When Hurst became intoxicated MacDonald began to strangle him. After a long drinking session at one of the local pubs, they went back to Hurst's apartment where they consumed more alcohol. MacDonald befriended a 63-year-old man named Amos Hugh Hurst outside the Roma Street Railway Station. He found accommodation in East Sydney, where he became well known in the parks and public toilets that were surreptitious meeting places for homosexual men, due to the criminalisation of same-sex sexual activity. After moving to Ballarat, MacDonald then moved to Sydney in 1961 as a construction worker. For this he was placed on a two-year good behavior bond. Shortly after his arrival, he was arrested and charged for touching a detective's penis in a public toilet in Adelaide. MacDonald changed his name, then emigrated from England to Canada in 1949 and then to Australia in 1955. Discharged from the army in 1947, he was diagnosed as having schizophrenia and committed for several months to a mental asylum where daily he was treated with electroconvulsive therapy. The experience traumatised him, and the thought preyed on his mind for the rest of his life. One night, MacDonald was raped in an air-raid shelter by one of his corporals.
In 1943, at the age of 19, MacDonald was enlisted in the army and transferred to the Lancashire Fusiliers. MacDonald was born Allen Ginsberg in Liverpool, England, in 1924.
