Jobs were constant and varied: milking the cow, cutting burrs, cleaning water troughs, feeding and mustering animals, fencing for miles and the list goes on. Up by 5am, bed by 8pm and always on-call.

My first real paid work was to help myself pay for my training as a teacher. I worked as a kitchen hand in a club Thursday to Sunday. 

I rocked up at 10am and started peeling huge bags of carrots, onions and potatoes. The onions required, according to the chef, chewing pieces of bread until the job was done as this was a sure fired method to halt crying. 

Eventually, I became the cook for all the deep frying and had to crisp all and sundry including thousands of chips each night. 

I still remember the joy of frying hundreds of Chicken Maryland. It was so popular it wasn’t funny!

Wages were terrible, the co-workers a diverse collection, yet considerate, while the head chef thought he was a real comic so you were often the butt of jokes. In real terms this was $3.15 an hour, no overtime, a hard, messy, smelly job and often not much to laugh about. Typically there was about 150 customers a night and a wedding most Saturdays with hundreds of guests.  

My second job had much better pay but the male workers treated women as innocent laughing stock who knew little about anything. The best part, apart from the pay, was that it was so easy to get your own back and that no one took offence. 

My employ was as a guillotine operator at the Orange Email factory during summer breaks. I was working with sheets of metal that you had to cut to make the sides of fridges, washing machines and stoves. This work gave you the shakes and made your teeth chatter. Night shifts, penalty rates and a small amount of loading realised over $1200; a princely sum in the early 70s.