The Early Years

Looking back it’s funny how after the initial turmoil of emigrating to Australia and buying a house in Perth all of the following years seem a blur dotted with a few significant event’s. I’ll try to make some sense of it all.

The first year in Australia was spent making our home more habitable and that took quite a bit of time. As I’ve said before the house was a bit stuck in the 1970's with the dominating theme of mission brown, bare brick and concrete. We completely redecorated and recarpeted the place and I rebuilt the kitchen and made most of the furniture to fill the house.

In December of the second year we were given a Cat (Hedi) and she gave birth to four kittens, two of which we kept (Billy & Mo). I changed job, it just didn’t work out with the first company this was mainly due to a down turn in work and it turned out that I am not good at doing nothing but still looking busy. In between jobs I found casual work as a parcel/envelope courier. In those days before the advent of the internet, couriers were in serious demand in Australia and although it was a struggle to learn the Perth road system in detail, I made a reasonable income. I eventually found work with another computer company in West Perth. This was again partially on the road but this time more office based. That lasted a few months, I yearned for the open road and wanted to be a courier. The joy of being (in theory) able to log off and take a swim at the beach on a hot day was a real attraction and after 6 months or so I left and became a courier. I bought a Nissan 720 tray back ute (small truck/pickup) and became that ubiquitous equivalent of the UK white van man, a taxi truck courier.

Jackie continued work as a nurse but unfortunately had an accident. Sadly It is not an unusual story in the nursing profession in any country. A patient who had been asked if he was capable of standing found that he couldn’t and finished up hanging by his arms from her neck. Jackie is a slightly built 5’1 and the result was one quiet seriously damaged spine. She was in a lot of pain for a long time with that and entered into the circus that was “rehabilitation at work”.

My courier job afforded me a fair bit of freedom but it was very hard work. The reality was that you started at 7:30am (or before usual 6:30am) and worked through to 5:30-6:30pm without a break. Swimming at the beach was not on the agenda. The pay started out ok but competition from new courier companies was strong and prices were cut. So the commission on the jobs we did went down. I loved the comradery of the work though and did it for about 6 years. But it became increasingly hard to make ends meet. When your major work tool is a vehicle and you can’t afford to maintain it, let alone replace it when it was worn out then there is something wrong. I made a very good long term friend working as a courier, Bob helped us a huge amount over the years, if ever there was a job to do Bob was always willing to help, there can be no truer friend. Bob is the original diamond in the rough.

Jackie succumbed to the usual investigations by private detectives to see if she really was injured and conflicting reports by doctors, some of who surely must have been in some way under the control of the insurance company. There was a real fight to establish the truth that was plainly evident, she had badly injured her back!. She was eventually compensated for her injury and she retrained as a phlebotomist (legalized vampire). Her injury still exists today in some ways but thankfully 18 years later she rarely suffers any serious pain.

We had many holidays over the year but never left WA, We went to Kalbarri (loved it), Margaret River, Busselton, pemberton, Geraldton etc. They are mostly sleepy towns but we had a good time in all of them. You need to love the open air, fishing, walking and beaches though. fortunately we do.

We lived in the house at Duncraig for about 5 years and made several friends in the area. I was particularly friendly with our then neighbor. He was South African and in common with many of his country men a strong and outgoing sort of character. He shared my love of all things mechanical and was a keenly interested in electronics. We had many adventures, the worst of which was the purchase of a 28 foot bond wood cabin cruiser.

I have always loved wood work and had an unrealised passion for the sea. My friend (I’ll call him Ivan for the sake of this story) had been in the South African navy and had some skill as a helmsman. We had some savings and against Jackie’s better judgment Ivan and I started looking for a restoration project. We found a boat in North Fremantle that was in need of a bit of TLC but mechanically seemed sound and didn’t leak. My woodwork skills were more than up to any renovation work and Ivan could help in every area. We took the boat for a test run and signed on the dotted line.

Then our major mistake, the day we bought it was a Sunday and we hadn’t insured the boat. Ivan was ever the enthusiast and inspite of the lack of cover wanted to take it out there and then. He persuaded me to take the boat out for a trip with Jackie and his family to Rottnest island a few miles off the coast of Perth. We got there ok then on the way back very nearly crashed into the reef on Carnac island. But we made the return journey to North Fremantle. Jackie had not enjoyed the trip and had been rather ill I didn’t feel the best either as Ivan and his wife had cooked sausages in the cabin and it turned me over, was this boating lark for us?. Anyway as we approached the jetty in the usual way the cable on the forward and reverse control broke and the boat hit the jetty full on at a brisk walking pace. This was not good, the bow fractured and the boat sank immediately. I had been on the bow and had been thrown on to dry land. The rest had to swim for it. Then right or wrong the legal battle ensued with the previous owner……..

We sold the house at Duncraig and went looking for a small holding on the outskirts of Perth. This we eventually found in Henley Brook. Initially the reason for the move had been because my hobbies were taking over the yard/garden at Duncraig and I needed more room. I was into restoring classic cars at the time and stripping a car under the single carport was pretty tricky space wise and likely to annoy the neighbors. Also we had acquired a Dog (Holly) she was a young Rottweiler and very energetic. A small parcel of land seemed like a great idea.

Henley Brook was a small 3 bedroom 1 bathroom house on 5 acres. Five acres seemed massive in those days, so much space for a large veggie patch, chickens (chooks), sheep, horses, dogs and cats etc and we kept them all. Bob was an ex farmer and helped us with a lot of the work The block was surrounded on all three sides by vacant land so in reality it was like living on 30 acres, it was so private. We had a great time doing fencing work, installing irrigation and building chook pens etc. I quickly built a large shed for my woodwork and car hobbies.

The scary bit of living on the land in Australia in the summer is the risk of bush fire. Many people are burned out of their homes every year, in the 10 years we lived at Henley brook fire threatened on at least 4 occasions but it never did actually hit us. One fire started just 300 mtrs from our house and 30 minutes later it had covered the 15 kilometers to the local petrol station, thankfully for us an easterly wind was blowing, others were not so lucky. Naturally there were snakes but we never had a problem with them, they tend to keep out of your way really and the spiders are not a problem, you have to be really unlucky or just plain stupid to be bitten by a spider. Leave them alone and they will leave you alone. We had a policy of not interfering with spiders unless they were actually in the house, then they were ejected or as a last resort killed.

The legal fight with the previous owners of the boat had dragged on, Ivan had no money to speak of and any financial burden was going to be on Jackie and I, but Ivan promised to repay his part of any eventual loss and costs. Our claim was that the boat was sold as a functional vessel but had a hidden potentially life threatening fault, this was I suppose naturally disputed by the previous owner. After two years or so the case was due for court, in the event I weakened and gave in and we settled out of court before the case started. It was an unfortunate experience all around but I suppose we learned a lot by it. No one is really right in those cases, Ivan never paid me his part of the debt and we are no longer friends, such is life…...

I carried on as courier for a time but eventually saw more money in larger trucks and I took my HGV test. I bought an old  truck and started on the fleet of the same company I had worked with as a courier. I made a bit of money on the fleet but not a lot, there was a huge amount of waiting around doing nothing. Waiting was something I had not been used to while operating a small taxi truck. After maybe 3 months I was offered a permanent run with a local company and took it up. This meant a regular income and amazingly I made enough to maintain and repair the vehicle. Shortly after starting my old international Acco 2150B broke down. This meant a bank loan on and a serious rebuild for the 16 year old vehicle. A rebuilt engine, brakes, gearbox, diff and cab later it was like a new truck.

The company had been very good about the rebuild and the delivery job wasn’t at all bad I started at 6am and had mostly finished by 2pm so there was time for hobbies and animals etc after work. The best thing was that my invoices were paid on the same day that they were presented, which is a huge help in business.
The rebuilt truck lasted for about a year or so when it broke down again, I sold it and bought a brand new Hino FG, what a truck that was, it was the making of my business.

Jackie had continued with the phlebotomy company and had worked her way up to supervisor, the company was very corporate driven and didn’t look after the staff that actually did the work at all well. Overtime was not paid for, even though it was always needed and staff turnover was a major problem. It fell to Jackie to make up rosters and where possible fill in the inevitable gaps herself, meaning some very unsociable hours. Eventually she left and started with a disability services organization as manager. All together a great move.

Pt6 Later on