Francis Rutherford Pullar was born in December 1915. Lesley Anne Harrison was born March 1924.
They were married in Scotch College chapel in June 1946 in Melbourne, Australia.
They then lived in their home at 16 Isabella Street, Shepparton.
Shepparton was about 190 kilometres away from where most of Lesley’s family and friends lived.
Frank came from Ardmona, where he still worked on his father’s orchard about 12 kilometers from Shepparton.
I was born at Mooroopna base hospital in March 1948
It was a forceps delivery. I was Lesley’s first child
Lesley believed that a good mother keeps a schedule, allowing the baby to cry until he is attended to rather than attending to the baby when he cries.
Julie, Lesley’s mother considered that Lesley would not heed any advice that she gave. So Julie told Leslie about how a particular child had some permanent mental damage from excessively being left alone in his cot.
I clearly recall the feel of the round vertical wooden bars and the edges of the rectangular horizontal top rails of the cot, as I stood up, looking at the closed door or at my soft toy on the floor.
I cried and I cried. Mommy did not come.
My shaking the cot made an interesting sound as it bumped against the wall. It eventually made a hole in the plaster wall board and I always wondered about the fate of the things that I put through that hole into the wall cavity.
I recall a time when there were one or more women visiting. I stuck a hatpin into a woman’s upper leg. Everybody seemed to get upset.
Some other times I sat on the floor near the table in the lounge and played with a toy hammer, hammering the coloured wooden cylindrical blocks into the toy so they would come out the other end of the wooden toy.
One day on the lawn in the front yard I was playing with blackie, our dog and he bit my face. I was shocked. I certainly didn’t expect that to happen.
At the kindergarten one of the activities was using a paintbrush to paint the cement wall with water. I noticed that the wet area of concrete was darker than the dry area however it went back to the original shade after it dried out.
I used to walk across the street and across the paddock to get to the Shepparton East primary school.
When the bell rang we all lined up in our class line in the assembly area. After assembly we walked into our classroom in an orderly fashion.
During class one day I wanted to go to the toilet. I put my hand up and the teacher asked me what I wanted. I said I want to fire. That is what I had learned to say at home when I needed to excuse myself to go to urinate in the toilet. The teacher explained that we do not have heating in the classroom and I felt embarrassed at the end of the lesson walking out with my pants wet.
At lunchtime I had sandwiches which were wrapped in grease proof paper in my square plastic lunchbox. I liked the look of the interesting lunches that the other children had in their lunch boxes.
The external walls of the school buildings had a grey chalky paint. Rubbing my finger on a wall panel left a grey residue on my finger.
One day out teacher took our class to the picture theater. We walked there and entered by the going up the steps outside the building and into the theater.
I learned how to ride a bicycle on the footpath, on my own outside where we lived. I started by holding onto the front fence while I was on the bicycle and pushing the pedal and letting go of the fence as I started moving.
Once I visited the next door neighbour’s home. In the kitchen they had the same type of large white octagonal speaker baffle as was installed in each classroom at school. For the few minutes that I was there I enjoyed the happy song that I heard playing from the loudspeaker.
One day we had some guests and I was sent to the milk bar to buy some butter. I also bought some lollies and happily told mum what I had bought for us to enjoy. I remember being severely reprimanded for having used some of the money for buying the lollies.
In about 1953 we moved into a new house on the orchard in Ardmona. It was a prefabricated weatherboard house on a large block of land with no trees.
Janet, Kay and I slept in the sleepout, a room with louvre windows the full length of the two external walls.
There was a cot which with flywire screens on each side, and on both sides of the top.
I remember often being in what I called “in a row with mum”. I had done something wrong and Lesley would say a lot of things to me. Sometimes she would send me to the bathroom to look at myself in the bathroom mirror. I would go in there, stand on the bathroom stool and look at my face but I had no idea what I had to do to change the situation. I felt powerless to end the row. It just ended when it ended and it seemed to take a long time to end.
Other times it was Kay’s turn to be in a row, which was little better than me being in the hot seat.
Kay and I went to Ardmona State school. We were usually driven there with other school students in our grandfather’s green Ford Pilot sedan. One of the employees on the orchard drove the car. There often was no spare room in the back seat.
I remember the thick drawing pencils that we used. One day I was physically lifted from my seat in Mrs Muir’s “bubs” class and placed in Mr Keen’s class. I was in that class for the remainder of the year.
There were peppercorn trees in the school yard and we sat on the benches around the tree to eat our lunch, except in wet weather when we ate in the shelter sheds.
Our class went to the monument at the front of the school with our pencil and paper for an art class. We had to draw the monument.
I drew a plan view and the teacher reprimanded me for that.
The leaves of the peppercorn tree had leaves with sticky sap.
One day I saw an older student carrying an oilcan. He was squirting oil on the ground as he walked along. I wanted to tell one of the teachers.
At home, Lesley taught me the multiplication tables in the kitchen. I remember it seemed to be a lot of times that I practised each of the twelve tables from one to 12.
I hated doing my homework on my own at the desk in the lounge while the other children were playing outside. I got through my homework very slowly and resented missing out on all the fun my siblings and friends were having outside.
I enjoyed playing with toys or reading books. I loved getting a new book so I could enjoy reading something different from all the other books that I had read many times.
There was the clockwork train set, rubber Minibrix, blocks, and other toys what we had to put back tidily in the cupboard after playing with them. I sometimes enjoyed chewing on one of the very solid red rubber minibrix.
The train set took some time to set up and the amount of time that I spent playing with it seemed very short. I had to put the engine, carriages, rails and clips in the correct compartments in the train set box and put the set back tidily in the cupboard before the end of playtime. After putting the toys away, Lesley would come to inspect the cupboards to ensure that everything was put away properly.
I loved playing with Meccano, especially constructing mechanisms with wheels, pulleys and gears. I even got a clockwork motor to drive the things that I made.
We also had plenty of outdoor toys, a tricycle, a scooter, bicycles, a toy pedal car and a trolley. These were kept in the pump shed. There was a see-saw, slide and jungle gym in the front yard.
In 1956 I remember visiting Melbourne with some other people to see one of the events at the Olympic games in Melbourne. I bought a few souvenirs. I also remember the few days before and after that, in the kitchen listening to reports on the radio about what was happening at the Olympic games. There was much excitement when any Australian athlete received a medal.
We had some Shetland ponies, kept in the back paddock. I was taught to put the bridle on the pony and saddle the pony. And Lesley also taught me how to ride. Some of those riding lessons seemed to go on for a long time and I was so glad when Lesley said I could get off and unsaddle the pony. I did like the ponies though grooming them was sometimes a real chore.
We also had to take care of the leather bridles, saddles and other leather work, rubbing saddle soap, leather conditioner or oils into every strap and every surface of each item. I felt satisfied with the improved suppleness and appearance of each item that I worked on. I especially the brand new saddles and bridles as the leather darkened and became more flexible with my working on them.
There was often a lot of dust in the paddocks and we often used the Hoover vacuum cleaner to help remove some of the dust from the ponies’ coats. Grooming was much easier after vacuuming.
We used to take several ponies to the Melbourne Show. We lived at the top one of the feed lockers in one of the rows of horse stalls during the show.
Some of the ponies tended to shy at various things around the showground, so I would lead them, one at a time, around the area to confront each of the things that they tended to shy at.
We also had to wash the ponies, and I would, usually on my own, wash one or two at the horse wash. I would walk them around for a while afterwards for them and me to dry off.
We had a cow at home, and for some months Lesley milked the cow each day. We poured the milk into quart preserving jars which we put in the refrigerator. I will always remember the delicious cream from that rose to the top of the jars. It was delicious on cornflakes or porridge.
One November day I was told that I had a horse in the cup. I felt puzzled as I thought a horse would be too big to fit in a cup. I looked in all the cups in the kitchen cupboard and didn’t find a horse in any of them.
We also had some chooks, kept in a battery of cages. One of my chores was feeding the chooks and collecting the eggs.
In the summer we went to the Tatura swimming pool. Sometimes I helped teach children or adults to learn to swim.
Other times I worked in the kiosk. I sold icy poles and lollies. and restocked the display of lollies as needed. I received the admission fees from the public as they entered the pool grounds. Occasionally Italian people would try to enter without paying, saying “Me no speak a de English.” I would stop them, and point at the admission charges painted on the sign at the entrance.
Lesley kept a chart of all the regular chores at home, removing cobwebs, sweeping the paths, mowing the lawn etc.
One day my chore was sweeping the paths. Being small, the paths seemed very long to me and sweeping he concrete with the straw broom was hard. I didn’t think the paths needed sweeping. To me they looked perfectly OK as they were.
One day I was taking too long to sweep the path so Lesley came out to see what was happening. I was not paying much attention to her as she reprimanded me. I noticed a swagman walking along Minchens Lane outside the front of the property and I thought about how great it would be to walk wherever I wanted and not have to sweep concrete paths.
Lesley noticed me looking towards the swagman and she said “You wouldn’t like to be like him would you?”
I thought for a moment and said “Actually I would.” Lesley was furious. She commanded “Walk over to the pole!” I walked to the electricity pole in the front yard. She said “Lean over!” I leant over and held on to the water tap at the pole. Lesley picked up the end of the garden hose and hit me hard on my bottom. Several times and she walked off towards the house.
Then I started feeling the pain. I collapsed on to the lawn and started crying. For two days I was unable to sit down.
I had learned to never say what I really thought.
Unfortunately I had not unlearned that lesson 37 years later when my partner, Claudine became pregnant.
Simone, our child suffered horrifically living in such a disharmoious family.
In April 1958 Lesley, Jay, Janet, Ian and I moved to Edithvale. I remember grade 5B at Edithvale State School. It was much bigger than Ardmona State School. I was 10 years old and I had not learned to do long division. I didn’t ask for help and it took me a few weeks to understand how the class did it.
I was amazed at the mental arithmetic. The teacher would say something like 5 plus 7 and the student instantly replied 12. I had to figure it out which took me about 15 seconds or so.
After the one school term at Edithvale, I started going to boarding school. Middle IV (year 5) at Geelong College. Not only was Mr Watson our class teacher. Some evenings in the junior dormitory he would read a story from the Biggles books before lights out.
After school and in weekends the House of Guilds was open for boarders and other students to pursue a hobby that interested them. There was a woodwork room, model aircraft room, leatherwork, model engineers and a radio room.
I spent a lot of time in the radio room, starting with constructing a crystal set (a radio receiver with headphones. It was powered by the radio signal, not requiring batteries or external power.)
I constructed a tape recorder. The most difficult task was obtaining recording tape as nearly all the retailers that I went to either did not stock it or were unwilling to sell it to me as I could not tell them what brand or model of tape recorder I wanted it for.
Initially I used an electric motor in the tape recorder however it caused electrical interference (buzzing) on the tape recorder output. So I used a clockwork gramophone motor instead.
I enjoyed reading the old editions of Radio Television and Hobbies that were kept in the radio room cupboard. I saw an advertisement for tape heads. The price was affordable for me. My tape recorder performed much better with that professionally made tape head than the tape head that I had made.
School work did not interest me much. During class I often thought of more interesting things to do.
Each desk in the classroom had an ink well, and we used a pen and ink to write with.
As the teacher, who was wearing a faded black gown walked past my desk, I flicked some ink from my pen on to the back of his gown. I started giggling when I saw the black dots on the faded black gown and the teacher reprimanded me for giggling in class.
Nearly every school term, my school report had the words “His school work is not commensurate with his ability.” When Lesley talked with me about my report, I promised to do better next term however that that often didn’t happen.
Over the 3 years that I was a boarder at Geelong College, I did many school pranks. Not only did I get punished for most of them, I was also punished for giggling or laughing at things that I thought were funny or amusing to me.
Each student had a record book. In the front few pages our class attendance and any marks for bad behaviour were recorded. We recorded our homework assignments in the remainder of the record book.
We were punished with Saturday morning detention if we got three or more marks for bad behaviour in a week. I had Saturday Morning detention most Saturdays.
On one occasion I was sent to the vice principal’s office. I waited nervously outside the door until Mr Davies called me in. He looked at my record book and told me to hold ou t my hand. I did not take the caning well. I yelled when I felt the pain.
Mr Thwaites replaced Dr Buntine as headmaster of Geelong College in 1961. He decided that I must permanently leave his school at the end of that school year.
Lesley eventually found a school that was willing to accept me. Mr Leppitt, the principal, cared about each boy’s development.
My behavour did not improve. I still enjoyed school pranks. That cold evening after dinner, during study I was sitting at my desk crumpling a piece of paper instead of doing my homework.
The master on duty walked up to my desk and grabbed the crumpled piece of paper from me and threw it in the fire.
A few minutes later there was a loud explosion in the fire. The master on duty asked who was responsible for that. Nobody owned up to it. He said that if nobody would own up to it, he would get the headmaster to come over.
I put my hand up and said “Sir that piece of paper.”
Nothing more had to be said or done about it.
Inside that piece of paper was a cork, and embedded in the cork was a starting pistol blank.
One evening in the dorm, some boys decided to nugget my balls. They had the black boot polish and the shoebrush. I attempted to wrestle out of their grip as they tried to hold me. The master on duty came up to investigate when he heard the noise of me and the other boys struggling on the floor. I didn’t get nuggeted and we all got Saturday morning detention.
Just before exam time at the end of year 12, Matriculation, my last year at secondary school one evening I jammed the little finger of my left hand in the dormitory door. It was extremely painful. I write with my left hand and I struggled to write my answers to the questions on the exam paper.
After the end of exams, my finger was x-rayed. One of the bones was broken.
I failed first year engineering at Monash Engineering the following year.
I failed first year electronics engineering at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology the year after that. I enjoyed computer programming, and we submitted our programs for paper tape punching. We then submitted the punched tape for processing on the Elliott 803 computer. One exercise was simultaneous linear equations. We were supposed to submit the data as comma separated numbers at the end of the program. However I decided to write an input routine in my program to interpret the written equations as input. It interpreted the numbers before the variables, the variables, the + or – sign and the = signs. It took about 20 minutes of computer run time to compile and 3 seconds to run the program.
I also wrote a program to calculate Pi to 450 decimal places. I used arrays of integers to represent all those digits. It took several hours to run on the computer.
The following year I started work. I went to Electronic Industries Limited service special projects division and started work immediately. EIL was part of the group of companies including Astor, General Accessories, Eclipse, A.W. Jacksons and Gainsborough. My first job was wiring plugs on to Necchi sewing machine leads. It was embarrassing for the person who previously did that job as I quickly finished all the leads that had to be done.
I then learned how to repair and recondition Reditune background music machines, and to manufacture and maintain EIL language laboratories.
I bought a new Morris Mini Van from Lanes Motors in Sturt Street, South Melbourne. I was living at home near Chelsea and drove Kay, my sister to work each weekday morning. I kept my car window open as I didn’t like the strong scent of her perfume.
I enjoyed working on the wide variety of projects and service jobs in Special Projects. We maintained television antennas, TV receivers and radios on ships. They had 230 volts DC power and we supplied vibrator inverters to convert the DC power to AC.
I modified a transistor mantel radio design to operate from DC mains, using a live chassis and having high voltage audio output transistor stage in series with the receiver circuit power supply. This audio output stage draws a fairly constant current which is sufficient to supply the remainder of the radio circuit, in series with the output stage.
I attempted to design a thyristor inverter to replace the vibrator inverter that was used for each television receiver however it was not reliable and an engineer from another department redesigned it to use high voltage transistors instead of thyristors.
In 1970 Philips took over EIL Service. I left and stated working for Haco Hagameyer repairing National Panasonic and JVC radios, radiograms and tape recorders.
We were told that reel to reel tape recorders would be replaced by audio cassette recorders. That seemed unbelievable, with the narrow tape and slow tape speed of audio cassettes. However we soon began to see many audio cassette recorders and fewer reel to reel machines.
I was occasionally called to the front desk of the service department to speak with a customer complaining about speed variation problems on their Panasonic cassette recorder. On each occasion a customer was using BASF audio cassette tapes which were more expensive than the National Panasonic audio cassette tapes. I had no problem demonstrating a National Panasonic audio cassette on their machine and recommending that they purchase some from us to replace their BASF ones.
I also worked part time in the evenings as sound maintenance technician on the live rock musical “Hair” at the Metro Theatre.
I had another job to, setting up the lights and other equipment for a dance at Coburg town hall on Saturday Nights. On Sunday nights I would set up the dance at Ormond Hall, Moubray Street and usually slept in the switchboard room at the side of the stage until the end of the evening when I helped pack up at the end. One evening I did not wake up until everybody had left and I had to finish packing up without any help!
While each of the boys that I knew started speaking with a man’s voice, I continued to speak with a woman’s voice. I felt embarrassed every time that I was mistaken for a woman. I went to speech therapy sessions with Mrs Eldridge and practiced with a tape recorder. However I felt too self conscious to use my new voice in public until one day that I was doing the bible reading at church. Over the following days I often felt nervous about slipping back to my high pitched voice. A few months later I felt confident about my voice.
At the end of the run of Hair at the Metro Theatre, I left Haco Hagameyer and John Morrison from Theatre Sound employed me to work on putting together the sound equipment for Harry M Miller’s upcoming rock music spectacular “Jesus Christ Superstar”
I worked with Mike Rutledge modifying the sound mixer for the requirements of the show. I tended to resent Mike as he often smoked cigarettes and I hated cigarette smoke.
We prepared all the sound equipment for the show and I put a lot of effort into making it reliable, including redundant power supplies and switching to bypass either of the stereo channels if one failed.
The show opened as a concert tour starting in Adelaide at the Memorial Park Drive Tennis Courts on the 16 March 1972. I had been working long hours for the few days of setting up and rehearsals. I slept in the dressing rooms rather than spending time going to and from the motel each day. On opening night, John Morrison told me to stand next to the sound desk and I went to sleep standing up. He woke me at interval to attend to a small problem with one of the loudspeakers.
At the opening night party I fell asleep and some of the security men started carrying me out. John Morrison noticed and tried to tell them not to take his sound technician away. That was after John had quite a few drinks so it took some time to get them to stop. I didn’t know anything about that incident until I was told about it the next day.
I bought a house in Burnley Street, Richmond. It was a double fronted weatherboard house. It cost $14000. I paid 50% deposit and 7.5% vendor terms. I paid it off within 2 years. I had friends renting rooms. One time I was away, working in Sydney and one of my neighbours wrote to me complaining about the noise from the people in my house doing band practice. I wrote to the people living in my house and to the neighbours asking them to sort out the problem. They did. They agreed on what hours to do band practice. My neighbours and the people living in my house were friends after that.
I had small jars of herbs and spices. They had Dymo plastic embossed labels on them. One jar had two labels. “Pepamint” and “Richard can’t spell”
We did not have colour television back then. So Blondie, wanting more colour painted the cabinet of the television set red. He used to call the television set “the idiot box” or “the cretinizer.”
Blondie used to say “Peter doesn’t have a communication problem. He just doesn’t communicate.”
We used to share the food in the kitchen and there was usually plenty. I said that if somebody uses anything, they need to replace it. This arrangement seemed to work well for everybody except Melinda. She had her own cupboard and nobody was allowed to touch her food. One day ants got into her cupboard and she loudly complained about all the ants stomping on her food.
When Melinda eventually moved out of her room she said “It is amazing how much dust collects up over three years.”
I worked for Australian Video Engineering in Johnstone Street Fitzroy. I worked on IVC video tape recorders and Ikegami television cameras. As we did not have a good television set for demonstrating the colour video equipment I bought a Philips television receiver and modified it to have a video input socket.
Australian Video Engineering moved to Palmerston Crescent, South Melbourne.
They eventually moved to Keys Road, Moorabbin which was a considerable distance to travel. One cold morning, driving to work, I saw a sheet of galvanized roofing iron on the road. I got out of the car and when I leaned down to pick it up, I hurt my back. It took me a few days to recover.
Australian Video Engineering changed its name to Pacific Communications. They moved to Burwood Road Hawthorn.
One day the receptionist was very upset. She had received a phone call from an angry customer. It was not the first time that something like that had happened. I started talking with her about it. I pointed out that our salesman let the customer down and she needs to tell our salesman that. I recommended that she think about the customer during a phone call rather than thinking about herself. The receptionist was better at handling phone calls after that.
I decided to leave Pacific Communications and work from home. I really enjoyed being self employed. I had plenty of work and I planned to also do some manufacturing.
I again hurt my back so I decided to employ somebody to help me. I put a small advertisement for a trainee technician, in the employment section of the Melbourne Age Newspaper.
The phone rang almost continuously. Many young people phoned and started telling me about what they had studied. Most of them didn’t know how to answer my question about if they had built any electronics projects or kits.
Warren mentioned several kits and projects that he had completed and as an afterthought said he had built a digital capacitance meter and added an extra two digits of resolution to it. I liked seeing that initiative so I employed him. During his apprenticeship he was the top student of his class each year. He was much better at much of the work than I was.
I had a Dick Smith System 80 computer and he upgraded the memory from 64 kilobytes to 1 megabyte, as well as having memory paging to give access to all the additional memory.
I was manufacturing a queuing system to guide bank customers to the next available teller. Warren asked if we could use the microprocessor on the voice board to control the queuing system instead of having a separate control board and microprocessor to control the system. I thought about it for a moment. It would decrease the cost of manufacture, reduce the complexity and increase the reliability. The only douwnside would be the amount of time that Warren would need to spend modifying the computer program of the microprocessor on the voice board.
I asked Warren how long he thought it would take. He told me how many weeks. I doubled that number, added a bit and decided that it would still be worth it.
Over the next few days Warren was working on the project and as it began taking longer than he expected, he started doing a lot of work on it in his own time.
Eventually he had it working. No bugs, no glitches, less hardware and less construction time for this and all future units.
The software is easily replicated for each new unit we build and the time between receiving an order to delivering the product is decreased.
I certainly wouldn’t have attempted such a challenging software project myself!
I started participating in the “Experiencing personal relationships” course at the Augustine Centre in Hawthorn. I had probably not done enough personal development to get the full benefit from the course and was reluctant to do more courses as I thought I might be doing too much. I attended a party and met Claudine Wells. She invited me to visit her place for a meal a few days later.
I went to her flat in Toorak. The carpet was all soaking wet as the plumbing had failed. Claudine did not seem at all worried about it and I laughed at the squishing sound as we walked across the wet carpet.
Claudine decided to move into my house in Richmond. I began to have difficulties as I was spending more money and spending less time at work.
Claudine became pregnant. She wanted to have an abortion. I was not going to support her in that. So she decided to give up the child at birth.
During Claudine’s pregnancy I was working at Video Duplicating Centre, often copying tapes about babies, child birth and children.
The baby was born at Doctor Bruce Sullivan’s birthing centre in Hawthorn.
It was a water birth and Claudine had arranged flowers and decorations. The midwife and the rebirther were there and Claudine was encouraged to breathe a lot.
The baby was named Simone Louise Pullar-Wells. I was amazed at the sight of this little baby.
Mrs Wells did not want Claudine to give up the baby. She and Jacky Cools wanted to take care of her until Claudine was ready.
I enjoyed Simone. I would bathe her in the big red bucket and she would stand up in it with her hands on the edge and giggle as I moved the bucket around.
My house was only partly renovated. I had not learned that an internal toilet was regarded as an essential item in any home and I only had the toilet out the back of the house.
It took months to get the internal toilet planned, built and installed. Meanwhile there was the smell of the bucket which was used as an internal toilet.
I was still working with my two employees from home. It did not go well.
I rented a unit for Claudine, Simone and I to live in. This added to my expenses. Being self employed became nonviable for me so Warren and I started working as am employee at Video Duplicating Centre.
My house was vacant and I could not get tenants. I decided to sell my house and Mal Manders from Video Duplicating Center offered to buy it.
I bought a new house in Seaford. I didn’t like it. There were no trees and it was miles away from my work. We sold the house and rented a house nearer to the city.
I often did not have enough money to pay the rent. We moved to another house.
I had difficulty finding a job. Eventually I got a job at Jacques Electronics in Brisbane.
We packed up everything and loaded it into our old Holden station wagon and we drove to Brisbane to live in a caravan park until I was able to rent a flat.
We shared the flat with many cockroaches, and enjoyed an endless supply of free fresh mangoes from the park and the streets.
I enjoyed working as an electronic technician at Jacques Electronics in Montague Road, West End.
I learned a lot about producing presentable products as Stan Jacques meticulously checked the appearance and the finish on each powder coated surface of each product. I had previously been careless about the style, appearance and packaging of products that I had manufactured.
I spent many hours working on a digital tape recorder. Unfortunately it was an unreliable product and the main integrated circuit tended to draw too much electric current and burn for no apparent reason.
Meanwhile I worked on the construction of audio distribution amplifiers, other professional audio devices and specialized intercom systems.
We got a contract to replace the sound system in the Daintree Lounge, one of the railway carriages of the Queenslander which ran between Brisbane and Cairns.
I was on my own doing the installation and it was taking a long time. I rang Claudine and invited her to come and practice her singing as it was a great sound system. Little did I know that in the early hours of the morning other workmen came to do maintenance work on the carriages in the rail yard.
A few weeks later I received a phone call from Queensland rail. They told me that the entertainment had cancelled on the Brisbane – Proserpine run and could Claudine do it instead.
Not only was it wonderfully enjoyable trip with first class accommodation and meals for Claudine, me and our daughter.
We were also paid for providing the entertainment.
When Jacques Electronics got the contract to refurbish the intercom system at a prison, I started working on the project. It was a big project and I decided to purchase a computer program for project planning to help manage the project.
I entered the information about the tasks that needed to be done and the estimated time that each would take. I then reported to Stan Jacques that I estimated that the project would be completed about 3 months after the required completion date.
So Stan employed a professional project planner. I was asked to leave.
I saw an advertisement “Taxi drivers wanted. Free training.” so I learned to drive a taxi. When I went to do the driving test, I felt too nervous to get into the car. That transport department vehicle looked so big and formidable to me, with its two way radio, lights and equipment.
I did the driving test a few days later. Making a right hand turn, the examiner told me that I had done the turn incorrectly. He seemed very displeased when I asked “Did I make the turn too sharply or not sharply enough? He didn’t answer. However I passed the test.
Within a few minutes of leaving the depot I noticed somebody on the curb waving at me.
I stopped the cab at the side of the road, he opened the door of the cab and got in. My first passenger. He told me his destination and I drove him there. I stopped the taxi meter, told him the fare and he gave me the money. I quickly paid him the change and he left. I liked being a taxi driver. It was better than giving hitchhikers a lift as they paid me.
I liked Saturday nights best. There were plenty of passengers until the streets became deserted on Sunday morning. There was something magic about driving over the Story bridge at sunrise on my way to the depot at the end of a 12 hour shift.
One shift I was driving the stretch limo. On my way back to the depot at the end of my shift I heard a call over the radio. “Any wheelies on air?” I didn’t answer. Then a plaintive call “Any wheelies on air?” I answered “I’m driving the limo and I am coming into the depot at the end of my shift.” The operator said two wheelchair passengers need a ride so I will call you back if one of them can transfer. Even though the passengers were disappointed that I was not driving a maxi taxi, they were glad that I could get them to their destination.
At the end of one Saturday night I pulled up outside a nightclub where many people were waiting for a cab. Immediately my passengers got in and closed the doors. As I started to drive off I heard a loud thud. I thought “Oh no. I have hit someone.” and I immediately stopped. My passengers quickly got out of the cab and a few seconds later they got back in. Apparently I had not hit anybody. The thud was somebody had kicked the cab and my passengers had then belted into him for doing that.
Another Saturday night I picked up a passenger at Fortitude Valley. A lot of drivers don’t pick up in Fortitude Valley on Saturday nights. He was a big man and he obviously had a lot to drink. He mumbled something like “Take me to Rode Road.” I started at the Sandgate Road end of Rode Road. It was a long road. Eventually he said “Turn right here!” By then he had climbed from the back of the cab into the front. As I arrived at his home, he said “Weren’t you scared of me?” I said “No I was just scared of not knowing where the hell you lived!” He said “Well I just went to Fortitude to find someone to belt up but I didn’t find anyone worth doing that to.” He then paid his fare and left. I felt sad for the guy. All that way to Fortitude Valley and he didn’t get what he wanted.