Charles Errock [7] Post-retirement

Charles Errock  [7] Post-retirement


1]  Managing a motel in Port Vincent

When I retired from the railways, my wife had been a Girl Guide leader, and the Girl Guide Association her if we would go up to Port Vincent, York Peninsula to look after Tuckerway Backpackers Motel. So, we applied for the job and we got it. It was supposed to be for six months, just to releive two ladies who looked after it so that they could visit England. We liked it up there, they liked us, and we ended up staying there for two years.  

The hostel was used by the schools for aquatic camps. They used to bring school kids. Sometime, the college groups used to come up there too. But then, they started cancelling because they couldn't get anyone to go with them to feed the kids. Parents were all too busy to come. So, Nancy and I were asked to come to do catering. Nancy's parents catered for the pipelines. When they went through catering, Nancy had to leave school and go and help them. So Nancy had a lot of experience in catering because they've done it in three pipelines.

The school can usually had between 30 to 40 students, though sometimes less. It was a big place. It had two flats, one each end split up separately.  There was a big long kitchen, and then the toilet seats and showers. The middle there, 

It would have seated up to about 80 or 90 people. There was also for they had the offer that Lewis bed. Brazil banks and beds.[?]

If a donor friend, they could sleep in the dining room part.

We had mostly school kids, but a couple of colleges used to come there too. At that time, we would probably have up to 80 or 90 students. But we catered for all of them.

So the camp was not just for the Girl Guides. even though the hostel was owned by the Girl Guides. Anyway, we boosted it. We made a real good business out of it even though we were not there to make money. I had just retired, and money wasn't a problem. We were simply getting paid to look after the hostel. 

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 We made menu for them. We asked them whether it'd be better if they brought their own breakfast material. They didn't want to do that. So, what we used to do was to go and buy the cornflakes and wheat bix, and milk, all the stuff for breakfast. And we just put them over there. They helped themselves. But then, they were down the beach on most of the days. So, I would take their lunches down about 12:00 for them.  Then, we'd would have a roast dinner at night time for them. What I used to do was just go to the butcher at Mennington that I got to know very well. He used to go out on the weekend, and buy what meat he needed from the farm, sheep and cattle. He had a black fellow called Alderroy Stewart, whom I knew pretty well. I used to play football against him at Peterborough. He used to kill [?] and dress it for him [?] and he said to me, "well, look, seeing you doing it for the Tuckerway Hostel, just give me a week's notice what you want, and I'll get it as cheap as I can." So, he used to get me a whole sheep for $10 then. A whole sheep! He would bone it, season it, and roll it. 

And then what I Would do is I took it in the BBQ kettle the day before, so that it was nice and set, and then, I carve it up. And we took the vegetables and Nancy would make the big thick gravy to put on it. And they loved it. That was very good. So we had no trouble with catering. 

2] An intruder in the Kilburn home.

Now about a week before we went to Tuckaway, we got broken into here. My wife had a a dentist appointment. She had to have some deep drilling. Normally, she would have driven herself up to main North Road and back, but for sure she's having this deep drilling. I thought perhaps I'd better go with her, so I went with her. And when we came back home, the intruder was still in the house. And so, I tackled him to the ground. I  then stood up over him, and told him to stop there. Meanwhile Nancy locked the front door, and was calling the police. And for all my the photo was taken, my eye off it, and I just glanced away for a second, and he jumped up and raced into the lounge there. Tried to get through the door, and pushed Nancy out the road. Then he come back through here. And I grabbed him with my right hand. I grabbed his shirt, but my left hand was behind me and he slammed the door and I didn't see that little scar there. Yeah, of course. he got away from me. He had broken the small window and he went out through there. I went out to the front, and he was halfway across the road, but the train was coming, and I knew of catching him. So he got on the train and went off. The police got here just a little bit afterwards, but they weren't interested as soon as I said he was an Aboriginal.

But they didn't. They just took all the particulars there, but all he got was. I've been to the bank the day before and drew some money out because we knew you were going out to Port Vincent, and I left Nancy 100. She didn't put it n the purse, she just left it on a dressing table. Well, he got that, but he didn't have anything else in his hands. I couldn't find anything else missing. 

3] Holiday 1  Taking Up Bowling [7:40]

Anyway, we went up to Tuckerway, and it was terrific for me. I had been under a lot of pressure in my job in the railway, and I needed to sort of quiten down a bit. And it was good. So we got there. We were there a few weeks. Got settled in, and got things moving. And then, the children were coming up for Easter. I said to Nancy, we'll have a big Easter raffle at the hotel. Go there and take a couple of tickets in it. It was on the Friday night, and while I was there. They had their local raffles that they'd had every week for their social club, and there was a big tray of freshly filleted Whiting. So, I took a couple of tickets, and surprisingly I won it.

And of course, "Who's he?" I was a stranger in town. So, that's where I got my name, the man from Tuckerway.  after that, the next week, on a Friday night, I naturally used to go down and have a beer anyway. And I said nicely, "I better buy a ticket in the raffle, because I won it last week and blow me down if I didn't win for two weeks straight." So, I became what was the most popular person in Port Vincent. Yeah, that was popular. 

Port Vincent was a holiday resort town with a population of a couple of thousands. A lot of people fill up the area. They've got shacks there, got a caravan park that fills up. I got to know a few people. They were very clicky, like if you weren't born there, you didn't belong there. I was there one night, and they were these two blokes alongside me. We're having a conversation about someone that they didn't like.  They were running him down and the last word was, "Oh, he's been here only about 13 years anyway." I was there only five minutes! So I knew that I wasn't going to win the popularity contest.

But then, this chap came up from the Bowling Club. And one of the ladies, she said to me before, "Oh, you'll be approached to play. Bowls are always looking for someone to fill in the bottom side." They had three divisions, first section and third division. And they could play any one in the third division. Didn't have to be registered or anything as long as you were prepared to play.  And she said, "Well, I've got a set of bowls that you can borrow those. It will save you from buying bowls."  I said, OK. So, this chap came up. A nice fellow.  He came in, sat down, and we had a little prefetch drilling that we had apart from Tuckerway. He explained all about the bowls to us and the bowl club, and that was all very good. And I said, "OK, I'll give it a go. I've always played a lot of sports."

10:58

"There is one thing that I must mention though," he said. "We have a group."

We won't be able to fill you in there  because we've got a full lot of people  there already."  So, yeah, that's where I found it was very clicky.  

But there were quite a few blokes there who were like myself, who had just come there. Some people were staying and living there, some others were just coming and going. So, we used to go around and play all over York Peninsula, Port Victoria, and Woodruff, and all the places we used to go. It was usually only about 20 minute drive from there to any of them.  We go off on a Saturday playing bowls night. 

I thoroughly enjoyed it and we were very lucky because there was a chap who used to be the First Division Bowler in Adelaide. He had a couple of heart attacks, and couldn't play anymore. But he said he had a shack at Port Vincent when he used to come out and play a role. And then, if he was feeling okay, he would fill in on the 3rd Division. He taught us quite a lot. When we had him there, we usually won. He was quite good.

There is also a socal aspect to the game. They give you a little book. I don't know whether it is all changed now, but the book is first about how to play bowls, then about the etiquette of behaviour in the Bowling Club. How I say to my opponent. Then, after a match, how I'm supposed to offer to buy my opponent a drink. Then, he buys me a drink back, and we sit down, and so on.

You have afternoon together. Halfway through, you go into afternoon tea. And you sit with your opponents over there. There was a competition between the different clubs there too. 


You get to know a lot of people, meet a lot of nice people. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Altogether, I played in three places: first at Port Vincent, then in the Abattoirs Bowling Club where I played after I came back to Adelaide until the government took the club away. After that, I went up to Clearview to play. Overall, I played bowl for 20 years.

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4] Holiday 2 - The eater [14]

We had a wonderful time there at Tuckerway Hostel, and we got lots of complimentary letters from colleges and church groups that came there once the word got around that we were catering, and there were people inquiring all the time. And we built the reputation up. When there was a quiet day and there wasn't anyone around, we'd hop in the car and go for a drive to different towns.

One day, we were going off to Warooka, and there was this weird person, a young lady in the camp. I said to Nancy that I'm not [?] going to ask the girl in the camp if she wants to come with us to have a look around.  Actually, I'd already made-up an arrangement. I knew this boy who had the post job there, and I talked to him. He said, any time he got a backpacker who is interested, he would be happy to take them around when he does the mail run. So, I had her connected to him. She went one morning with him on the mail run, just from one town, the other dropping off mail on it. But that was about all.

Next tim, I said to her, "We're going to xxx this afternoon, Would you lke to come with us?" She said, "Oh, I would love that." 

Nancy got on very well with her, and so we went to Eureka[?] and then   xxx. 

"Well, we might as well make a day of it, and take you to towns that you didn't see when you went with the postmater."  So we took her all around because Nancy loved looking at all the museum things, and all the holiday and tourist things. So she'd hop out with her, and they go and look at everything. So we spent the whole day or a half a day moving around with her. And then, I said, "We're getting a bit late. We might as well go to a hotel and have dinner there." We talk about up there, and I bought her a dinner. 

A couple of years after we came back Adelaide, we got a letter from her. She said she came from Switzerland. And she was now managing a tourist place. And she offered us free accommodation. She said, "Just come,  We'll accommodate you and feed you. I loved what you've done for me in Tuckerway." But Nancy was having a lot of sickness at the time when we left Tuckerway. She had hurt herself. She had a knee problem that was bone on bone before we went, but she did twist it, and padded once up there.

5] Holiday 3 Perth Trip [16:35]

And I was also giving a lot of trouble. So, we had to come back to Adelaide, and she had a knee replacement. So that quietened us down for a little while. When she got over that, I got the idea of retiring early so we could go on some longer vacation. So we hopped on the Indian Pacific and went to Perth, and we had a cabin in the central Perth Caravan Park, and we were there for a fortnight. And every couple of days, we have done a bus tour around different parts of WA, and Nancy loved that.

Until the day she died, she always told me that the Perth Trip was the best holidays she ever had. And we were very fortunate. The bus driver in the first bus we got on, he had studied at the Agricultural Department in Perth, and then, he went to NSW, and got a job. Then, he lost the job there, and came back to Perth. The only job he could get was driving a tourist bus. But it was great for us because he knew everything about the place. He could explain as we'd go along to different places. He'd explain everything to us. It was really hands on tour, and there were lots of  places. Well, with looking at it like Pebble Beach, where the Dolphins were, and that thing. So, it was very good holiday. Then we came back, and after a while, we went to Mildura. And we stopped there for a fortnight, and had a cabin in the caravan park there. 

When we visited Perth, we also visited many places on the way back. We used to always take a tent then. But as we got a bit older, we decided not to take tent in our travel. We would just have a cabin and that was a lot easier.

18:45

Mildura Zoo

When we went to Mildura [?], there was a little zoo alongside of us, and it had a few of these animals, but they also had a jaguar. A wild one. But they brought it up from a baby and a pet, and they had it in the house for years. And the jaguar started to take over. They went to get the jaguar in the bath once, and they couldn't coax it out. And they were frightened of pulling it out because xx turned on them. One night, they went in the lounge, and there it was, sprawled on the lounge, and it wouldn't get off. They tried everything, and the coats it off. 

And they thought, "Well, it is a wild animal. And if it did turn, they'd be in big trouble." So they built a special purpose cage for it, and put the jaguar in the cage. But they still used to put it on a lead like a dog. It was quite time and then we think and it loved the attention that it used to getting. It was quite an experience for us to be in a close contact with a jaguar.

Then we ride alongside all the animals there that they had living a lot. But there was quite a few of them. And so that was quite enjoyable. 

What we used to do was, each day, we'd go off somewhere different because Nancy loved looking at the different museums. And like Morgan and all the different phrases around down there. So, that's what we have done there. That was the two good holidays. 

6] Nancy's health problem and holiday with grandson

Head and then she came back, and she had to have her knee done. She had the other knee done. She had a full replacement on one, and a half replacement on another. 

Then she had to have both her shoulders operated on. So when I wasn't playing bowls in summer. We'd go off for a holiday somewhere, then my grandson, he was great. He got into the under eighteens state team, a ten point bowling team. Know they knocked the bet [?],  the skittles over [?]. And that was at Canberra, so we decided we go there. So we went over there for a week while that Carnival was on.

So, that was yet another enjoyable holiday, going over and watching him play. And then we took him to a lot of the places like  Gundagai, New South Wales, where we saw the dogs sat on a "tuckerbox".  So went to quite a few places, and on the way back from there, in NSW and Victoria, and that took up a bit of time. 

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7] About Bowling again  [21:21]

After that, I started bowling at the Abbot Tour's Bowling Club. And I enjoyed that very much because the chairman of the BIR [?] was a lad I grew up with in Peterborough. And he was the chairman of the Aberdeen Bowling Club. And then, there was another chap there. His father was my Grade 5 teacher at Peterborough School. He made a great fuss for me, and I was very welcomed there. And yeah, and then and there were a couple of blokes that I knew from the railways as well. So, that was very good, and it was going on very well. We were very financially sound. We just had the car park upgraded. 

Bowling games were played mostly by retired people when I played although it has been changing. Ladies were seperated from men. But then, they made a decision that the ladies could play with the men. And, initially, a lot of the men were not happy about the change.  When I first started bowling, I had no experience, but you learn as you go. But I never made the top. I managed to play in four winning Pennant sides at the lower level, but I could never get to the top. I wasn't good enough, and I had a problem with my arm. I used to bring my arm around too much instead of going straight out. The game can be very competitive as you get to the top. Like I said, like Port Vincent was clicky especially at the top. Buit was clicky in the Bath club too because the top is lighter. The blokes at the top level didn't want to know the bottom lot. 

But  I can usually make my way through. Well, with me, I think I'm pretty good at that, and I thoroughly enjoyed that. The two years I stopped up there, it was terrific. And then the Berber tours, I enjoyed it there. 

But then the government took our Bowling Green away from us. The government wouldn't lease the place any longer to us. I wrote many letters in protest.

I don't how many letters I wrote to the premier of the state. 

Got sick of it, very ripe.
But then, the premier wrote back to me! I never expected that.
I got two letter with two lines of words from one of his helpers. But then, it seems that the premier got sick of my letters, so he ended up writing to me. He said that he didn't realize all that went on .... ? 

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8] Lucky in Keno Game [26]12:12 

Then we went on quite a few holidays. About thirteen years ago, I was a bit lucky. I was used to go to the hotel and have a couple of drinks, and play keno. I used to take these three numbers of spots 3, or 17, 27 and 77, and they used to go up reasonably. I think $32 back for a dollar just to get up there. This night, I was up there, and those sevens were not coming up at all. And I said to my mate, there were three games, and there's no seven.

I said, "Well, law of averages, they've got to come up sooner or later." 

So, I put it on, and I also put on a spot 8 and the whole 8 numbers. And blow me down, the whole 8 numbers came up. And that was worth $50,000.

So I went to see my financial advisor about a week before, and she said, "Well, is there any big ticket item that you think you're going to have to replace?" 

And I said, oh, I got a Toyota Corolla car. But it goes OK. I've never been out for a new car. Would just get another second hand one to see me out. But when I won this, I thought, well, I'm 70 now. If I buy a new car, I won't have to ever buy another one. So I bought a pulsar for $26,000. And then, I still had some money leftover. So, I said to Nancy we will go on a cruise trip around both islands of New Zealand.  There was still a bit of money left over after that. So we had a 12 days up at Queesland and up at the Gold Coast. And, of course, we've done a few bus tours up there, so we had a good look around up there, which I'd never been that far up.  So that cut out for $50,000. At least I didn't give it back.

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9] Grandchildren in our place [28]

My granddaughter came up to our place from Mount Gambier to go to university in Adelaide. She wanted to be a science teacher. But she didn't maticulate with enough marks, and even when four or five points were added on later, it still wasn't enough in the science faculty.

She didn't know what to do, whether she might become an industrial chemist or not. She was just feeling her way. And then, she come home one Friday night, and she said, Granddad, have you got a hammer? I said, why is that, Catherine? She said, "We are going looking for rocks in the weekend. So, I need a hammer." Anyway, she came and stood on this big box. And she told me all about what they were. She said she decided to be a geologist. And she passed, and she became a geologist. Yes, she went from strength to strength. For the first job, she went up to iron ore. With work, with Pyrenees for a mirror of Fitzroy River, or Fishway Crossing, whichever they call it.  And she said, she was being asked, "How much you're getting where you are. If you come up here, we'll give you $10,000 a year more." 

At that time, they were desperate for geologists. Done at a better time, you know? And they kept an eye on for recruits. Knew the good ones and the bad. She had heaps of offers, and every time it was "I will give you 10 to 20 thousand more, and come work for us. So, of course, in between her top jobs, she went overseas on a couple of trips, and then, she ended up working in the biggest gold mine in Kalgoorlie. I forget the name of the company, but there was about 90 geologists working in that mine.She met this chap in Broken Hill and they got married. 

He worked at Paria and. They were opening up, I think it was the South mine at Brown. They used to go down with the big cage to the bottom wall. They started doing open cut because that all that area around where the cages were full sewers, plenty of silver and and stuff all there. She got the job there on ground as a geologist when they started that. And she's still up there when she was married. and got two children. They had this fly in, fly out work system, people coming in, just having to work 3 shifts, she said. She was the only woman there, and there's all these blokes, and she eventually got a bit sick of it. And so, she did a course on psychology. And now she's working up there in a very different area. She is a very clever girl. 

So I rang her up the other day to find out when she came here, and she said 2002. She said, "You are not going to say anything bad about me. Are you?" And I said, "Well, I'm open to bribes." No, seriously, I loved having her here. She lived in the backroom for two years. And, of course, a teenager going to university, ... I mean, about two o'clock in the morning, I heard someone at the front door, and it was Catherine. She was too drunk to get the key in the door. So anyway, when she saw me in the afternoon, she said, "I'm sorry about waking you up, Grandad."

I said, "Well, state you [?], and you could have poured yourself through the keyhole." So, apart from a few things like that, she was fine, and it was a privilege to have her. 

But anyway, she was here just over two years, and then her brother, he got a apprenticeship as a butcher down at Port Adelaide. And so, he said, "Can you put me up right there?" And I said, "Oh, it will fit you." So, we rearranged the house a bit, so, for some period, we had them both here while he was doing his apprenticeship, and while she was going to uni at the same time. 

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10] Organising Probus Club and Nancy learning to use computer [33]

When grandaughter Catherine came here, she just happened to go to uni at night time. Her studying at home led us to learn to use computer. We never had a computer, but my younger son was teaching at Wakari Lutheran School there, and they were replacing their computers, so he managed to buy one of the secondhand one from them cheaply. He brought that down and got that going. Then, I bought a printer and a desk for Catharine.  And then she found it conveneient to do her studies at home, and use compyter and print everything off at home. Because of that, my wife Nancy loved the idea of learning the computer too, and Catherine taught her how to use the computer. That was a big bonus for Nancy, because later on, we were both in the Probus Club. I was president and Nancy was secretary. She used to sit at the computer and print out the minutes of the previous meeting. She'd do the newsletter, and she used to do so much research to get information for articles. I gave one drawer in my filing cabinet there. About 12 months after she died, I decided to clean it out. The stuff she had collected in there was unbelivable. I think the editor of the Advertiser would love to have some saved materials. She was great on researching things. 

But anyway, what happened there was that we were going on very well. We had the men's Probus club, which I was secretary and President of, and then Nancy started up the Ladies Probus Club. But we couldn't get more than about 24 members, and it was not quite enough. I used to arrange the guest speakers and we used to go on tours around the different places like the tube makers and different firms. It was very interesting. It was only two hours, one Tuesday a month.  But I couldn't get anyone to gather. They said they didn't have didn't have time. But I think it was mainly because they were going out to play the pokies. 

All the time, that was what was taking up their time. 

Anyway, You couldn't get people to replace you. I was then the secretary, and now  the President, and I couldn't get replacement for the job. I had to keep on because no one else would take the job. And so, we decided that it would be a good idea to combine the both. You know, the women and men. Most probus were already combined. Most blokes voted to do that. But out of the 24, only three of them came over. So that's how we didn't make it. 

But we were going OK, but then Nancy became ill. She kept complaining. She used to sit down at the computer, and wang out [?] the mnutes in 3/4 of an hour. Then she do the news., and that was all done. But then she was taking two or three days to do it. She would get up and say her back was hurting.But it wasn't that at all. She was experiencing short term memory loss.

10] Nancy's health problems [36-49]

I took her along to a specialist, but she said no. She was suffering from short term memory loss, and possibly alzheimers. And so anyway, we went to a Probus meeting. And she gave out the minutes and the newsletter. And then one of the ladies said, "Oh, Nancy. There's nothing in the newsletter you handed out. You put the minutes in that too." The newspaper was same as the minutes in the first day. And she said, "Well, I'm sorry. It took me a long time to do that, and I just can't do it anymore." So, she resigned from the job on the spot.  

This was about 20 years ago, I guess. I looked after her for about seven years. Then, I had to give up bowling because I had three hernia operations, and one of them didn't work. It had to be redone. And I just couldn't lift a bowling bag around anymore. And then I hadn't heard a look after so.

Grandchildren left us when I was 70, and it was just Nancy and I then. We used to go off on a few camping holidays. And but then Nancy gradually got more ill. Then on Christmas we were due to go up to my son's place for Christmas at Nuriuk [?],we did not go because she hadn't been well. Nancy had been having domestic care. who came to shower Nancy, and help in everything, three times a week. There were two of them. They were  actually both nurses. One was them, her husband worked in Telecom. He was going to retire, so she retired from nursing. But then the husband decided not to retire. So she got a job in domestic care, just to pick up a bit of pocket money. The other one was a young girl. She just had twins, and she gave up nursing for 12 months to look after babies. But her mother used to look after them a couple of days a week while she worked for domestic care. They were terrific. And they showed me how to look after Nancy properly and how to do everything, because she did have problems. So that was great until I got sick, and then we were going to New York.[?] for Christmas dinner.

I got up and had a shower, and got dressed, and then, I went to get her out of bed. I took a look at her, and I could see that she was vey sick. I rang for an ambulance. and I got Naomi [?] and she took Nancy to Calvary Hospital. And Nancy was there for a few weeks, and the specialist there said, "Well, you better tell your dad this time to put her in a nursing home because he's not well enough to look after her, and she will need a lot of looking after now, because she has got fully blown Alzaimers.  I managed to find a nursing home around here, which was only 10 minutes away. From then on, it was a go round every day, and I took the dog with me. And they gave me a key to an outside door. There was a rose garden and lawn there. And Nancy just walked the dog up and down like the same as she did here. 

I knew what she liked, so, I'd always text up, and she liked her afternoon tea. And then, I'd stay until she had her dinner at night because she lost so much weight in such a short time there. And I asked the nursing home staff, "Is she eating alright?" They said,"Oh yeah." They had different staff. They changed. So, I talked to this lady who was in charge of carers. She said, "I ticked it off at her." 

I asked, "What do you mean 'I ticked it off' ?"

"Well, we check her: wash, shower, breakfast. Tick, tick, tick. You know?" 

Tick meant ticking in the patient check list.

Nancy had bad rheumatoid arthritis, but she could walk by herself. The doctor we had when we went in there was really good, and he treated her well. She became well enough, actually she was flying around the place. 

The special thing about this place was that she went to school here in Kilburn. Where the nursing home was that was actually the old Kilburn Primary School. They had knocked the old school down, and built the nursing home in the same place. One of the characters of Alzheimers was that the patient never forgets locations. 

So, when we wanted to take Nancy there, I told to my two daughters to take her around to the back way. Mum won't go in the front, I said. We'll take her in the back way. Nancy had no idea where she was.  When we got her in there, it was terrible for the first few months in there. It was shocking for her. But we kept going around. The girls kept going around, and eventually we got to settled in a different room, different place. And and that wasn't too bad. But I took her out to my three daughters regularly on Sunday. We would have  lunch together, and she'd be in quite good mood.

But as soon as we went back to the nursing home, she would said, "No, this is not our place. This is a school." It was location of her old school. So, I said, "Well, we better go, and see if they're all behaving themselves," or something like that. She was calm most of the times there because of the location. Because she went to school there for 7 or 8 years, to her that location was school even though it was now a nursing home. It had good points and bad points, but was running very well in the finish. 

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But we had a carer there who was a source of problem for Nancy. One time, I noticed Nancy's fingers were all puffed up. And I initially thought it was a symtom of arthritis. And then, my older son came over from Victoria, and this carer came in, and Nancy went bizzerk: 

"Get out! I don't want you! I will have nothing to do with you." 

So, the carer went away. Then, she said to Steve, "Everyone thinks she's wonderful, but she's a terrible person." Nancy was talking about a carer. 

So, I told Michelle, my oldest daughter, "Well, next time you go to see mum, see if you can find out about this carer. Ask mum why she didn't like the carer?" Nancy said the carer smacked her fingers. 

So, I went to the manager. I found out that it was within your rights to have a grievance with anyone. You could go and stop them. The manger said, "We won't rush to her (the carer X) to look after Nancy anymore. Perhaps only on an odd occasion, she might have to, but she won't be looking after Nancy anymore. That was okay.  About six weeks later, Nancy's  fingers came back to a normal condition. Fingers were swollen only because they were smacked. So, when they didn't do anything, they became normal.

So, that's how we got rid of the carer. When she left, the head carer said to my daughter, "I'm pleased she is gone. Your parents were not the only ones who complained about her."  And I thought, "Why was she still there?"

But it is hard to sack people nowadays, you know. So, anyway, Nancy was a lot better off for not having the old carer, but there was still a couple of incidents there. Debbie, my other daughter went in one day, and she heard Nancy in the bathroom screaming her head off. There were these two big African girls in there with her, Debbie said "What's going on?" They said, "Oh, we have to get her out of the shower after she finished. We are allowed to use reasonable force to do it." 

And Debbie said, "Well, you can go, you can get out now." 

Not touching her. And we're not using any force at all, she said. 

Debbie said, "Leave it, I'll fix her. You just get on your way." So Debbie went to shower and got a dress and put Nancy in bed, and that settled her down. 

I went to see the nurse at the nurse station, and I asked her, "What's this business about them using reasonable force on my mother?" 

And they said, "No, no, that's not right. " We never saw those two carers again. 

But whether they were just there at the one thing. 

But yeah, the little things like that, that's what's wrong with nursing homes.

Most of the girls there were good. There were a couple of boys there too, and I got to know one of the nurses very well. I told her I had one particular problem and I was always worried about. And she said, "Look, don't you worry about it anymore. I'll watch it. I'll let you know if there's any problem."

That was good. 

When Nancy first went in there, I told the head nurse about Nancy's problem, and she ignored it. That was only in three weeks since Nancy end up in hospital because it was ignored it.

But anyway, Nancy went to hospital, and she came back to the nursing home. 

Then they looked after her very well. Yeah. So, it was hard slogs [?], you see. 

I think that was five years before she died.

===

 I didn't go into a lot of detail about the bowling clubs because there's not much sense in that. You know that there's one there I've got hanging.

11] A 1947 story [49]

Going back to 1947.

We spent Christmas with my auntie in Adelaide. There was auntie Glad and auntie Lorna Strang, and Nancy Strang, who was her niece. Nancy became an orphan when her father got drowned when she was 5 or 6 year old, and Auntie Lorna brought her up and taught her. The three of them were hairdressers. And we can never understand how one of our daughters, Deborah,  cut all the hair off of every doll we bought her. Auntie Glad had said to me, "Because Deborah wanted to be a hairdresser." And she said, "The difference between good hair dresser and an ordinary one is the ability to cut. If she keeps it at that, she would probably be OK." She did end up in hair dressing.

I already told about this last time when I went through about the kids.

So anyway, my father was there, and after Christmas, he was going to the Repatriation Hospital. Because my grandmother's brother, Charlie Smith, he was a prisoner of war at Singapore, and he was in Changi Prison for 3 1/2 years.

My father was going to see his uncle Charlie Smith in the Repatriation Hospital and I wanted to go with him. My father didn't want me to go, but he took me in the finish. [?]

Oh God, I can shut my eyes now, and see these poor devils come back like their arms and legs feel like broomsticks. They had little tiny faces or great big swollen faces, but my father took me to his other cousin Jack Strang. I never heard of Jack Strang, but he had a Barbershop at Hyde Park, and he had a residence at the back, and had a cellar down under the Barbershop.  Uncle Jack was great at making these Peach wines and all these different fruit wines you make out of fruit. So, he gave us both a bit of a trim up. And then Dad had two or three of these wines with him, and I noticed he was having a bit of trouble getting on the tram. 

We went with the tram that used to go past there, and we used to get off the tram to a terminus. We had to get off, and get on the bus to go to Lower Mitchum where auntie Lorna lived.  

===

So anyway, I saw uncle Charlie, that's what we called him, Grandma's brother who was in Changi. 

I met him about three times, I think, when I was at her place. He was a lovely man. He wasn't bitter. He could have had a TPI pension, but he insisted he'd work. He was a blacksmith before he went away, but when he came back he got a job as a Spring Smith in this factory. And of course, they knew he was an ex prisoner of war. So they said, "Okay, there's your forge and you can come to work.  If you can't, we understand. Just turn up when you can. He turned up ost of times. He worked there for a few years before he died. But his kidneys were shot from the treatment and starvation in the camps, but he told me a couple of stories about it.

====
One was. uncle Charlie was out with on the railway line, digging the rocks up. And the broke next to him said, "When I say move, you move quickly."

"Well, are you going to be in trouble?"

Uncle Charlie flounced up, and there was this jap, and a quickly moved out the road and it didn't get crushed. Uncle Charliee also told me that they wouldn't feed the prisoners who couldn't go to work. So the others had to try and get whatever they could for the sick ones.

When his  group was taken prisoners, there was a warehouse in Singapore. They placed this silk around their bodies. And the Japs never found it. And they managed to hide it. So when the japs marched them off to where they had to go, he was quite a nice bloke. He'd been going to uni in England when the war broke out, and we went back to Japan and put him straight in the army, gave him a Commission.

what he arranged was that for one of them to go with all these stall holders used to be on the road. And so they arranged for a bit of silk that was very valuable to them, you see. And they would get quite a bit of food. Put in their pockets and take it back to feed to the ones that have. OK.

But anyway, at this particular time, a group of other prisons wanted to do the same thing, and they broke lines. And the Camp Covenant used to ride around the big Grey horse, and he came around just as this happened. And uncle Charlie never saw that bloke who was in charge of this. He said that he did not know what happened to the man, whether the japs shot him or whether they transfered him or what. That was just two of the stories he told me. But he wasn't bitter about the Japanese.

Actually, when I worked in Port Lincoln, Ronnie Smart who worked in the saloon bar in Tasman  Hotel told me he'd been in Changi for three and half years, and Doctor Sheedy, the specialist over there, also was in Changi for three and half years. Ridy Sheedy, he was called. He was like an ambulance officer, but he used to help all the surgeons do an operations in Changi, and when he came out, he went to university, and studied and got his degree, and he loved over there. Yeah, he was quite nice bloke.

12]  Saving a life   [55]

I had an experience there with him. I was working in the Tasman Hill Hotel one night, and this person ran in, and said, "Can we get some help? Someone out there, he's dying."

At that time,  I'd just done my second first aid course. I had been in Railways for quite a few years, but I've done the first aid course just before I left Peterborough. And the first aid instructor was in Port Lincoln, and at the time, he said, "You've done your second course. 

So anyway, I grabbed a handful of clean tea towels, and raced out. And there was this lad. He was on a motorbike, and got hit with a boat with the utility. He was lying  there unconscious. I've never seen so much blood in my life. When I looked at him, the bottom part of one leg was completely shattered, and the foot was just hanging on it bleeding. So I grabbed one of these, and I put a tornado on to stop the bleeding. Doctor Sheedy happened to be in the Rotary Club as he used to every Thursday night. He used to dine there on every fortnight. He was having dinner and we called the ambulance, and I was just holding his leg up.  

I said to my mate "Just hang on to his foot. Don't tell him that his foot was just hanging on. Just hold it, so that it doen't get any worse."

And so I rolled him over, and he was unconscious, but he was still breathing. 

And I heard this taunta Kay.  

Dr. Sheedy came out and he said, "Okay, take that taunta kay [?] off. But keep his leg elevated."

He said, "Just keep putting pressure on the wound with the hand, with one of the details of fold into the pack. The pressure on. Keep us elevated." 

I'll ring up and make an arrangement with xx to get him in the theatre at the hospital as soon as the ambulance gets here and Emma's got there and he said to the ambulance, " You' be very careful now, and make sure not to put too much pressure. Hang in there. Hopefully there's enough blood getting through so that we don't lose his foot."

Dr. Sheedy worked all night on him, and he restructured the young man's whole leg. Several weeks later, he came in to have dinner. And I said, "Oh, you saved that bloke's life, Doc." 

He said, "No, you saved his leg. In fact, you saved his life."

 He said he wouldn't have been able to save the patient if he lost another cup full of blood. It would have been the finish. It was at the limit. By the time I got him on the table, it was tough.  So Dr. Sheedy said I saved the young man's life.


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