Christmas in 1993 brought with it the usual festive cheer, and for me, a copy of ‘Tecmo Super NBA Basketball’ for my Super Nintendo. While ‘NBA Jam’ boasted flashier graphics, I preferred the realistic 5-on-5 gameplay of Tecmo, its grounding in gravity, and the darkly humorous injuries you could inflict on virtual opponents. The hyper-extension was a particular favourite, a term that sounded hilariously brutal to my brother and me, even though we were blissfully ignorant of its actual meaning. Winning became secondary to unleashing a barrage of hyper-extensions, a childish pursuit that unfolded against a backdrop of real-world unease.
state forest
Unbeknownst to my game-obsessed eleven-year-old self, a grim reality was unfolding just a few hours away. Decaying bodies were being discovered in a state forest, and the chilling news of a serial killer, then unidentified, dominated newspapers and television broadcasts for months. My Fraggle Rock innocence was shattering, replaced by a dawning awareness of a world where danger lurked, personified by a serial killer who preyed on the vulnerable. “Stranger danger” was more than a cautionary phrase; it was the palpable atmosphere of the time. My mother, understandably anxious, instituted a secret word, “ANT” (an acronym of our initials), to be used if anyone other than our parents attempted to collect us from school. I only had occasion to use it once, met with my grandfather’s impatient dismissal and a subsequent lecture on the supposed low quality of McDonald’s when I dared to suggest a detour.
Amidst this climate of fear, Soul Asylum’s song, “Runaway Train,” became ubiquitous. While not explicitly about runaway children, its thematic resonance was strong enough for Missing Persons Units to incorporate photos of missing young people into the music video. Names, ages, and “last seen” dates flashed across the screen, transforming the video clip into a somber, updated version of a milk carton appeal or a particularly bleak set of trading cards. This localized approach, tailored to different states and countries, was lost on my young mind; my world ended at the edge of my town. As weeks turned into months, and the newspapers continued to land on our veranda, some of the faces from the “Runaway Train” video, faces I had come to know intimately, began appearing on front pages, linked to the grim discoveries in the rainforest. These children were then dutifully removed from the video, replaced by a fresh wave of “runaways,” a cycle that chillingly normalized the unthinkable. It’s a sobering thought now, realizing that someone was tasked with making these edits, day after day. Each morning, I would rush to grab the newspaper, wrestling with the cling wrap to uncover the latest gruesome updates, devouring them alongside my sugary cereal, the disturbing details clashing with the mundane ritual of breakfast.
During this period, my mother worked late shifts at a nursing home, often returning home in cabs late at night. This filled me with a gnawing anxiety, fueled by the daily diet of stranger-danger stories and the still-unapprehended killer. A rumour circulated at school that a classmate’s brother had been almost snatched, further amplifying the sense of pervasive threat, regardless of its veracity. Each night my mother worked late, I lay in bed, gripped by terror, convinced of her demise, picturing her in a shallow grave in the forest. I would grieve in advance, mentally preparing for a motherless future, imagining myself as a forlorn orphan, stoically concealing my pain from friends. This morbid ritual would continue until, around 11:15 pm, the sound of her key in the door would flood me with relief, a silent promise forming to become a millionaire child actor or inventor, anything to keep her safe at home, forever.
The police investigation eventually focused on Ivan Milat, whose capture seemed almost absurd given his trail of evidence – a distinctive appearance, witnesses, and possessions of his victims stored at his home. His trial and subsequent life sentence brought a degree of closure, but Milat continued to dominate headlines with his prison antics: feigning insanity, hunger strikes protesting the lack of video games, blaming his brother, and even swallowing razors. As perhaps the most notorious murderer in recent Australian history, he was frequently moved between prisons, eventually ending up in a convict-era jail mere meters from my high school. On my first day, our year advisor casually warned us to carry our keys as a makeshift weapon when walking near the school at night, a piece of advice delivered with the same nonchalance as explaining a minor grammar rule. This unsettling combination of casual violence preparedness and the mundane school environment painted my new school as an unexpected urban battleground. The day Milat was transferred to the local jail, a special assembly was convened to address the understandable anxieties of parents and students. The principal reassured us with “The Plan” for a jailbreak: a continuous ringing of the normal school bell, dubbed the “Jailbreak Bell,” alarmingly similar to the “Bomb Threat Bell.” If the bell persisted for over two minutes (calmness seemingly prioritized over speed when facing escaped serial killers heading towards a school full of children), teachers were to calmly lock doors, draw blinds, and instruct students to calmly place chairs on desks and crawl underneath. Calm. Impenetrable.
Of course, Ivan Milat never escaped, I never learned the practical implications of a hyper-extension, and my fear of strange cars faded as they became symbols of freedom and independence. However, I often reflect on the 24-hour news cycle of today and the constant barrage of anxieties facing young people: suicide bombers, health scares, violent crime, delivered relentlessly through pocket-sized devices, sandwiched between fleeting online trends. This constant stream of unfiltered, decontextualized information contrasts sharply with the slower pace of news delivery in the 90s, when information arrived in manageable doses, printed on paper or broadcast at set times. In those days, parents had a degree of control, able to shield children from the most gruesome details, perhaps switching channels to the fictional dramas of ‘Home and Away’, a sanitized seaside town where even tragedy was neatly packaged with a dramatic soundtrack. Perhaps there was a strange comfort in that curated, less overwhelming world.
