The Story of My Life!

Part 3

This is a continuation on from Page 2 in the series...

Australia

Many migrants from the United Kingdom have been disappointed at things being very different from how they were 'back home', and often this was because of completely inaccurate information given them by interviewing officials in the High Commission in London (known as Australia House). I had the advantage of working with an Australian while I was at the range, and this proved helpful in my assimilation into a completely different culture because I was made aware of many differences beforehand. Perhaps 'assimilation' is not entirely the right word because there are still some areas of my outlook where I am a Pommie 'square peg' in an Ozzie 'round hole'! I eventually obtained Australian citizenship in 1988, it being denied for many years to anyone who was a British subject by birth because of the Australian linking witht he U.K. many years before.

In Australia in the 1990s, the term 'assimilation' has been perverted from its true meaning to reflect the views of activists from one specific section of the community, who present the meaning of the word in a very narrow way. It is my view that all immigrants to a country are expected to become assimilated into that culture, it not being a word reserved solely for those people taken from their parents and culture and then offered a different lifestyle and education. However that is a politically charged topic

My sister, nine years older than me, could be regarded as part of a 'stolen generation' if she wished (because she was also seperated from her parents), but she chooses not to. Indeed, I spent much of my childhood away from my parents as well, and my father spent all of his - so we discovered - from the age of about eight, not just during school terms but school holidays also. There are many possible 'stolen generations', but most of them get on with life.

Starting out from my arrival in Adelaide, capital of South Australia, at a time when there was plenty of work, I immediately encountered the problem all migrants face. From being a 30-year old technical supervisor with 'status' in the 'old country', I had to start again from the bottom of the tree, as a technician's assistant, a tool-bag carrier if you will, and this is probably what has distressed more than a few skilled migrants coming to Australia. After all, a person 'with a trade' is justly proud of his acceptance among his peers, his ability to do a reasonable if not an excellent job when asked, and at a later time in life not to have to go back to the books and start theory all over again. It is also an exercise in humility, a word that many of us don't know very well, and that certainly included me!

My first job was with the Long Line and Country Installation Division of the telephone administration, known at that time as the PostMaster General's Department (of the Commonwealth - federal - government), referred to as 'Paddy McGinty's Goat' by many. I enjoyed what I did. I obtained a driver's licence, and within a week was driving American sized cars to a number of spots within a hundred mile radius of Adelaide, South Australia's State Capital. I even drove 5 ton trucks loaded with telephone exchange equipment to near country locations, and qualified as a driver by producing a United Kingdom licence and answering a country policeman's questions during a trip to Tailem Bend on the River Murray..

Television Broadcasting

A couple of months later, I was transferred to the operations staff of the studios, and worked there for a couple of years, before moving into a commercial station first in Adelaide, then one in rural Western Australia (Bunbury, 120 miles south of Perth) and finally to Perth itself, this time in a sound broadcasting station. The map to the left shows the coastline south from Perth to Bunbury and Busselton, and its hinterland.

Western Australia is by far the largest state of Australia in terms of area, though its population is concentrated in the metropolitan area of Perth, its capital, which was founded in 1829.

A few months after going to work for the A.B.C. in 1965, I became converted to the theological thinking of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints - known as Mormons - and studied long hours with them, as did my former wife. When I accepted the employment opportunity at Bunbury we did so, believing that there was a church of that denomination there. There was not; it had closed some months before when the remaining elder there had moved with his job to the Latter-Day Saint church's college just outside Hamilton in New Zealand. We were not to know this until we arrived in Western Australia, and were not to meet the elder and his family for several more years when we visited the New Zealand temple for the first of two visits. Consequently almost all of my spare time was taken up with pastoral work amongst those who had been left behind without any oversight.

My church association stayed with that denomination (although they do not regard themselves as a denomination) on my removal to Perth where we rented homes in three areas, Como, Wattle Grove, and South Perth. I moved in my work first to a commercial 'steam' radio broadcasting station, then to X-Ray equipment maintenance and development work in the Sir Charles Gardner Hospital just west of Kings' Park, where under the eye of the departmental Director I used what limited technology was available at that time to attempt to improve on an imaging system produced by the Dutch Philips electronic company.

Changes of Vocation and Avocation

The work in Perth included the last little bit of design work on the Standard Gauge Railway Project for both the Signals and Telecommuncations Engineer and for contractor GEC who supplied some auxiliary power equipment.

The rest of the time was in the office of the Commonwealth Department of Works where I was involved in services design of several floors of the Perth multi-story building called the Commonwealth Centre on Hay Street, near Victoria Square, and a number of regional building services upgrades including post offices (Broome and Albany) and telephone exchanges.

While in the West I was privileged to be afforded the opportunity to photograph lineside the arrival at Perth Terminal of the inaugural across-Australia passenger train, named the Indian Pacific on the start of its journey from Sydney four days before, on a late summer morning in 1970.

My genuine thanks go to Jack Morris who headed up the Public Relations Department of what was then the Western Australian Government Railways. Jack and I had spent many hours talking during my lunch break in his small office above the Wellington Street branch of the Bank of New South Wales

Indeed Jack and his staff were very helpful with the never-ending questions from this "Wise Man from the East", and provided him with a large amount of material which I took back east later that year, some of which went missing in 1977 due those who made the decisions about what was mine when my marriage broke up while I was away working in country South Australia.

From Perth I moved east, spending a very interesting three years in the electrical design office of the Broken Hill Proprietary Limited's steeelworks and shipyard at Whyalla.

View map

Some of the responsible work I was given included the design of a transport communications control suite for the steelworks are, the relighting of the huge Boiler Shop at the steel works using completely new technology, upgrading of residential accomodation and workshops area at the Iron Baron townsite including major changes to the main power reticulation system, part of the electrical design for the ill-fated Ship 51 - M.S. Amanda Miller - and a number of minor upgrade projects in the Auto Diesel and Diesel Loco shops, and the Rolling Mill and Finished End of the Steel Mill.

I returned briefly to hands-on technical work between 1973 and 1975 at another Adelaide television station, followed by designing and commissioning extensive leisure activity electronics installations for undergraduates of the University of Adelaide, after which I returned to electronics design producing printed circuit board trackwork and component layouts for a military aviation project.

Between 1977 and 1980 I worked in the town of Woomera - in the past a military proof range - way out in the desert area in the far north west of South Australia way out beyound Whyalla and Port Augusta (view map) where I was one of a number of alien civilians hired to the United States Air Force. This was another fascinating time, working on a huge steerable antenna and satellite up- and down-links. Actually I probably learned more about heat exchangers and refrigerated cooling systems than the electronics.

In 1980 I returned to Adelaide, and worked for several labour hire companies who used my expertise with a range of clients. During one of these, between being interviewed for the position and starting work, I suddenly experienced vertigo. This put an end to clambering around on steel construction structures, which was a pity, as much of the available work was in this field.

Work here took me into several unusual projects - the re-instrumenting of ICI's five existing Lime Kilns and the provision of new instrumentation for an added sixth kiln - the follow-up on the exisiting design of a new power station by writing operators' handbooks for its coal unloading plant - and details within the design of a microprocessor controller microfiche reader for the visually handicapped.

This is continued further down the page...

During the 1970s I followed a dormant interest kindled as a child in the training of dogs (having visited a number of sheep-dog trials), and also the science of breeding them. Until this section is written up, please take this link to check out some stuff I have written about a couple.

In 1970 I was asked by the church I was attending (in Whyalla) to run its young mens' (12yo -18yo) programme which was based upon scouting, something with which I had never previously had contact. I had been in the Army Cadets when I was at boarding school in the UK, but as my scouting expertise was zero, I approached the local scouting people and offered my services on the basis that I would not use the organisation for my church's ends but was interested in pursuing (for a number of years anyway) an association with them. Having a sailing background, I wsa coerced by them into joining the Sea Scout Group, and so an association with blue uniformed scouts started. I still have my blue uniform with white belt, although I sunsequently was involved in the management of "regular" scouting activities.

While living in Perth in 1969-70 I lived in the foothills below the Darling Range for a period and it was while there I discovered that typically Australian organisation, the Bush Fire Brigade, becoming a member of the Maddington-Orange Grove unit for about a year, an association which started as a result of a fire sweeping through the paddock opposite my house at 2 o'clock one early morning. This was to prove quite useful in the prevention of fires spreading through scouting activities!

I enrolled for a number of Scouting adult leader training courses, and can remember calculating that I had travelled nearly one thousand five hundred miles between Whyalla and Adelaide before I had completed all the various aspects of leader training, and receiving my treasured 'Wood Badge' beads, and membership of the 1st Gilwell Park Scout Group in north-east London.

That in itself is a bit of a mockery now, because the international scouter training centre has been sold by the cash-strapped UK Scout Association along with everything else donated to them specifically for the purpose of providing facilities for kids unable to participate in any other way. That's a long story, and I refer you to the page on my main site about 'Traditional Scouting' if you are interested.

I joined the back-to-basics scouting organisation known as Baden-Powell's Scouts in about 1985, and ceased active participation with them shortly after my marriage in 1988. The reason for ceasing will become apparent later on when I discuss my wife's deteriorating health.

1980 saw my return to Adelaide and a resumption of electrical and electronic draughting and design work, eventually becoming proficient in 1986 with a very early version of AutoCAD - at the time about the only PC-based Computer Aided Design software worth considering, although that is no longer the case.

This expertise took me to Ballaarat in Victoria, performing plant control design work on a confectionary production line, and to Millicent (map here) in the South East of South Australia at a paper mill, both during 1988, and then back into the defence industry after further design work on the control systems of several fertiliser manufacturing plants for Victoria and South Australia through Christmas 1988/New Year 1989.

Ballaarat has a deserved reputation for being Australia's most consistently coldest spot. This place in the highlands north and west of Melbourne, and also Claremont in Tasmania, are reputedly the only two locations in this vast continent where the climatic conditions are suitable for the manufacture of chocolate. Cadburys established a plant in Tasmania, and the Mars family (two brothers and a sister) built theirs at Ballaarat (check map) . My work was associated with the design of three new lines to manufacture M&M confectionery, replacing an initial small experimental line.

Six months' work in the automotive industry followed, working on the electrical harness design for the Mitsubishi Magna model TR. Some of the work was on an IBM computer system's CAD terminal running the French application Catia (developed by Marcel Dassault Aviation). This took me through to early 1990, which was followed by further defence work at Adelaide's Technology Park.

An offer of work in Sweden for the last six months of 1990 made it possible to visit the Holy Land for three weeks while en route to take up this position, and then about a year after returning to Australia I was invited to submit written articles on a regular basis for what became the better of Australia's two monthlies devoted to Computer Aided Design and Drafting - or CAD for short. As a result I am privileged to be able to count the editorial staff of Multi-CAD Magazine as personal friends, a friendship which has really developed over the years.

The work in Sweden exposed me to the Unix operating system, on a very slow node of 25 workstations on a VAX, mine running the English CAD program known as Medusa (developed by Cambridge Interactive Systems). An intensive training course by the Australian Medusa distributor Prime - but using a different interface from that used in Malmö - was followed by a short refresher at the Swedish factory prior to starting work there.

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

My wife's condition was (and still is) extremely severe, and is manifested in a minute amount of energy being available for any and all tasks, and a very slow 'recharge' rate - it not being at all possible to 'overdraw' the account. This enforces extended periods of total bed rest in order to be able to perform as simple a task like visiting her doctor (and the inevitable wait). Pain and energy management is the ONLY treatment that is available to ANY sufferer ANYWHERE in the world, despite claims in and by the media for cures. All have been shown to be short-lived improvements, or that the sufferer actually had some other problem that had been mis-diagnosed.

This photograph shows my lovely wife and me, and was taken in about 1996 at a formal evening to celebrate the birthday of her sister's husband. While she greatly enjoyed the occasion, it was only made possible by prior preparation of total bedrest, and then was followed by many weeks of recuperation under painkilling medication.

I mention this in case you encounter someone who suffers from this complaint and it appears to you that they are not as ill as you suppose. Unless you care for a person with ME (CFS), I assure you that you will be totally unaware of what the person has gone through in order to be seen briefly by others, and usually members of the family are the least appreciative of the magnitude of the problem - a fact brought home to me through having been Secretary of the South Australian Support Group for a bit over three years between 1989 and 1993.

Take a look at the South Australian Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Society's webpage, or visit their chat site on undernet at #cfs if you would like to know more.

It should be pointed out that my wife is just one of thousands in this country, and there are many more in other parts of the world too; not only is this condition not unique, but more are being added daily, and there appears little willingness on the part of bureaucrats and politicians anywhere in the world to get involved in meaningful research to fix a problem which in my opinion is tending towards epidemic proportions, well hidden by those who manipulate the statistics.

Retirement

Please take this link to go to the next part of my story.

To Be Continued....