Is it wrong that I want to meet James Vlassakis, who was the youngest of the four men involved in the Snowtown murders, in which 11 people were murdered between 1992 and 1999?
Mr Vlassakis was given a life sentence with a non-parole period of 26 years for his involvement in four of the murders, and a decision to grant him parole was upheld around a month ago. On Thursday, the media took photographs and filmed him as he left the Adelaide Pre-release Centre, which is near Yatala Labour Prison. When I saw footage of him on the news, the idea of meeting him came to mind.
I used to know quite a lot about what happened with the Snowtown murders. I've read extensively about them, but I've forgotten most of the details over time. I recall something about how Mr Vlassakis cooperated with authorities and testified against John Bunting and Robert Wagner. His evidence also helped convict Mark Haydon, who was imprisoned for assisting the offenders. Because of his cooperation, Mr Vlassakis received a 26 year non-parole period, which gave him the hope of getting out of prison one day.
And that day is getting closer. He has been granted parole and is now undergoing a period of supervised reintegration into the community.
I don't mean any disrespect to the victims' families, and I don't want to meet him to celebrate what he did in any way. I guess I'm just interested in whether a person can rehabilitate themselves after literally being a serial killer. I'm also interested to know whether he is sorry for what he did.
I've just started calling offenders on home detention to check in with them and see if there are any services the organisation can provide, and now I've been thinking about meeting Mr Vlassakis. I know that seems like there's a pattern in there somewhere, but there's not.
More than anything, I think it would be interesting to know what comes up on Mr Vlassakis's police check.
A couple of weeks ago, Mum mentioned to me that she had almost had a fall in the shower. This is something I took very seriously, so I did some research and decided to have an emergency response system installed in the house.
Basically, it's a communication box with a speaker that is connected 24/7 to operators at the company. If Mum needs emergency assistance, she can activate the system using a pendant she wears around her neck. An operator is notified and calls out to Mum through the speaker, asking if she's okay, if she needs help or if the system was activated by accident. Depending on her response, they take whatever action is necessary.
It's really good because Mum can wear the pendant in the shower, and when I'm not home overnight she can wear it to bed. If there is ever an emergency, the company that runs the system can call Triple Zero.
I also ordered a locked box with a combination code, which we've attached to our fence. I'm going to put a spare key inside it once I get one cut, so the ambulance can get into the house in an emergency if I'm not home.
I had a man come to the house yesterday to set everything up and, speaking of serial killers, he reminded me of one. I know he would have to have a police check, which would probably be more respectable than mine, but my imagination started running away with me. The thing with serial killers is that they don't just kill out of passion. They can be systematic and clever, and I found myself thinking, what better disguise could there be than working for an emergency alarm company?
He was an older man with an accent and a straggly white beard, and his eyes seemed to look straight through me. For whatever reason, I felt uneasy around him.
Mum, on the other hand, was disturbed by the whole process. There were alarms going off and the cats were running around scared out of their minds by the noise, and probably the serial killer. Mum was getting angry, and once the man left, she became quite upset and said that wearing the pendant made her feel old.
Usually I'm quite nice about these things, but in this instance I simply said, "You need to stop being so precious about it."
It's not about her age. It's about the fact that she nearly had a fall in the shower, and that is something very serious.
My mother is defiant, and that's one of the things I love about her. She took the pendant off and said she wouldn't have her life dictated to her. I'm hoping she comes around eventually.
I've talked before about how I have a little crush on an Italian man, John, who owns the hairdressing salon at the local shops up the road. He's married and I don't mean anything by it, but he's just such a genuinely nice man that whenever I'm talking to him, I think to myself that if I ever got into a relationship again, I would love to meet someone like him.
Mum and I go to the salon every Thursday night. I get my hair done by a woman in her early forties called Stella, and Mum usually gets her hair done by John. We always have such a laugh, and Mum tells me that she loves going to the salon on Thursday nights.
It's become a real social outing for her because, when I stop to think about it, Mum doesn't really go anywhere anymore. I am her full-time chauffeur, and I've only just realised that I don't really take her anywhere. This is one reason why I think it's really important to keep going to the salon.
We take it in turns paying, so it works out really well. I recently changed my availability at work and said I was available three nights a week and explicitly said I wasn't available Thursday nights. Those changes haven't come through yet, and I've been lucky with Thursday nights so far. I just want to make it official that I'm free to go there with Mum.
Mum loves John too. He is beautiful with her. Mum was a player sponsor this year at the Adelaide Crows, and she gave her tickets to John once or twice, which I know he appreciated. Mum also got tickets to the best and fairest awards dinner, which has just passed, and neither of us wanted to go, so she gave the tickets to John.
It was weird because I was sleeping during the day just before the AFL Grand Final and I had a dream about John. It was G-rated, but I dreamt that we were driving somewhere together. Then when I woke up, he called me.
He never calls me, but he was calling about the tickets to the dinner. I couldn't believe it and I said to him, "You won't believe it, but I just had a dream about you driving me somewhere."
He thought it was weird because he had just driven to Melbourne for the Grand Final.
John is also friends with my good friend Mariah's husband, Luigi. I hadn't spoken to Mariah in around three months, which was weird for us, but both of us usually have a lot going on, so it's not unheard of.
Last Thursday night when I was at the salon, John told me that he had recently seen Luigi and asked me if I knew that Mariah had been diagnosed with breast cancer. My heart sank. I told him I didn't know and that she hadn't told me.
Then, literally five minutes after John said that, Mariah sent me a message saying she missed me, that she had had some health issues and that she wanted to catch up.
Five minutes after John told me, when I hadn't heard from her in months. As soon as I got the message, I looked at my phone and then looked at John and said, "Oh my God."
He looked concerned, and then I showed him the message from Mariah. He just looked at me and said we were psychically linked.
In relation to coincidences like that, I don't read too much into them anymore. But I will say they happen to me a lot, and whilst the dream one isn't completely far-fetched, John telling me that my friend had breast cancer and then her messaging me five minutes afterwards, when I hadn't heard from her in months, was different. I'm sorry, but that is weird.
I also used to think coincidence was the universe's way of winking at you and telling you you're on the right track.
But I would be particularly angry at the universe if it used the delivery of the news that my friend has breast cancer as a marker that everything is okay.
My initial thoughts were to send truckloads of flowers and make a donation to the Breast Cancer Foundation. But I knew she wouldn't have liked all the fuss, so I didn't say anything about it in my response to her message. We arranged to catch up, and I actually just got home from her house a couple of hours ago. I ordered a small vase of flowers from Tynte Flowers and had them delivered to my house, then took them with me to Mariah's. You can see them below amongst some of the other arrangements she recently received for her recent birthday.
We were both really happy to see each other, and her husband Luigi came into the kitchen. Mariah said she was having a function for breast cancer awareness because she has breast cancer and had only been diagnosed a few weeks ago.
I sort of looked at her for a moment, and both Luigi and Mariah asked me if I already knew.
I hesitated to answer for a split second, and that was for two reasons. The first was that I didn't want to get John in trouble if he wasn't supposed to tell me, and secondly, if they knew I knew, then why hadn't I said anything?
But I was just honest about it. I said yes, I did know and I had known for just over a week. I told her she would know that I would have wanted to make a really big deal about it, but I knew she wouldn't like that, so I just told her that if she needs anything at all, any time of the day or night, I am there for her.
When she went out the front to get the pizza, I asked her husband how he was coping with everything. He said it was tough, but he also said she will be okay. And it seems she will. It hasn't spread, she is in the care of the right doctors and, from what she said, the prognosis is very good.
She got quite teary at times and stressed the need for me to get tested. I don't self-examine my boobs. I can't. It spooks me too much. I used to go to the doctor every three months and get them to do an examination, but I look at Mariah and she couldn't feel her tumour and she had no symptoms. It was only a routine mammogram that picked it up.
I've been for a few mammograms since I turned 40, but I think my inability to check for lumps could be an issue one day. I think it's the only time I wish I had a husband so they could quickly check for me every now and then.
Mariah and I talked for hours about the cancer, her treatment and the things she was scared about. One of those things was that she said it will always be in the back of her mind that it could come back at any time. And I have often thought about that. Can you ever really get cancer out of your system?
I just said, "You can't think like that."
She said she needs to be realistic for her adult daughter, but it's like me thinking about genetic testing for dementia and Alzheimer's. You can't live your life under those sorts of shadows. Yes, be responsible and diligent, but you can't sit there in fear that it will come back one day.
I guess the other thing with Mariah is that she needs to get rid of it first, which I have every confidence she will.
I know it's easy enough to say that you have to get past the fear of cancer coming back or the onset of dementia. But I know that, for myself, I've let that fear go for now, and I hope Mariah gets to a point where she can too.
Mariah and I have been friends for five years, and the time has just flown past. I have also made a new friend, Jason. Jason is the successor to Jimmy at the post office where I have a PO Box. When Jimmy sold the post office, I got him a present and gave him a big send-off because he had been the administrator of so much of my international mail.
He took an interest in my projects and even asked if he could sell any of my artwork at the post office. I told him he couldn't sell any of my letters, firstly because you can't put a price on the sentimental value they all have to me. But secondly, it's not the sort of artwork that has a place in retail sales.
When Jason bought the post office, he was initially quiet. If I'm being honest, when I first dealt with him, I didn't think he had what it took to operate the post office. He took no interest in the letters I was getting from all around the world, and he kept putting A4 envelopes into my PO Box, which damaged the letters.
It must have been around a month ago now when I went into the post office and asked him if he could hold all the letters apart from the small ones behind the counter and just leave a card in my PO Box for me to come and collect them. He agreed, and he also used my first name. I smiled like a schoolgirl and left.
Jason is much younger than Jimmy, and he could even be younger than me. He's Asian, I've been told he's Chinese, and his English is not the best, but I have just discovered that Jason and I don't need English to communicate with each other. We both speak the language of Australia Post.
He asked me where all my current letters were coming from, and I told him they were oaths from police commissioners and chiefs of police around the world. He laughed and then looked at me like he couldn't believe I had written to more than 200 of them.
I am not romantically interested in Jason, but every time I see him I get butterflies in my stomach because he genuinely cares about my letters.
Just last week, I went and bought him a box of Roses chocolates and delivered them to him at the shop front. He loved them and spent a long time talking about the beautiful colours on the box. He told me they looked too good to eat. He even held up the queue of people looking for postal services to talk to me about the Roses.
I finally built up the courage to ask him his name, and now Jason is a name I use every morning when I go to check my PO Box just after 8:30am.
Technically, he is supposed to send me an email whenever I receive mail in the box, but I've found letters in there when I haven't received the email. I don't care about that. I'm just glad to have an ally in the big wide world of postage.
Speaking of my police oaths project, the current South Australian Police Commissioner, Grant Stevens, is stepping down to become the Governor of the state.
Mum knows Mr Stevens, and she likes him. I've always wondered what he is like personally. I admired the vulnerability he showed to the public when his young son Charlie was killed in a hit and run in 2023. I also remember him being interviewed by reporters on television when his mobile phone went off and his ringtone was "I'm Too Sexy", which I thought was funny.
I can certainly see why he was selected as Commissioner. He has that "he walks amongst us, but is not one of us" vibe, and it's easy to see how he was elevated above his peers. Maybe I'll learn more about him when he's the Governor.
It was so weird because I was looking at a photograph on The Advertiser online of the outgoing Governor, Frances Adamson, and there was a man in the background behind her. He was wearing a bow tie and a ceremonial jacket of some sort, and then I realised it was the Superintendent I am making the police oaths book for. That is the second time I have noticed him in the background of photographs on The Advertiser online.
I hope he is made the next Commissioner, but I feel like higher ranking officers probably have more of a claim to the top job. I will also say that I would equally celebrate a female Police Commissioner, and the current Deputy Commissioner, Linda Williams, will be acting in the role when Mr Stevens steps down. It will be very interesting to see how it all plays out.
It's currently 3:11am, and I have to stay up all night tonight in order to maintain my current work sleep schedule. I make my calls to elderly clients to check on their wellbeing in just over four hours, and then I'm going to sleep all day, get up in the early evening and be at work at 10:15pm.
I have wanted a job like this for so long. It's good money for the skill set I bring, the hours are directly in line with my natural sleep schedule, and it's with a reputable company.
But I know it's the wrong thing to do to continue working like this. Mum doesn't want a pendant to dictate her life, but she does need someone here with her to make sure she's okay. Not all the time, but probably the time when she needs someone here the most is when I'm working.
I don't know if three nights instead of five will make a difference. I'll have to wait and see, but it's not sustainable in the long term.
What I have decided, though, is that I need to be earning money, so if I end up leaving this night job, I'll find something during the day. Hopefully at the Centre.
I'm on a bit of a high tonight because I've decided I'm going to go to Israel next year. I have to go there and see for myself.
But there is no way I could leave Mum on her own, and I am not putting her into respite care, which the My Aged Care assessor said she was eligible for.
The reason I won't put Mum into respite is because I feel like once you go there, you end up staying there. It happened with Dad, and it happened with Nanny. They only went into these homes for respite, and they never came out.
So I messaged my cousin, who is Mum's niece, and told her I wanted to go overseas for ten days next year. I asked her if she would come and stay here with Mum, and I told her I would pay her. She said she would. This makes me so happy.
I'm not sure when I'll go, and I'm not telling anyone I'm going to Israel either. But the truth is, there's no one left to tell. No one would care.
I'm just going to get my affairs in order, go on a tour and then hopefully come home.
