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David J. Murray

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Born

in Sydney, Australia

Genre

Fiction

Member Since

March 2015

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I grew up in Mosman, a suburb of Sydney, Australia. My parents divorced when I was 4 leaving my mother to bring up my sister and I. As a result I became the man of the house at a rather young age.Consequently I spent a lot of my youth doing jobs around the house that in my mates homes were usually done by their fathers. I did however have a rather free run during the times that I wasn't mowing lawns, painting parts of the house or doing the household shopping for my mum who, due to the divorce had been forced to work full time. My free time was spent; billy cart riding, fishing, tree climbing (there wasn't a tree surrounding Mosman oval that
I hadn't climbed), participating in rock fights and surfing. On most summer mornings, before school, I grew up in Mosman, a suburb of Sydney, Australia. My parents divorced when I was 4 leaving my mother to bring up my sister and I. As a result I became the man of the house at a rather young age.Consequently I spent a lot of my youth doing jobs around the house that in my mates homes were usually done by their fathers. I did however have a rather free run during the times that I wasn't mowing lawns, painting parts of the house or doing the household shopping for my mum who, due to the divorce had been forced to work full time. My free time was spent; billy cart riding, fishing, tree climbing (there wasn't a tree surrounding Mosman oval that
I hadn't climbed), participating in rock fights and surfing. On most summer mornings, before school, I'd run the two kilometres from home to Balmoral beach accompanied by my two dogs, have a swim and run back home. These regular workouts were probably the reason that I was School swimming champion during my final two years as a student at Mosman High School. Three years after graduating from same high school I was conscripted into the Australian army and spent much of 1967 fighting in the jungles of Vietnam. Upon my discharge from the army in 1968 I won a Teaching scholarship and in 1971 began working as a Health and Physical Education Teacher. In 1975 my wife and I spent a year touring around Australia in a campervan and the following year backpacking around Asia and Europe. Teaching was one of three occupations that occupied my working life. For 7 years I worked as a full time Professional swim coach after gaining the highest pass possible in a course conducted in Canberra during the 1970's. In the late 1980's I undertook an Advanced Certificate course in Real Estate studies and Strata Management at Crows Nest TAFE and after winning the State Medal for top student in the state, I worked in Real Estate for a number of years before eventually returning to teaching. After retiring from the workforce at age 58 I continued a fitness regime that had served me well for most of my life and in 2012 rode a push bike three quarters of the way around Australia, a distance of around 8000 kilometres before a road train travelling at close on 120 KMPH hit me on the Nullarbor Plains, between the towns of Penong and Ceduna. A broken Pelvis and badly injured right hand put paid to the ride and resulted in a 5 week stay in hospital. It was almost 2 years before I recovered from the accident at which time a mate and fellow Vietnam Veteran, Clarence Ormsby phoned me with the offer "Dave, if you'd like to complete the ride around Australia, my wife and I would be happy to accompany you in a support vehicle." It took me less than a second to take the Ormsby's up on their offer and on the 18 August 2014 I set out from the site of the accident 30K's east of Penong and rode the three thousand kilometres to Sydney via Adelaide, Melbourne and Canberra, at age 69. On route we me some wonderful people and had a good time. We even had morning tea with the Governor General and a number of Federal Parliamentarians whilst in Canberra, and raised approximately $17,000 which went towards Landmine and UXO clearing in South East Asia. Not one inclined to sit idly bye during retirement, some years back I became an Indigenous Community Volunteer and over the past 8 or so years have completed 10 assignments ranging from 10 days to 10 weeks helping the indigenous people, mainly in remote areas of Australia. This work has been a wonderful experience for me and provided me with insights into Aboriginal culture that very few non aboriginal possess. Currently recovering from rotator cuff(shoulder) surgery, I'm looking forward to a few months down the track, when I can resume my voluntary work.

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Average rating: 3.67 · 3 ratings · 1 review · 1 distinct work

Programmed To Kill

3.67 avg rating — 3 ratings — published 2015

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David J. Murray's Blog: It's a Crazy World

Yes U are Crazy

If U don't think U are at least a little nuts then U must be stark staring MAD. Think about it for a few minutes...ie if u are capable of concentrating on something for more than a minute or 2 without getting side tract. Take the upcoming NSW election. Could it really be a close run race? Even though the current mob have had a scandal or 3, just think back to the previous mob who had corruption by Read more of this blog post »

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Published on March 22, 2015 21:21

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“ITs not the number of breaths you take, but the number of time you experience something that takes your breath away, that defines your life.”
― David J. Murray

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“ITs not the number of breaths you take, but the number of time you experience something that takes your breath away, that defines your life.”
― David J. Murray

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¡ POETRY ! — 22488 members — last activity Oct 07, 2026 06:07PM
No pretensions: just poetry. Stop by, recommend books, offer up poems (excerpted), tempt us, taunt us, tell us what to read and where to go (to read No pretensions: just poetry. Stop by, recommend books, offer up poems (excerpted), tempt us, taunt us, tell us what to read and where to go (to read it!) Goodreads honors wordsmiths: poets and poetry promoted and prompted here. ~~~ "Poetry is the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits." -- Carl Sandburg “God has a brown voice, as soft and full as beer.” —Anne Sexton On Clouds – “…what primitive tastes the ancients must have had if their poets were inspired by those absurd, untidy clumps of mist, idiotically jostling one another about…” —Yevgeny Zamyatin “If the poet wants to be a poet, the poet must force the poet to revise. If the poet doesn’t wish to revise, let the poet abandon poetry and take up stamp-collecting or real estate.” —Donald Hall “Poetry is a rich, full-bodied whistle, cracked ice crunching in pails, the night that numbs the leaf, the duel of two nightingales, the sweet pea that has run wild, Creation’s tears in shoulder blades.” —Boris Pasternak “Wanted: a needle swift enough to sew this poem into a blanket.” —Charles Simic “Language is a cracked kettle on which we beat out tunes for bears to dance to, while all the time we long to move the stars to pity.” —Gustave Flaubert “Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It’s that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that’s what the poet does.” —Allen Ginsberg. ~~~~~ Amy King, Moderator Amy King is the recipient of the 2015 Winner of the WNBA Award (Women’s National Book Association). Her latest collection, The Missing Museum, is a winner of the 2015 Tarpaulin Sky Book Prize. She serves on the executive board of VIDA: Women in Literary Arts and is co-editing with Heidi Lynn Staples the anthology, Big Energy Poets of the Anthropocene: When Ecopoets Think Climate Change. She is also co-editing the anthology, Bettering American Poetry 2015, and is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at SUNY Nassau Community College. ...more

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