31. Port Kembla

You never know what to expect when you visit the pier. Sometimes it’s an unusual catch and occasionally it’s something even stranger than that. Today I was amazed to see a shopping trolley, resting against the railing right at the end of the pier. It had obviously been hoisted up out of the water, perhaps after a fishing line had been caught up in it? It must have been in the water for quite a long time.

One of the regulars on the pier, who is almost always there early, is John. I think he would have seen the trolley well before I did.  He’s one of the more skilled fishermen who come to try their luck here in the morning and I often admire his catch and have a brief talk with him.

In fact, John and I got talking the other day and I found out that he, like me, had worked in the steel industry in his younger years. That was of great interest to me because Port Kembla, in New South Wales, was where I first settled after migrating to Australia. I had an uncle and aunt who were already living in the suburb in Warrawong and that’s where I chose to live for some time.

Hence, talking with John had brought back many memories. We both recalled not only the steelworks where we had worked, but also the pubs, the lake, the beach, and the names of the surrounding suburbs. John mentioned that his brother still lives in the area today, near the picturesque village of Kiama.

Almost immediately after arriving in Port Kembla in 1960, I started to study and to work as a clerk and trainee accountant in small local businesses. Several years later, following a few disappointments, I was fortunately offered a job with John Lysaght (JLA), a large steel company with operations throughout Australia and overseas.

In order to introduce me to the operations of that company, I was required to spend my first 4 weeks on the factory floor. I had to wear a helmet and safety glasses, and to report each day to the managers of all of the departments involved.  

Every day during that training period, I sweated in the very hot, very noisy and, to my mind, very dangerous, manufacturing spaces. The factories were very large, many hundreds of metres long, with huge gantry cranes travelling at speed above my head. Large coils of hot rolled steel thundered into the heated acid baths of continuous pickle lines, where they were descaled, cleaned, trimmed and recoiled.  Five-stand cold reduction mills reduced the steel thickness of the coils and extended their length from 1200 to 6000 metres. To make galvanised steel the coiled strip passed through very long continuous hot-dip zinc coating lines. There were painting lines, annealing furnaces and many other processes at work.

It was a lot to take in. After 4 weeks of observing this I had to submit a report to demonstrate that I had learned something and that I was now ready to join the team in the office.

The Commercial Projects Department, which was where I started, was a small unit which included 2 other trainee accountants. One of the senior accountants, Bill, was an Englishman who had been a pilot during the Second World War, flying Spitfires. At that time Bill lived quite a distance from Port Kembla and he’d travelled to the office by train. He often talked about his war experiences as a pilot, particularly when we all went to the pub together, which happened every Friday afternoon, after work.

In the pub, the custom (explained for my Dutch readers) was that when someone in the group “shouted” (bought) beers for the group then everyone in the group was expected to reciprocate, i.e. “complete the shout” by buying a round of beers back. As Bill had only a limited time before he had to catch his train back home, this meant that we all tried to drink our beers very quickly. If there were 4 in the group then 4 beers were consumed in record time. It was something I was not used to and I have to confess that I did not really enjoy the process. So I always tried to keep my drinking group as small as possible, preferably to just 2 or 3.

I worked at JLA for 17 years, first at Port Kembla and then in Sydney, eventually reaching the position of General Manager Finance. This involved many years of study until I became fully qualified as an accountant.

I understand that my friend John’s career developed along very different lines. Although we did not know each other when we were young, we both remember the extremely noisy and hot factory environment that we worked in, with chundering overhead cranes moving at speed above us, and we both appreciate our peaceful existence today, on the pier and at the waterfront. For both of us, the contrast could not be greater.

Today, I am grateful to be able to relax in my “bonus” years, walking and talking here in Sandgate. I can enjoy meeting John in a more agreeable setting, both as friends and as custodians of the memories of our shared experience in the steel industry in our younger years.

O.P.

P.S. Next Sunday we’ll take you to nearby Baxter’s Jetty, where we will try to unravel the mystery surrounding the death of the man after whom the jetty was named.

For the record I should also mention that I’ve turned 88 now, but I won’t change the title of my blog from 87 to 88, because nothing else has changed and we’ll just keep walking and talking as before.