Homeward Bound to Oz by Ken Saunders - HTML preview

Just before we sold "lu lu" as we affectionately called the Austin, Georgie went into Balmain hospital to have our first child.

The first visiting night I got home from work - got out the car to go to the hospital - we went across Iron Cove Bridge. It was a very windy night and we were almost blown off the bridge, a scary drive. We got to the hospital to find Georgie had been admitted to the labour ward, we had to wait for quite a while for Linda to make her appearance into this world. It was well worth the wait, she was a beautiful baby.

The three of us lived at Five Dock for about another four months waiting for our house to be completed.

There was a chap who lived up the back of Nug's and Mums house who agreed to take all our worldly possessions out to Campbelltown on his small truck.

The day finally arrived, we loaded the truck up, getting wedding presents from under beds and from the top of wardrobes and we were off to our own little home in the bush.

We drove into the street and before we even started to unload not one but two milk trucks followed us down the street. The first milkman, Jack Campbell, who I later got to know very well, gave us a complementary bottle of milk and he had a new customer.

I had now completed the training school at the Post Office and I was transferred to Campbelltown Post Office.

My job as Postal Clerk was to work on the counter, look after the telegram boys, do the telephone accounts, send and receive the telegrams on the morse code, light the fire in winter and any other odd jobs that may be needed to be done.

I remember reading an article in the local paper one day that said that "Mrs Smith was very surprised to receive a telegram telling her to go to the railway station to pick up a box of parrots; she was somewhat relieved when it turned out to be a box of carrots. I worried all weekend thinking that I was sure to get the sack for that mistake. I need not have worried the boss was very understanding.

People often came into the Post Office for change for the public telephones and at the same time ask us what was the delay in booking a phone call to Sydney. It was not unusual for there to be a two or three hour delay and people accepted that, how times have changed!

I joined the local RSL and started playing for their cricket team.

We played in the C grade of the local competition and after the game win lose or draw we would adjourn to the club for a few liquid ambers to relive the game.

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I was made the opening bat mainly because I knew which way to hold the bat not because of my ability. In one game we were up against a team from Oakdale, full of big brawny farmers. Their opening bowler was the biggest bloke in the team and he was a bit quick, in the first over he managed to get one on the wicket and it came up to me I tried to get out of the way but it kept following me hitting me in the cheek. I have been told I staggered around like a headless chook, managing not to knock my wicket down and finally sunk to the ground with blood all over my lovely white gear.

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My young wife nearly had a fit when she saw my mates carrying me up the front path. I didn't go to the club that night.

The games were played over two Saturdays, in the second innings I went in fairly low down. The big opening bowler had already had his spell when I arrived at the wicket but their captain gave him the ball and I almost ran away from the wicket, result bowled 0.

I got myself a job with a local milkman doing his run for him on Sundays. He lived just around the corner from the RSL so it was handy to pick up the truck on my way home after a game of cricket. It always amazed him how I could remember all the instructions he gave me and how I managed to get the old truck home in one piece.

In those days we started delivering the milk about 1am, I remember one night I got this note which was under the empty milk bottles and the snails had eaten part of the note, it read "Dear Milko please leave.................thanks Mrs........., I don't think she would have been very pleased if I had knocked on the door at that time of the night. On another occasion I got a note that said "Dear Milko if you get this note please leave me half a pint of cream, if you don’t get this note doesn’t worry".

I got a transfer to Strathfield Post Office as a relief Postal Clerk which entailed travelling quite a lot from Post office to Post office replacing staff who were either sick or on holidays.

It was interesting work because you never knew from one day to the next where you would be working and every Post office is a little different from the next.

Strathfield was a suburb where many old age pensioners lived and they would line up for their pension every second Thursday. I got to know some of the characters of the district very well. One lovely lady knitted me a pair of gloves just for doing my job; I suppose she appreciated being treated civilly and with a bit of respect.

Someone dumped a couple of kittens on the Post office doorstep and I took them home. I got a little cardboard box, made some holes for them and carried them home on the train. They looked so cute when they poked their little heads out of the box, it kept the people in the carriage amused all the way home.

We named them Kelly and Kitty had them desexed and they became part of the family. In fact it wasn't long and they were running the place.

Our garden was starting to take shape. We had the front yard rotary hoed and I would spend many an evening raking it and getting all the lumps out of it.

My father-in-law caught me dumping some of my rakings next door on the vacant lot, he told me I would regret that and that I should keep all the dirt as it would come in handy later. I was pleased in later years that I had taken his advice, I found out that dirt is not cheap.

Our estate was not on the sewerage yet and we had a little dunny shed out the back, the dunny man came every Thursday to empty 61

the pan, it reminded me of the dunny cart days in Japan a few years ago.

Every pay day Georgie had little tins for putting the money in for paying different bills. One pay day I had about five shillings to spare so on the way home from work I bought a toilet roll holder. I screwed it on the back of the door of the shed and we both stood and proudly looked at our first purchase for our house.

About two and half years after we moved into our new home Wendy our second daughter was born.

We didn't have a car and when the moment arrived our next door neighbour lent us her car and I drove very slowly over to Camden Hospital and took Georgie inside.

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The nurse told me to go home and she would ring me when the baby was getting closer. I went back home and had some tea that my Mum-in-Law had prepared and about an hour after tea I rang the hospital to see if there was any news.

The nurse congratulated me and told me that Wendy had been born only a few minutes after I left the hospital. If I had known that I would have just about passed out.

That was in the days when husbands were not allowed anywhere near the birth. I think it is much more civilised now, although I don't think I would ever have been of much help.

While Georgie was in hospital I was doing the housework of course and that included the washing. Up to that time we did not own a washing machine, we had a copper and an old wringer but after using that for about a week I lashed out and bought a washing machine on time payment.

I was still playing soccer and was lucky enough to get picked for the local district representative team. That was exciting and I must admit my job as goalkeeper was a lot easier with an organised defence. The two fullbacks we had in the rep team were fairly big boys and gave me a fair bit of protection from the oppositions forwards, something I was not used to.

Linda was about four years old and Wendy was about eleven months old when we went on our first holiday up to the Entrance on the Central Coast.

It was so exciting. We packed our bags, got all dressed up, the girls in lovely pretty dresses, Georgie with hat and gloves and me in a suit and tie and we caught the train first to Strathfield and then on to Gosford.

We then boarded a bus to the Entrance, Linda saw a pile of building sand through the window of the bus and thought we had arrived; she was all ready with her bucket and spade.

The driver pulled up near the little cottage that we had rented for two weeks. The cottage was on the north entrance across the old wooden bridge, it was on the waters edge and although it was very old it was very clean and we all thought it was beaut.

Georgies Mum and Dad came up with us and quite often Nug and I would go out fishing on the lake. We hired a rowing boat from the boatshed for the two weeks and we certainly got our money's worth out of it. Nug and I found a good fishing spot - we would anchor with one end of the boat level with the saloon bar of the pub and the other end level with the caravan park on the north shore, right in the middle of the mouth of the lake.

We were having a very slow time of it one morning , not even getting a bite, so we piled all our gear up in the boat and waded ashore to have a beer at the pub.

The ladies wondered why we didn't wave back when they saw our boat from the bridge as they were going across to do some shopping.

On another occasion we set out early to catch some fish for breakfast. We started fishing at a favourite spot called Pelican Island, after about half an hour Nug suggested another spot about half a mile away so we pulled up anchor and tried that spot , no 63

luck. We kept doing that all morning until we ended up at Toukley right over the other side of the lake.

We then had to row all the way back to The Entrance, by the time we got back to the cottage it was tea time and we were in big trouble. What made it worse we had to buy fish at the fish shop on the way home.

Back home after the holidays I was still doing the milk run for Ron Ambrose on Sundays.

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He had an old 1950 Ford Pilot which he offered to me for fifty pound. It was a good old car so I decided to buy it.

The back seat was like a big old lounge suite, the girls loved it, they would get in that back seat and sing their little hearts out, songs like "one stormy morning without any warning a large umbrella crossed our street", they were great days.

I remember we took the Pilot up to the Entrance one holiday and we were pulled up in the middle of the road waiting to make a right hand turn when the traffic was clear. An almost brand new Holden came over the hill and ran straight into the back of the Pilot. The Holden was a tow away job but I had to really look hard to find the small mark it made on my car. They made them strong in those days. The driver insisted that the police are called; when they arrived they booked him for negligent driving and told him to get his car off the road. I suppose the only good thing as far as he was concerned was that he had no damage to pay for my car.

The old wooden bridge across to the north entrance was good fun, it had little pedestrian bays in it. If you were walking across and a car was coming you had to run to the next bay and shelter in there then make a dash for the next one until you were safely to the other side of the bridge.

There was a big old merry-go-round that Wendy and Linda loved and it was very strategically placed, you had to go past it to get to the shops and the girls insisted that they should have a ride. That merry-go-round is still there to this day.

The pelicans were another big attraction, feeding time was very exciting and a big crowd was always on hand to witness that. That attraction is still there also so even in this swiftly changing world something’s remain the same.

The local milkmen did their collecting on Mondays and after collecting they would meet at the Good Intent hotel for a couple of beers and a bit of a yarn. I would try and get an early train home on Mondays so that I could join in and listen to all the tales they had to tell.

It seemed to me that the Milko's life was a pretty good one and I started to wish that I

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could become a full time milkman instead of just a weekender.

It wasn't long after that when Ron Ambrose gave me the sad news that he was going to sell his milk run. I was devastated, that was the end of my weekend job.

Ron came up with the alternative he - offered to sell me the run. I laughed because I had no money. That didn't deter him; he said he would finance me. He had complete faith in me and said that in his opinion I would be able to sell a run off it within two years and pay him back.

So after talking it over with Georgie we decided we would take the plunge. I gave notice at the Post office after working out all the legal aspects of the deal.

I got a job delivering groceries for Coles Supermarket during the day and another job as a contractor at the Post office on Sundays and settled down to some hard work.

The Sunday job was interesting. Georgie came with me and we would drive around all the letter receivers in Campbelltown and pick up all the letters in them and take them back to the Post office. We would then face them all up the same way, put them through a stamp cancelling machine, pack them in bags and then take them down to the railway station to be taken to Sydney.

I remember one day putting the letters through and Georgie picked one up and read the slogan for the day, it read "Post this week for Christmas delivery”. That would have been fine except it was early July; someone had put the wrong slogan in the machine.

I had visions of that appearing in the Sydney Morning Herald so I quickly re-inked the machine changed the slogan and put them all through again. Just as well my wife is observant.

Not long after we started delivering groceries for Coles they built a huge new supermarket opposite their old shop. They called for tenders for the job of delivering for their new store and I was lucky enough to get the job.

I had most of the milkmen in town lined up to work for me for the first day expecting to get a huge amount of business. We were all prepared with our trucks and vans waiting; the manager came out just after opening and said they were not going to have any deliveries the first day.

I was disappointed and disbanded all my helpers and went for a little walk down the street.

Half an hour later the manager came running after me in a panic, apparently one of the customers with a shopping trolley absolutely packed had demanded home delivery and when told there would not be any , had told them to stick their groceries and she would shop elsewhere.

I had five trucks working flat out all day that day and we had quite a business going for us.

We got twenty cents a delivery and a good driver could manage a hundred deliveries a day, not bad money in those days, but boy you earned every penny of it.

A good friend of mine (another milko) was delivering for Woolworths just down the road and we had an arrangement that on our slow days we would have a day off and he would do my 67

deliveries for me one day and I would do his on another day. The managers would have had a fit if they knew we were delivering the oppositions groceries in the same truck.

Easter was the weekend we dreaded as far as groceries were concerned, it was not unusual to still be delivering at 9pm and then have to get up to do the milk run at 1am.

I was delivering milk early one morning and I ran into this house to deliver the milk and bent down to pick up the money and my back went snap, I couldn't straighten up

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so

I had to go home and get Georgie out of bed to give me a hand to finish the run.

I went to the doctor and much to my dismay he put me into hospital to have a back manipulation. They gave me a knockout needle and took me into the theatre for the staff to play touch football with me, using me as the football (that's what they said they were going to do).

It is on occasions like this that you know just how many friends you have. All my fellow milkos rallied around and took it in turn to do my milk run. Then each day they would troop into the hospital to see how I was going.

One evening it was decided to move me to a little room all on my own, because some of the injections they had given me were giving me severe headaches and they wanted to let me have complete silence.

When the boys arrived and found that I had been moved they feared the worst about to happen.

They told me later that they were working out who would get what part of my business. I think they were joking or at least I hope they were.

I eventually got out of hospital and returned to work.

The milk run was growing rapidly and it was taking me about eight hours to get around the whole run.

A very large housing commission estate was in the process of going in, which was starting to make my future look a little more secure.

All of a sudden the government started to get interested. The Dairy Industry Authority decided that all this growth I was getting belonged to them and that they would allow me to keep 10% of that growth after I had developed it. They would then put another milko into the run, a milko that was not doing so good in the city.

This prompted us to form our own Milkman's Association. We had a meeting at the Appin pub and the Southern Tablelands Milk Vendors Association was formed.

I became secretary of this group and many interesting and volatile meetings were held.

I remember one meeting we had with the dairy industry authority, I gave an emotional speech pointing out in no uncertain terms that I had gone overseas to fight communism and they were trying to ram communism down my throat.

We met with the neighbouring Milk Vendors Associations in Wollongong and Canberra and discussed tactics on how best to combat this threat to private enterprise.

After about fifteen months I was able to sell a section of my milk run and so get myself out of debt, just as Ron had forecast.

I sold my first run to Tony Gaudry, Tony and I became good friends, in fact I am God Father to his daughter Kelly.

Tony introduced me to the game of golf. We would play every Tuesday, mostly at Studley Park.

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Four of the milkos would play every week. We had the course to ourselves, which was just as well because we would hit the ball all over the place.

Georgie could never understand why it took about seven hours to play a round of golf, that nineteenth hole was a difficult hole to get away from.

Another member of that group was Ian Grace who became a good friend. We played some unbelievable games of golf. On one occasion I remember teeing off and hitting three consecutive balls into the water, this really broke the boys up. When I threw the club in after the balls they went into hysterics. A frustrating game golf.

Joan, Ian’s wife and Georgie became good mates and although Ian and Joan now live

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in Queensland we still manage to see them at least once a year.

I managed to get Joan a job as a post lady at Campbelltown Post office. She had to ride a scooter on her rounds and she had never ridden one before and didn't have a licence but this did not deter Joan. She got a learners permit - got the postmen to show her how to manage the scooter and off she went on her rounds. Joan called in to see Georgie half way round and parked the scooter in the driveway. Georgie mentioned to Joan that she had left the motor running and Joan said she couldn't turn if off, she didn't know how to start it again.

We continued our battle with the Milk Authority and I kept making a lot of noise about the injustice of it all. I had taken a chance and put up my life savings and gone into a great deal of debt and they were prepared to milk me dry .

The authority started sending inspectors out to see me to try and quieten me down, saying that I was causing them some embarrassment. My reaction to that was to increase the pressure to try and get the battlers some recognition.

I am pleased to say that in the end I was able to sell enough runs out of that business to make all the hard work worth while. We didn't make a great deal of money but at least we got what we deserved.

I had a cheque returned from the bank one day and when I approached the lady to tell her that her cheque had been returned because of insufficient funds, she said that couldn't be right she still had three cheques left in the book. It took me a long time to convince her that just because she had cheques left in the cheque book it didn't mean she still had money in the bank.

The Milk Vendors meetings were becoming a real social event for the milkos and their wives.

Our first annual meeting was held at the Appin Hall. What an event that turned out to be. We decorated the hall, got a couple of kegs of beer from the Appin pub across the road and prepared for a night to remember.

The ladies prepared a sumptuous feed for us all. I thought it was my duty as secretary to get the meeting over as quickly as possible so that the feast could begin.

The kegs were the biggest problem; everyone was an expert before we got the kegs but when it came time to do the job nobody seemed to know how to tap them.

So Jack Campbell went over to the pub, gave one of his mates an invitation to the party and he became the barman. The only trouble was that he drank more than the rest of us put together and ended up rather the worse for wear. Some of the ladies were having a good time - for some unknown reason they got some empty boxes that the decorations came in and started wearing them as some sort of hat and they went into fits of giggles. Someone suggested that they maybe a bit "how's your father", but that couldn't be true.

There were some fairly sick and sorry milkos getting around Campbelltown the next day but the job still got done.

I was called to an urgent milk vendors meeting at Goulburn. The Dairy Industry Authority was showing some interest in some of 71

the growth that was being experienced in that area. The milkos in Goulburn had heard about out experiences in Campbelltown and they wanted some advice on the right way to attack this problem.

A friend of mine Don Nash volunteered to go down with me and make a weekend of it.

The local milkos made us more than welcome and we settled in for some meaningful discussions followed by some meaningful socialising.

The meeting was held in the local football clubs rooms and the bar was not serving

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Milk unless you had some whiskey with it! Don and I returned to our motel rooms with not a care in the world that night. We certainly didn't need any sleeping tablets.

Campbelltown holds a Fishers Ghost Festival each year and I suggested at one of our meetings that maybe we could use this festival as a means of advertising milk.

We decided to enter a float in the parade that is held on the first Saturday of the festival and look at entering a team in the 13km Fun Run that is held.

We hired some costumes for the parade and we had a cow suit.

The cow we wrote up in the local press and we affectionately called her "Daisy". She was a very ferocious looking cow so we prettied her up a little bit by putting false eyelashes on her and putting daisies through her horns. I was the front end of the cow and my daughter Linda was the back end.

It was a very hot day and as we passed the Good Intent Hotel one of the milkos said to the barman "quick give me a schooner - I need it for a very hot cow". He passed the schooner to me; I had a drink and passed it back to Linda.

We also had an old milk cart which was horse drawn, the only trouble was he was an ex trotter and every time someone rang a bell he wanted to take off.

The crowd loved it and the milk vendors got some good coverage in the press that week. In fact we won the ribbon for the best commercial float.

The Fun Run was a bit of a worry, none of us had ever run that far before. We decided to at least try and run the course once before race day. We successfully did that although we were very slow.

We decided to have some T/Shirts printed with "I drink milk" on the front and we wore another shirt under it which read "I love beer". If any of us broke down we were to take the top shirt off. I am pleased to say that we all finished and we were all wearing our

"I drink milk" shirts. Our team finished third in the local business houses section of the race, I will not mention the fact that there were only three teams entered.

That Fun Run actually started a couple of us on a rather belated running career, which I will talk more about later.

There was a move to allow milk runs to be done in the afternoon. I was strongly against this move; I considered that the Australian climate was not conducive to deliveries in the evening especially in summer.

So it was off to Sydney to the Dairy Industry Authority to argue against this proposal. I said that I thought vendors would use their milk runs as a second job and not consider it as their prime job; a point of view that I think history has proved correct. The authority argued that refrigerated trucks could be used so that the milk would not go off under the hot Australian sun, my reply, “What happens if it is left on the doorstep for any length of time?"

To cut a long story short I lost the debate and I was of the opinion that it was the beginning of the end for the average milk run. The only one that would survive would be the run with super-markets and other shops. Unfortunately that is the way it has turned out.

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We needed a holiday and Ian agreed to do my milk run for me.

We decided that New Zealand sounded good, we booked a package which included flying to Wellington, a rental car, vouchers for motels for two weeks and flying home out of Auckland.

We arrived in Wellington on a wet and windy Friday evening in peak hour. My car was a little Morris Minor. I was in a strange city in peak hour trying to find my way to the motel. Not the best start to a holiday - I must admit I was in a bit of a panic. Every time I turned a corner some idiot would blow his horn at me! It was not until the next

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day that I realised that the horn on these cars is on the end of the indicator lever.

When we arrived at the Motel we booked into the restaurant for dinner and it was a fantastic dinner made even better by the fact that when I gave the waitress a travellers cheque for $100 she gave me almost a $100 change because of the exchange rate - great place this New Zealand.

We found the Maori history very interesting and never got sick of going to the hungies - the Maori feast. We explored the North Island as much as we could in our little car, getting lost on more than one occasion.

We were on a country road, off the beaten track, on one occasion and we got crop dusted by a small plane. To this day I don't know if he did it on purpose or not.

It wasn't long and we were back doing the milk run and groceries.

We did this for another twelve months and then we decided that the future of milk runs was not too bright so we decided to sell.

A decision I didn't take lightly because it was a job I loved and at 46 I would find it difficult to start a new career.

Before looking for work we decided to have a short holiday so we drove to Victoria stopping at motels on the way down and went to see Georgie's brother Jim and his family.

We spent a very enjoyable few days with Jim, Christine, Virginia and Stewart then continued our journey looking at the rugged but beautiful coast of Victoria.

I was now a very enthusiastic jogger and would go out for a jog nearly every day. In one of the towns we stayed I went for a run around the town before breakfast, taking a mental note of all the street names so that I could find my way back to the motel.

Being a terrible navigator I got completely lost. What made me panic a bit was the fact that I also forgot (for a moment) the name of the motel we were staying. Luckily I came across a park which had a map of the town on a notice board, that jogged my memory and I was able to find my way back to Georgie.

When we returned to Campbelltown I started to look for work.

The NRMA were advertising for an assistant supervisor of the Mail Room in Sydney.

I went for an interview and was lucky enough to land the job.

The NRMA will most likely be where I retire from, at this stage I have been with them for fourteen years and I have met a lot of nice peop