Working or Jobs

Jobs I had as a Kid


Up to about 1973, there was virtually no such thing as unemployment, but things changed then and it was kind of sad that the generations of youth that flowed into the seventies, eighties and nineties never knew the days when there was plenty of work. There are hundreds of reasons for this, and it will no doubt be well documented in some future economics or social history text book.

I feel as though I was one of the first to be displaced by modern technology, for somewhere in the early 50s, I had a job that paid 5 bob an hour, the basic wage rate. It was a mowing the lawn job, took an hour with the hand mower, and gave me a much needed boost to my meager pocket money. Then one day, the lady told me that she didn't need me any more, because Mr So and So had a Victa lawn mower, and could do the job in 30 minutes!

Christmas school vacation jobs were the norm, my first was in 1952 at Mr Kellows general store in Sheridan St. Flour, sugar, salt and whole host of either items came in bulk, and needed to be done up in packets of one or two pounds for sale. This was a very, very monotonous and boring job, and I made a mental note never to do it again. The pay was 2/6 per hour, about £5 a week, an enormous some of money for a 12 year old.

Then in 1953, I had a job at a printers place, type was set in lead, and there was always an awful clanking of machinery. In this job, I first came across "sexual harassment". At 13 I had no idea, still a couple of years away from puberty, I was going to be greased with blue printers ink around the balls, I was told to go and see the girl in the office and get my dick measured (I never did) and told I'd better learn real quick about gonorrhea and syphilis. I really had my eye on an escape route all the time in that job.

The attitude and behavior of the people I worked with changed completely when the boss, a seventy year old man came round on his twice daily tours to check on this and that. I was really pleased when this happened, except one day, he checked on my work, found I had charged out to a customer a full sheet of carbon paper when only 3/4 of a sheet had been used. The correction procedure was time consuming, but guess in a way there was a lesson in that for me.

I had to learn all the paper sizes, Doubly demy, Royal, Crown, F'cap and a couple of others. Never ever had to come back to this knowledge, life after that was foolscap, and then the new sizes, A5, A4 and A3. One nice thing about the job was that on Saturday mornings, I got to work in the shop, running out the back to get things for the shop assistants. In the shop there were these fantastic drawing instruments, just loved looking at them, could never afford to buy them.

In the next four years, 54-57, I worked in Woolworths, in their warehouse which was fun, in the store meeting people, and out the back doing what I swore I would never do again, filling up packets with flour, sugar, salt and a good one, raisins, because they were edible! I have no bad memories of this time, the money was good and probably kept me out of trouble.

When one of my daughters, Roslyn finished school, there was this big graduation thing, presentations and dances and goodness knows what. It was interesting to reflect that on our last day at school, we sort of said see you around and next day went off to work. In my case at Watkins builders where I did a labouring job stacking timber from the mill. Knew all the timbers that there were in North Queensland, knew the stains they put on your hands, but like a lot of things, left the job and lost the knowledge.

We had a couple of farewell activities, three of us took a camping trip to Green Island for a few days, millions of fish, but none took our lines, and then later a mixed group of us went off to the Boulders near Babinda for party, a real tame affair, having lunch, a swim, a walk, and then a trip back home. Times have changed!