THERE was a pretty good reason last week to take my mind back 40 years to 1970 when I was first employed by the old Wingecarribee Shire Council as a “suitable male clerk”. Just imagine in 2010 advertising specifically for a bloke. They’d have the Equal Opportunity Commissioner beating the door down.
The strange thing is one of the other applicants for the job was Miss Toula Kasadelis, a very good looking Greek girl from the café up the road.
If we’d been interviewed by a couple of young blokes in those days, you can bet she would have landed the job.
Fortunately I was interviewed by the Shire President Bevan Badgery and the Deputy Shire Clerk, Bob Erwin, a Second World War veteran who served in Bob Askin’s regiment.
Actually Askin ran the two-up games, while Bob Erwin fought a war, but that’s another story.
THE interview was memorable. These days we must ask the applicants a series of structured questions without any deviation from the script.
To do so would risk the wrath of a bunch of rules that govern this sort of thing. But there weren’t any rules in 1970.
The shire president was one of the local stock and station agents and I was fresh off the family farm, so we talked for half an hour about sheep, the cattle market, serrated tussock, fattening vealers and fencing in rough country. Bob Erwin chipped in every now and then with some sort of vague local government question in a futile attempt to get the interview back on track, but that was a waste of time.
I didn’t know anything about local government and Mr Badgery was far more interested in continuing our discussion about the cattle market.
The other bloke they interviewed had worked at two councils and was studying at university for his local government certificate, but clearly he didn’t know anything about the local cattle market, serrated tussock or crutching sheep because I got the job.
Obviously the deputy shire clerk didn’t have much say in the selection process.
TO be a councillor back in 1970 you had to be a retired old bloke and it helped if you were a farmer.
Upstairs in the council chamber the elected members would sit around the table smoking while the council meeting was going on. As the debate became heated the blokes sucked harder on their cigarettes and their pipes, filling the room with a filthy pall of smoke.
ONE of my many jobs as the “suitable male clerk” was to pay the staff. We stuffed money into envelopes and I always added a Mintie for the blokes with the neatest timesheets - risk management rules wouldn’t let you do that now because Minties aren’t in tamper proof wrappers.
On the morning of pay day a couple of us would wander across to the Bank of New South Wales carrying a clapped out old leather bag with a dodgy catch to collect the cash. It was all pretty casual as we strolled back with a bag full of unmarked notes.
One day the latch gave way and the bag flew open.
Money went everywhere and random people in the street helped us pack all of the money back in the suitcase.
Would you believe we balanced, with not a cent lost - amazing!
AFTER stuffing the money in the pay packets I would then head off with the overseer to pay the blokes working in various corners of the shire.
Since we had thousands of those unmarked dollars I carried a revolver loaded with six bullets to fend off the crooks.
Even though I’d been a farm boy brought up with guns, I’d never fired a pistol and didn’t have a clue how this one worked, until one day out along Tugalong Road I decided to have some target practice, just in case.
My first shot missed by a mile, so I lowered the sights and fired again, and again, and again, and again, and again. All six shots missed.
When I returned to work I told the boss we’d need some more bullets to replace the ones I’d fired into Tugalong Road. “How many do you want?” asked shire clerk Harold Jopling, pulling out a handful of bullets from between the councillor’s whiskey bottles in his safe. No paperwork, no questions asked.
YES, local government has certainly changed a bit in 40 years.
*Geoff Goodfellow has lived his life in the Southern Highlands and is well known in local sporting and social circles.
Email a friend