Kilbreda reunions often yield wonderful stories of days gone by and last Saturday’s was no exception. It is the story of PPoD nominee, Class of 1986’s Louise Bedford’s ‘entrepreneurship’ whilst a student here in the 80s. I hope you enjoy it.

My Life of Crime at Kilbreda

I started small. Year 8 Art class, under the unblinking eye of Mrs Adams, I fashioned a long double-headed fork contraption. One bold experiment later and I was in business. For 20 cents I’d toast your sandwich – holding it as high as I dared against the ancient, gas-belching heater. I could get through six sandwiches in a lunch hour. It felt like easy money. Then Mrs Riordon caught me and locked the door over the lunch break. Heart-in-throat stuff. Good times.

Year 9, my father sold his stationery business and I inherited boxes of liquid paper, coloured pencils and pretty pens. There was a market. Behind the shed on the oval I set up shop and sold out my stash in a week. But supply ran dry and I had to find my next gig.

Year 10 brought opportunity – and risk. The new music teacher, Mr King, was careless in the sweetest possible way. As he bent over a desk to help a classmate, a shiny keyring peeked from his back pocket. I moved like a surgeon. Slow. Precise. The key slid into my blazer sleeve without him knowing.

I spent weeks trying that key in doors, randomly, furtively – until one day it worked. Magic. It opened a classroom, the balcony door, and then the door to the Tower. The first time I climbed up there the breeze hit my face and something in me changed. Freedom tasted like cold air and dust.

The balcony was exposed and dangerous. I learned to be careful. I found a rotten window into a tiny room and with a jiggle, freed the nail that kept it shut. The wood splintered; the whole thing smelled of rot and old paint. Once inside, I saw potential. Private, out of sight – perfect.

And just like that… I was in business again. One dollar a tour. After the first week, I bought a camera and charged another dollar for a photograph at the top of the Tower. Word spread. I had a waiting list. Lunchtimes on a Thursday – when teachers were in meetings – became my golden hour. I even paid a girl to be lookout; a single sharp whistle and we’d freeze. Five girls at a time, tiptoeing up, sworn to secrecy. We avoided the fourth rotten step because it threatened to betray us with a snap and a scream. We were hidden once we were through the window.

Yep – I got caught… but Mr Diamond didn’t report me. But one day, shortly after that, the window was nailed shut properly.

I started hunting for the next score.

Rumour told of a Kilbreda cellar. I kept the magic key busy. And eventually discovered that cellar and spent a couple of early mornings working out my strategy. I lined up seven girls, collected my dollars, swung open the trap door, and we climbed down dodgy stairs into a wonderland of dust and the faint waft of mould – a book nook with sagging shelves, lanterns hanging from hooks, an ancient chair and tools that belonged to another century. For a moment, it was perfect and silent. Swirling dust, wildly beating hearts.

Then came the terrifying stomps of Mrs Christopher. We were caught. That moment – her silhouette through the hatch, the smell of damp and the scrape of our shoes – has never left me.

Did I manage to reform? I try. A life of respectability is harder than it looks. But I look back on those years with fondness. The mini-scams, the small fortunes, the conspiratorial whispers and the thrill of being a Kilbreda criminal – they all feel like chapters of a life I wouldn’t trade.

Louise Bedford

Kilbreda Inmate (1981 – 1986)

Damian Smith

Archives