The Man For The Job – Leo Pennisi

It rarely happens now. Folk in jobs for three of four decades. Experience in the generality of one’s profession mixt with the specificity of the industry.

As the Australian plasterboard industry faced onshore challenges with new local producing entrants, importers also reared their heads. Winstone, a New Zealand producer of plasterboard began to land containers of plasterboard in Australia, Holy Kiwi!

To return the favour it was decided that for retaliation, Melbourne was the preferred port. It was Australia’s lowest-cost producing plant, set on a large shipping port with frequent cross Tasman services.

Board was loaded by forklift onto 20′ flat racks, tied to the rack with metal bands then covered over with waterproof tarpaulins, also tied to the flat rack. These flat rarcks were in short supply and only infrequently available. The plasterboard required for the order was taken from available stock and the order was prepared on overtime by warehouse workers. Each container took four hours to load secure and make water tight. Depending on warehouse stock completing a four container order might take two weeks to complete.

The loads arrived in New Zealand with up to 15 – 25 % reject, the result of water ingress, metal strapping damage to sides of loads and end crushing caused by loads sliding and impacting into end struts.

All the profit was absorbed in that 15 – 25 % rejected. Intangibly there was the cost of the frustration of customers having to sort through shipments to find useable board.

Our Brisbane plant had spare capacity. An opportunity! But how to maximise this opportunity? Leo came up with some ideas. How to efficiently load board into standard closed 20′ containers, avoiding the need to cover the load and utilise the more readily available containers?

Experimentation with an aircushion hovercraft sled were conducted. Board was loaded onto the sled outside a container which could then be raised by air and floated in. When in place inside the container, the air to the cushions was released lowering the load onto internal blocks. The sled was then retrieved. This whole operation could be performed by a single operator. The sides and ends of the load were supported away from the container sides using air cushion pads, inflated using the same air source which had inflated the hover craft. The whole process of loading the sled by forklift and placing inside the closed container could be done in 15 minutes. To speed up the process an order from New Zealand could be taken as late as 11 pm, board produced and stored into the aisles of the sleeping warehouse. A crew came in at 3am to load the sleds, load the containers and ensure the aiselways were clear before the start of business at 7am. Special mobile container lifters were provided by the transport company to lift the containers from where they had been loaded directly onto truck bases. Four containers could be loaded in this time and be at the port by 11 am.

We waited (do we say here with bated breath?) for the feedback on our first trans Tasman load. The feedback was “magnificent”, “perfect” “, “amazing”. Reject levels were 2 % or less.

Within a few months outbound shipping of building materials from Brisbane to New Zealand, was topped by Gyprock.

Winstone stopped its nonsense.

Thank you Leo, and others.

UBF – The Introduction

An old factory marooned on a hillside between terra cotta tiled rooves of suburbia. Perched well above surrounding backyards, it was one half of a wartime era sawtooth building shared with a failing carpet factory. The exterior was thirsty for a lick of paint, well more than a lick really, perhaps a thorough repaint, but squeezing a profit from its aged frame was what its owners sought.

The plant was manned by a motely collection of unionised labour of the old school, textiles workers who though under siege from an Asian onslaught of cheap fabrics, cost cutting and cheap labour skills fought bravely on against the tsunami threatening their demise. Perhaps by ensuring their kids never followed them into this cul-de-sac of a working life could they find salvation from their disappearing way of making a living.

I admit I knew nothing about textiles and carpet under felting. The job was advertised by a small consultancy in Sydney. Down towards the harbour foreshore in George St, just north of Australia Square on a corner as I remember. It was a vague interview, company undisclosed, but being in need of work I wasn’t too fussed. Retrenchment after 28 years takes a toll. The consultancy I’d done in Indonesia in an area I knew well was a fading memory. I needed work. The interviewer told me that it was a wealthy private company with a wide range of interests two of which were self storage, and turf farms. The job was in neither.

I got the job after a mysterious reference about phrenology at the interview. I put little store in it, until a month or so later I was sitting in the wooden paneled vestibule of the offices of United Bonded Fabrics, Kedron. Sitting there on a plastic chair, I waited. Mario the General Manager was due from Sydney, I was to wait for him.

“Would you like a cup of tea?” Daphne asked, seeing that I was anxiously looking about but looking at nothing.

“Um, er yes please,” I gasped, the neck tie straining my voice.

Daphne was a glasses wearing mousey looking woman with a hunched back. She’d noticed me over the mid level partition from her desk within the chaotic office shared with two others. Papers were strewn haphazardly over several desks.

“Milk and sugar?” she enquired.

“Both please, milk and one thanks,” I replied feeling the tension ease.

Before my tea came, Mario swept into the office. Mumbling about the traffic from the airport and the chore it was to be at this plant three times a week.

Alarm bells began to ring. Three times a week echoed in my skull.

He roughly introduced himself, then just as roughly told me to stay where I was until he summonsed me. Swinging open the bar door in the low panel wall, he strode across to the partly open office door to the left of Marie’s desk, disappeared inside then the door closed.

The tea was just right, settled the nerves but before I could finish it the office door open and Mario called,

“Ok, you can come in now, I’ll introduce you to Mark..”

I rose and wove between the paper laden desks into the office Mario had entered. Slumped behind the desk sat Mark, looking as if he had been just been crying, if not barely suppressing tears. I wasn’t sure whether a hello and handshake were appropriate, but Mario told me he’d just sacked Mark and would I mind poking my head out into the office and ask Daphne to make up Mark’s entitlements and pay..

“Um what,” I tried to compute what was happening. Mark had taken over as manager of the enterprise following his Dad’s retirement after many years service. Mark had been there for over a decade and like his Dad fabric flowed in his veins. Daphne immediately burst into tears. Frankly a most uncomfortable scene.

Returning from my head poking the chairs had changed. Mario and Mark were facing the desk, Mark occupying the chair I’d vacated, his managers chair now vacated.

“I’ll have to leave soon to get the plane back to Sydney, ” Mario said, “However I’d like to sit in on the start of the handover Mark if you don’t mind?”

I wondered if Mark could mind about anything. I didn’t know what to think. Perhaps I could remind myself that such experiences are character building as I stood in the wreckage of Mark’s life.

We chatted in front of Mario desultorily, over the coming months we got a better idea of each other. I rang Mark at home for advice, he was very helpful and held no grudge against me. I learnt a lesson.

A Very Different Calibre

Phil Haley, Liz Toner, Arthur Collins, Les Hoyuen

The Tinning Street Towers, Brunswick, Victoria

Four folk are locked together in my past. They call from the within the shadows. The shadows of the defunct gypsum silos of the Brunswick Plaster Mills in Tinning Street, Brunswick, Victoria.

Lil, Arthur and Phil, good ole’ Aussie monikers from a time past. I entered their world in the nineteen seventies as they were preparing to leave. A new boy on the block, in more ways than one. Apart from Les Houyen, it was unlikely that an Asian had graced the rabbit warren that comprised the Mill.

Les had been engaged as a labourer just after the second world war, by construction manager Geoff Bosanquet for the silo build. With shovel and picks, three guys commenced the arduous task of digging down about fifty feet for the silo foundation. They toiled, rail, hail and shine in the notoriously fickle Melbourne weather. Les had worked his market garden in the bed of the nearby Merri Creek. His body was tuned for hard work. By the time the silos rose above Tinning St, Les’s inattention to his plot had seen it overrun, first by pests, then hooligans and then floods. He took a more permanent role at the Mill when production commenced. He became the gun operator on the Bates Packer. The Bates Packer rose pipe organ-like above the raised wooden loading dock at the front of the factory. Three propeller-fed spouts were supplied by individual screws in the base of a fifty-ton bin. The operator slid between the filling bags, ejecting filled bags between his legs onto a rubber conveyor below. The conveyor carried the fifty-six-pound bags to the right. Three trolley packers were needed to keep up the pace. Five bags per trolley, eight trolley loads to the ton. Attempting to join the three-man crew schlepping trolley loads to storage I could barely tip the trolley over its balance point to get it rolling. Realising I was more a hindrance than a help I settled into the background pensively considering my sub-foreman status. In time Les retired, calling by the Mill daily as he went out for milk and bread. It was his only human contact. He lived the life of most single Chinese guys of his age at this time. Alone.

Occasionally I’d call by Les’s in the evening for a cuppa and chat. We examined his veggie garden, a shadow in size of his Merri Creek market garden, this was a suburban backyard. In the garage a dusty yet pristine 1953 FJ Holden sedan up on blocks. As a treat sometimes Les would start it up for me, the symphony of heaven in a Brunswick garage. When there was more time Les would cook a meal for us both. A diet not much changed, I suspect, since Les was a kid. Rice, lup cheong, steamed garden bok choy, occasionally harm darn. Where’d he come from? I hadn’t the cheek to ask.

bok choy

I’ve visited with Les in the last decade, out at his plot at Fawkner cemetery, reminiscing over my memories of him, of Lil, Phil and Arthur.

Arthur was a dour Scotsman, he called me laddie. I followed him around like puppy. I knew, he knew what I might someday know. He must have been at the Mill before the silos were constructed. To understand the intricacies of the leather belt power off takes from the central line shaft was a trip into the industrial past. The drive into the twelve foot diameter stirrers in the twin kettles were enormous. Replacing belts onto the crown of the drives was an art. An art now forgotten. Formulae and cook times for brattice, mine, pottery, stucco and hardwall, were closely guarded secrets, so why write them down? As some of these were only made twice a year it was imperative to be on the spot. Getting the briquette fired kettles up to temperature and maintaining them there was a finely balanced skill. Most of this was done by sight. Arthur had the eye for this. Peering into the kettle fireboxes to observe the hue and glow, slowly wormed its way into my brain. After a year or so apparently I’d mastered some of it.

Arthur lived north of the Mill. Somewhere north but I never really knew. A row of double storey terraces, one terrace which he now owned. In a rare conversation not about work Arthur told me of the eviction of a neighbour in the Depression. Household chattels thrown on the footpath and road by zealous constables in one tumultuous afternoon, it was an experience that had clearly scarred him. The house was left empty. We got on ok Arthur and I.

Lil, Lilly Toner was the payclerk, and secretary to Phil, whenever Phil was there. Where did she come from. Locally I suspected. She never spoke about personal stuff, she simply served. A tiny lady, and in the cold bare linoleum sheet floored office she ruled. Guardian of Phil’s office she never ventured into the plant. In through the front door in the morning, perhaps a trip or two to the ladies and home again through the front door. Being in charge of the money Lil had the respect of all. She gave a sense of decorum in a fading era. For her there’d be no retraining, when this gig was done, it was done. Retirement, retrenchment whatever Phil might cook up since taking on the dual role as manager of the new Gyprock Plant over at Yarraville. A twenty four hour cycle of tankers took stucco from Brunswick to Yarraville to feed the increasingly insatiable plasterboard monster. Phil was overseeing the build of a Mill at Yarraville to supply the Gyprock plant. On completion this new mill capacity would quickly consign Brunswick to the past.

Phil Haley was short. Well not real short perhaps middle sized. Always primped his hair flowed mane like to either side after rising from his pale crown. To me he always seemed to be evaluating each personal interaction suspiciously. I felt this all the time I worked for him. Phil was secretive. With Lil guarding his office door, Phil came to his office from Yarraville or Ascot Vale home through a back door in his office. He’d back his HQ Premier up to the rear door, raise the boot, to extract documents from his filing system for the day’s work. We never knew he was there. Perhaps we’d see the car, but Lil, outside of the inner office door never had a clue. Likewise he could enter his office, and without notice be gone. Weird? Maybe it was just how it was.

Sir Billy Mackie B M Snedden, KCMG, QC. – I Barely Knew Of Him.

In the sixties, we lived near the top of Loughnan’s Hill, Ringwood, a leafy suburb on Melbourne’s outskirts. Dusty dirt roads wound away from Loughie’s road, up onto the aspirationally sought after hill top. Panoramas of the burgeoning village cum city below were had through the eucalyptus tree tops. On our roadside, towards the summit were two magnificent pines Wind buffeted they over-reached to the centre of the rutted road below.

A perfect climbing eyrie for two teenage boys, recently displaced from inner city slumdom.

Breaks from tilling the soil on the sloping block we now called home, were taken up exploring the wilds of outer suburbia. We loved it. Jere Shing and I clambered and wondered.

Politics was far from our minds it was the sixties. The occasional cavalcade of black lustrous government limousines storming up the hill made us aware that further round the hilltop someone important must reside. It was Billy, at that time either Australian Minister for Immigration or Attorney General.

Not being of age to vote, our competitive spittle rained down through the pine boughs in a contest of, “nearest the windscreen.” We’d learnt sufficient physics to estimate the time of drop, allowing for speed of target, wind drift and tree sway. Ultimately we became most proficient.

From then on we had little to do with him. We saw his son Drew occasionally in Eastland’s Mall, possibly at Dunkin’ Donuts. He however was a private school boy, we state high kids.

In time we got the vote, missed being drafted as Billy ‘s star rose then steadily declined. Politically he was out of the political limelight when he resigned as Speaker of the House in 1983

He burst back into public view in 1987 in flanganto delicto:

On 27 June 1987, just hours after attending John Howard‘s election campaign launch, Snedden suffered a fatal heart attack at the Travelodge motel in Rushcutters Bay, Sydney, while having sex with an ex-girlfriend of his son Drew, identified only as “Wendy”.^[39][40] Melbourne newspaper The Truth headlined its report “Snedden died on the job”, while the Sydney Morning Herald reported that Snedden was wearing a condom and that “it was loaded“.^[41] *

Yes, its very obtuse ‘folk I knew”, but whatever, I’ll claim it.

*. Wikipedia contributors. (2022, April 14). Billy Snedden. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 05:45, June 3, 2022, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Billy_Snedden&oldid=1082715895

Lying There

Relaxed or posed, she lies there nude,

Bare skin exposed, it’s far from crude.

Framed up in wood on bedroom wall,

Her bum blows moonies at us all.

Ted painted this at Bellingen

Life classes brought that thrill again.

Could this be Maria? I pause and ask,

It’s hard to tell from this fat arse.

At Norwood High School we first met

Sylph like she drifted, avoiding nets,

Eventually sent to far off convent

To cure the ills of adolescence.

She drifted in and out of my life

Our paths crossed not, I’d found a wife,

How did she met Ted, a mystery,

They’d shacked up close to South Taree.

When I retired to mid North Coast,

My marriage burnt to darkened toast.

Maria and Ted, we met each other,

In time I treated Ted as a brother.

A nursing home’s now where Ted lives,

His daily sustenance, what it gives

He’s ninety, will I see him again?

The guy who painted nude in the frame.

The Art Of Dog Walk – 1

By Derwent Estuary a southerly blows, its on my back,

Mid afternoon sunshine warms, on scoria track.

I shuffle on in tiny steps ahead of him

Arthritis now slows him, once full of vim.

I rest him there, and take a bench,

Squats over there, far from my stench

Dogs nasals sense, famously strong,

Perhaps he’s offended by my pong?

I ruminate with Vanessa Goodwin

At Howrah Rotary, she was a good’un,

Seagulls swoop and wheel while overhead,

I sense they’d like a feed of bread.

At first they miss then try again,

I duck and weave, shouting “ahem,”

Seagull farts, before shit lands,

Splattering on veins on back of hand

Uncles George, Bill and Ron Wong Loy – CARRUM BEACH

A corn beef sandwich. Corned beef is brisket, a tough meat pickled in brine then slow cooked for tenderization

Just the thought of a corn beef sandwich transports me from wherever I am back to my childhood.

Heinz tomato sauce seeps thru the thin white bread, lightly smeared butter sticking the layered corned beef to each slice. Cut paper thin the entrapped air creates a puff of summer. Row upon row of quartered sandwiches, corned beef, salad, tomato and cheese, ham and pickle.

Jesus died for all the children,
All the children of the world;
Red and yellow, black and white,
All are precious in His sight:
Jesus died for all the children of the world.

Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.
Little ones to him belong;
they are weak, but he is strong.

Refrain:
Yes, Jesus loves me! Yes, Jesus loves me!
Yes, Jesus loves me! The Bible tells me so.

Hey ζ Buddy!

Gladys stoutly defended her position before the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption into her behaviours as premier and her former roles as a Minister.

A neat commentary of this defence was provided by a retired assisting corruption commissioner Wheatley, QC. It’s worth a look! S’on YouTube in an interview with Sky News.

Berejiklian in a feisty, button down defence, sort to portray the image of a hard working, steely pollie, a no nonsense, straight laced personna.

Wheatley noted beyond the shady behaviours exposed, the scant regard to the parliamentary code of conduct was an important feature. He noted that parliamentary colleagues would have declared a close/intimate relationship, as existed between Berejiklian and MacGuire. Truth be known, the scoundrel MacGuire, when a Minister, was obliged under the code to declare.

With oratorical rhetoric, Gladys stood her ground, barely conceding the commissioner’s authority. My guess is she was advised by her current “boo,” Moses QC. Moses was her defence barrister at MacGuire’s earlier corruption hearing.

Great theatre!

For all of what she said, she said it best by saying nothing at all.

She didn’t think to register her relationship.

She’s a modern woman. “We had a close personal relationship.”

Yes, it was intimate occasionally, but he never meant nothing to me. Like we never met each other’s parents!

Aussie readers will know how “meeting the folks,” is a necessary requirement for formal bond formation from the teachings of Married At First Site.

He’s just a ζ buddy.

And that ain’t in the code!

Mako and Meghan

London, blind date, martinis and beer –

Dear star crossed college sweethearts fall in love,

For vulgar celebrity, the glitterati cheer. –

Near respectful press, coos like turtle dove.

Public cathedral garish pomp and tv ceremony,

in private she secedes from Nippon patrimony.

Parental scandals add to the couples’ troubles,

Doppelgangers for the other’s double.

Meghan grasps collapsing Windsor rubble,

Mako forgoes Reiwa era Imperial bubble,

In the West, publicity strains the bonds I fear?

But in the East true love, endures here.

Image result for Queen Elizabeth Coat of Arms

Solving Shadow Poetry

Valiantly I’ve tried, and yes, I failed.

A writing task I set myself.

Poetic forms ‘gainst which I’ve railed

Were best left on my upper shelf.

Traditional forms seen some before,

Didactic, Epitaph, Haiku and Sonnet

Rhymes and language from days of yore,

When gals wore crinoline and bonnet.

Invented forms a different task,

Trolaan , CinqTroisDecaLa, and LaCharta,

Querying the meter, then as I ask,

Rise on right cheek, let go a farta.

Solving verse forms is a puzzle,

Can 3-D Suduko really be solved?

Ultimately I gave up the hussle,

A 2-D Rubik un revolved.