Cockeyed Optimist

A New Job

Since Rolls-Royce was getting a bit boring, and in any case, it was not really expected that Graduate Apprentices would stay there for ever, I started looking at job advertisements. I found a couple that interested me and sat down and started writing applications.

The first, inspired by my colleague’s successful bid for an academic life at Adelaide University, was to the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Queensland, in Brisbane, Australia. In due course, I was summoned to London for an interview with a three-man board, including an eminent Australian Professor, Peter Karmel (not an Engineer, but an Economist, later very eminent in Australia, who must have been roped in on a pretext). All I can remember is being asked whether I thought that a candle would go on burning in a lift in free fall (I said it would go out, since it depended on convection currents and therefore on the effect of gravity).

They said they would let me know.

The other application was to a body with the grand name of BICERA (British Internal Combustion Engine Research Association), which had been set up by a consortium of diesel engine companies. I went to Slough, west of London, for an interview for that one. All I can recall from that excursion was seeing an interesting motorcycle on the way from Slough station, a four-cylinder Henderson, an American machine.

They said they would let me know.

A few weeks went by, and then I got a letter from BICERA offering me the job! Not having been impressed by the environment of Slough, I hesitated. I hadn’t yet heard from Queensland University, apart from an acknowledgment of my application, so I sent them a telegram asking them what was happening. (Back in the 1950s, the only rapid means of communication half-way around the world were telephones and telegrams. A telephone call was out of the question - the rate per minute was of the order of pounds, and how could you be sure of reaching someone who could give an answer, so the telegram was the only practical way.)

After only a brief delay of a couple of days, I got an answering telegram “YOUR APPLICATION NOT ON SHORTLIST,” so that was it.

I wrote and accepted the BICERA job. As soon as I had posted the letter, I got another telegram from Brisbane, “DISREGARD EARLIER MESSAGE STOP THAT APPLICATION ANOTHER FOSTER FOR DIFFERENT POST STOP NOW OFFER YOU APPOINTMENT AS LECTURER MECHANICAL ENGINEERING.”

So, I phoned up BICERA and shame-facedly withdrew my acceptance!

Over the next few weeks I did what had to be done, including persuading my wife, Ann, that it would be a good move, while at the same time reassuring her family and friends that it would be safe for her to have our second baby in an Australian hospital, as I believed that they were quite well set up. The baby was due in about September, and we had a passage booked on the P&O liner ‘Strathmore’, sailing from Tilbury, in the East of London, on the 23rd of June, 1959; the trip to Sydney would take about five weeks.

I sold my Scott motorbike (to whom I forget - I was part-way through building a sidecar for it so I could take Ann and our little son Carl on a holiday in Northern Ireland), and I also sold my push-bike to my colleagues in the Project Assessment Office for six shillings, so they could nick out at lunchtimes on it to get lunches and so on.

The Voyage Out

After tearful goodbyes at Tilbury, with much throwing of streamers and waving until we could see those on the dock no more, we headed off. Our first port of call was Malta, but we were not able to go ashore, because, by then, Carl had broken out in measles and needed to be kept in his cot in our cabin and kept cool by spongeing.

But by Port Said he was alright again. We still didn’t go very far on shore, but were entertained on board by the ‘gully-gully man’, and bought worthless items, like embossed leather wallets that turned out to be cardboard, and huge rush baskets that were eventually confiscated at Sydney by quarantine officers.

Then we went through the Suez Canal (which had only recently been reopened after the Suez Crisis of 1956), to Aden, and then to Colombo, where our little blond boy was patted on the head by many smiling and cooing women. And then we finally reached Australia, at Fremantle, the port of Perth. But we still had about a week to go! To Adelaide (by the way, my Rolls-Royce colleague had not taken up his position there - he had experienced a worrying blackout while driving, which sapped his confidence), and then to Melbourne.

On the ship we had met a guy, with his family, who was also headed for Brisbane to take up a lectureship in the same department as me, so while we were in Melbourne, where he had lived for some years before spending two or three years in England, we went to his parents’ place for tea. My first impression of Melbourne suburbs was of their untidiness, compared with what I was used to in England - residential streets where all the houses looked much the same.

Brisbane

We finally disembarked in Sydney, and took the train to Brisbane. We had been corresponding with the department, and when we pulled into South Brisbane Interstate station we were met by a new colleague, who took us home first for a cup of tea, and then to our new home, which had been rented for us in Clayfield, a northern suburb of Brisbane. In fact it was a half-house, an apartment made by dividing an old-style Queensland house into two. The other half was occupied by our landlord and his wife, who showed us the ropes and instructed us about the need for mosquito nets for the beds and cot and showed us the laundry (a washing machine and tubs under the house).

Like many houses of that era and later, it was built on ’stumps’ - timber uprights that left a space underneath which was very convenient for garaging the car, storing stuff and, yes, doing the laundry. Unusually, as we were to find out, the toilet was indoors, a proper flush toilet, while much of Brisbane was still served in that respect by ‘ECs’ - earth closets - emptied each week by the sanitary men, who took away the full cans and left clean ones, together with a supply of sawdust. The sano men ran everwhere, sprinting from their truck to your out-house, with the can balanced on their shoulders. I never saw one spilt, thank goodness. Later on, we would experience this form of sanitation ourselves, but, as I said, our new place had plumbing.

So we were set up in Brisbane; the next step was to make my acquaintance with the Mechanical Engineering Department, in the city. To get there and back, I would take the tram.

Next Chapter

If you liked this, why not treat me to a coffee (or a bone for Kafka)? Thanks, mate!

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