According to this website, Eye of the Tiger was the number one song in Australia in October in 1982. And most likely was the number one song on the 30th of October that year.

At about the same time, Do You Really Want to Hurt Me? by Culture Club was number one in the UK.

Going by the Wikipedia page on October 1982, nothing of importance happened on the Saturday, 30 October 1982.

So why post about it? Because at about 1pm, just as the nurses were supposed to be changing shifts, I was born.

My mum had rescued a stuck goat earlier that morning and it the act of throwing a goat over the fence (my mum is tiny, but says after hours of trying to free the goat, she found super strength through anger and threw it) made her go into labour and a few hours later I came along in the usual bloody mess and screams of a natural birth.

And so I started my life out in the big bad world, the second of what would become five children.

So as I’m about to turn 30 I figured I’d write to myself about the last 30 years, starting where I started the day before Halloween.

A few things worth mentioning from 1982:

I was born in Hobart, Tasmania, so the first thing worth mentioning is something that happened locally.

In Tasmania, the debate over the proposed Franklin Dam got very heated, with Bob Brown (not yet as famous as he is now) announced the first blockage to take place on 14 December. My Mum tells me she wanted to go to the blockage to protest against the dam, but she wasn’t allowed because it was too dangerous for kids and babies. The protests did get nasty, but the short version of the story is the dam was stopped, the Franklin and Gordon Rivers on the West Coast became World Heritage areas and one the world’s first environment parties was started because of it.

Elsewhere, 1982 was the year the Falklands War started. To be honest, I’ve never understood that war. It always seemed out-of-place for England to go to war over some far flung islands.

1982 was also the year Michael Jackson released the Thriller album.

A slightly interesting thing about me:

As 1982 was rather a dull year, I might as well mention something of vague interest about myself.

I have syndactyly with my right hand. Mine’s of the complex variety.

What does that mean? It means I’m half pterodactyl. Which means my fingers on my right hand are stuck together. They’re smaller than normal and all in all, my right hand looks rather freaky. How freaky? This freaky:

When I was born, so my mother tells me, I was whisked away and muttered over by the doctor and nurses before they finally went over to tell my mum there was a problem. They then told her I wasn’t normal and after preparing her for the shock, they showed her the problem. She says for her it was never an issue and she doesn’t care. Easy for her to say. 

And that’s how my life kicked off. In a year of crap music and conflict over cold places and with a nice hideous hand to give me that extra bit of interest for the rest of my life. It was a good year. 

For the record, I hate both The Eye of the Tiger and Do You Really Want to Hurt Me?. Horrible songs.