![]() It began when he was a small child and had nightmares about being chased by a huge rolling ball. I'm awestruck at what can happen in a person's life – if you allow it."Īll his life, Smith says, he's been running away, without knowing where to run to. Does he pinch himself sometimes and wonder if all that has gone before is true? "No," he says. Smith has spent most of his life on a disastrous trajectory that began with violence in the home. It's hard to believe he left school at 14, when he was diagnosed as "functioning at the lower level of the dull range". Everything he says reveals a fierce intelligence, and he uses the sophisticated vocabulary of a highly educated academic. Speaking on the phone, Smith sounds relaxed and eloquent, with flashes of humour. But today, at 63, Gregory Peel Smith has a PhD, teaches in the Social Sciences at Southern Cross University, lives on the New South Wales South Coast with his third wife, Lizzie, and has produced a memoir, Out of the Forest, about his extraordinary journey. Such a tale should surely end in tragedy. ![]() Each time he left, he couldn't get back to the forest soon enough. He got himself a reputation as the local hairy wild man some of the Byron Bay hippies thought he was Jesus. Smith made occasional forays there, to trade his pot for food and supplies. But however bad it got, the outside world was worse.
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