INTRODUCTION & DISCLAIMER - Growing up in Melbourne, Australia in the 1980s Justin and his younger brother Clint often wish they had a sister, a wish that comes true when their parents decide to foster Natalie, a girl from a troubled family who has ended up in the foster care system.
For years everything goes just fine, until Christmas 1989 when the now 18-year-old Justin develops a massive crush on Natalie, now also aged 18. Justin tries to banish the feelings from his mind, but his crush only gets stronger in 1990 and the sexually frustrated Justin only has one outlet for his feelings about his foster sister - voyeurism.
Natalie's knickers are the most usual focus of Justin when he is perving on Natalie, but the young man gets to see a lot more on a family picnic one day and Justin watches some secret things going on the forest between Natalie and her boyfriend Darren when they think they are alone together ...
All characters and situations in this story are fictional, with any similarity to real people living or dead coincidental and unintentional. Only characters aged 18 and over are in any sexual situations. For North American readers unfamiliar with Australian sexual slang, please note that the word fanny is used for vagina on several occasions.
Please enjoy your trip back in time to Australia in the late 1980s/early 1990s, and rate and comment.
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My younger brother Clint and I watched from the living room as two smartly attired social workers, one a middle-aged man and the other a middle-aged woman got out of the car. Following the two adults out of the car was the girl who was to be our new foster sister.
Clint and I had been very surprised a few weeks earlier when our parents sat us down and told us that they had a big surprise for us - we were going to have a new addition to our family. Immediately assuming that Mum was pregnant, we were all excited about the prospect of a new baby brother or sister and congratulated our parents, but Mum and Dad had then clarified that the new arrival would be not a baby, but a foster sibling.
Our house in Melbourne's northern suburbs had four bedrooms and two bathrooms. Mum and Dad obviously had the main bedroom, Clint one and myself another, but the fourth bedroom was a spare room containing just some boxes that could easily be stored in the garage or shed. With so many kids in unfortunate situations and looking for foster care placements, Mum and Dad had decided that their home could accommodate a foster child.
They didn't arrive straight away, of course. Mum and Dad had to go through a few different interviews, paperwork and procedures, but soon everything was in place. With me being 11 and turning 12 later in the year and Clint two years younger, my brother and I possessed fertile imaginations and wondered just what our new foster sibling would be like. Would they be really young, a toddler or baby, primary school age or would they be older, perhaps a teenager? Would they be a girl or a boy? Would they be fat or slim? Would they be nice or horrible?
Clint and I pondered and speculated until Mum and Dad told us that our new foster sister would be a girl named Natalie, who was 11 going on 12 just like me, and was arriving tomorrow morning. So on that cool Saturday morning in May 1983, Natalie joined our family.
Looking out the window, Clint and I observed Natalie closely. She was quite tall for her age with long light brown hair, and very pretty. She carried with her a bag that I presumed contained her clothes and personal effects, the female social worker carrying a second smaller backpack. Natalie was attired in a black and white Magpies football jumper, blue jeans and white sneakers, and it was her jumper that caught our attention most.
"I like her already Justin, she's a Magpies fan, that is so cool," said Clint.
"Yeah, she has good taste in football teams," I agreed.
Both Clint and I were huge fans of the Magpies, even though they never seemed able to win the Grand Final and that Natalie liked them too made a good first impression, and soon we were introduced to our new foster sister and began a new chapter in our lives.
Natalie came from a very troubled family background, with an older brother in a juvenile remand center, a father who she had never met, and an abrasive, alcoholic and neglectful mother who would sometimes leave Natalie alone all night in their somewhat dangerous housing commission flat, one of the many bleak high rise buildings found in Melbourne's inner suburbs. Other times she would simply lock Natalie out of the flat to let her roam free sometimes on very hot, cold or wet days, just to get her out of her way.
Not surprisingly, young Natalie had run off the rails quite considerably, and was getting into trouble at school (which she often failed to attend) and for shoplifting, although she had only stolen food from the supermarket as there was none in the house as her mother had spent it all on booze and smokes. She had tried to live with other relatives, but things hadn't worked out with her religious zealot grandmother, and things were even worse when she lived with an aunt who had a drug problem and was already taking care of Natalie's senile grandfather. She had hated the first foster home she had been allocated to and run away, and was miserable in a group home for other troubled children.
The challenge was not to see how Natalie would get along with our family. Although for the most part polite and cooperative, at first she had some rough edges that definitely needed to be sanded down. Natalie had a bit of a smart mouth and could be extremely sarcastic, and possessed an interesting vocabulary. The weekend after she joined our family we took her to the football to watch the Magpies play as a 'welcome to the family' outing. Everything was fine until young Natalie disagreed with an umpiring decision that went against the Magpies, and Natalie's response contained many four letter expletives that suggested that a sailor might be her most suitable occupation as an adult.
At school Natalie was in my class given we were the same age, and while she seemed to get along okay with the main teacher she could not abide the bitchy art teacher, Natalie telling her to 'get fucked' one day before storming not only out of class but the school as well, somehow finding her way all the way into Melbourne city and hanging out by the Yarra River until collected and brought home.
Natalie, understandably because of her background, was also wary about showing vulnerability. When my brother and I came across her crying one day she became most defensive, running off so as not to appear weak in front of us. It was a similar story when she was off school sick one day and Mum had her lying down with a bucket because she had been vomiting. Natalie was horrified that Clint, Dad and I had seen her in this position because she thought it made her look weak.
In time however Natalie's hard exterior thawed and she adjusted. In a stable home and school environment that she liked the waif from a troubled family background soon began to blossom. She was always helpful around the house, played netball, made friends and applied herself to her studies with no more truancy or misbehaving in class, getting good grades. Her bad language was curtailed, and her sarcasm turned into a great sense of humor.