| A short Autobiography |
| Under Construction - check back soon - last updated Feb 2002 |
| Some bits of my life I've written up as family stories of roughly 1000 to 2000 words. This brief autobiography attempts to tie them together - and to include links to the stories or other family pages where there's something more to see or read. Some things are written up in a fair amount of detail because they're interesting, but not interesting enough to write a separate story about. I was born in Dorrigo Hospital in northern NSW on 20 March 1945, my father being a cattle dealer and drover and all round Australian bushie who lived near everywhere after his boyhood in Melbourne (read the 'My Dad the Cattle Drover' story), and my mother being a country girl from the Grafton area who'd been a domestic worker. She was a remarkable woman and some day I'll be able to write words which do her justice. In the meantime have a read of 'Mothers Mine' which traces through the history of seven generations of the female line. I had a brother, Fred, nearly three years older than me, with whom I squabbled all my life, but whom I sorely grieved when he died of heart problems in 2000. Visit Freds tribute pages if you'd like to know him better. The first seven years of my life were spent in Dorrigo in Northern NSW. Dorrigo holds a very special place in my memory and my years there have been documented in stories about 'My Dorrigo Home' and 'Dorrigo - My Dreaming'. and The Dorrigo to Glenreigh Train. Around 1952 mum, my brother Fred and myself moved to western NSW near Wellington where mum worked as a housekeeper until Fred was ready to start an apprenticeship and I was to go to high school. There's several stories you might like to read about our time out west. 'The Second Seven Years' covers the time in the west, and a bit on my high school years in Sydney. 'The Pioneer Homestead' is about one particular property where mum was housekeeper. Then we moved to Sydney. We lived with Hugh and Hazel Bedwin in North Ryde where mum continued her housekeeping 'career'.. The Bedwins were a disabled couple who had founded The Civilian Maimed and Limbless Association - or CMLA. (The concept of 'sheltered workshops' which provided a range of work for disabled people might be frowned on today, but it was an essential first step in allowing many people to move out of often appalling home conditions where they were hidden from the world.) Through some form of inverse snobbery, I elected to attend a Domestic Home Science High School (at Hornsby) rather than the elite Fort Street Girls High School, and spent my school vacations helping out at the CMLA workshops. |
| During the Christmas vacations - I can't remember whether it was '57 or '58 - there were very bad bushfires in Sydney and a fire came up the gorge behind the Hornsby Home Science School and the school was burnt beyond repair. As a result I spent the remaining time, until I passed the NSW Intermediate Certificate in 1959, at the newly built Asquith High School several miles further on. A little of my high school years is covered in 'the second seven years' story (link above) |
| My first job lasted just a week - it was operating a small switchboard at a Jewish publishing company in lower George St Sydney, near circular quay. The pay was five pounds, and I was only 14 years old. I can remember the old switchboard was in a wooden faced cabinet, and was operated with a headset and cords and plugs which you put into sockets in the board to make the appropriate connections. Silver coloured disks dropped into view behind small glass windows to indicate lines in use. |
| I'd rushed into the job, elated at being in the work force, and quickly realised that not only was I in a dead-end job but also working for well under the going rate for juniors. Then I saw a job advertised for a card-punch operator, and after my brother explained that it had to do with the new 'electronic brains' I applied and started work soon after with CSR Chemicals at Lane Cove. My boss then was Kevin Corley, who gave everyone the opportunity to do whatever they were capable of, so soon I was operating the larger sorters and tabulators and even 'programming' the tablulators to produce invoices and statements and so on for the company. The programming was done by plugging numerous small coloured wires from point to point into a heavy panel which fitted into a rack in the back of the machine. |
| From there on I went on to work for Rothmans doing very similar work. For a while I was working in the machine room operating the early punched card equipment, but later had the priviledge of working with a lady named Judith Campbell (Judith married and I can't recall her married name) who was a pioneer in the employment of women as computer programmers. At the time Rothmans had ordered an ICL 1301 (or was it still ICT - 'International Computers and Tabulators' then?) from England and there was a waiting time of many months. During those months Judith and her small band of programmers developed programs in machine code, shipping the resulting programs punched onto cards to England for testing. There was a six week turnaround. And now we get impatient if information from an international site takes six seconds to load over the internet onto our PCs ! I'd like to claim I was one of Judiths programmers, but unfortunately not so. Not officially at any rate, because at that time only university graduates were being accepted into the job. I was termed I think an assistant, and my job was to review the program code written by the others (machine code) and seek to optimise it. |
| The career continued to develop after that, when I moved to Melbourne - I've told everyone for years, and in my resume, that I worked for the Department of Defence - not exactly a lie, but it's time to 'fess up I suppose. I had in fact joined the Army. The one job in my life which had such a negative image in the public mind that I never wanted to admit to it.. |
| I joined becaue I'd been led to believe that I'd have an opportunity to work with computers - then found myself working as a clerk in a transport corps. That's probably when I had to learn to 'tough up' in a hurry, and I sucessfully battled to be transfered to a job in which I could work with technology. Remember although I had a couple of years work experience behind me, I was still not 18 years old. One day I'll try to write more about the army years, but for now these few words and my 'Resume' are enough. |
| It wasn't all work and no play. With no family around, countless opportunities for a social life, and distressing living conditions within barracks, it wasn't long before I spent every possible moment in an unwise relationship - resulting in finding myself pregnant at age 19. I was discharged (in an era of no pension or support for single mums) with no savings and no local support. My partner (also Army) was transferred to a country location 'to save him embarrassment'. So much for Military justice and weak mendMy story 'Giver of Alms' explains a little of my situation at the time. I was fortunate because mum generously left her housekeeping job in Sydney and moved to Melbourne. At least I had someone to share the hard times with, even if mum and I were in about the same position financially. It seemed for a while like all my dreams for the future and a better life had been totally dashed by my own foolishness. In time though, having to be responsible for another human being provided enough motivation to turn my life around. It turned out OK, and I guess following that bad patch, there were a lot of things in my life which I can feel good about. More about that later.. |
| RIP Grahame - Feb 2002 and another chapter of my life closes with the death of my daughters father. |