A NEW CHUM BATTLES ON.

WE ARRIVE WITH BABIES ON THE FAIRSTAR for ten quid, 1969, after a long and not luxurious cruise, to a paradise of banana plants, technicolour parrots, and glorious sunshine.

There’s about $200 in the bank, a kitten in the Bundaberg house, and a million frogs. Frogs everywhere.

Work peters out soon, after a year and a bit.  After a happy start, nothing, absolutely nothing. It never occurred to me we were living in a depression, I thought it was normal life.

No jobs for anyone; last hired, first fired. The new chum was always put off with apologies, and bosses were kind, one exceptionally so; I was splitting blocks in a cement-product factory (three kids to feed, no shoes necessary), asked the boss to give me a challenge, a price per hundred. Andy, he said, look son, you can work here as long as you like, no problem, but I don’t need them blocks split, just keeping you in work, ok? I took the hint and we took off. For the big smoke: Brisbane, the Country Town.

No jobs in the Courier Mail each morning. No trades, no-one wanted; plumbers, electricians, carpenters (me), no joiners (me again), mechanics, librarians, shop assistants. Hard to believe now; no jobs at all advertised. I had a pocket of sixpences for the phone box across the road, but there were no jobs to apply for.

Except for salespeople. Hard selling, that is. Cold-calling; the most mentally demanding job on the planet, destructive of souls, with a burn-out period of two years, max.

There was no alternative.

I sold insurance. I lasted eighteen months and aged five years. I had been a quiet carpenter. All involved became rabid extrovert alcoholics, but we earned a good quid for the duration. There was a lot of car-throwing, into motel swimming-pools.

Then, with a small economic buffer in the bank, and a horror of further door-knocking, I knocked on one more: Ray White’s, in the big city, where kindly bosses assigned me to the Stones Corner Office.

An easy choice; there were only three offices: the City, Toowong, and Stones Corner. My territory was the South Side, all of it, every house on the south side of the river to the bay was my legitimate prey.

I met my new boss, the best of all bosses, and I’ve had some of the finest: Rene Ranke, Marinus from Holland, ship’s engineer, most patient, kindly, and generous.

I worked my arse off for month after month. Nothing, no income whatsoever. There were no other jobs to go to, no carpentry, insurance would kill me, the small savings depleted. I was in a cleft stick. I knew every house we had for sale, inside-out, every detail, every land-size, bedroom, price, rates, condition, owner and dog, rabid or friendly.

From Stones Corner to Cribb Island to Jacob’s Well I had examined every place we had for sale, hundreds of them, and updated every ancient listing, and added to them as folk confided in me.

I showed my allotted and advertised-for clients the world out there, in my $500 Valiant VIP. Petrol was cheap. Houses were plentiful. Nothing. Clients kept coming back to me, they liked me; I was a free, willing, taxi-driver of unlimited mileage. I showed house after house after house. I knew all the best buys, the bargains, the ripe-for-development. You could buy a good Queenslander in Buranda for less than $10,000.

It’s hard to believe that I earned not a single dollar for ten months, despite the experience of being a successful insurance-salesman of the toughest variety.

And it would have been longer, perhaps much longer, except for the generosity of dear Rene, who donated to me his personal perks of a southside auction: a guaranteed commission, and another, and a certain buyer. It was nearly a year before my first donated commission arrived in the bank, and fourteen months before my first actual sale.

To this day I have no idea why I was so hopeless at the job. Without Rene’s generosity I would have had to have quit and gone on the dole, never to have found out that I was actually very good at the job. One year I was Top Salesman of all Ray White’s, winning a giant silver-plated plastic eagle, but no bonus…….tough but fair. Well, not even fair sometimes. I remember four sales I made during my time, where the commission was somehow questioned by others, or by the owner himself, despite my work and my contract and my signature and my client. I was paid nothing, and with no explanation. If there was the good name of the White’s to protect, little me was the loser.

That second year saw sales mysteriously mount up. I was doing nothing differently. I had developed no sales-technique, my attitude was, if I showed the best house at the best price at the right time…….they’d buy the thing. I showed some clients houses on and off for two years and more, with prices always mounting, before they finally made a decision.

After five years, and I suppose, success, Rene’s kind faith in me paid off for us both, but the office and the car-driving and the constant telephone made me long to put on my carpenter’s apron and start restoring some of the wonderful architecture of Brisbane, on my own account.

In the great outdoors, in and on and under old Queenslanders, I learned so much, and worked so hard, that The Book got written to preserve both my re-claimed knowledge and benefit those who come after me. Despite crap, ill-informed tv programs……..(See Blog)

So, My thanks to the Whites for putting me on, Alan particularly, and the young son who once turned up late, in pyjamas, holding a younger grandson, to conduct one of my auctions. The informality was endearing if peculiar, but the sale was made, and I was paid. On yer, Brian.

But most of all thanks to Rene, kindly gentleman of good humour and comradeship, popular and perhaps loved by our Stones Corner coterie both in office and in adjacent hotel after work. I once calculated that a good 20% of my sales originated in that pub.

Good memories of fellow-phone-fiends in our cubicles, and best wishes to Michael Ball, Danny Burke, Gerry Ponych, and Robin Phillips the fellow-ex-Pom. We seldom argued, and were always gentlemen when it came to divvying the loot.

And, one last Post Script. Our Saturday-morning girl of talent and efficiency and responsibility, and of attractive exterior, was one day studying sheet-music during lulls. (I love lulls) Being a muso of sorts from way back I was curious, and we chatted more than the usual typing necessities required. Her music exams coming up. Piano her instrument. We needed a pianist; could she play jazz? No but will do, and she did, and does to acclaim right now; one of Australia’s busiest and most popular professional musos.

Jo Bloomfield, now Jo Hawthorne; she married my mate the trombone-player, both of whom I love dearly. I think she failed her exam. Good.