by Nikki McWatters
At the age of sixteen I was almost raped and murdered. It was the Gold Coast. 1982. After sneaking out of my bedroom window I walked the three kilometres into Surfers Paradise, along darkened streets and the glittering highway to the rock and roll venue, Bombay Rock. It was late, maybe eleven o’clock. I was trying to work my way backstage to see ‘Australian Crawl’ play live. In my desperation to get inside I accepted an offer by a bearded man of about thirty who told me he knew a way inside. He and I clambered up over a concrete wall and crawled through an opening into an unfinished level of the building, a dimly lit concrete bunker.
As I followed him further into the building and came to a staircase with heavy doors at the bottom he turned and grabbed me roughly, breaking my watch and pushing me to the floor. I struggled and got out from under him and ran to the doors but they were locked. A rock band was playing on the other side and the sounds were deafening. I yelled but in a concrete bunker above a rock concert, no-one can hear you scream. I was cornered. He dragged me back up the stair as I pleaded and begged for him to stop and he began to assault me.
This was not long after the infamous hitchhiker murders in the same town. To say I was stupid to get myself into this position is an understatement. But my primal need to survive kicked in and despite my youth, in those seconds I grabbed for a defensive strategy. I could not fight him. He would win. I would be raped. I had seen him clearly. I was sixteen. No one knew I was not in my bed at home. No one would enter that part of the building for months. I believed he would kill me. All I had was my desperation to survive.