by Graeme Leith
Although respected as the firm’s founder, Mr F. was not considered to be particularly useful around the place anymore. Sometimes he’d arrive at work and the other people in the office would say, ‘You don’t look well, Mr F., perhaps you should go home.’
To which he would respond, ‘At home they told me to go to work!’
Anyway, as the battle raged, the whole staff was soon in the workshop and the other partner, Mr B., came from the office and poured oil on troubled waters and asked me to apologise to Mr F. But I was not satisfied. I had done exactly as I was told and was to be punished for it. The injustice rankled! So that evening, unseen by my fellow workers, I snuck into a corner of the workshop, found some other tins of paint and gave the motor a bit of creative decoration; some nuts were yellow, some screws blue, and the terminal box bright green. In the morning, when the workshop lights were turned on and the motor was seen in all its psychedelic glory, I was of course sacked and Mr Anderson from the Apprenticeship Commission had to be called again.
He was less sympathetic this time but managed to find me a position with another contractor, and things went well for eighteen months or so until another matter of principle raised its ugly head. This time, when we were doing an electrical installation in a largish factory which built bus and truck bodies, there was a sort of catwalk running around two walls, high above the work area. From there the factory owner observed the activity (or otherwise) around the vehicles below, and one day he spied me talking to the plumbing apprentice and rang my boss to tell him. I was summonsed to the telephone—most unusual for an apprentice—and was told I’d been caught talking and must not do it again.
I protested to my boss that we had, in fact, been discussing work. Both of us needed to get pipes through a very thick brick wall high above the ground, so we were discussing whether to put through a larger shared hole rather than two smaller ones, but my protests seemed to be falling on deaf ears. So I marched up to the office of the illustrious owner, knocked on his glass-panelled door, entered that inner sanctum and explained the truth of the matter to him.
He was apparently unimpressed by my forthrightness because half an hour later my boss arrived. My tools and I were bundled into the ute and we were off back to the workshop. On the way it was pointed out that the owner of the factory was outraged at my audacity in approaching him, would only find satisfaction if I was sacked and, if I were not sacked, various contracts would be altered to my boss’s considerable financial disadvantage.
Mr Anderson had to be called one more time. He was gruff and displeased in front of my boss but, when I drove with him later to an interview with my next prospective employer, he was quite friendly, and later I thought that maybe he respected me for taking a moral stand. We were now scraping the bottom of the barrel in terms of employers—it would be highly unlikely that any contractor would employ me—but good old Mr Anderson, God bless him, had got me a job with the Harbour Trust, where he figured I should be able to serve out my final year without mishap.
Old cars, fast bikes and good mates
And he was right! And what a job! It was all about crane maintenance so it became necessary to learn to drive one. I had to learn a completely new set of skills for both the huge jib cranes and the smaller travelling ones in the sheds. They require coordinating three different movements to drop the hook exactly where required—luff, slew and lower on the jib cranes, and travel, traverse and lower on the travelling cranes. It’s a lot harder than it looks, requiring the sort of skills needed to pilot a helicopter, and many enjoyable hours were spent doing crane maintenance and ‘testing’. Boy-oh-boy, could those things accelerate! One day I begged a crane driver mate to let me ride on the very end of the jib to see what it felt like. This was completely verboten of course but he did it to shut me up, and I can attest that the G-forces applied to a human body clinging to the handrail of one of those apparently slow-moving cranes is considerable—in fact, terrifying.
Another job required driving around the wharves in the ladder truck to replace light globes and that, too, was fun for the thrill-seeking petrol-head I’d become. And there was spare time to work on pieces of the car that my mate Rob Hall and I were restoring! I’d take bits to work to file and buff and polish as close to perfection as they were going to get.
Socially, I lived two different lives: one life as the owner and enthusiastic user of a succession of old cars and motorcycles and the paraphernalia and friends who went with them; the other as a member of a church-going group of mainly girls, one of whom I fell seriously in love with. When it came, the parting (largely engineered by her parents, for I was not a good catch) was traumatic—my first and worst broken heart! Strangely, and to my delight, she visited me at my family house a few years ago after almost fifty years without contact.
So in 1957 it was goodbye to the cashmere twinsets, pearls and dances at Heidelberg Town Hall, and on with the leather jacket, motorcycle boots and jeans.
When I began my first-year apprenticeship, I gave half of my wage to Mum as board, leaving me with twenty-seven shillings and sixpence, the exact average amount I had been earning selling newspapers. But, somehow in my second year, I managed to purchase a 1928 Chevrolet. I’d chauffeur my mates around between milk bars, where we’d drink double sarsaparillas, the car fuelled by the petrol they’d acquired by fair means or foul, until the police came around and told my mother that they knew her son had a car and, as he was aged sixteen, not eighteen, he’d better get rid of it.
So I came home one night to be greeted by Mum and my sanctimonious brother, Ian, who smugly informed me of the police visit and the ultimatum. This didn’t worry me overmuch, though, for a bloke wanted me to swap my Chev for an Ariel 500-twin motorcycle he had. So the following night my mother and brother were alerted to my ownership of a new machine when the house vibrated to the throb of a powerful motorcycle engine coming up the driveway. They must have given up then, for I heard no more about vehicle ownership and the cops didn’t trouble me—although they tried to catch an Ariel 500 on a couple of nights, not knowing that it was me. In this they failed, for the Ariel was faster than a Holden police car and more nimble than the Ford V8 Customlines they later started using.
From the beginning of my apprenticeship I was plagued by a lack of money. This was possibly a good thing concerning alcohol, for I couldn’t afford to drink and maintain motorcycles at the same time. Sometimes, late at night, we’d go to my house on the bikes, no doubt annoying the neighbours, and make something to eat. Spaghetti was about as rebellious as we could get and Mum always had some ‘Kookaburra’ pasta in the cupboard for these nocturnal feasts. I had heard that you could use olive oil to cook onions and things—garlic was unheard of then. I purchased a small bottle from the chemist one day and that night we fried some onions in it and, with the addition of some Kia-Ora tomato sauce and a couple of sausages, it became my first attempt at sugo (bolognese meat and tomato sauce). I was pretty pleased with myself but Mum was concerned the next day when she realised that I’d been cooking with ‘medicinal’ olive oil.
But far more dangerous than my cooking exploits was my Ariel phase. This was a time of racing at night with my bikie mates on powerful machines at high speeds—until two of those mates hit a truck. One was killed. The other went to hospital with a fractured skull and brain damage, from which he never recovered. We didn’t wear helmets in those days, but I doubt that helmets would have saved them; they were going too fast for that.
After the funeral of my friend I thought that my time of racing around on motorcycles had more or less come to an end, but I was still riding my bike to work from Reservoir. Then one morning, barely a month after the crash, I jumped on, kicked it over to start it and grasped the clutch lever with my left hand prior to engaging first gear. But my hand began to shake and wouldn’t apply any pressure to the clutch lever, and the more I tried to apply pressure, the more violently my hand shook. I had to abandon the bike and run to the train station to get to work,
speculating as to whether it was some sort of delayed shock, or omen—some sort of message from the gods.
In any case, I sold the bike and hung my dead mate’s leather jacket on the back of the garage door. His mother had given it to me after the funeral—she, I am sure, not having realised that her son’s bloodstains were on the sheepskin lining.
The love of bikes must run in my family. I remember Dad telling us about my uncle Jack being pursued by a policeman, also on a motorcycle, and Jack, not wanting to reveal the whereabouts of his domicile, riding around the block with the policeman in pursuit. It was apparently quite entertaining, for Jack had extinguished the lights on his bike and all that could be seen of him in the darkness was the tip of his exhaust pipe glowing red hot as he roared past for the hundredth time. Mum and Dad put chairs out on the verandah to further enjoy the show, which ended when the policeman ran out of petrol and Jack was able to ride up the rear lane undetected and enter his property via the back gate.
After selling the Ariel, I set about purchasing an old Ford V8, for that is what the rest of my mates were travelling in then. The best thing I could afford was a 1938 model with worn-out piston rings and terrifyingly inefficient mechanical brakes. The only time they worked with reasonable effectiveness was on the first application of the day, so the trick was to delay the first application for as long as possible and enjoy that first good safe stop. Somehow I didn’t crash it, and it didn’t wear out completely, but it was worthless by the time I’d finished with it.
Shooting for England
My apprenticeship was coming to an end, and although I had promised my mother that I would complete it, I had sworn to myself that I would not work a day longer as an electrician than the allotted five years of the indentured apprenticeship. I’d had enough; I wanted a challenge. A plan was evolving between me and some mates—Rob Hall, Roland Betheras, Michael Buck and Brian Savron—that we’d go to England. In those days England was referred to as the ‘Mother Country’ and travelling there was a virtual pilgrimage, but to do this I needed money, a lot of money, comparatively quickly. We’d heard a rumour that professional kangaroo shooters were making fabulous money in the desert around Broken Hill in Outback New South Wales, so I decided to go there and check it out. It’s a long way from Melbourne to Broken Hill, and it was unthinkable to take the Alvis. Instead I hitch-hiked the 300 miles or so, finally ending up at a roo-shooters’ camp on the Darling River where I was able to question them on the viability of a roo-shooting operation.
After the men had gone for their daily sleep—for they shot by spotlight all night—I decided to do a Huckleberry Finn and build a raft to float back down the Darling, which according to my map passed close to the shanty town of Pooncarie. I made a crude raft by lashing together some dry logs with old fencing wire, left behind by successive floods, and set off down river, only to have my craft gradually sink as the timber became waterlogged. By the time I saw the roof of the Pooncarie pub in the distance and abandoned ship, my wallet clamped between my teeth, my torso was the only bit above water level. The patrons at the bar were very surprised to see a wet young man without a vehicle appear from nowhere. One drinker at the bar was headed south to Wentworth on the way to Melbourne so I was able to cadge my first lift for the long trip home.
Two other mates, Michael Hall and Philip Buck, neither of whom were included on the planned England trip, were interested in a roo-shooting adventure so that when I reported back positively it was all go. We borrowed some money from Michael’s church credit fund and bought rifles, knives, a rebuilt World War II army jeep, then had a trailer made, which we loaded with bullets and other provisions, and headed off towards Broken Hill. I’d established the location of the most convenient ‘chiller’, where the butts of the kangaroos were delivered and purchased if they were of good quality, so we camped reasonably close to one and began a new and very challenging slice of life; it was a steep learning curve, becoming nocturnal riflemen/slaughtermen in that inhospitable country. Philip didn’t last long; he hadn’t realised how much he loved his girlfriend, so he soon returned to her loving arms. Then Michael developed serious back problems, but we mucked along all right for some months, making money but using a lot, mainly on fuel and vehicle maintenance.
When in Broken Hill, I would stay Friday nights in a hotel, The Globe, which was frequented by middle-aged ladies of the night who saw me as a novelty, calling me ‘Professor’, insisting I drink with them and buying me beers. Their pimps had no time for me, for when they came in with a job offer the girls would often say, ‘Bugger off, it’s Friday night and we’re talking to the Prof.’ Whenever one of the girls did speak to me alone, they all made the point that they had once been truly loved; it was important for me to know that their lives had not always been like this, that there had been better times, more dignified times, that had preceded the pimping and prostitution. Perhaps to them I was the son they’d lost, or had never had.
Back then, out bush, the time was fast approaching for my departure to England, but the desert held me in thrall. I didn’t want to leave. One day I collected a card from the post office from my best friend Rob Hall, asking what the hell I was doing. We were due to sail in two months and why hadn’t they heard from me?
It had rained in Broken Hill, Tibooburra and Silverton; everything had turned into a sea of mud, and roo shooting became impossible for a week or two. So I retired to a campsite close to Broken Hill, which meant I could go to the pub sometimes and have a beer with some of my new Broken Hill mates. A few days later the police began enquiring about an incident—a marksman had shot out the ‘POLICE’ light in front of the Broken Hill Police Station, and someone claimed the marksman was chauffeured by a young bearded man in a jeep, who apparently looked a lot like me, as the Johnny Cash song goes. So after a chat with the constabulary, I left. Despite being in a four-wheel drive, I only just made it through to Wentworth, with the sides of the road littered with, at first, two-wheel drives and, later, four-wheel drives that had slid off the road into the muddy roadside ditches.
We hadn’t made a lot of money, but we’d matured an awful lot and grown physically and mentally a lot stronger in a few short months.
Then it was time for another project.
Beloved Alvis
Rob Hall and I had bought an Alvis, a 1924 vintage car in a state of advanced decrepitude, although still being used as a daily commuter. Its owner agreed to part with it for the sum of forty pounds, about two weeks’ wages for a tradesman.
It was a four-door open tourer and although it looked dowdy with the roof up, we knew what it would look like refurbished and with the hood down, so we spent many evenings in a shed we had borrowed from Rob’s uncle—polishing, cleaning, filling, patching, rubbing back and finally spray-painting. My work experience with my dad at the panel-beating shop was invaluable in the restoration of this lovely old vehicle.
At the time I was in my fifth year of apprenticeship at the Harbour Trust, and had access to a workshop and a job allowing me plenty of spare time at work, so I spent many hours polishing brass headlamps and filing down the windscreen pillars prior to re-chrome plating, until between Rob and me we had the thing sparkling like a jewel. It had an exhaust note that made our blood race more than any musical instrument we’d ever heard, except perhaps the voice of Mahalia Jackson. The night we finished it, we drove it out of the shed beneath a street light, its German silver radiator sparkling, its brass head-lamps glowing, reflected in the shining plum brown duco, and to the beat of the exhaust going ‘pom-pom-pom’ we danced with joy and triumph in that deserted Reservoir street.
We loved that car, and as Rob and I were close friends we were able to share it, often going out as a foursome with any girls we had been able to attract. We would go to the dance at Powerhouse in our corduroys and desert boots (brothel creepers, as they were called for some reason), or to one of the little jazz clubs, or maybe take some girls home and after an extended kiss and cuddle, for that was all you got or
expected in those days, return to Reservoir along an almost deserted St Kilda Road with the top down and the exhaust burbling away beneath the roadside trees. That was paradise enough for us.
Rob had had exclusive use of it while I was away for the months of kangaroo shooting, so when I returned from the killing fields of Broken Hill and Silverton it was my turn with the car. I made the most of it, which included briefly squiring a young lady around. I’d suggested lunch and she had agreed, insisting that I pick her up in the Alvis. I learned only later (aboard the Castel Felice on my way to England), that almost every girl in the building was watching from above, having been made aware that Jenny, or whatever her name was, was being collected from the street below ten minutes before the normal lunchtime in an open vintage car. They no doubt assumed that a wealthy and idle young man drove the car. Idle I was, indeed, at that time, but not wealthy, for I’d just a few days previously had my employment terminated.
I had realised that I would have to get a job because there were a few weeks to go before our departure for England. Money was running out and we were trying to sell the Alvis, even though that wasn’t going to fetch much anyway, for vintage cars didn’t attract the huge sums they do today. So I did something that I’d never had to do before and went to the employment office to ask them for a job—but not as an electrician.
There were only two jobs going, both breaking rocks at quarries, one at Heidelberg and one at Coburg. I asked which one might be preferable and the man behind the counter said: ‘The hammers at the Coburg quarry weigh sixteen pounds and at the Heidelberg quarry they weigh fourteen pounds.’ So I duly reported for work at the Heidelberg quarry at 7.30 the next morning and signed on.
I jumped into the truck with the other men and down we went to the floor of the quarry to be greeted by very large rectangular metal bins and vast quantities of huge chunks of basalt. During the night these massive rocks had been liberated from the precipitous cliffs by the ministrations of the ‘powder monkey’, the explosives expert, after the rock-breakers had done their work on the previous day’s crop.