Ryde
We moved to Cecil Grills asbestos hot-box in Ryde. He owned tennis courts and when the Prefect finally died, bought it for the number plates. We shopped at Top Ryde and went into the City on weekends to the Botanic Gardens, The Rocks and similar places. I worked at Farley and Lewers in North Sydney as a clerk for a couple of months and attended Macquarie at night.
Neutral Bay
We moved to the top floor at Harriette Street, Neutral Bay and Sandra’s sister Olwen and her husband and son Jason lived on the ground floor. I worked at the MLC in North Sydney as night watchman, which meant I could go to Macquarie during the day – much more flexibility with the course programme. I remember good times at Harriette Street. Duncan went to a local child-care centre, Donna to Neutral Bay Primary and Sandra looked after a child and household for a shoe manufacturer. She then got a job with the Geographical Society of NSW at Science House at The Rocks.
I finished my BA and then went on with Honours and started working for Woolworths in the Property Department. Exciting work, as I was hot on Operations Research and statistics and Woolworths were expanding and needed new sites. I developed a location model, which identified potential gaps in the market and their real estate people would look for sites. Other work involved modeling fit-outs for new stores and then I was transferred to warehousing to develop transport models.
This meant leaving HQ at Town Hall and relocating to Silverwater but a car came with this so no transport hassles. As the (now old) IBM 360 computers were at Silverwater I had more access and programming in Fortran, modified various off-the-shelf programmes for the better routing of trucks in the country, locating regional warehouses and other logistics matters. Excellent work that led to my Honours thesis.
Gough Whitlam became Prime Minister and they cut tariffs by 25 per cent, which quickly led to the clogging of all ports with imports. Trains of containers were stranded between Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne; stores began to run out of staples such as tinned beetroot and pineapple so I was moved to visiting suppliers and getting stock loaded on to trucks. Woolworths was underdog to Coles then and had a shocking reputation for late payment, rude buyers, stealing CHEP pallets and other bad behaviour. After a disastrous price-cutting war with Coles, Flemings and Franklins (our rents were tied to turnover not profit) the then GM was sacked and my mentor, Paul Simons was appointed and he changed the culture. I was one of the emissaries who sold the new line to our suppliers and in time it worked. I got very tired of flying all over Australia sucking up to mediocre intellects, being stranded in air terminals because the sandwich makers were on strike and the ever cut throat environment of Woolworths. One mistake was OK, number two led to the door with your effects in a carton. I managed to talk my way through the many ‘second mistakes’.
Sydney was both radical and conservative. The Vietnam Moratorium was in full swing, Harold Holt (or was it LBJ) is reputed to have said, “Run over the bastards” during a cavalcade I watched from my office. We went to grunge movie houses, where the audience either smoked or drank illegal substances, to see early Leonard Cohen (he was a poet then) and other (now) tedious stars of the underground, film festivals at Rose Bay, concerts at the Town Hall and then the Opera House, meetings of the USSR-Australia and China-Australia Friendship Societies, voted uber-Left, discovered pizza and generally had a great life. Duncan wagged school for months, hiding in the back yard at Harriette Street. Donna went to Cremorne Girls High. Macquarie was young and radical and a great learning place. We bought an 80 inch wheelbase Landrover which was a bomb and then moved up to a Series IIA long wheelbase so were out of the City most weekends camping.
I finished my Honours in 1973 and successfully applied for a PhD scholarship to the ANU in Canberra.
Here is some film probably shot as we exited the Shoalhaven — a favourite weekend walk and camp. I have the red rucksack and the others are Jan Wagschall and Martin Halliday. It looks like we were practicing our newly learned physical geography. The camera person must have been Sandra.