Writing is something I have always loved. I started writing short stories when I was in primary school and my year 7 teacher was so impressed with what I wrote that at our graduation ceremony, she said I was likely to become an author (well that didn't happen!)
I was always very career driven. Even from a young age I had great ideals on what I would do in life. I remember wanting to be a doctor, a lawyer (thankfully this didn't last!), a nurse, a paramedic and a police officer. The latter being the winner. I remember being at that age in life where I thought, well I better make an actual decision on what I want to be. I was in year11 and picking my year 12 subjects, did I want to aim for university and become a paramedic, or did I want to join the police at a young age and work towards becoming a detective? It was a hard choice as both paths appealed to me. I made the decision to work hard in year 12 and get a high enough score to apply for the paramedics course. I achieved my goal and I applied for uni with all intentions of starting a paramedic degree. However, I filled out my preference sheet wrong, and listed a BA as my first preferred choice and was accepted into that, as it was my first preference (and no body gets turned down from a BA!) so in my stupidness, I was briefly devastated as I realized I had applied for the wrong course! If I wanted to get into the other course, I had to reapply with the chance of not bein accepted. So as an 18 year old I thought my life was over all because of a lapse in concentration and a stupid mistake! Little did I know it was probably the best mistake I had made.
I gave it a lot of thought for several weeks and decided that I would start the BA and think about changing degrees later down the track. At some point, I had a conversation with a retired police officer and spoke about the job and the role, and queried the process of becoming a detective. He mentioned it usually took about four to five years of working as a patrol officer before becoming a detective. This made me think-I could be working as a police officer, earning money all the while working towards my dream of becoming a detective, or, I could be doing a degree for the same amount of time, paying to study, working at Coles and possibly not getting employed at the end of the degree....I was really starting to see the benefits of leaning towards my other chosen career path... After all, this had been my childhood dream. Looking back, all my short stories were detective fiction and involved a leading female detective character!
I started uni, I generally enjoyed my time there, mainly spent at the uni bar, record store and photography lab(I was taking a lot of band photos at the time on film) I chose to study criminal justice as my BA major, this made me think even more about the police. I didn't really enjoy the statistical side of law (ie criminology) but felt I would really enjoy the practical side.
It is all a blur of how I actually came to apply for Sapol, and the whole process was extremely fast, which is strange as I hear from so many people that their application process was excruciatingly slow. I applied in September and was accepted by November, and was able to start at the academy in January. The process of getting accepted was the most challenging of my young life. I still felt like I was on auto pilot mode and someone else was guiding me through that process. I at the exam-I passed. I was interviewed by a panel of police officers, asked very hard, and confronting questions - I passed. I was given a medical, a physical, a computing test - I passed, oh wait, I failed to computing test! But that didn't matter, it was just a small part of the process and they let me do it again.
I remember receiving the letter address from Sapol, I knew that whatever in that letter was going to change my future one way or another and when I opened it I could not believe my eyes - I was in, I was going to be a cop! If it had said that I was not accepted, I don't know where I would be today, I honestly do not believe I would have applied again.
So I started at the academy in January and graduated in August and as a clueless, lacking in life experience 19 year old, I made the decision to move to the country. I chose Ceduna, one of the furthest country postings in Sapol! These are two reasons I chose Ceduna, and the first was a conversation that went something like this:
"dad is there surf in Ceduna?"
"cactus is near there."
..........
(Cactus Beach)
I then googled cactus beach and what did I see...plenty of photos of lovely looking waves! So I was half sold...
The second was this:
..........
(beautiful Charlie dog)
The chance to live by myself and have my own puppy. Charlie came along and moved to ceduna with me as a six month old!
So in a nutshell, I moved to the country, lived there 3 years, grew up a lot, moved back home, travelled a lot, moved out of home, met a guy, got engaged, got married, become a detective and had a baby boy.
This blog is a version of all those events, and the main reason I have started writing is because of the birth of my son, I feel I need to write down what we went through, as it is still hard for me to think about. I will tell the story about the birth of my son, but I will talk about other significant memories I have that have helped shape my life to what it is today!
