I assume before I was born I was nothing and didn't exist but who knows how all that works, I certainly don't. They believe even randomness has some kind of mathematics behind it, maybe making some logic out of the illogical. Whether it was just a random event or something controlled by a high power, I went from non-existence to existence.


What in life is more magical than that? I experienced it with my children and I guess my parents went through the same awe. The randomness or higher power chose two people out of the 3.9 billion on the planet at the time to be my parents. Out of the hundreds of countries Australia was chosen, luckily for me it wasn't a third world or war torn country. In fact it was known in Australia as the lucky country.


Ian and Louise Anne Walker nee Shepherd had been married three years prior and already had one child, a beautiful little girl, Sharon, the apple of my Dad's eye. Did you know that saying comes from the pupil being round like an apple and whatever you look at has its reflection there. I guess my sister would have been in that reflection a lot when he wasn't working hard.


My Dad was a Scottish born immigrant boiler maker who had come to Australia as a 'ten pound Pom'. He was from the big industrial city of Glasgow and had completed his apprenticeship in the same place as Billy Connelly, the shipyards on The Clyde. My Dad saw flags from all over the world on the ships visiting the port while working there and it planted a notion of a big wide world out there to be discovered. Mum was an Australian born nurse from the almost outback town of Bourke on the Murray River. Two totally contrasting backgrounds.


They met in New Zealand, he was travelling after working many weird and wonderful places in Australia including hot and desolate Broome where they decided to put a frilled neck lizard in his lunch tin because of course it would be hilarious to do it to a Scotsman who had never seen one of these little dragons. My mum was backpacking and hitchhiking like some sort of hippy getting picked up one time by Sir Edmund Hillary the first white guy to climb Mt. Everest. She was meant to go and work there for six months but stayed six years.


After meeting and I assume falling in love, like what happens in the movies, they came back to Australia. After getting married they travelled around three quarters of the globe before settling down for a while in Canada where my sister was born.


When it was time for the greatest gift of their life, me, they were back in Australia living in a suburb of Sydney called Lakemba. Lakemba was home to many immigrants especially Greek, Italian and then a huge influx of Lebanese in the 70s.


My Dad had been working on Cockatoo Island, a former colonial prison, ship building. Boiler making is hard, hot work with welding flashes going off all the time burning clothes and skin. My Dad told me that because of this hard work a lot of guys drank, alot too much in today's view. He said a van from the local pub would pick up all the guys on breaks with only standing room in the back and they would skull as much beer as possible before being dropped off just before time to get back to work.


I was born in Bankstown hospital, the nearest to Lakemba and the rugby league club that I still follow because I'm loyal. It was a long difficult birth for my Mum. Maybe this would be the start of a trend of difficulties in my life from then on or an indication that I would be trouble from the start.


I was born with severe jaundice and there were worries that I would not survive it. I was an extreme yellow. When I was placed in the big room with all the other babies I stood out. My Mum had gotten photos, to send to all the relatives to announce the birth of their first baby boy and given them to my Dad.


My Dad viewed me through the large window when he overheard two elderly women saying 'there are a lot of these Asain babies around these days' and pointed directly at a little yellow skin me. My Dad promptly went home and burnt all of my baby photos. He wasn't going to have people see his precious baby boy in that state.