When I had completed my B.A. degree with honours in psychology from the University of Qld. at the end of 1967, I decided I needed a change of scene from Brisbane so I moved South to Sydney. Being Mr Frugality, I had a comfortable level of savings, no debts and a sky blue VW beetle -- so the transition was an unproblematic one.
I did however want a job. So I went along to the Army recruiting office. From my time in the CMF in Brisbane I was a fully qualified Sergeant in the Psychology corps so thought I might get work there. They grabbed me. An extra qualified hand was very welcome. So within days of arriving I was back in the Army!
I did not stay there for long however. I applied and was accepted into the NSW public service
I was assigned to the Dept. of Technical Education as a graduate clerk. Their graduate clerk program was however a typical bureaucratic bungle. The only work they had for me was filing, something I had done years ago as a junior clerk in the Queensland Dept. of Public Works. I was quite miffed at being given such dumb work so I refused to do it. And it was all downhill from there.
Eventually I was transferred to Head office where they gave me some slightly more interesting work. I did what was asked but there was not much of it so I had a lot of spare time on my hands. I was at the time enrolled with the M.A. program at the University of Sydney so I mostly used the spare time on academic work. The managers apparently felt unable to do anything about that.
But one morning, just after I had handed in my Master's thesis at U Syd towards the end of the year, I unintentionally slept in and arrived at work late. That was it! They had me. Lateness was something they could act on. So I was promptly fired that day. There would have been access to an appeal but I didn't bother. I knew I was going on to other things next year.
Instead I turned to someone I had worked for in Brisbane: The eccentric Harry Beanham. I sold light machinery for him in Brisbane -- new lathe gears and other new machinery. Harry also had a big stock of secondhand machinery which he had bought at auctions. Auctions were his second favourite hobby, I gather.
So when I was fired, I went and saw Harry at his Sydney business -- in case he might want me to work for him again. He did. Harry remembered how I sold lots of diehead chasers for him in Brisbane so had a high opinion of my usefulness. So he promptly put me to work preparing his secondhand stock for sale. So I got a job that did not exist until I asked for it!
So in the space of less than a year I had got 3 jobs, none of which were advertised! Lessons: Don't be late in a bureaucracy and finding a job is easy if you have usable skills and qualifications.
The Baroque Music Club
I founded The Baroque Music Club club shortly after I moved to Sydney in 1968. It was a very informal thing that consisted of Sunday afternoon meetings at somebody's place where we would drink cheap flagon wine and listen to recorded Baroque (pre 1750) music.
Denis Ryan was our most frequent host and his wife, Fay, used to put on a whopper afternoon tea to aid the deliberations.
It was a good way to meet musically-inclined single women and I did meet a few there, including one wife (Dawn) and some other sexy ladies, such as Leslie Johnson and Nola Holland. I still remember Leslie Johnson arriving there and noting at the time what an admirable bottom she had. Joy used to come to some of the meetings but I did not meet her there.
Terry French was another frequent participant at the meetings but I never got into her knickers. Like Joy, I met Terry at Mensa. She was quite attractive and I made several attempts to take her out but was always knocked back. I asked her about that some years later and she said, "You just didn't try hard enough" (!)
All that aside, however, my chief memories of the Baroque Music Club still are musical. I still feel the lonely eminence of Bach, the circular-saw-like power of the Vivaldi oboe and bassoon concerti and the elegance of Albinoni, Pescetti and Gabrielli. As far as I can remember I kept the club going until I left Sydney in 1983
At the University of Sydney
As soon as I arrived in Sydney I went along to the University of Sydney and was told that part-time students needed to take 2 or preferably 3 years to do a Masters Degree. That suited me not at all so, even though I in fact had a full-time job, I enrolled as a day student and did the M.A. in the bare minimum of one year. I just took time off my work in the Dept. of Technical Education to attend whatever lectures I had to. There weren't many lectures and tutorials and the Public Service encouraged time off for education anyway. "Further study" was greatly facilitated as a matter of general policy.
I actually got the highest marks awarded in the M.A. exams but the Psychology Department would not give me the degree with first-class honours because (I imagine) they suspected I was really part-time and didn't want to look fools. So the cowards sent me a special letter saying that I only got second class honours but would probably have done better had I taken the "normal" two years. I still have the letter somewhere.
While I was doing the M.A. I also enrolled at the University of N.S.W. as an evening student and studied economics. Economics was a major intellectual discovery for me and Economics I was probably the most valuable course I ever did (in my opinion). I did a bit of accounting too just to find out what it was like but didn't persevere with it. So that was a busy year for me: A full-time job plus a complete higher degree plus a new undergraduate subject. I enjoyed meeting the demands that placed on me. For once I had to use my time fairly efficiently.
Social
Work and study were not my only activities, however. I also had a good time socially. I had joined Mensa not long before I left Brisbane so started going to their meetings as soon as I arrived in Sydney also. Mensa formed an important part of my social life during my entire sojourn in Sydney. As well as being highly intelligent, Mensans tend to be eccentric. This suited me as such people are more interesting and they certainly don't threaten me in any way. Social skills, however, tended to be in short supply so I ended up running Sydney Mensa for quite a few years. Organizing meetings seemed to be beyond most of them.
I particularly remember summer nights in 1968 when I was doing my M.A. and eating chicken Maryland at the Forest Lodge hotel -- in company with Michael Crowley, the wonderful Lesley Johnson and various "Sydney Push" types like David Ivison. For some reason, Shostakovich's "Second Waltz" also reminds me of those times. And the song "Moscow Nights" captures my mood at the time rather well
Michael Crowley was a fellow psychology student at Uni Syd in 1968. Michael is a very caring man but later got into trouble over an affair with a lady aged just 15. A year later he would have been in the clear. So I hold nothing against him. He and I both had affairs with the redoubtable Mavis K. And he married an ex-girlfriend of mine, the delightful Elizabeth T.!
Isabella
One lady from that time whom I remember was Isabella Schmidt-Harms. I met her at a Goethe Society function at the University of Sydney. She had the bloom of youth upon her and fitted the Scots description: "a bonny lass". She was the daughter of the West German Consul in Sydney. I took her to a musical -- Man of La Mancha, I think -- but basically did not know what to do with her. I get on easily with English and Australian women but I don't really understand German women at all. I think that German women expect German men to order them about whereas I am more used to good old Anglo-Saxon "signals" to guide behaviour. So I never asked her out again.
I felt rather foolish about that at the time. It would not really have been hard to progress matters further and if romance had developed I might well have followed her back to Germany. My German wasn't too bad at that stage and I would have been fluent within 6 months. And there is a lot of German in my personality -- Prussian punctuality etc. I am even a devotee of sausages! And a diplomat's daughter would have socially elevated contacts so I might have ended up among the movers and shakers in Germany. And Germany is a much more important place than Australia.
I saw all that at the time but deliberately opted out. I could have been a very good German -- the high culture would have suited me greatly -- but it was a lot easier to be a relaxed Australian. I was lazy and unambitious. Still am. So that was a turning point -- a road not taken.
But I did contemplate becoming a German -- a Prussian even. The great marker of the Prussian is precise punctuality. And I have that. And I would certainly have been happy to wear a Pickelhaube, long gone though that now is. And I am in fact a former army man anyway. Prussians are particularly known as soldiers -- not that I was a good one.
And Germany's rich cultural life would have suited me down to the ground.
Joyce H.
Shortly after I arrived in Sydney I ran into Joyce Hooper -- while walking down George St -- whom I had briefly taken out in Brisbane (I met her at the Folk Centre).
We soon started living together (in Rozelle). As Joyce looked great (big firm breasts, slim waist, creamy skin, freckled face, brown eyes, about 5'6" tall and a mop of dark red hair) and shared my musical interests, I was pretty pleased with things.
We lived together in a flat at Rozelle for a while. Joyce is an enormously critical woman, both of herself and everyone else so we ended up arguing enough to split up. I was disappointed at the breakup but I don't know that I was really upset. It was just very hard to stay on the right side of Joyce and I felt confident that I could do better than such a difficult relationship. I was still working for Harry Beanham when we split up
Lesley J.
A definite lady that I met whilst I was at Uni Syd was Leslie Johnson. Lesley was from a Communist family, though she was more into philosophy than politics. When I was dating Lesley, she had a beauteous sister who was being dated by Mark Aarons, son of Laurie Aarons, boss of the Communist Party of Australia. Mark had the blonde and I had the brainy sister
Lesley was 5'10" and a very nice person indeed. She was very slim, elegant, well-spoken and poised and had a very sexy big bottom. She had very long auburn hair which she would only ever let down when getting into bed.
She was a gentle, thoughtful person but with a good sense of humour. She had done very well in Philosophy III (topped the year, I think) at the University of Sydney, which is a major intellectual achievement. We got on very well intellectually but we also did very well in bed together.
Her high level of education caused her to appreciate my high cultural level -- e.g. my desire and ability to make apposite quotations from Goethe, Chaucer etc. She was so thrilled to find a man who was both up to the highest intellectual standards and yet not a nerd that our eventual breakup was particularly hard for her.
I remember sitting on a bench with her overlooking the Lane Cove river on a calm moonlit night. An appropriate poem by Goethe came into mind -- Meeresstille -- so I recited it (in German) right down to "reget keine Welle sich". I suspect that I did it rather theatrically but it elicited great approval anyway. It was definitely one of my "Moscow Nights"
A curious thing about her was that she was urged to take Philosophy honours but felt that she should not because it would alienate her from men. (At that time she just wanted to start a family). She was probably right. She therefore much appreciated it that I also had also done a fair bit of Philos. (Philos. I at Uni Qld and "General Psychology" as part of my M.A. at the University of Sydney). So we had a lot in common and should have stayed together. We did not. Mainly because I had a wandering eye at that time. If you cannot have a wandering eye in your mid-20s, when can you? It would have been a lovely calm life if I had stayed with her, though.
I was living by myself in a flat at Balmain at the time I was seeing Leslie. Her family were very permissive. Her younger sister used to have her boyfriend (Mark Aarons, son of the Australian Communist party boss and later party boss himself) sleep with her overnight at the parental home. I think the parents were fairly academic. I dined with them once or twice and I remember that they used to have wine with dinner -- still fairly unusual at that time.
Despite the permissiveness both girls were far from promiscuous. Leslie had slept with only a few blokes before me. She was quite choosy, actually. Most of my woman-friends have been. It is probably the main reason I have never got any V.D. other than the ubiquitous wart virus and thrush.
She did eventually became an academic and I still see the occasional article by her in the journals. I think that she eventually made her career as an Educationist but she also seems to have managed to become a Pro Vice Chancellor at the University of Technology, Sydney! She really was an extraordinarily fine woman.
Nola
Nola Holland is someone I kept in touch with for a long time. I met her through the Baroque music group. She originally came from Dubbo and her maiden name was Boyle but she greatly disliked the bog-Irish image that her family name gave her so she used the surname of her first husband (John Holland) for the rest of her life, even though they were together for about a year only. They married while she was a teenager. I seem to recollect.
Nola is about 5'3" tall, has blue eyes and brown-to-red hair. She also has a very plausible tongue but I can usually see through her machinations despite that.
Nola is a very sophisticated person in general and has had a very large number of sexual partners -- most of whom have been very well-off. So she was "slumming it" to be with me.
Nola and I were together in the early stages of my stay with John Henninhgham and Alf Croucher in a terrace house at Wentworth Rd., Glebe. An incident I remember from that time was when Henningham, Croucher and I were about to take out some insurance. The salesman, George Serhan, was of Lebanese origin and a real bull-artist. We rather liked that side of him. We thought it an art-form and quite amusing (He even had a chauffeur!) Nola was there, however, and also detected the insincerity. Did she get up him! She really gave poor old George a tongue-lashing. We almost had to pull her off him. It is lucky I am so exceptionally blunt and straight-forward or else I would never have got on with Nola.
I remember Nola and I spending one Xmas day together during that time. We got on my motorbike (a little Suzuki. I think I had both a motorbike and a car at that time) and rode up to Galston Gorge. Nola loves motorbikes. We had a picnic lunch and we made love in the bush. I remember noticing at that time that her pubic hair had a reddish tinge to it.
On the way back we fell off the motorbike, which Nola scolded me about for a long time. We both had some fairly painful but really minor injuries from it.
Nola is your original wild Irishwoman (though Australian-born) whom most men cannot handle at all. She just manipulates them. We had a pretty intense relationship for a brief period soon after we met but soon realized that we were both too headstrong to live together.
Nola is a great traveller. She seems to have at least 4 holidays a year: A sensation-seeker. She is about the same age as I.
She told me that once she was at a fancy dinner party with her Greek barrister boyfriend (John Gleeson) when people started discussing who their best friend was. When they asked Nola who was her best friend she said: "My vibrator". Typical. She finds it hard to be tactful for five minutes.
I think Nola and I got on well because we both have very down-to-earth attitudes and because neither of us is much restrained by convention. Her blunt utterances would offend a lot of people but I just find them fun -- as they are intended to be. She is full of fun generally.
