DUMBING IT DOWN

Chapter 11

The Pilot I Nearly Became

The conversation turned, as conversations occasionally do in military offices, to whether I spoke in my sleep. Until that moment I had thought the Air Force might be more interested in eyesight, reflexes, fitness, mathematics, balance, co-ordination and whether a young bloke from the bush could be trusted not to put a very expensive aircraft into a paddock. Apparently they were also concerned that I might one day mutter the nation’s secrets into a pillow. It was an odd thing to sit there and consider, with my school life nearly over, the HSC bearing down, and the whole idea of escape suddenly being measured against the possibility that I might talk nonsense after lights out.

The officer had the results of the psychological examination in front of him, and I remember the feeling of the room more clearly than the furniture. It was one of those official Sydney rooms where the air seemed to belong to someone else, and where a country boy sat up a little straighter because the room itself appeared to demand it. There were papers, forms, boxes, marks, observations and a tone of trained politeness that made every question sound simple until you realised the answer might close a door. I had already survived the poking and prodding of the previous days, so I was foolish enough to think the worst of the testing had passed.

The physical for the Air Force officer training pilot intake had been held in the week before the break-up of school before the HSC examinations. That timing alone made it feel slightly unreal, as if one life had not quite finished before another had begun tapping at the window. I was still meant to be thinking about exams, school reports, teachers, subjects and whatever future had been quietly assumed for me by everyone else. Instead I was in Sydney with my father, being examined as a possible pilot, as though someone had briefly misplaced me into a larger story.

We had gone down on the Spirit of Progress, which even now sounds like a title someone would invent if they were trying too hard. It was an iconic train, though at that age I probably understood that more by atmosphere than by history. There was something in the name that suited the trip, because I was not simply travelling to Sydney for medical tests; I was travelling toward the possibility that I might be more than the boy others had already sorted into their existing boxes. The train carried more than passengers that week, because in one of those carriages sat a version of myself I had barely dared to imagine.

My father came with me, and that mattered in ways I probably did not know how to say at the time. He was there for the practical side of it, the travel, the arrangements, the quiet support that men of his generation often gave without wrapping it in language. We did not need to have some grand emotional conversation about dreams and destiny, because that would have embarrassed both of us and probably caused the Spirit of Progress to slow down in sympathy. Still, I knew he knew this was something, and I knew that made it heavier.

The Air Force process itself was not romantic once you were inside it. There were no stirring musical themes playing in the background, no camera angle from below as young men walked toward their futures in slow motion, and no one standing at the end of a corridor promising greatness to anyone who could keep his shoulders back. There were doctors, tests, instructions, waiting rooms, measurements and the steady thinning of a large group of hopefuls into a much smaller group of possibilities. We were being assessed, weighed, compared and quietly removed, one after another, until the idea of being chosen became both more exciting and more terrifying.

For two days we were poked and prodded in the way institutions poke and prod when they are trying to turn bodies into risk profiles. Eyes were tested, hearing was tested, reflexes were tested, and whatever else they could think to test was tested with the confidence of people who owned clipboards. There is nothing quite like being seventeen or eighteen and discovering that your future might depend on a stranger deciding whether your knees, lungs, pupils and nervous system were acceptable to the Commonwealth. I had spent years being marked by teachers, but this was a more physical kind of marking, as though the whole body had become an exam paper.

The list of potential inductees for the Academy was large enough at the beginning to give some comfort. You could tell yourself that plenty would fall away and that there was no shame in being one of them, because the odds were long enough to protect the ego. Then the numbers began to shrink, and that comfort disappeared, because every time someone else was removed the remaining possibility became sharper. By the time I had made it to the last six, the whole thing had changed from an adventure into a dare.

I can still feel the strange force of that number. I had made it to the last six, which is a small phrase if you say it quickly and not a small thing if you sit with it for more than a moment. It means the Air Force had not dismissed me at first glance, nor second glance, nor after the ordinary hurdles that removed many others. It means that, for a brief moment, someone outside the usual rooms had measured me and found I might belong somewhere demanding, disciplined, difficult and wide open.

That should have been enough to carry as a kind of pride, but pride is not always strong enough to survive the way a door closes. The final number needed to be five, and there I was, occupying the inconvenient sixth space. I do not say that with bitterness toward the officer, because he had a job to do and the system had a number to reach. The military is not designed to cradle the feelings of young men who nearly fit; it is designed to make selections, reduce risk and move on.

There is a special kind of cruelty in being close enough to see the life on the other side, but not close enough to step into it. If I had been hopeless from the start, the story would have been cleaner and probably kinder. If I had been sent home early with a clear physical defect, I might have carried disappointment without the extra burden of almost. Instead I was sitting in a room with the future still visible, just as the conversation shifted toward what I might do while asleep.

The psychological examination had found what was described as a potential for talking in my sleep. I would like to say I received that with mature reflection, but I suspect my first private reaction was closer to confusion. Talking in my sleep did not seem, at first, like the sort of thing that should stand between a young man and a cockpit. Plenty of adults I knew talked nonsense while fully awake, and some of them seemed to have progressed quite nicely through life without official intervention.

The officer began asking questions, and the questions led where questions often do when a boy has grown up in a family where odd details are remembered with the accuracy of sworn evidence. Had I ever spoken in my sleep? Had there been occasions? Was there anything unusual in my sleep patterns? Slowly, because honesty has always had the unfortunate habit of arriving before strategy, the answers began to form, helped along by the sort of family story that had probably been told more than once around the kitchen table.

My mother, apparently, had once watched me rise from bed while still soundly asleep and head down the long hallway of our house with the calm purpose of a man who had been selected for a night match nobody else knew about. I did not stumble, mumble, bounce off door frames or perform any of the helpful little signs that might have alerted the household to a medical oddity. I simply got up, walked out through the house, and made my way outside to the area I had set up to hone my bowling skills, as though the subconscious had looked at the day’s training program and decided more work was required. It takes a particular kind of household to witness that and not immediately assume the child needs either a doctor, a coach or possibly both.

Once there, still asleep, I apparently proceeded to bowl eight full overs at speed. That detail matters, because I was an opening bowler, and “at speed” was not a decorative phrase thrown in by a proud mother to make the story sound better. It was the middle of the football season as well, so I was certainly fit enough to do it, which only made the whole thing more ridiculous. Most people, if they sleepwalk, might wander into the kitchen, stand vaguely near a cupboard, or attempt a quiet conversation with a door; I decided to conduct a private fitness session with a full bowling run-up.

There was no announcement, no complaint, no demand for applause and no dramatic collapsing in the dust. Having completed what my sleeping mind evidently regarded as a satisfactory spell, I returned to the house, walked back down the hallway, climbed into bed and returned to REM sleep as though nothing unusual had happened. My mother was left with the slightly awkward knowledge that her son could apparently complete eight overs in the dark without waking himself. The Air Force was left with the slightly more awkward question of whether this was the sort of young man they wanted anywhere near military secrets.

I can see now how the story might have sounded to the officer. There I was, applying to become a pilot, and the evidence being placed before him suggested that my unconscious mind already had a more active sporting life than many people managed while awake. If the Commonwealth was looking for discipline, fitness and commitment, I had apparently demonstrated all three; unfortunately, I had also demonstrated them while asleep. That, as selection criteria go, was probably a mixed result.

That image still amuses me, although the amusement has a bruise inside it. I can picture some poor future officer imagining me asleep in barracks, muttering field placements and bowling changes while national security trembled beside the bed. I do not know what secrets they imagined a trainee pilot might be entrusted with immediately, but apparently my subconscious was not considered a secure facility. There is dry humour in that, and at the time even the officer and I found some of it, but humour did not change the mark being placed against my name.

Then came the broader issue of sleepwalking, because talking in your sleep might be manageable but taking the whole show on the road was apparently another matter. I had, at some stage, wandered down the side of the house in my sleep, and the bowling episode gave that wandering a certain athletic credibility. A young bloke who might get up at night and go for a stroll without conscious approval was perhaps not the ideal candidate for aircraft, weapons, procedure and military secrets. The fact that he might also bowl a lengthy spell before returning to bed probably did not improve the risk profile.

Once the questions were asked and answered, the atmosphere changed. The officer had what he needed, and I knew he had what he needed, which is a peculiar thing to recognise while the conversation is still pretending to be exploratory. We had moved beyond testing into a strange little candid conversation, almost friendly, because the decision had effectively been made. He did not need to trap me, and I did not need to pretend not to understand.

We talked about the vagaries of divulging government and military secrets in my sleep. I remember the absurdity of it sitting there between us, not quite a joke but not entirely serious either. There was relief on his side, because he had managed to whittle the number from six to the required five without inventing a reason. There was relief on my side too, although it arrived tangled with the awful collapse of something I had started to want.

That is one of the complications memory does not tidy up for you. Part of me was relieved, because the closer the door came to opening, the more real the consequences became. I would have had to leave, commit, submit myself to a world of discipline and risk, and become something far beyond the local pathways that had been waiting in the wings. Another part of me was devastated, because those very consequences were also the dream.

I had begun, in those few days, to imagine aerial escape. That phrase may sound too grand for a country boy on a train with his father, but that is what it felt like. Flying was not just a job or a uniform or a cockpit; it was height, distance, speed and a way of leaving behind the rooms where I had already learned to reduce myself. It offered the possibility that a mind moving too quickly might finally be placed inside a machine that was built for speed.

I could not fund that dream myself. Pilot training was not something I could simply decide to pursue by pulling a bit more money from a drawer or asking the family budget to make room. The Armed Services were not only a doorway into flying; they were the doorway I could actually see. When that door closed, it did not close as one option among many, because there were not many realistic options standing politely behind it.

That is why the tick on the sheet mattered more than a tick on a sheet should have mattered. It was not merely an administrative mark, and it was not only a sensible risk assessment by an organisation that had every right to protect itself. It landed in me as another version of the old lesson, that a life could be redirected by a room deciding which part of you was useful and which part of you was too much trouble. In this case it was not my waking mind that had to be managed, but the sleeping one as well.

There is something almost comical about that if you stand far enough away from it. I had spent years learning how much of myself could safely be let into the room, only to discover that even unconscious Jeff might be a liability. I could slow down the thought while awake, soften the edge, reduce the explanation and try not to scare the horses. But apparently once asleep I might start bowling imaginary overs, walking down the side of the house, or giving away the operational secrets of the Royal Australian Air Force to a pillow.

The comedy, though, only reaches so far. Underneath it sat the more familiar ache of being measured and found nearly acceptable. Not hopeless, not foolish, not incapable and not dismissed early, but nearly acceptable. That kind of result has its own cruelty, because it gives you enough evidence to know the dream was not ridiculous and then denies you the dream anyway.

I have wondered at times whether it would have been easier to fail earlier. If the eyesight had gone, or the reflexes, or some obvious physical requirement, perhaps the mind could have made peace with it more quickly. A clear no has a certain blunt kindness, because it leaves less room for replaying the last moment and wondering whether one answer, one forgotten detail, one family story not mentioned, might have changed the outcome. Instead, I was left with the knowledge that I had made it to the final six and then been removed by something I could neither control nor improve.

That is where the black dog began to bring its numbness. I do not mean that the rejection alone created everything that followed, because life is rarely that simple and I am not interested in giving one moment more power than it deserves. But there are moments that press on existing bruises with perfect accuracy, and this was one of them. Everything I had worked for, everything I had quietly hoped might lift me into a different shape, seemed to be dashed in one tick on a sheet of paper.

The numbness was worse than ordinary disappointment. Disappointment still has movement in it, because you can swear, argue, blame, sulk and eventually get on with things. Numbness is heavier, because it makes the world go flat and takes away the use of anger before anger has done its job. I did not walk out of that office in a grand state of emotional understanding; I walked out feeling as if something had been taken and I had no authorised language for the loss.

My father was there, and that made the silence more complicated. I do not remember a great speech from him, and I am grateful for that, because a great speech might have made it worse. Men like us often handled these things by dealing with what had to be dealt with, getting to the next place, making the train, sorting the bag and leaving the feelings to catch up later if they could find the platform. I suspect he knew I was hurt, but hurt was not something we unpacked in public like spare socks.

The trip home did not feel like the trip down. The Spirit of Progress had carried possibility south, but it carried something quieter back. Sydney had done what Sydney often does to country boys: it had shown me a larger world, tested me inside it, and then sent me home with a story that was difficult to tell without sounding either boastful or pathetic. I had nearly become a pilot, which is not the same as becoming one, and nearly is a word with sharp little teeth.

School was still there when I returned, waiting with its exams, timetables and assumptions. The HSC had not paused out of respect for my failed military career, which was inconsiderate of it. Teachers, students and classrooms kept moving, because other people’s lives do not slow down simply because one of your possible futures has fallen off the back of a train. I was expected to step back into the old room as if the larger room had not briefly opened.

That was another kind of collision. The Air Force had seen enough in me to carry me almost to the intake, while the school world was still sorting me through marks, subjects, exams and the familiar rituals of finishing. I was expected to be young and practical, disappointed perhaps, but not altered. Yet something had shifted, because once you have imagined yourself leaving the known world at speed, it is hard to return quietly to the desk and pretend the horizon has not moved.

I did not have the emotional equipment then to say I felt worthless. I would not have used that word, because it was too bare and too needy, and because boys were not generally encouraged to present their inner collapse for discussion. I would have disguised it as frustration, tiredness, indifference or a bit of bush practicality. Inside, though, the old question had started again, because if even the open door closed, what exactly was I supposed to do with myself?

That question has followed me in different forms for most of my life. It appeared later in offices, client meetings, partnerships, family responsibilities and the strange half-life between work and retirement. It was never only about flying, just as later it was never only about tax returns, business structures or clients who could not see the wall until they had already hit it. It was about the repeated shock of seeing a path, understanding its logic, wanting to move toward it, and then discovering that the room had its own rule.

In the Air Force office, the rule was risk. In school rooms, the rule had often been conformity, even when it was dressed as discipline, order or the sensible way things had always been done. In sporting rooms, the rule was belonging if the ability was useful and not too threatening. In professional rooms, the rule would become translation, because people wanted the answer but not always the thinking that produced it.

I did not know all of that then, and it would be dishonest to pretend I walked out of the admissions office carrying a neat philosophy about intelligence, rooms and survival. I only knew the feeling of being reduced by a process that could select only what it was prepared to carry. That is not always an unfair process, because every institution has limits, purposes and risks of its own. It still hurts when the part it cannot carry is part of you.

The officer was not cruel. It would be too easy and too false to make him the villain of the piece, because he was probably decent, probably relieved, and probably as amused as I was by the idea of a sleep-talking security breach from a young bloke whose main unconscious concern seemed to be bowling another over. He had a number to reach, and I gave him the cleanest way to reach it. There is no point pretending otherwise now, even if the truth still has a small sting in it.

I gave it to him because I answered the questions. That is the irritating part, looking back, because the honest answer did what honest answers sometimes do when they enter systems designed for neat selection. It supplied the evidence required for exclusion. I was not clever enough, or cunning enough, or perhaps damaged enough yet, to understand that not every truth belongs in every room at full volume.

That became another early lesson in dumbing it down, although I did not call it that. Later, I would learn to soften warnings, shorten explanations, choose simpler words, leave out branches of thought and present conclusions in a form others could tolerate. In that office, the lesson was cruder and stranger, because even the harmless truth could be too much if the room had no category for carrying it safely. It is a strange thing to discover that the problem is not only what you think while awake, but what you might reveal when you are too asleep to edit yourself.

I do not know whether I would have made a good pilot. That is the other honesty required here, because imagination has a habit of improving the lives we did not live and polishing the versions of ourselves that never had to be tested. I might have thrived, or I might have collided with military discipline, authority, hierarchy and the sort of people who prefer questions to be answered only after they have finished giving instructions. A fast mind is not automatically a good fit for command, especially when it insists on seeing three problems past the one currently being discussed.

Yet I also knew something about the death-or-glory mentality that sat inside many young men, especially young men raised around sport, work, machinery, weather, animals and risk. It was not always heroic, and it was not always wise, but it was real. You learned to run until you were out of breath, bowl until the shoulder burned, get back on after being thrown, stand your ground when common sense suggested a quieter exit, and treat pain as information rather than instruction. No one could have questioned my loyalty, my courage, or my drive to achieve once I had put myself inside something I believed mattered.

That is not the same as saying I would have been easy to command. I know myself well enough now to admit that obedience for its own sake has never been my strongest natural gift. I could follow rules when the rules made sense, and I could accept discipline when the discipline had purpose, but I have always struggled with authority that expected silence to pass for respect. The burning question, the one that still sits there after all these years, is whether I could have converted the drive, the bravery, the loyalty and the relentless need to improve into the military shape required of me.

I would have loved to have tried, and that is the part that still catches. Trying would have answered something that rejection left open, because it would have shown whether the restless mind could be trained without being broken. It would have shown whether the competitive instinct could become service, whether the boy who had spent so much time measuring rooms could finally step into one large enough to test him properly. The sky was the limit, which sounds like a cliché until the limit is quite literally the sky and someone quietly removes your name from the list.

Still, I know what the possibility represented. It represented a way out, not from family or place in any simple ungrateful sense, but from the narrowing effect of being known too early by too few people. It represented a world where ability might be tested against something larger than schoolyard politics, local expectation and the small permissions handed out by familiar rooms. It represented escape with purpose, which is a more respectable form of running away, and perhaps the first real chance to discover whether the force inside me could be turned into flight rather than frustration.

When that possibility went, something in me looked for a place where thinking would not be required to carry so much hope. That is not a noble thought, but it is probably true. I had spent years learning, performing, adjusting, proving and trying to find rooms that would recognise the full shape of me without requiring me to cut pieces off at the door. After Sydney, the idea of disappearing into physical work began to seem less like defeat and more like relief.

Shearing was close enough to touch. I had already worked in our shed, and I had worked for the shearing contractor George Johnson in the shed next door. There was nothing abstract about the floor of a shearing shed, nothing that required a psychological profile to interpret. Sheep came in, wool came off, fleeces were picked up, pieces were sorted, bales were pressed, and the body did what the body had to do.

There was a rhythm to that world that appealed to the part of me that had become tired of possibility. On the board, in the heat, with the lanolin, the dust, the noise, the dogs, the calls and the constant movement, thought did not disappear, but it had less room to turn on itself. You chased wool, chased sheep, swept, picked up, carried, pressed and kept moving. It was hard to feel like a failed pilot when there was a fleece on the floor and someone expected you to get it out of the way.

That is where the chapter of my life began to bend. Not dramatically, not with music or announcement, but quietly, in the way many young lives bend after a door closes and no one quite knows what to say. I did not choose shearing because I had discovered my grand destiny among the bales. I moved toward it because it offered work, exhaustion, usefulness and the blessed absence of too much explanation.

Looking back, I can see the danger in that as well as the relief. Losing yourself in work can look like strength from the outside, especially in country life where tiredness is often mistaken for virtue. The black dog likes that arrangement, because it can walk beside you unnoticed while everyone praises your capacity to keep going. A busy body can hide a collapsing mind for a very long time.

So the pilot I nearly became stayed in Sydney, somewhere inside that office, attached to a form that had one mark too many against my name. The boy who returned home carried the evidence of possibility and the verdict of exclusion in the same hand. He had been close enough to be hurt properly, which is a strange kind of honour and a useless kind of comfort. He had seen the sky open, briefly, and then watched it close because he might talk in his sleep.

There is humour in that, and I am glad there is, because without humour some memories become too heavy to lift. I can still imagine the officer’s relief, the absurd national risk of me reciting cricket field placements under anaesthetic sleep, and the bureaucratic satisfaction of reducing six to five. But beneath the humour was a young man going numb, feeling worthless, and looking around for something solid enough to stand on. What he found was not the sky but the shearing shed, and for a while the floor of that shed seemed safer than any cockpit, because it asked less of the mind and gave the black dog fewer words to work with.