Number 41

INTRODUCTION

On an overcast and cold May afternoon in 1954 a slender young girl with long black hair and wide brown eyes rode her bicycle along the broken edge of the busy Princes Highway in Western Victoria. Swinging on the back of her seat was an empty billycan. The 15 year old was on her twice-weekly, two-mile, round trip to collect milk from the local dairy. The task had fallen upon Lenore’s narrow shoulders as her three older sisters had since left home; Peggy was now 29 years old, Janet 27, and Margot 24. For most of her life, Lenore had felt like an only child.

Speeding cars passed perilously close to her squeaky old bike, and trucks nearly ran her off the road, but it was the lumbering buses she feared the most. The thundering engine noise signalled their approach from afar, but she dared not look around and run the risk of swerving into their path. As they sped by, the air around her transformed into a swirling vortex that seemed to blow from every direction and it took all her focus to remain on two wheels for the one second that seemed more like ten. Lenore Barclay hunched her shoulders and gripped the handlebars so tightly her knuckles nearly popped but there was nowhere to hide and all she could hope for was that the bus driver had seen her, and that he was a good judge of distance.

It was always a relief to turn off the highway, coast down the dirt track to the dairy and start breathing again.

On this particular day, parked outside the cow shed was a 1928 red and black Essex utility that she had never seen there before. The owner of the dusty old car was Raymond Taylor who was visiting his mate, Rex, the dairy hand.

Ray was a handsome 19-year-old horsebreaker and herd-tester who had dropped out of a Melbourne private school education to follow a rural career. Dressed in brown trousers, white shirt, and a green tie, he was on his way to town for a rare night out, but this moment was about to change the rest of his life.

Lenore was a shy girl, two months short of her 16th birthday and a complete novice in the art of romance. But she knew love at first sight when she felt it and pedalled home with a glow in her cheeks and a flutter in her heart.

Ray and Lenore never spoke a word on that first meeting in the cow shed, but after she left with her billycan full of fresh milk Ray turned to Rex and said, ‘I’m going to marry her one day’. Four years later, being a man of his word, he did. They would remain together, and in love, for more than 65 years.

Once married, in July 1958, they didn’t muck around. Or more likely, they did. Ten months after the wedding my sister, Deborah Jane, was born in the small town of Heywood, Victoria (population 900). Seventeen months later, in the early hours of an October morning in 1960, I entered the world at the same hospital and immediately said to myself the three words that every newborn screams out when they open their squinty little eyes and look around for the first time; ‘What the hell?’ And then I cried. Whether from disappointment, surprise or shock, the tears did not last long as I steadied myself and began the first day of a lifelong unpredictable adventure.

It would take a mere 16 years for my diversified vocational journey to begin, and my parents can incur no responsibility or blame for what became a patchwork quilt of careers. They both set a fine example of work ethic and stability – Mum as a schoolteacher and Dad with a trucking company – and they also instilled in me healthy levels of confidence, and self-assurance that enabled me to follow my unconventional path. Not once, in 40 years, did they ever question my work choices (okay, maybe once), show any disappointment at the job I was doing in whatever faraway place I was doing it, or suggest a possibly more sensible direction to take. They always encouraged me in all my endeavours although possibly hoping, deep down, that the latest job would be the last job and that maybe I would settle down, enjoy my current work, and be satisfied for once. Without their love and support, I would have led a far less interesting life.

As for my own children, who are children no longer, it is still too early to tell which courses they intend taking. They may choose to ignore the type of long-term career path that tends to herd workers together as a mindless flock, but can lead to financial rewards, and decide to embrace the randomness and uncertainty of a varied working life. My advice may not be the best to take. When young, they were invariably asked by someone, ‘What does your dad do for a living?’ After hesitating and looking at each other, one of them would simply yell out, ‘Hey, Mum, what’s Dad’s job at the moment?’ Most of the time, she would know.

I deliberately chose a random path of employment as a 16 year old because I could not decide what to do with my life or see how it was possible to make such a choice at a young age. Blessed are they who can. I reasoned that trying a few different jobs for say, 40 years or so, would help me in making an educated and well-researched decision. Okay, maybe 40 years was not part of the plan, but here’s the thing – it worked. And, in a decades-long search for the perfect job in the perfect place, life has never been boring. I have been broke, homeless, lost and apprehensive – but never bored for long.

From being a soldier to a stable hand to a ship’s captain, my life has been like driving through an unfamiliar city, taking streets at random to see where they lead and then living there for a while to see what happens.

At times, I have worked two jobs at the same time, or a similar job for different people or a different job for the same people. I became the master of bluff, an artist of resumes and I reinvented the meaning of the word reinvention. I became so good at job applications and interviews that I could teach those skills to others – and I actually did for a while (number 20). At one stage I had four pending job applications: in media sales, in environmental rehabilitation, as a coal technician and as a marine officer. (Environmental rehab won the day - number 33). In 40 years I have never been on the dole, although at one very low point, as a desperate 51 year old, I did stand in the unemployment benefits queue before pride took over and I walked out – never to darken that doorway again.

If a person’s occupation defines them in the eyes of other people then I have confused many for a long time. A job no more characterises a person, however, than do the shoes they wear or the food they eat. The label we all carry as a particular type of worker can be a long way from indicating who we are as individuals, and yet so many people do judge others by their employment. There are some bad people who are lawyers and some exceptional people who are cleaners – and vice versa.

The only constant in my life has been change because I fear boredom, routine, monotony and the eternal damnation of being stuck in a rut. The words long-term, career path and planning for the future have always left an unpleasant taste in my mouth which is why I have rarely spoken them. Until now. After 40 years, the second most important day in my life finally arrived – and it provided job number 41.

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Ray and Lenore on their wedding day

NUMBER ONE

I believe that school was a great concept when first invented and the entire educational focus was on reading, writing and arithmetic. All you needed to do was nail those three subjects and the world was your oyster. Whatever that meant.

They were still the core subjects when I started my schooling in 1966 in Mount Gambier, a South Australian town famous for its 246-feet- (75-metre-) deep Blue Lake and not much else. Mum was a Grade 7 schoolteacher, and Dad drove a truck on interstate runs for a local company called Kain and Shelton (K&S).

He carried loads of wool, timber or dry goods to Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney and even as far away as Brisbane on highways that today would qualify as back roads, in a truck that required skill and a physical dexterity which gave him the build and endurance of a dingo. Dad had once owned his own truck. One Friday he had taken that truck with a full semi-trailer load of wool bales to Melbourne but arrived too late for it to be unloaded. Rather than wait all weekend, he offloaded every bale onto a dock by himself, then returned to Mount Gambier to collect another load, which wasn’t wool. He drove that to Melbourne, delivered it and then reloaded the wool bales by hand in time for Monday morning.

Given the nature of his work, Dad was regularly away from home for long periods of time – so often that I only seemed to see him occasionally during the first nine years of my life, but I don’t believe his absence unduly affected my early childhood. He enjoyed the open road and a part-time role as a father because he had no idea how to be one – having received scant help from his own father’s example of paternal behaviour. He did what he had to do and provided for his family while Mum raised their children almost single-handedly. She did it while working full-time, and with an enormous amount of love and care.

When I was in Grade 4, Dad was given a promotion to manager of the K&S Adelaide depot. He had become a senior driver and was one of the first to be part of the new technology of refrigerated trucks, but his boss was concerned that one day he would join the growing list of driver fatalities. The change meant no more long-distance driving for him, and being home every night. Dad thought long and hard about the offer. As far as Mum was concerned, there was no question and, for once, she put her foot down – possibly even stamping it.

Starting at a new school as an eight year old did not bother me too much. I was able to make friends easily and it was exciting living in what I viewed at the time as a big city. Mum and Dad first rented, then later bought (for $35,000), a modern three-bedroom brick house in the wonderfully named suburb of Panorama. The short street dead-ended at the side fence of the Hi-Line Drive-in Theatre which had been there since 1957. In later years we would joke about sitting in our loungeroom watching the drive-in screen, but I don’t think that was ever the case.

I do remember sitting in the branches of the big old tree at the end of our street on many a Friday or Saturday night and watching the movies for free. We couldn’t hear them but that was probably a good thing when adult classics such as the R-rated film ‘Clockwork Orange’ were screening. At the time there were 15 drive-in theatres scattered around Adelaide’s suburbs. When I had a driver’s licence I visited most of them and tried to coax my female passenger into the backseat where we could stretch our legs out and be far more comfortable.

The Hi-Line Drive in would close in 1987, but during the 1970s it was one of many that were unofficially responsible for sex education classes, unwanted pregnancies and all manner of sexually-transmitted diseases – all delivered with one foot in the glovebox behind fogged-up windows.

Our house was very modern compared to the one where I had spent my early childhood, but best of all we had a creek running beside it and a huge nature reserve behind it. Acres of sparse bush reached almost to the low foothills which were topped by a peak known as Windy Point. Accessible by road, the lookout offered expansive views of the urban chessboard that was Adelaide. At night, it became the go-to place for cars containing curious and fumbling teenagers who were enjoying themselves in the rite of passage known as parking.

Deb and I spent the weekends riding our bikes, climbing trees and occasionally making the trek up to Windy Point until we were dragged inside by Mum because it was dark and our cuts and bruises needed some Dettol and a Band-Aid. Every kid had a bike and spending time inside on a weekend was unheard of unless there was a thunderstorm. Television was only a habit on Sunday nights at 6.30 when Disneyland was on and we hoped for Fantasyland with cartoons and not Adventureland with its boring stories about polar bears or monkeys.

We had a good-sized backyard which was a handy thing because Deb and Dad took up the hobby of pigeon racing. The pigeon coop was built, birds were bought and trained, and for a couple of years it was a wonderful father and daughter activity. Twenty years later, the truth would emerge. Through some inter-generational miscommunication, it turned out that Deb had only got involved because she thought Dad was keen, and Dad only took it on because he thought his daughter was interested. The truth was that neither of them liked the bloody pigeons and both were totally bored sitting around watching the sky for some bird to hopefully fly home from Woop Woop on a Sunday afternoon. Any similar misunderstandings were from then on forever known in our family as ‘pigeon jobs’.

One of the best things that Mum and Dad did when we were growing up in Adelaide was to get us involved in sailing. Before that, there hadn’t been many father and son activities apart from kicking the footy around on a Saturday afternoon. Dad was a great guy but always struggled to hammer a nail, drill a hole or cut a straight piece of wood. Come to think of it I can’t recall seeing him ever do any of those things. My childhood, although a happy one, was never filled with calls from Dad such as, ‘Come on down to the shed, son, and we’ll build a new kitchen for your mother before we recondition that old Ford V8 motor.’ Dad did not have or need power-tool skills so did not pass them on to his only son, which possibly led to me sustaining a couple of serious injuries later in life.

Our first boat was a timber 12-footer called a Gwen 12. Nobody in the family had the remotest clue how to rig it, or steer it, but with the help of a ‘How to Sail’ book we muddled along. We eventually progressed to a Hobie 14 catamaran and then a Hobie 16 – spending every summer weekend sailing off the beach at Brighton. We named each boat No Worries, which pretty much sums up my childhood.

By the time I started high school in 1973, the standard three educational subjects had expanded. I was now being taught things like Russian history, how to dissect a sheep’s eyeball, how to make a wooden pencil case, and how to replace any number with an x or a y. None of these things seemed particularly relevant to my life at the time, or necessary to prepare me for employment. In the many years since, I have never had the need to dissect an eyeball or replace a number with a letter, and who the hell needs a wooden pencil case? What should have been taught at high school were subjects such as finance, politics, how to make an edible lasagna, and how to service your car, with a compulsory class on ‘How do females think?’.

At the beginning of Year 8, all the 13-year-old students were asked to write down what job they would like to do for the rest of their lives. I submitted racing car driver or actor, and for the next four years I was never encouraged to change my mind. As I was to discover, these two occupations had limited opportunities and were somewhat difficult to crack, but I had no idea about a possible career and either option sounded like a bit of fun.

There was minimal vocational guidance at school in the 1970s apart from a trip to the Commonwealth Employment Service (CES) office in the city during Year 11, presumably so we knew where to go when we left school and joined the ranks of the unemployed. Apart from that I enjoyed high school, mainly because half the students were female, and I only got the cane once, although the deputy principal, Mr. Schultz, was a towering German with an excellent golf swing which he happily demonstrated while giving me three of his best. After 11 years of education I had no discernible skills, no outstanding talents and, basically, no idea. My favourite subject was English, and I was happy to see dear old Mrs. Mulcahy’s Year 11 report in that subject which gave me a B+ and read: ‘Mike is a friendly student who participates well and shows considerable ability in expressive work.’ But where could that take me? I spent a lot of time sailing and, later on, boxing, but I was never good enough at either of them to make a living. And, as it turned out, I couldn’t drive a car effectively fast or act very well, and the only useful thing I could do with my hands was clap.

In 1977, the common choices for male school leavers were university or an apprenticeship and I had neither the ability nor the motivation for either. I was simply an average student who had no idea what he wanted to do for a living. All the options seemed to be round holes and I was an octagonal peg. My science teacher in Year 11, the statuesque and stern Mrs. Fox, summed things up with her comment in my final school report: ‘Not working to the best of his ability. Michael has a relaxed and talkative approach.’

But, in my defence, this was the 1970s. A poster of the 1920s poem ‘Desiderata’ hung on my bedroom wall (alongside Raquel Welch in a fur bikini), but going placidly among the noise and haste and remembering what peace there may be in silence was not part of my plan. Choosing a career took a backseat, as would many of the girls from my neighbourhood while on drive-in dates in my mum’s two-door Torana.

I had a party at home for my 16th birthday, and two things from that night remain in my memory. I put an exploding cracker inside the sponge birthday cake that Mum had