The Orange Oral History Group is a disparate group of people, both men and women, with a common interest in capturing the past and looking at the social changes and implications which have occurred in our lifetimes.
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We try, as much as is possible, not to be judgmental when looking at the present, ever mindful of the fact that, while attitudes and reactions may change, people remain very much the same.
At the same time we share much laughter and we hope we can look at our younger selves with understanding and humour.
This month we threw our minds back to our first tentative steps into the workforce and remembered the problems and insecurities of that first day at work.
John Bowler’s first day at work was at Trangie Research Station.
“I arrived at about 11 in the morning on the North West mail and the manager met me and took me out to the station to show me around and meet the staff.
“Then he drove out 7kms to a far paddock which was used as a nursery during the war, dropped me there and drove away leaving me to walk all the way back. It was a good introduction.”
Leslye Melville summed up her life by saying: “I’ve had more starts than Phar Lap, but when I was 45 I started a course in enrolled nursing at TAFE. I was terrified because I was twice the age of the other students and thought to myself that with their bright little minds I would never survive.
As I continued through the course I realised the things I’d learned above and beyond their years were very valuable.” (Leslye actually topped the state in her course but was too modest to tell us.)
Pat Daley worked at Palings’ music store in Orange.
“We used to handle all the bookings for musical performances,” she said. “A pianist from Sydney was playing that night and the bookings were very low and I didn’t know why.
A customer came in and we were discussing the problem. He asked me if I knew why that was and I said : “The pianist is not well known and I’ve heard he’s not very good. To my horrified embarrassment he revealed that he was, in fact, that pianist!”
Curiosity might well have killed the cat was our reaction to Bill McAnulty’s story of his first day at work in a chemist’s shop when he was 14.
“This was in the thirties when all sorts of chemicals were kept in big glass containers to be used in medicines. They were stored on very high shelves and I was told to climb up a tall ladder and dust them. Being a curious boy I took the stopper off each bottle and had a sniff to see what it contained. One of them nearly blew my head off and just about knocked me off my ladder! It was ammonia!”
Tim Vivers has always worked on the land and knows it well. “I started jackerooing on a big place at Wee Waa in February. On the first day we were asked to empty out a 2000 bushel silo of wet corn.
“There were four of us and with the temperature at 40 degrees we managed to take the door off and were met by this dreadful stench of putrid corn. It was so bad that by the time we had finished the job it had permeated our skin. It certainly kept us out of mischief for at least six weeks!”
”I was 17 and just out of school in the 1930s,”Hazel told us. “My mother had enrolled me in a modelling course to teach me how to walk properly. A call came from an agency for a girl of a certain size to show foundation garments to a group of buyers and I fitted the bill.
“They were very discreet dressing us in tutus and stockings with the corsets over the top, and we had to parade in front of the buyers.
“When my turn came I was so embarrassed that I had stage fright and couldn’t move. One of the other girls gave me a push and I landed on the stage in a clumsy gallop much to the amusement of the mostly male buyers.”
Harassment seems to have been alive and well in those days and we were a bit taken aback to hear Elma Woolfe’s story.
“I was appointed to a four teacher school at Barradine where I was the only female,” she said.
At the same time we share much laughter and we hope we can look at our younger selves with understanding and humour.
- Helen McAnulty
“We had Assembly outside under the elm trees.
“This young fellow would amuse himself trying to throw acorns down the front of my dress.”
Dick Page raised a laugh when he told of his first day as an apprentice fitter and turner when the foreman asked him to go in search of “a long wait”.
“I wasted three hours looking for that item until I realised what “a long wait” actually was.”
We have three registered nurses in our group and they all spoke feelingly of their first days at work. They all attended a preliminary training and after six weeks it was on to the wards.
Rosemary Curry was a bit like Elvis Presley who was “crying in the chapel” . “I was crying in the pan room after having to wash blood out of sheets.”
But Dot Higgins’ story was voted the best.
“I had to take all the temperatures on my first day and facing a ward of thirty patients, my preliminary training went out my head.
“In those days we put the thermometer under the arm and when I had completed the whole ward I was amazed that they all had the same temperature until one of the patients called me over.
“Nurse”, he said, “You are supposed to shake the thermometer down after each one.”
We were very young and innocent in those far off days and the world and its ways have changed.
We can only hope that the years have taught us tolerance and compassion.
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