My first job was as a labourer to a team of brick layers working on the building of an oil refinery at Kurnell, a desert site on the southern shores of Botany Bay.
When the concrete trucks arrived they filled huge steel vats that were placed on the side of the road with their loads. They couldn’t drive onto the soft sand without becoming bogged. There were no concrete pumps in those days, my job was to shovel the cement out of the vat into a wheel barrow and wheel it three hundred metres across the desert sand on builders planks laid end to end. With one foot on each side of the plank in the sand and the wheel on the plank to keep the builders loaded with enough cement to continue to lay the bricks all day, day after day.
It was hot in the blazing sun, it was hard work but I loved the challenge. It built me up physically, stronger and fitter than I had ever been. It was monotonous, but it gave me time think. What do I really want to do with my life?
