Inventions and discoveries have always given rise to social changes and shaping. The World Wide Web, with its break down of linear text parallels the structure of the family of the 1990s. More parents are opting to live a hypertextual life-style where continuality, with all its responsibilities, is discarded for the chop and change method of living, which parenting in most of Western society has disintegrated into.

As this is a linear essay, if one wishes to avoid the next few paragraphs, where I speak from my own experiences as a single parent in a foreign country without the ease of a computerized linking method then do so. If this is the hypertextual version click on AVOID- HERE. After the AVOID- HERE section I intend to discuss why maintenance laws in Australia must change. If you wish to avoid that section do so, but if this is the hypertextual version of this essay click on THE FAMILY LAW ACT. If the Family Law Act is a 'no-go' section jump past that and arrive in the I PAY MAINTENANCE ALREADY AND DON'T WANT TO HEAR NO COMPLIANTS section. If you are in a "I've heard it all before' mind-set and just want to read the poem at the end, click or skip or just piss-off.

AVOID- HERE - I met her at one of those new-age astrology conferences that were popular for the '60's hanger-ons'. It was 1980 and I had flown to Sydney from my home in Baltimore Maryland. The conference was nothing to remember, or at least I do not remember any of it. What I do remember, and I am reminded of it everyday, is that I crossed paths with someone I did not like then and eighteen years later we still are trying to hypertext ourselves away from one another.

For whatever reason, that is beyond the normal workings of my mind, after returning to Baltimore, this person who I did not like in Sydney fronted up at my door. For whatever reason (and to this day I do not know what, where, how, why - it was truly a hypertextual moment - a quick link and either I or she would be on our way, or so I thought - we linked, merged, crashed. I moved to Hawaii shortly after our linking experience and for the first weeks in paradise I forgot about the person I now refer to as 'that witch'. It was after attending a Rod Cooder concert and whilst enjoying a Hawaiian beach relax with some best mates when I received the phone call men have been avoiding hearing for thousands of years. Maybe long ago it was a smoke signal or a bare-footed runner or even a cave drawing, but the message, whether on the phone, Internet, cave-face or even in one's dream is always the same, only the delivery is different. Meaning is always the same when based on those horrific enceinte two words.

"Guess what?"

As men, we know what that means. There is a gene lodged in the brain stem (the old brain) that mutates and spreads throughout the brain when these words are heard. Often people (men) experience seizures, blackouts, convulsions and a need to take up marathon running.

Sure enough my hyperlink experiment back in Baltimore had developed another node - inside of her, linked back to me. For whatever reason, and in these situations reasons have little validity anyway, there she was at the Honolulu airport a month after her announcement. Darkness descended in the middle of the day. We uped and got married. It was the day of the Solar Eclipse the day after my birthday August 11, 1980. Knowing nothing good comes of an event commenced on a solar eclipse I set up the marriage chart to benefit myself the best I could. In some ways it has all worked out quite well. I have raised two children alone though in a foreign country. It is school holidays now and both of my children are out of town. After seventeen years I have a break from parenting. One son (Hawaiian node) is in Sydney for the two weeks school holiday. My other (the Anzac node - Anzac because he was born alongside Anzac Highway in Adelaide) is in the States playing baseball with the Australian Under 16 National Team in Illinios and next week he travels to New York to visit his 93 year old grandfather.

For the successful raising of two kids I gave up my country, friends and family and endured seventeen years of abuse from their mother. On the lighter side, unusual for a bloke I am told I was given sole custody of my children and have raised them alone since 1984.

THE FAMILY LAW ACT: The Family Law Act of Australia. We have gone past the nuclear family stage of social evolution. We have even gone past parents having their say in what is best for their children. We live in the Government-Controlled-Family Era where laws made by strangers tell us how to link with our various genetically shared nodes. Earlier this week I stopped in at the Court House here in Adelaide. I had a slight problem. My son went to the States on his American passport, but because he is a duel-citizen Australia will not let him back into Australia without an Australian passport. I learned this as my son passed through emigration on his way overseas. We had travelled overseas before without an Australian passport to come back with, but this was a new law that no one informed us of. Considering my son, Leigh, was born in Adelaide and has lived here his whole fourteen years I was surprised to learn he could not return. So I was asking the Family Court what to do. They brought out my past court orders. A huge pile of orders. I must have forgotten, until then how many times I had been to court. In fifteen years I probably have been to court twenty times. This is all because as a parent, I can not make decisions. Everything is up to a stranger who has no idea of what a situation is and must decide between two people saying totally different things, which one, if either, to believe.

What makes it all even more abstract is that the judge is not the only one to meddle in family's lives. There is the well-paid lawyer who is the go-between between parents and lawyer. This is even more complicated now as I have a lawyer, the other person ('mother') may or may not have a lawyer and my son has a lawyer and they all go before a judge who links feverously between the various nodes then deletes us all and gives his or her verdict based on what her or she happens to think at that particular moment is the best thing to do and get rid of these nodes and go to the next case to be heard. Neuage vs. Neuage vs. Neuage...good golly it is messy. My first lawyer was the worst. I was in a foreign country, no friends or family and I was fighting a local for the custody of our children. On the day we went to court my lawyer had a big zit on the end of his nose, he was very young, did not know anything about parenting (I found him in the telephone book and he had said he could help whatever it was I wanted - I did not feel like shopping around so I took him) and was very naive. But it did turn out my way, sort of. The mother was more worried about her house and money so I agreed to take the children and not make a claim on her house, even though I had helped pay off the mortgage for four years. I never used my pimple faced youthful lawyer again. I just paid the three thousand legal fee and moved out to the country (Mt. Compass) with my children.

In this case the judge was all right. The mother wanted her house I wanted the children - no problem. But that little decision fifteen years ago was never to be the end of it. Parenting via the Family Courts was to be the structure of raising my children.

I have had many mini battles in the Family Court, always over money. But they fade into insignificance with my latest and hopefully last Family Court fight. I have had to get permission from the Family Court for my son to play baseball. His mother had managed to have a clause in one of the court orders saying that the children had to reside in Metropolitan Adelaide. For fourteen years my children have lived with me. My youngest son has never spent more than four days in a row with his mother during that time. I have done it all - the whole parenting thing - of course, under the watchful control of the Family Court. He was not permitted to travel outside of South Australia so I got a court order giving me 'sole-decision-maker' (which I have been for fourteen years anyway) of his baseball career. The current court order was made to last one year and I am back in court in August to attempt to have it extended, hopefully until my recently turned 15 year old turns 18. All the pains and time and expense involved of going to court, nothing to say how the mother treated the children and me each step of the way. Was it worth it?

Since the court order gave permission (twelve months ago) for my younger son to leave South Australia he has played baseball in tournaments in Canberra twice, Brisbane twice and in Melbourne. He is now in the States playing in a twelve nation Under-16 World Series event as a representative of Australia. Australia came in fourth in the event and almost beat the USA in a well-pitched game by my Family Court run son. Without the Family Law Act this would never have happened. And though I do not like the idea of someone else making the descions for me, my son is fortunate that the ones making decisions prevailed against the opposing parent so he is able to recognise his potential on the world stage.

One other minor aspect and one I must thank the Family Court of South Australia for, is that my son is currently staying at his 93 year old grandfather's house in Upstate New York. As prisoners of Adelaide I did not think my father would ever see his grand children or me again. He is waiting on an Australian passport to return home.

How many children never accomplish what they could because of a parent's opposition? The nuclear family surely is gone - it is a dead link, a wrong URL. Single parenting is here to stay. Most single parents are fine, yes they are usually women who have their child with full intention to be a single parent for many different reasons. Some see it as a career move and live off of the government, or get pregnant from a wealthy person so as to have a lot of money others want to have children but see men as pigs - which I must admit, there are a lot of. Of course I know some mothers who are worse than any male could be. But there are many single parents with the role thrust upon them. I had no intentions of being a single parent living in a foreign country. My experience was beyond explanation. One morning as I was working at my Adelaidian tofu factory in 1984 my wife dropped off the children with their belongings and told me not to come back home. I had lived with her for four years and had no idea anything was amiss. The children (one three and one year old: two nodes 'UNDER CONSTRUCTION' - just as one sees on many web sites) and I moved into my office and that was the last I heard from the mother for awhile, until I got a court order for divorce. Since then we have had a steady string of court orders to help in parenting. I never knew why we were always in court. She never requested to have the children, it was always some complaint she had about me personally and thought going to court would give her control over me. My favourite line in one of her court presentations was 'he has questionable thought process...' But then again for a male to give up their country, family8 and friends and spend seventeen years totally dedicated to parenting is a bit nuts. Of course nothing ever went her way.

I even had to get a court order for the children's mother to put a back seat with a seat belt in her car. Before that she drove around with the kids sitting on pillows in the back area of her car. But do we need to have a judge make every decision in a child's life?