At some time I moved to Perth and began working for Millers Timber and Trading as an apprentice joiner but was soon migrated to the office (perhaps incompetent with sharp tools) and cycled about the city delivering things. I was boarding at the Legacy Hostel in South Perth which was rather restricting so moved out and boarded at Como. Then there was some trouble with the police and I got shipped back to Brookton, and then north to Exmouth Gulf and a station called Yardie Creek. I see it’s now a tourist attraction but when I lived there it was fundamentally a shithole. The manager, wife, son and ‘fiancée’ ate in the dining room; we ate in the kitchen. It was hot, hard work but I liked my horse, ‘Poitrel’. He was slow, grey and careful so I never fell off. We had to bring in the sheep for shearing so travelled long distances, camped out and had fun with an increasing flock of woolies.
I then moved back to Brookton and having been on a sheep station, carried some kudos and had no problem getting work in shearing sheds or on farms. Agricultural work was considered worthwhile – five days on the farm; the weekend home at the Bedford. Once I got my driver’s licence Bill gave me access to the 1939 Pontiac.
This meant I could dance all about the local area – balls in York or Beverley, punt down to Pingelly for a beer – it was a fine car and very fast – 140km per hour was no problem for that motor. One could drive quite drunk then – I recall (possibly apocryphal) a party setting off for Pingelly but as the driver could only find the reverse gear, he reversed the 19 kilometres (very little traffic then).
Bill would send me to Perth regularly to fill the car with alcohol – at that time the WAGR had a monopoly on country freight and truck transport was taxed – so he could put a little extra margin on the Scotch, gin and sherry. Petrol was 3/6 a gallon.
I would head north with Synnot and Dunbar for the shearing season as a shedhand and return to Brookton for the harvesting. We went to Noonkanbah several times and I recall meeting the local elders and going to corroborees. And then I went to New Zealand for a season in the sheds and to Invercargill in the meat works as a pelt grader. And then throwing off the agricultural activity, I moved to Sydney.
I had my 21st in Sydney. Betty had a fling with Milton Lanham of Lanham’s Laundries – they met on a cruise – and we gathered at some restaurant in Sussex Street with Rachael Lieberman and ate eastern European. Rachael was the first in the family to get a degree – economics. She was uber-intelligent and worked on the Australian Financial Review.
I went back to NZ for another season and then returned to Sydney on the Orcades (4 days of utter boredom). My first job was with a freight forwarder at the Redfern goods yards – long demolished. I logged in consignments, someone else loaded them, and I confirmed they were on the wagon. I initially lived in Elizabeth Bay with one of Betty’s old acquaintances but moved out to Bexley North and boarded.
Jobs were plentiful so I moved to Wella Hair Cosmetics as a store man and soon graduated to a van sales person. This meant I had a VW van and getting into surfing, I had access to excellent beaches during work hours and on weekends. However, I was never more than a mediocre surfer – I never have had good balance – but I did enjoy the fraternity.
At some stage (I can’t recall the year), I hitched north and ended up as a builder’s labourer on Green Island, off Cairns. An idyllic life – a hut to live in, a reef to dive on, a hotel for tourist entertainment, food from Cairns weekly – this lasted a year until I went south to Crescent Head in New South Wales.