What were you before?

[Bushmiller]

I started out my working life with an absolutely paranoid fear, a phobia really, that I would be in the job for 40 years and leave with a gold watch and a handshake. I come from the era and an environment where that was common.

However I needn't have worried. The time for job loyalty and stable employment was fast disappearing and I set off on a series of differing careers.

I started at a re-insurance company which was with a good group of blokes but incredibly boring. So we spiced up the job by describing reinsurance as being like a bookie passing off bets.

But after a couple of years that wasn't enough. I worked for an airline for one year and ws made redundant and then took a job in publishing selling advertising. By twenty four years of age I was in charge of two monthly magazines and two weekly newspapers. I continued in publishing, apart from a brief ,if rather ill-fated, stint in public relations until I emigrated to Oz in 1980 with the aussie wife.

That's right, I'm her souvenir from London

Once ensconced in Oz I decided a complete change was in order, although I had absolutely no idea what that might be. In fact the truth is that I am still looking. I did know that I wanted little more to do with the plastic world of advertising.

I signed up at the Newcastle BHP plant and worked there for two years before getting a power station job in the Hunter Valley. I worked in that area as a power station operator until 1997 when I became restless and left to form my own portable sawmilling business.

It was unsuccessful for many reasons so I won't go into them except to say that I had left my dash too late. I then, together with SWMBO, took on the running of a tea house/ coffee shop. Another venture that was less than successful.

So I went kicking and screaming back to the power industry where I still am, albeit interstate.

I had an amusing incident while I was in the coffee shop. The president of a local service club asked me to give a talk about how I had ended up where I was. A good question I said to myself, although I had no idea why anybody else would be interested.

Anyhow, I agreed to tell them my life history on the understanding they wouldn't laugh, until I had left. I entitled it,

"Insurance clerk to sawmiller; A logical progression."

By the way, to this day I don't wear a watch; Just in case.

Regards
Paul

[chambezio]

Gee this has turned out to be an interesting thread.
Its amazing how some blokes (unlike me) have been able to do 2 or more "trades/skills" in there working life. Fascinating
The other thing that has come to notice is the number (like myself) who have had to be put out to pasture before that 65 year, gold watch and hand shake.
I am feeling a little more comfortable with my situation. I can now answer that person when they ask "Oh, and what are you doing now?" unembarrassed.
Thanks to for the initial starter

[Handyjack]

After my last HSC exam I started 'vacation' employment in a confectionery factory. This lasted over 10 years during which time I qualified as a boiler attendant.
I left the confectionery factory to become a full time boiler attendant, for 2 years and 3 months at a carpet factory before moving to a hospital where I spent the next 14.5 years in the boiler house before it closed. I was redeployed in the hospital to be a trade assistant / handy person, a position which over six years latter despite department restructure and redundancies I still have.
I spent 16 years working as a boiler attendant, and over twenty three years doing some type of shift work. For the last five years I have worked part time for myself as a handyman.

[Ashore]

Painting houses when I was 12 ( sanding and brush cleaning while dad painted)
Laying concrete drive ways when I was 16 ( shoveling and working the mixer)
Nightwatchman at 18 ( assisted the old man who had had a major heart attack by then )
Laid rail tracks at 18-19 Till I started training as a Marine Engineer
Went to sea as an engineer and renovated a few places with the old man when I was on leave
Lecturer in marine engineering
Retired
Though the jobs changed one thing always stayed the same, the ruggerd good looks ( being tall and handsome always helps) and the sence of humor

[Chesand]

I am afraid that my story is rather boring compared to most of the above.
When I left High School at the end of 1956, I started in pharmacy and have been there ever since. In those days it was an apprenticeship where you worked part of the week in a pharmacy and attended the Pharmacy College the rest of the time.
Compared to today, we were not that well educated in theory, in fact, some of the sciences such as pharmacodynamics and pharmacokinetics were not even known. We were very well equipped in a practical sense and most were able to run a pharmacy pretty much as soon as we graduated.
Looking back it has been an interesting time to have been part of history where we have progressed (??) from all the interesting concoctions of the 1950s to todays medicines
I managed several pharmacies before buying my own in 1978 and was then in partnership until 1996. Since then I have worked part-time until final retirement this year when I will not renew my registration in November.
My interest in wood-work started in High School and I did 2 years of one night a week at local tech school after finishing pharmacy course. I have since done several CAE courses and was helped in general woodwork by my late father-in-law who was a carpenter. The ultimate complement was that he asked me to make him a small bookshelf for his room when he had to go into care.
I once helped him nail down a floor and he happened to have a nail fly away after miss hitting it. My older daughter (about 4 at the time) said "you are not very good at that are you, Grandpa." It cracked us up.

[rod1949]

.... as pharmacodynamics and pharmacokinetics .....
I once helped him nail down a floor and he happened to have a nail fly away after miss hitting it. My older daughter ( about 4 at the time) said "you are not very good at that are you, Grandpa." It cracked us up.

Well Herbie you have used a couple of words that the rest of us have never heard of so we've had a bit of an education.
Love the last bit... out of the mouths of babs as they say, and I can relate to complety missing a nail and leaving a two bob mark in the timber

[Grumpy John]

I started my working life as an apprentice Fitter & Turner at GMH Fishermans Bend. Stayed at it until 2 weeks before I racked up 15 years service, when I took voluntary retrenchment. Walked out with 46 weeks pay, this gave me enough to buy a block of land and a deposit on a house. I then tried my hand at sales, selling hi-tech lubricants, I really sucked as a salesman (too honest ). I'm not saying salesmen are liars, I just couldn't keep giving BS excuses as to why customers orders weren't being delivered, why we were out of stock of a particular hydraulic oil, blah, blah, blah. I then landed a job Allwood Machinery installing and servicing woodie machinery such as Altendorf panel saws, Weinig moulders and drying kilns. I stuck at this until I was approached by a friend to apply for a job at ANCA.
This was probably the best and most interesting job I ever had. My initial employment involved retrofitting manual machines to accept CNC controls which were built in Australia by ANCA. I was also involved in building the prototype of their CNC tool & cutter grinder as well as being involved in the development of their (not so successful) machining centre. Unfortunately due to changes of management I felt my input and hard work in the development of their very successful grinder were not appreciated and left to work for Wickmans as a service engineer in their wood machinery division. After about 3 months I was approached by ANCA to return, which I did, in sales. Have I told you I suck as a salesman. This lasted about 6 months when I left after buying a video library in December 1990.
I ran the video library with my wife and the help of a couple of part timers. Life was pretty good for about 7 years and then pay tv and increasing piracy began to take it's toll, and the last year in the library we were living month to month on the credit card. Unable to sell the business we closed the doors in Jan 2000, sold our house before the bank did and started from scratch in an ex housing commision house in The Pines.
I worked for a couple of companies involved in building and servicing machinery till 2007 when I started getting stressed out with long work hours and constant travel.
I've been at Bunnies now for 5 years, the pay's crap, but the hours are good and most of the customers are OK. I still get in trouble for telling the truth, if a tool's no good I'll say so. Some customers don't like being told the $35 hammer drill will not drill 16mm holes in their garage floor, and the $15 10 piece holesaw set is not suitable for drilling the faucet hole in their stainless steel sink.

Thanks for starting this thread , it wasn't until I sat down and started typing that I realised I've done quite a lot since I started out a pasty faced 16 year old at GMH.

Sorry to anyone that damaged their keyboard when their head hit it after they went to sleep reading my saga .

[Acco]

Before I officially started work, I worked school holidays on my Uncle's farm near Benalla, used to catch the train from Melbourne or go with my folks when we visited Nan at Benalla.

First job at 16 was an Apprenticeship as a Coppersmith in the Hospital Industry manufacturing Sterilisers and Steam heated cooking pots from 20lt through to 320lt capacity. Got retrenched after 6 1/2yrs when we had the recession that the government said we had to have which would have been early nineties I think.

From there on I have been mostly self employed or contracting.

Started up and ran my own Steel Fabricating business for about 7 yrs and also helped my Uncle shift his farm after the government bought his land to build the Australian Defence Industries at Benalla, till I had 2 of my bigger clients go into bankruptcy and after having just recovered from from another clients bankruptcy, I decided to call it quits.

I then went and lived on my Uncle's farm for a few years helping him by putting up sheds from the old place, establish winery, etc. Also contracted part time to a Steel Lintels business welding and cutting steel.

This is about when my depression really started to get to a all new downtime low, so moved back to Melbourne for a few years, took about six months off work then worked with my brother installing kitchens for about a year, then another few months off then started doing timber deliveries for a couple of mills in the Yarra Valley with ute and trailer as it was easy work and only required a couple of days a week and also a few days a week to erect new 20mt x 48mt winery shed back at my Uncle's.

That takes me to about 35yrs old which is when I moved to East Warburton renting for nearly 3yrs and doing more work delivering for the timber mills and buying my first small truck. Liked it up here so much that I ended up buying a place where I am currently residing. Also bought a slightly bigger truck when I moved, then a year later bought my current truck which is my Acco1850E Crane Truck.

Since I've been up here in the valley I've only worked part time as I cannot handle too much due to my depression which had since been upgraded to clinical depression. At some stage in that period of time I was also put on a disability pension as well, so some weeks I earn a wage and other weeks I live on the pension depending on how much I've earned from working.

I also have a Lucas Sawmill which I bought about the time I took 3 months off work after working for my brother, which has partially earned me an income but was mainly used to cut my own stuff or for my Uncle or family.

At this stage I'm currently a couch potato, haven't worked for about 6 weeks or so.

[BobL]

In between when I was 13 and 21 I did the following
Potato picker
Gardener
Car washer
Stuffed toy stuffer
Menswear Retail
Supermarket Shelf stocker
Footwear retail
Footwear warehouse dogsbody/delivery boy
Builders labourer
Cement Mix plant operator in a concrete slab factory
Dogman
Crayfish processor
Night Watchman.

The rest of my working life is pretty boring after that.

[Terry B]

Mine is much more boring. Went to uni and have been a medico ever since. Now a country GP.
I did work as a projectionist in a cinema when at uni though. This was fun but long hours watching the same movie over and over and over and over etc.

[ozhunter]

Never went into a trade (regret that now)

All I ever wanted to be was a farmer. Left for the shearing sheds around Bouke 2 days after finishing Yr10.

DId some shearing
worked on a large cattle property and feedlot at Tamworth for a couple of years (nearly starved to death)
Made stock feed in a Goodman Fielder mill
Built Ambulances and demountable school buildings
Tassled corn
Came home to more shearing and farm work
Bricky labourer
Pet food factory pleb
Printing business pleb
Gold mine mill operator
Hay carter
then into Corrective Services for 18 years. Got injured and was wiped like a dirty back side. No payout, no nothing.

Went back to farming and now own part of our family farm as well as working for an engineer a couple of days a week and shooting a few kangaroos as time permits.

No regrets about any of it. Pity the politicians got to the Workers Comp laws a while before I got hurt, or things could be different.

Lucky to be alive, great wife and kids. The engineer I work for has been the best thing, learn stuff everyday. Using all the associated gear, and got an even bigger fetish for hand tools than ever before.

[Cliff Rogers]

Did 6 years in the RAAF in electronics. Loved it - but was not the life for a married person. Back then you could be moved every 2 years.

After the Airforce I spent over 30 years in the computer industry working for 6 different companies. Two of these companies were second to IBM at different stages - not one of the 6 exists today. Such is the IT industry......

Wood working has only ever been a hobby as well as home repairs. But it sure fills in a day during retirement.

Similar.

I was a ground based radio tech in the RAAF for a couple of years & then got computer training, have been working on computer for 33 years now.

Not retired yet, the woodworking & home renos fit in between computer calls.

[Sebastiaan56]

Well I started a career in the public service when I left school. Lasted six weeks . I then did sundry factory work for a year until I started travelling around Australia and doing itinerant agricultural/mining work till my late twenties. I ended up doing Quality Control in a packaging factory and then another packaging factory and finally in a food factory. By the time I was made redundant from that I had my Certified Quality Engineer and a Masters in Environmental Management. I was then the corporate Quality & Environment Manager with lots of staff, 6 locations and basically non stop corporate travel. I was glad when it was over and I bought a printing franchise. Been there ever since. Loving it. I seriously doubt i could work for anyone else again.

Woodworking started as an antidote to corporate stress, now its my indulgence.

[FenceFurniture]

Jeez , this might take a while because I've had 3 working careers, two marriages, a defacto or two (I usually work on a having a new partner for each career), and a couple of reincarnations.

14 to 18: Car Washer & Polisher
18 to 18 +a bit: Factory process work after a 3 month stint at Uni
18 +a bit to 18 +a bit more: Builder's Labourer
19: Menswear retail
19: Cleaner at Uni (I went back for more of the same, stupidly)
20 to 30: IT (operating and then programming). Great days.
30 to 45: Photograher (Industrial, Hospitality, Natural History)
45 to 54: Investment Property sales and Mortgage broking
54 to present: Trying to wrap my head around that vast area of woodworking

Two of the three "proper" careers have left me with skills that I use on an almost daily basis. It was a real blast being formally trained in logic (IT), and i now use quite a bit of programming in Excel. The photography skills never seem to die, like bike riding, and they are pretty useful in preparing things for posting on here. It can get a bit ridiculous sometimes - I had to pull myself up yesterday (when preparing a thread) - I was getting too carried away with styling a photo of what was essentially a pile of dust!

[shedman]

My working life has been varied. Left school in UK went to train as teacher then needed money to get married (just for 15 months) so worked in real estate as sales person for several years. Came to Aus worked in vehicle spare parts and as pest controller. Got married for 2nd time (Still together now 37 years later). Moved back to UK for 8 years sold stationery and office equipment. I then became a commercial manager for a major it equipment manufacturer before starting my own business in commercial fitout and some small domestic building jobs. Came back to Aus lived on a yacht for 2 years but got bored so with wife went and studied law part-time whilst working as technical writer. Worked for 12 years as a Barrister in Brisbane then retired for 2 years. Now back working as a barrister but working with people to save them money in family law by showing them how they can do a lot of the work themselves.

During my life I have renovated two houses in UK and built my current house from scratch. I am also a qualified volunteer ambulance officer.