In early December 1965, I finished five years of servitude as an apprentice fitter and turner at the local brewery. I’m exaggerating I know, although there were times when it felt like I was under a form of feudal bondage, and the documentation that I signed in the presence of my father five years earlier used such dramatic expressions as "...wilful disobedience of lawful commands of the employer, his managers, foremen and other servants having authority” and stressed the need to avoid being “...slothful, negligent, dishonest or in any other way guilty of gross misbehaviour” under penalty of discharge of services; it was, all the same, a great place for a young man to learn an engineering trade and I look back with affectionate memories on that time in my life. The work was hard, the study hours were long and played merry hell with that young man’s social life, but the diversity of the work and the practical experience would ground me in so many ways over the following years.
I wrote about
my first few days at the brewery in an earlier post (The First Job - Cairns 1960). Today I want to round that off and talk about my last year there and
look back on the experience a little more holistically (if that’s possible).
I was not everybody’s
favourite apprentice during that last year. At one point, I was obliquely involved
in an industrial relations dispute, the result being that I was regarded by
some as a young agitator spending too much time hanging around the wrong group
and not enough time getting on with work. In those early nineteen sixties with the
war still a recent memory for anyone over 40, there was a core of fedora
wearing, trade unionists whose appointed task it was to improve underpaid,
unfair and unsafe working conditions. They were by no means all paragons of virtue
and morality; some just liked the power or wanted a fight – but even at that
tender age (or maybe specifically at that age), I was all for a good wage for the
worker.
These were
the days of the True Believer, and it was important to choose sides. There
were many of the population who cherished Queen and Empire and were admirers of
long-time conservative Prime Minister Bob Menzies; and there were others who had
been advocates of former Labor leaders, John Curtin and Ben Chifley and who
continued to support the right of the working man to lay down his tools and
walk off the job (often straight to the pub) for higher pay and safer
conditions.
This is all
of course, an over-simplification. My own father, workshop superintendent at
the local City Council workshops; a man who had served his own apprenticeship
many years earlier as a motor mechanic working in England between the two wars
and later owned his own garage under the shadow of Nottingham Castle, was as he
described himself – “right down the middle”. Throughout his life, I never knew which way
he voted in any election. When I asked him, he would say, “it’s a secret
ballot for a reason, son – no one needs to know.”
Unlike my
father, Bill Stone made no secret of where he stood. He was a returned
serviceman, a senior engine driver and the local organiser for the Federated
Engine Drivers and Fireman’s Association. Bill was always well dressed
in tailored short sleeved shirt, short trousers, tropical style long socks and
was rarely seen without his grey felt narrow-brimmed hat. In contrast
with his fellow engine drivers and boiler attendants, Bill was never seen in a
pair of overalls or a boilersuit. He was an articulate man who along with his
co-workers, maintained an engine room that was spotless and grease-free.
Ammonia compressors used for refrigeration; great horizontal piston
machines with flywheels half as big again as any man; chattering high
speed vertical engines and a great English Electric diesel powered generator -
all of them high gloss cream in colour such that with its green walls and
polished red floors the whole area could have hosted a Wednesday afternoon
meeting of the Queensland Country Women's Association were it
not for the noise of the engines and the occasional fugitive whiff of escaped
ammonia.
Bill
epitomized the no-nonsense, plain-speaking Labor supporter of the 1960s.
He was a loyal, hard-working man whose motivation in life was to want
nothing more than a university education for his children and a fair share of
the fruits of his labours. He went on to become the federal secretary of
his organisation and was later awarded an Order of Australia Medal for his
services to trade unionism. The dispute which took place toward the end of my
final year progressed into a prolonged and at times bitter strike. In
accordance with our Terms of Indenture, apprentices were not permitted to stop
work, but I was conspicuously sympathetic of my comrades, and this did little
for my career enhancement.
The chief
engineer, Michael Kerry (Mick) Hawney was not my greatest fan, although years
later we gained a lot more respect for each other. Mick went on to become
something of an icon in the Australian brewing industry and would play a
significant role in the development of the Yatala Brewery in Southeast
Queensland in the 1980s which later became one of the largest and most
efficient breweries in the country – it still is. Mick helpfully mentioned to
me that it would in my best interest to look elsewhere for employment once my
five years was complete - it was wise advice.
There was
plenty of work for a qualified man in those days and it did not concern me at
all that I might soon be unemployed. Tradesmen earned a respectable
income in those days – at least twenty pounds for a 40-hour week plus overtime
and there was always plenty of overtime.
As things
turned out, I was able to depart gracefully when shortly before my last week as
an apprentice, a family friend who was also an executive at the Cairns Harbour
Board, asked my father whether I might be interested in a seagoing career. It
so happened there was a British ship in port which was short of an engineer and
if I was up for it, there was a job as an engineers’ assistant, with the
potential for promotion to engineer when a position became available.
Was I
interested? You bet I was!
It was to be the
end of five years of travelling the kilometre or so to work from my parent's
home at the northern end of Draper Street. For the first couple of years I made
the journey on my old Malvern Star bicycle, then later a selection of motorcycles
each one slightly bigger than its predecessor, and finally a slightly worse for
wear aging Holden sedan.
Much had
happened during those five years, both personally and in the outside world.
Many happy memories; some very sad ones. Here’s just a few – there were many
more.
·
Gathering
around the open hatch door of the workshop storeroom with several other
workmates listening to the cricket on storeman Lionel’s radio when Richie
Benaud’s Australians and Frank Worrell’s West Indies tied that magnificent Test
Match at the Gabba during the very first week of my apprenticeship in 1960.
·
Selling
tickets to friends and family in the Annual Brewery Social Club Melbourne Cup
sweep and then listening with excitement to that same transistor radio as the
race was run and won. In 1963, I sold
the winning ticket (Gatum Gatum) to a friend, but I have no idea now what the
prize money was – it seemed like a lot at the time.
·
The
death of a former schoolmate and fellow apprentice who was tragically killed in
an accident at work which, even more than fifty years after the event, is
painful to recall. A young 20-year-old life, gone – never to experience
the joys of living and loving, and children, and grandchildren. What a waste.
·
Worrying
whether my birth date would be drawn from the ballot in 1964 meaning conscription
to serve in the Australian Armed Forces during the Vietnam War. I missed out,
others were not so fortunate.
·
Going
on road trips with a team of brewery fitters to one or more of the brewery
owned hotels to carry out construction work – including a memorable visit to
the Mount Garnet Hotel in November 1961 where I had the unpleasant job of
painting the inside of a recently installed corrugated iron water tank with bitumen
cement, which burned my eyes and nose for hours – and later listening and
sharing an underage glass of Cairns Draught as Lord Fury won the Cup.
·
Six
months working in the drawing office under the watchful eye of one of Mick’s
engineers, Eddie Patton, who taught me more about the need for neatness and
accuracy than I ever learned at school. Eddie had an unfortunate speech
impediment and would often seem to finish a sentence on a Monday morning, where
he appeared to have left it the previous Friday, with a short, “…and also
Michael, how are you this morning?” Eddie was a gentle man and a clever engineer,
who later became the Chief Engineer at the Rockhampton Brewery.
·
Fitters,
and boilermakers, and other maintenance and construction workers who looked
after each, told tall tales and made me laugh – and sometimes want to cry.
Howard Chalk (a funny man, without any doubt the most artistic craftsman ever
to don a welding mask); Frank Tanswell (fitter and part-time crocodile hunter);
John Scheinpflug; Gordon Dilger (no one could strip down, repair and reassemble
an engine and not spill a single drop of oil, or get the slightest particle of
swarf or dirt on himself or his immaculate working clothes quite like Gordon),
Ted Dowker; Alan McKenzie; Ken Northey; Noel Cook (a source of jokes and parody
songs, that I continue to force upon my exhausted family today); Bobby Ward (always
with a smile on a face that said, “I’ve been slapped about a bit”), John
Ranford, Jim Read, Brian Fitzsimmons (who played hooker for the Australian
Rugby League team in 1967 during the time when good scrimmaging was an art form). Most, if not all of them are gone now; but so
much of what I learned and took into later life and experience came from
working alongside these men.
·
I
must not forget Paddy O’Brien, whose tales about “the small ships” that he
served on during the war, were legends around the shop floor – if only 10% of them
were true…
·
Gordon
Williams, the workshop foreman and godfather figure to all the apprentices.
Gordon had also served on small ships, but his only comment about his war
service was that he spent most of it seasick. If anyone taught me how to hold a
bastard file properly or not get carborundum in my eyes while using a grinder,
or how to stand over a fast-rotating lathe or a pulsing shaper without losing a
finger, it was Gordon Williams – we all loved that man.
This was my five
years of servitude – I may not have always loved it at the time, but with
hindsight, I had no idea how good it was.
Thus it was
that on the 5th of December 1965, exactly five years to the day that I had
started as a fresh-faced schoolboy, I punched my Bundy Card for the last time
and walked out of Northern Australian Breweries as a qualified mechanical
fitter and turner, ready for the next stage of my life.
This was the
chance I had been waiting for, and within a few days I had signed on as a crew
member on the MV Baron Jedburgh. I was its most junior of
junior assistants. My official title was donkey-greaser, and my job was to
assist the ship’s engineers as offsider and general factotum.
Stay tuned
for A Ship of My Own.
