21. The 402 Muritai Road weapons programme by James Curtis

It was Dave and me against the world.

Our weapons programme began quite simply, making bows and arrows out of all the bamboo growing on our property. Later we got a bit more sophisticated and started putting fins on the back of the arrows. Then we discovered we could tape nails on the front and would aim them at targets down the back of the section.
 

The plums were a great temptation, of course, and were great ammunition for the various sling shots we made or were given. Uncle Colin gave us some primo sling shots once, which Mum wasn’t at all happy about. She had to confiscate them in the end, especially when she found out we sometimes fired them at birds.
 

Joey guns were great for shooting gum nuts. We made these out of bits of pipe and fingers from old rubber gloves taped onto the ends with masking tape. You could get different gloves that would shoot the nuts at greater or shorter distances. Dave and I would play a “war” game with Stephen, Chris and Matthew Galbreath next door and Patrick Rountree up the road, using all three properties. We would be in teams and then hide from each other. You could take prisoners of war and put them in captivity. We used pretend guns sometimes. The tree forts we made were part of the war game. Some of the trees on our property ended up with so many nails hammered into them, they were virtually destroyed. We liked to help out the Galbreath boys on their fort design and construction too. We also played a lot of “war”games with the Baker brothers. They even attacked our house one day.

Attacking the judge’s house next door was great fun when we got home from school. We really wanted to flatten his house, for some reason. We would throw eggs, tomatoes, rotten fruit, old 78 records belonging to my Dad, anything we could think of really, at his house and at his nice white chimney. We also fired BB guns over the fence. 

He would get so angry with us and would come over to see Mum to try and find out why we kept doing it and what she could do to stop it. Really, there was nothing much she could do – we were just so determined to annoy everyone. Funnily enough, the judge and I made up in the end and he even let me keep my motorbike in his garage, which was better than storing it by the shed at home.

Dave and I eventually moved onto bomb making, using things like baking soda and vinegar and putting it in a canister. There were lots of other missiles we made too.
 

Around Guy Fawkes, we would use fireworks in our war games. Eventually the community picked up on our fireworks wars and we would have a big war down at Bishops Park, which Dave and I led. We were the Curtis brothers, our own entity, and this was illustrated best through the feuds we had with other families. It was total mayhem. Roman candles, which came in 20-shots, was a favourite weapon, as was Thunder in the Blue Sky, which made an extremely loud bang. We would fire this above people’s heads to frighten them. Unfortunately, this firework was banned after the first year. We made skyrocket launchers, a pipe in which we could fire off our skyrockets horizontally at people. Mostly we shot the little fireworks at people.
 

The morning after Guy Fawkes, Dave and I would get up at dawn and head out on our bikes to collect unlit or dud fire works from the parks and beaches. We would bring them back in New World plastic bags and hide them under our beds. Then we would spend the next few weeks emptying out the gunpowder and recycling it as bomb-making material.
 

One morning, after Mum had gone to work, we let off a big fireworks bomb in the back garden. Jill next door rang the local policeman Jo Mitchell to tell him a weapon had been fired next door. He was around in five minutes, but he didn’t do anything. He was just a push over, really.
 

Dave and I just loved our weapons programme. I would say our passion and enthusiasm for it were equally matched.