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When I was ten years of age, I was given a glass of whisky and drank it straight down. It burnt and took my breath. Throughout my drinking years I did not touch whisky again. At sixteen, I had my first experience of getting drunk. I used to work for a bottling company where my job was to put labels on bottles. I knocked off work one lunch time and proceeded to join next door’s bottle department...

My name is Bill and I’m an alcoholic.  I was born in 1928 in a little place in New South Wales called Gulargambone.  We had, like all Aboriginal families, become fringe-dwellers in the town. At the age of 14 I left home with my uncle and “jumped” a train to Coonamble where I got a job working on a property in the Pilliga scrub.  I stayed there for ten years cutting burrs, ringbarking, mustering...

I was born the eldest of three children. Neither my parents nor sister and brother were alcoholic, which might seem unusual. In fact, I can’t establish any genetic link at all in my family. I had an excellent and privileged childhood and adolescence. My parents were very moral, respectable people of good standing in the community. I was given every possible opportunity in life – private school...

I was a square peg in a round hole. I felt like I came from outer space. I picked up a drink at the age of twelve, after my two sisters had their wedding receptions in our home. I left school at fourteen-and-a-half to work with my father as a bricklayer. The money was good. But I was not cut out for it. I would have liked to be an artist and paint people and landscapes. After drinking with a lot...