I’d changed.

After all the years of neglect and deception, it would be a chance to make it up to her and to put the record straight. I felt like I needed to do that.

The other obvious positive was that I’d get to have a decent holiday in the sun, something that I had been deprived of for years living in London and working mostly in the evenings. I still felt drained by the experience of switching to my new medication and knew that a few weeks in a nice environment would do me the power of good. My mother told me she was living on a little farm way out in the middle of nowhere, near a river. It sounded idyllic. Australia, or more specifically, the Australian landscape, had always occupied a special place in my heart. Reconnecting with it would be good for my soul.

The list of pros were long. The list of cons, however, was even longer. And at the top of the list was my biggest concern of all: Bob. Who would look after him? How could I be sure he’d be there waiting for me when I got back? Did I actually want to be separated from my soulmate for weeks on end?

The answer to the first question presented itself almost immediately.

The moment I mentioned it Belle volunteered to look after him at her flat. I knew she was totally trustworthy and would take care of him. But I still wondered what the effect would be on him.

The other big concern was money. My mother might have been offering to pay for my fare, but I still wouldn’t be allowed into Australia without any money. I did some digging around and found that I’d need at least £500 in cash to gain admittance.

I spent a few days weighing up both sides of the argument but eventually decided I’d go. Why not? A change of scenery and some sunshine would do me good.

I had a lot to do. For a start I had to get a new passport, which wasn’t easy given the way my life had disintegrated in recent years. A social worker gave me a hand and helped me organise the necessary paperwork, including a birth certificate.

I then had to sort out the flights. The best deal by far was to fly with Air China to Beijing and then down to Melbourne. It was a much longer journey and involved a lengthy stop-off in Beijing. But it was way cheaper than anything else on the market. My mother had given me an email address by now. I sent her an email with all the details, including my new passport number. A few days later I got a confirmation email from the website through which my mother had booked the tickets. I was on my way.