From pupae to pest

Leaving the farm set off a great change in my life and in my approach to life.
The defining event of leaving came with the auction of stock and farm machinery. I had to say goodbye to my beloved Red Wings, to Rex – the horse not the neighbour – to Daisy and Rosie and Jessie and all the other cows, to the dogs whatever were the current crop’s names, all in one tumultuous day when auctioneers moved from dairy yards to tractor shed to barn to hen house and eventually to back yard where buckets and boxes of ironmongery and tools were sold as job lots to a crowd easily rivalling that of the Lismore Show. Soon after, I was ensconced with the Cornfords in Lismore, up the hill past the Base Hospital toward Goonelebah. Here with barely known cousins I was to spend the last half of my Intermediate year of schooling so as not to spoil the continuity of a deplorable education. Des, maybe a year older than I and his three younger sisters, um Raleen was one of them, with their mother Lucielle and um, their dad, were to share theirs with me for the next six months. The first thing I noticed about this new arrangement was that I was starving. Used to a breakfast of cereal, milk, cream, eggs, sausages and toast, all in abundance I found their toast and tea somewhat lacking. Dad had left money in my bank account to pay my board and incidentals and when he visited after some months I had to explain that it was all gone, spent on food.

On the up side, the discovery that the Cornfords did not have a milking herd to occupy every spare minute left me with time to idol around the main square of Lismore with school mates whom I had only known before in school hours. Soon I was to discover that I had more in common with the school bully, Mick Davis, than I had ever imagined. We became firm friends Huck Finning about in the Richmond River behind his house downstream from Lismore where it presented as a formidable water course. Once, my cousin Des a member of the rowing club, introduced me to the joys of rowing when we took out tubs – single man training boats – easier to handle than sculls but a lot heavier to row. We set out down stream and went about five kilometres before turning to return against the river flow. I don’t think he wanted to kill me but he may have harboured some sub conscious resentment at having to share his room. Enough to say I made it back in darkness and under my own steam only with great fortitude and never bothered to row again.

Girls too or the obsession with them occupied more of this new found time. Cycling around the block on Saturday morning checking out the pictures of bodgie cuts in barber shop windows, always held the prospect of running into mates who might in turn run into girls for a bit of the flirting practise I so sorely needed. The closest I ever came to a relationship was when at the end of year school dance we were allocated dates from the convent school who we were given the responsibility for picking up and taking. There were a number of dance practise sessions at the venue where we boys danced with one another being careful not to learn the girl’s part and one I think with the actual girls when we met our inducted partners. I don’t think I could have been much more excited or terrified if I had been going to marry her though other than that she was big boned, blonde and attractive in a horsy sort of way I have little recollection of her. Suffice to say that during this period I began to learn there was life without a farm and it could be good. School term ended and I said goodbye to Lismore and friends, quite permanently as it turned out. In these days of email and personal phones it may be different but in those times to Lismore Sydney may as well have been the moon and vice-versa.

Even with the transition half year in Lismore town, Hydebrae Street, Strathfield was culture shock with its liver brick California Bungalows separated only by a drive entry lining both sides and the Hydebrae Hospital (private, expensive and for alcoholics) across the street. The biggest shock was knowing no one but my family however I was saved by school holiday employment at Anthony Hordens, the Catholic employer. On the first day after a welcome speech we (maybe forty to fifty of us) were handed chits with the name of the department we would work in. Mine in hand written scrawl seemed to say dog and monkey and I tried my best to construe this as something more credible. We were asked randomly to call out what was on our chit so that all with that department could be corralled by a supervisor and taken to their tasks. I kept my eyes glued to the floor and don’t know what I would have done had not someone else called out dog and monkey so that I was able to fall in. Now Hordens was not Australia’s answer to Harrods where absolutely anything can supposedly be bought, the dogs and monkeys were not product, the were in fact Searle’s Fabulous Dog and Monkey Circus there to entertain kids during the holidays and we were to be their attendant ushers and ticket seller/collectors. What a doddle though fortunately for Hordens we were naïve enough to take it mostly seriously. My three co-workers were a bouncy blonde girl and two boys from St. Pats Strathfield where I was to be a student next year one of whom, Mat Nolan, was to be in my class. I don’t remember the names of the others but Mat with his bright red hair made an impression and would wind up with his own estate agency in the west. You all know how hard it is to forget the name of a self aggrandising Real Estate Agent. I don’t remember much of this short stint of work except that we had fun and one time I went with one of the others, probably Mat with two girls to Luna Park. My date I recall as pleasantly chubby with raven curls and red lips and everything went well till we arrived back at Strathfield Station where I rather awkwardly bade her farewell as she lived further down the line. I spent the waking part of the next few days beating up on myself as you do, over what I should have said and done. After Christmas there was no more dog and monkey Circus and my colleagues left to spend their earnings on holiday pursuits till school went back. This proved to be fairly depressing as apart from no longer having friends to play with I was in a new department and expected to work on dusty old stock under a grumpy boss. I must admit that that was probably the first year of school I ever looked forward to.

I’m not quite sure how it happened but this year of school saw me transformed from an awkward reticent bumpkin with few social skills into the confident social bombast you witness today. I did consciously choose to change my name at this opportunity from Robert as it had always been to Bob and I know that everyone from the card reading astrologers to the psychiatrist and campaign managers will agree that this is potent transitional stuff that works. Aside from that I consciously did nothing new as I blossomed into one who was sought after socially and achieved academically. I was truly astounded by my own progress as I rubbed shoulders with the elite and gained confidence in my ability. In reflection it probably didn’t hurt that the deputy head Bro. Gieger assessed that I would not be able to compete academically at any other than the lowest level which put me into General Maths where before I had studied Math1 and Math 2, Combined Physics and Chemistry, where before I had done Physics and Chemistry as separate subjects, English, Modern and Ancient History as separate subjects and Economics. Miracle of miracles those Brothers with their swinging canes at Lismore had as it turned out imparted some education as I now found the math to be a doddle and in Combined Physics and Chemistry was merely covering old ground to the extent that Brother Berg, more at home in his role as sports master, would turn from the blackboard at the end of an equation and look nervously at myself and one or two others as if to say “did I get it right”. For English and if memory serves me well Modern History I had for the only time in my school life a competent, qualified, gifted teacher, Brother Couch
(Subsequently praise the lord, left the order and married the school secretary) who inspired us all and gave us a glimpse of what we might be. Ancient History and Economics were both two year courses only taught at this level and not difficult.

So it was that these two years of school were very happy ones for me. Our school socialised with the girls from Santa Sabina both officially at school dances and un- officially at parties and the beach at Coogee. Delivering telegrams from Strathfield Post Office on Saturday afternoons provided pocket money and as well I had arduous lawns that I would mow with dad’s cranky old Pope Mower. Later on I even developed a client line in hair cuts which I don’t mind saying I was pretty good at as you can probably find no one qualified to refute it. Our garage with its ping pong table built by dad to survive a nuclear blast was an after school hang for a group of boys and sometimes Lindy Hulls and Di Catterns on their skates. It’s a great pity we had no musical aspirations. A garage band would have been good but Mark Moroney would have obviously been in from next door complaining that we were giving him a migraine and disrupting his university studies. He had an attractive sister Margaret and I would prowl the drive in the evenings hoping to catch a glimpse of her sans clothing after a shower, fruitlessly I’m afraid. She asked me to partner her at a school dance once, an invitation I was aware of long before I received it. I was also aware via the gossip that although she hadn’t asked me yet she had forbidden any other from inviting me. Ah we had a lovely time but that was it.
I remember going to the Easter Show in new winter clothes that were much too hot and in great gangs who we spent all day waiting for or loosing. Towards the end of my final year I turned seventeen and got my licence and surprise- surprise with my father’s car was able to attract my first real snogging girlfriend Susy Maxwell or Smaxy. We didn’t go all the way, though not out of any consideration on my behalf. She was very sexy and I loved her but she dumped me for Peter Doherty who had his own car and I knew my first heartbreak.

School finished and what now was the obvious question on everyone’s lips. Well I certainly didn’t know and in reflection I can see that I had no role model/mentor. I certainly admired my father but he had no career or any that he may have had he had abandoned for his own good reasons. Dairy farming was the only thing I had any experience of and I was certain by then that I never wanted to milk another cow. Hairdressing wasn’t even a consideration nor was lawn mowing, art, music or writing considered. Eventually it was decided by others that I should study and practise accounting which these days would translate as commerce, an open ended practical experience that could lead to anything. I began to spend Saturday morning putting circles around jobs in the Sydney Morning Herald which as I recall were abundant. Mondays were spent calling for interviews and by mid week I would find myself sitting in offices in the city with the same people I sat with in the last. Unfortunately those interviewing us could tell the difference between someone who wanted to be an accountant and someone who was there only because others thought it a good idea and I never seemed to get that call. Eventually John leaned on one of his parishioners, Doug Sutherland, who had a small accounting business in Burwood and would go on to become Lord Mayor of Sydney some years later. He employed me as a trainee when his only employee other than an elderly female accountant who worked part time was a big bumptious secretary receptionist at least twice my size with not an ounce of fat on her. Doug gave me spread sheets and showed me how to do check book balances, or thought he did. Throughout my whole time there I never made one of these simple structures balance. Once I took his banking to the wrong bank causing him much embarrassment. He had had polio as a child and wore leg braces. He drove one of those first Australian Chrysler Valiants with the spare tyre impress on the boot lid, a manual, and his leg brace clutch/brake work which put me in mind of the nuclear scientist character played by Peter Sellers in Dr. Strangelove who could not control his Heil Hitler saluting false arm, always made me tense. Travelling out with him to stuff up audits at his client’s timber yards wasn’t something I looked forward too. I was much happier when he was out of the office, joking with the secretary and hoping to catch a glimpse of a very big leg.

Along with this work I was enrolled to study Accountancy at Medowbank Tech. a couple of nights a week. I went to the first lesson or two, learnt nothing and could not stand to go back. From then till the end of term I would take dads car and try to exploit this time with the car to some advantage. I was cautious about driving too far which might be obvious to my father on the speedo and in the tank. One time I parked the car in Burwood Road and went to the city. On returning I suffered a case of mental blindness and was unable to find it. I remember reaching a state of blind panic running up and down the road unable to find a car which of course was where I left it. I realised I had to come clean and as I had noticed that my school friends who had gone to university seemed to live an unstructured groovy life I announced to my parents that I had discovered I wanted to go to Uni and study Arts. It only remained to tell Doug of my new plans to which he responded “will this Friday be soon enough” to find myself unemployed. Under these new circumstances the next job did not need a career attached but a wage would be useful as in those days though Uni was cheaper than today, HECS did not exist. It’s shameful to say that even this job I could not get off my own bat and it was up to my dad to secure me a position at AWA on the assembly line, the worst job I ever worked. Sitting all day on a high stool at a press making radio tuners, listening to 2CH radio, then owned by a conglomerate of The World Council of Churches and AWA, whose programming mixed old time music with sermons, had me leaving at knock off time as fast as my legs would carry me. I would literally leave the place at full speed for a few blocks till exhausted I would calm and make my way to my dads work place for a lift home. Eventually my dad or maybe John approached someone they knew in the NSW Public Service, also then a big employer of Catholics, who said they’d be glad to have me and after a easy exam to establish I wasn’t a loony, I went to work for the then Department of Labour and Industry in the section of Scaffolding, Lifts, Factories and Shops at Circular Quay.

Here I would learn the then astonishing public service culture which had I been smart I would have exploited as my dad suggested, though to his credit, only once. On the Eastern corner of George Street and The Argyle Cut next to the now MCA (then the Maritime Services Board) in the Records section of the afore mentioned department I commenced my Public Service career. Yes my image of records was of the vinyl kind and I imagined chilling with Chuck Berry and Bill Haley till my immediate boss, a Check refugee with a wonderful sense of humour enlightened me to the droll task. An escapee from the dark, as we saw it, Communist system he could not believe that students in this country paid to learn. After a couple of months of his tutelage I was given responsibility for archives while the permanent archivist went on extended leave. Here on my own and with a lovely view south up George Street I read Penguin Classics and fantasised seduction scenarios with another receptionist, a bleached blond from Maroubra. On the return of the archivist I was moved to the section that handled the registration of cranes and scaffolds. This small section consisted of my boss, me his clerk, and quite remarkably a typist. The office had a typing pool a mere desk width away, a room full of girls who did nothing but type but somehow my boss, a scammer, had his own dedicated typist. The work we did was to process a bunch of forms and after the first week I had the hang of it and completed the days work in the first hour or less. The typist would type this work up and sometime in the afternoon I would take it upstairs to get it signed off by a loony. This guy had passed all the public service examinations, quite a difficult task as it virtually required the memorising of the public service act of NSW, a large and boring tome. My boss did nothing in his department other than manage his staff and study this act. The loony had proved totally irresponsible but his grade and seniority required a significant job and mercifully his own office. His job was an invention and signing off my paperwork was a facet of that but he occupied himself cutting up the Gregory’s street directory and reassembling it as a giant map on his walls. This wasn’t as easy as it sounds in a pre photo copier commercial world as the maps were in different scales. My boss hated me, kept begging me to spread the work over the day but I persisted in finishing it first thing and pulling out my penguin classic in full view of his boss should he look up from his own charade of busyness.

Some six or so months down this track I was called by this department boss, a beaky nosed, jockey size, bad tempered Mic to his cubicle where well out of sorts he told me I was being transferred to The Department of Vocational Guidance. He kept asking obtuse questions like “who did I know?” but in a noticeably more deferential tone than he’d ever used with me before. I had no idea what was happening till that evening when this tale was told. John had recently been transferred to the Parrish of Manly where as was his wont he got out the Parrish Register and the Who’s Who and began to compare names. One of his parishioners turned out to be a minister in the NSW government and John made a note to visit him. Of course when he went The Minister was away on important Government business so John was entertained by Mrs. Minister. Seeking conversational material he began to talk of his family and this naturally led to my job. Intentionally or not he gave Mrs M. the impression that as a future leader as soon as I’d completed an as yet uncommenced Arts degree, time spent in Factories, Shops, Scaffolding and Lifts seemed a tragic waste. Mrs. M. remembered what she thought the new young curate had said and that night in place of pillow talk related it to Sir M., yes he was a capital letter Sir. “Worry no more pet” said the gallant Knight and next morning he was on the phone to the minister for Labour and Industry, well before their regular luncheon appointment at the club, asking a favour. So now I and you understand more the state of mind my jocky boss was in that morning. Things like this don’t happen. This has come from the very top. This lad is very well connected. O why didn’t I befriend him? I could at least have known his name, and now he’s gone. Confusion reigned across Labour and Industry that day for when I arrived at Vocational Guidance although they knew I was coming they had no role for me. Public service departments have allocated positions for employees and have to struggle hard for greater, statue enhancing, allocations. Here I was surplus to allocation so they took the path of least resistance and placed me with the markers. The markers were a room full of girls, much like a typing pool, who marked the papers of school children who took vocational guidance tests. The only male in this domain prior to my arrival was Beresford Gilles Step, a half cast Anglo Indian, exceptionally camp, who lived in his mid forties with his mother in Belleveue Hill. Berry was a delight, loved by the girls and as I got to know him, me. I was psychologically ill equipped for marking, a process of placing templates with holes over pages of multiple choice answers, counting and noting the crosses. The girls marked up to twelve tests an hour, I struggled to complete one a day. There was too much distraction, a room full of girls, gossip with the gay boss. It didn’t matter, no one cared, they were a happy bunch as I recall. One of them, from Newtown, completed the Herald Cryptic Crossword before morning tea without any distraction to her marking skills. The Cryptic was a major play in the Public Service and was always a topic of conversation at morning tea where Miss Newtown was without peer.

As time passed I was to explore this building on Clarence Street at Wynard Station much closer to the hub of the city than Circular Quay then. I discovered the basement stores department when in my undefined role I replaced the chap who ran it whilst he was on holidays. Here was a quite hidden refuge to read, snog, I smuggled Lindy Hulls in here and when all else failed to entertain, do some of the myriad of IQ tests. I shan’t brag about the massive scores I achieved, whoops what am I doing? Without a position I had no specific boss and soon learned that any of the three or four bosses who liked to sometimes treat me as theirs were in such backstabbing competition with each other that they never communicated. If asked by any one of these, “what was I doing?” I could simply reply that I was engaged at the behest of another and that would be the end of it. Lunch time was from twelve to one and one to two as it wasn’t good policy to send everyone at once. I began to take both. I would meet friends at the Menzies Keller Bar for lunch at twelve and others at one. It takes little imagination to work out that most folk can get tipsy in one lunch hour spent in the pub so after two I was often as they say pissed as a newt, though I’ve no idea what a newt is or how pissed it could be. By three thirty I’d be becoming desperate for a top up and wandering from office to office of professional graduate employees who had their own offices and were bored shitless trying to find a drinking buddy to come to Pharlets until knock off at five when we’d both be barley able to sign off in the book. The department had access to a car from a car pool and early on Berry had authorised me to drive it as he didn’t drive. He and I would go to Parramatta or Penrith to pick up some suitcases of exam papers that these regional offices were struggling with. On the way home we usually stoped for lunch or a thirst quenching ale or both, sometimes at the Royal Sheaf at Enfield, a favourite watering hole of my friends in those days. Sometimes on extra hot days, no air-conditioning in those days, I would conspiratorially whisper in Berry’s ear that there were probably papers to pick up somewhere and an hour or two later we’d be on the road to nowhere to quote Talking Heads. Once I parked in Castlereigh Street outside David Jones Men’s Store to do some Christmas shopping. Returning to find the car missing I learnt that it had been towed to a pound near Chinatown. I called Berry and he covered for me while I retrieved it at no cost it being a Government car. As anyone could see, including me in lucid moments, all this drinking during the day followed by night shifts with mates at the Royal Sheaf, was leading to or was in fact full on alcoholism. Coupled to this, the cost of this binging was extremely detrimental to creating a bank of funds for a future full time Uni course.

So it was that in 1965 two years that seemed like ten after leaving school, I bade farewell to my ‘work’ colleagues, many of whom thought I was making a massive mistake, with just enough to pay my first years fees. It’s interesting to speculate here about possible outcomes in light of the one we know. The two most likely outcomes of continuing in Public Service are 1. Alcoholism leading to early accidental suicide. 2. A successful career golden handshake and Public Service Super mid forties but brain dead. It’s silly to speculate but I really don’t think I was psychologically suited to a Public Service career.