47) Looking for a job.

Once I had permission to work I started scouring the local newspaper for job adverts that I thought I could apply for. I came across adverts for jobs with various organisations that assisted the elderly to cope in their own homes. In this country the government bend over backwards to help the elderly or the disabled to stay in their own homes rather than go into a nursing home. If they have difficulty with their housework or their shopping the government will subsidise people to help them with these chores so that they can continue to live at home. It is obviously financially beneficial for the government to keep the elderly at home for as long as possible but it is also very beneficial for the elderly people who would rather stay at home so it is a win win situation for everyone. There seemed to be a number of organisations that subcontracted to the government to provide these types of services so I applied to all of them that were advertising for staff. I was so sure that there would be so few people that wanted to do that kind of work that I would be able to get a job easily, but I was wrong. All the applications I sent off were returned with polite refusals. Then one day I was doing some shopping at Erina Fair and I bumped into one of our customers that we had delivered groceries to. She was a really lovely lady whom we had always got on well with and she had been kind and friendly to us. She asked me what we were doing and I told her that I was trying to get a job as a cleaner/carer but that I was not having much luck. She told me that she thought that that was strange as her daughter was doing that kind of work and her company were always looking for reliable staff. I told her I thought it might be that my age was against me and she said that they could not refuse me because of my age and that once they saw that I was fit and capable they would be willing to employ me. She could not remember the name of the firm that her daughter worked for off hand but promised to ring me with their name and number once she had spoken to her daughter.

Later that day I got a telephone call from her giving me the relevant name and telephone number and she also gave me her daughter’s phone number so that I could ring her to get some advice on how to go about applying for a job with her company. The daughter told me to ring and ask for application forms even though the company were not advertising for staff. She also told me how to fill in the forms and said that the company were notoriously bad about getting back to people who filled in forms. She advised me to fill in the forms; she said that they would ask me how I would clean a bathroom. I had never thought of how one cleans a bathroom, I just clean it. She told me the best way to put it on paper and also that I should say that I would not use bleach. The company’s policy was not to use bleach and if I told them that I didn’t either it would stand me in good stead. At first I thought that it was a bit of a cheat to have this inside information but when I thought about it I realised it was just like getting training for the job before applying. If they did not want me to use bleach I would not use it and was fine with me. She told me to post them off and after about a week to telephone the office and ask them if they had received the forms and what was happening about them. I did all she advised and when I phoned about the forms I was asked to ‘hold the line one minute’ and then given an appointment to meet with the boss of the company the following week.

I was a little nervous of meeting the boss face to face. Filling in forms was easy enough but now she would see how old I was and maybe not want to employ me. I briefly thought of dying my grey hair bright red or having some botox treatment but decided that such drastic measures were a bit over the top for a job as a cleaner. The lady who interviewed me told me that they had had a 69 year old working for them and that age was not an issue with them As long as I was healthy and reliable I could work for them for as long as I wanted to and asked me to come to the office once again the following week for a short training lecture. At this lecture I was told that my job would not only involve cleaning but could also include taking clients shopping, or to medical appointment. I could also be called upon to change the sheets, do laundry, prepare a small meal or any small tasks that would make life easier for the client. They also showed us how to fill in all the paper work involved. It seemed a bit excessive for a cleaning job but I suppose that as there were government grants involved it had to been done so that no one could cheat the system.

The government actually give the grants to various nursing services that undertake to make sure that the clients are well cared for. Their staff gives medical assessments and assistance and subcontract the housework and driving services to companies like the one I work for. They also arrange for the podiatrist or the physiotherapist or the gardener to call if they are needed. So with so many people involved the paper work has understandably to be correct. It really is a great service and most of the recipients are very grateful for all that is done for them.

46) Red Tape

So we started another search for something to do. A member of our church spoke about the need for people to assist the Red Cross in their Telecross service. I had not heard of it before but the she told us how the Red Cross undertake to ring elderly people who live alone every morning to ensure that they are well and healthy. I had heard of a few cases of elderly people laying dead in their homes for weeks before anyone missed them and investigated their non-appearance. It was volunteer work and only meant to take a few minutes a day but I thought it was a good service and was glad to be of help.

I rang the Red Cross and was asked to attend a meeting of volunteers where the whole thing would be explained to us. The meeting was well attended with about twenty-five to thirty people there. We were given a talk about the different sections of Red Cross work that we could get involved in. We could do visiting the elderly in hospital, help with serving breakfast to needy children in schools or the telephone service that I was interested in. Once we had heard an overall description of the Red Cross work we were asked to fill in forms at any of the three desks allocated to each of the different services.

At the desk for the Telecross I filled in my form and was told that as The Red Cross was a “child safe” organisation not only would I have to attend training for the how to do the telephone service I would also have to attend a course on child protection so that I could be accredited as a Red Cross volunteer. I thought that this was a bit excessive as all I would be expected to do was to ring one person every morning between 8.00 and 9.00 am and ask them if they were alive or dead. As I had gone this far I thought I might as well continue but it did seem silly.

The training course turned out to be only a two-hour talk at the Red Cross office the following week so I duly presented myself there to be ‘trained’. There were four of us attending that session and the young lady who was running the course told us how the service works. She told us that anyone who asked for the service was accepted and that we were to make our call as soon after 8.00 am as possible. If there was no answer we were to wait ten minutes and then repeat the call. After that if there was still no answer we were to call the Red Cross number and someone would set things in motion, they would call another number that the client had given them, usually a neighbour or family member who was able to check if everything was all right. Sometimes they would discover that the client had been taken into hospital or gone to visit a friend and forgotten to inform the Red Cross but now and again they would not be able to find any reason for their failure to answer the phone and then an ambulance and emergency service would be put into action.

It all seemed simple enough and as the lady told us that they were very short of helpers I agreed to join them. I was given a large folder with lots of literature about the Red Cross and a number of forms that had to be completed. I had to agree to a police check and ‘working with children check’ even though the I would not have anything to do with children and I would not even be given the address of the person I would be phoning only their name, telephone number and any thing that might affect my call to them. I would be told if they were hard of hearing or would have trouble getting to the phone quickly or not. At the bottom of one of the forms was a small note. “If you do not have an Australian permanent residence visa please check with the Immigration Department that your visa permits you to do this kind of work” I thought that was rather funny and was sure that it would not apply to me. I was glad of an excuse to ring the Immigration Department to make sure that they had not forgotten about us. We had been told not to ring the office unless we had some new information to submit to them but to wait until they contacted us. A genuine enquiry was a chance to get them to take out our file so it would not be left on a back self just gathering dust so I decided to give them a call.

When I got through to our caseworker and explained my inquiry I was told that I was not allowed to work and that included any kind of volunteer work as well. I was amazed. The caseworker told me that if I wanted to I could apply for permission and he would send me the forms. When I mentioned the ban to someone they said “Oh well! I suppose they think that you might be doing an Australian out of work” That was daft, as it was unpaid and I had been told that they could not get enough people to man the service properly anyway. Jonny and I had been doing volunteer bush regeneration work with National Parks and Wild Life for about four years by then and no one had ever mentioned that we needed to check with the Immigration Department before.

Yes all very crazy and over the top but it turned out for the best as when I got the forms they asked if we wanted to apply for permission to do unpaid or paid work and I was able to say both. Two weeks later I got a letter giving us permission to work at any kind of work that we wanted in Australia but that we were still not entitled to any of the welfare states benefits. Now all I needed was to find someone who would employ a 64 year old with no qualifications and no local experience.

45) A New Business

During the time Jonny was having his health problems a friend from church approached us with a proposal. He is a ceramic engineer and he had been thinking for some time that he would like to develop a new product but as he was very busy at work he just did not have the time to do the research that it needed. He was looking for someone who would be prepared to source the ingredients and make up samples for testing. The product was to be used in the mining industry, to seal holes in worn metal pipes used in the industry temporarily so that production could continue until a more permanent repair could be done. He knew that there was a similar product on the market at the time but he was sure that he could make a better one if only he had the time. He asked if we would be interested in doing the groundwork and then mixing and packaging the product for sale once we got it right. He had a certain amount of money that he was prepared to put into the project and so he would pay us a living wage out of his pocket until the business was making money. The ceramics business that he had started had just been taken over by a large international company and he was very busy running the factory. He also thought that while we were doing the research Jonny could do a couple of little engineering jobs for his company to bring in some immediate income for the business. It all seemed so simple and our friend was so sure that it was a big money spinner we were very interested. Then when Jonny was sick and obviously could not continue to carry on lifting heavy parcels and climbing up long flights of stairs, it looked like a perfect opportunity, just at the right time.

We gave a months notice to companies that we were doing deliveries for and said a fond goodbye to all the lovely people that we had met during our time running Erina Deliveries. We were sad to be leaving most of them and tried to get someone else to take over the delivery run but could not find anyone who was interested.

Our partner gave us a very elementary course to explain to us what we were looking for and also told us about the frame he needed made up for a new kiln that he wanted for the factory and we set to work. While Jonny worked on the drawings for the kiln frame I started looking for the ingredients we needed. It was a bit of a problem as I was not very confident that I knew what I was talking about but I just pressed on, making dozens of phone calls and using the internet to try and obtain the ingredients. We did eventually with a great deal of help from all sorts of people manage to get some samples of the chemicals that our partner wanted. We mixed and poured and made samples out of different combinations of the chemicals and different resins. We timed how quickly they hardened and made comments on the texture of one against the other. This was interesting work and we really enjoyed it.

I also became an apprentice boilermaker and tried to help Jonny with his engineering work whenever I could. I was not a great help but at least I could hold the end of things or pass tools to him to help things go a little faster. Once we had finished the kiln frame Jonny designed and we built a machine to cut the profiles of moulds to manufacture the ceramic products that our partner was making in his factory. Our last engineering job was a grinding machine used to finish off the ceramic products. This machine needed to have a small steady flow of water pouring over the turntable that could be instantly turned off to prevent the product from getting too wet. It sounds simple enough but to bring the water up through the central shaft and not just pour back down that shaft gave Jonny a big headache but with trial and error he did eventually get it right and that machine was finished too.

The Grinding Machine

Meanwhile our samples had been made and sent to a laboratory in Victoria for testing. The results were very encouraging, the samples were so hard that the laboratory had to use harder grinding equipment to grind our product, as it was harder than anything else they had ever tested. The problem was the availability of the ingredients. We had obtained samples from local companies but to buy the product we would have had to buy a whole container load of each of the ingredients if we got it locally or from China. The only other alternative was to buy from America but the cost of shipping it to Australia would have made our product so expensive it would not have be competitive with the product that was already on the market even though it was so much better. So after a year we decided to wind up our company and look for something else to do.

44) A Frightening experience

For three years Jonny and I criss-crossed the area delivering groceries and making many friends. We were busy and happy even if we were not making a fortune. But then we had a rather frightening experience. While doing a delivery up a high flight of steps Jonny started coughing up blood. He tried to hide it from me but he soon realised that I needed to know and with the amount of blood he was loosing there was no way that he could hide it for long.

Obviously it was very worrying. The bleeding was very heavy and seemed to be worst when Jonny had been climbing a high flight of steps or carrying heavy loads. His doctor sent us straight to a specialist who said Jonny needed to have some blood tests, a scan and a gastroscopy. The blood tests and the scan were not too much of a problem as we had some idea what they would cost. We explained to the specialist that we did not have a Medicare card so would have to pay for the treatment ourselves and we needed to know how much a gastroscopy would cost us. He had no idea of the costs but said that he would get his secretary to find out.

When we went to make an appointment to have the scan done the first vacancy that they had was about a week away and we made that booking. During that week we tried to get the blood tests done but because the laboratories needed the samples to be taken at particular times of the day and delivered within a certain time we found that we could not manage to comply and did not have those tests done at that time. Jonny was still working and he had a number of heavy bleeding cessions during the day and we had to travel with bottles of water and large quantities of paper towels to clean up. He also bled quite a few times at night. For the last few days before he was due to have the scan he did not bleed at all and was feeling much better so was not keen to have the test done. When we arrived for his appointment the receptionist told us that they had been trying all day to contact us, as the scanning machine was broken and they could not do the test. We could not understand why they had not got hold of us as I had our mobile phone on me all day. It turned out that they had got our number wrong. They wanted us to make another appointment but as Jonny was feeling so much better and had not bled for a few days he decided not to bother.

For about a fortnight there was no bleeding and we felt sure that what ever the problem had been it was cured and we just thanked God for the healing. Then one Sunday in church Jonny started to cough and bleed once again. It was a particularly bad attack and one of our friends from the church, a young woman who is a doctor, tried to help him and asked him if he had been to a doctor and wanted to know what treatment he had had. We told her that we had been going to have a scan but that the machine had broken and we had just not gone back. We realised that the scan had to be done and planned to make an appointment when the offices opened on Monday morning. On Sunday evening we got a telephone call from the lady doctor to tell us that she had been at a meeting that afternoon and been talking to another member of our church who was a radiographer. She had told the radiographer that we did not have any medical assistance and she offered to do the scan free for Jonny. We were told to ring her the next day to make an appointment and she would let us know what the cost would be. She could do her part free of charge but the report would have to be done by the radiologist and he would have to say how much he would be charging. When we rang and spoke to the radiographer she told us that she had spoken to the radiologist and he had said that if she was giving her service for free he would do the same. So the whole thing would not cost us a penny. We were so grateful; we have been blessed by many kind people. So many good Australian people who hardly know us who have been generous and helpful to us.

Once the scan had been done we went back to see the specialist and he told us that the mark on Jonny’s lung that has shown up when he had the last scan was now smaller so that was good news. He still had no answer for us as to what had caused the bleeding and was not prepared to say that he was sure that it was not cancer. He still wanted to do the gastroscopy before he would commit himself. We once again told him that we would consider it if he could tell us how much it was going to cost. As it turned out the bleeding that Jonny had had in church was the last one he ever had. No one could actually tell us the cause of it but it has never reoccurred so we are just grateful for that

A couple of weeks later Jonny got a letter from the specialist saying that he had not been able to find out the complete price of the gastroscopy but he has found out that the use of the treatment room for about 2 hours in the local public hospital was $850. That did not include the actual test, the technician’s fee or the doctor’s report, so $850 was just to lay on their bed for a couple of hours. As Jonny was so much better we decided not to bother with that test that was three years ago and there has been no reoccurrence of the problem

$850 for the use of a bed for 2 hours is just incredible. I am beginning to feel that the medical profession and not the mining sector or the sheep farmers power the economy of Australia.

43) Railway Cafe

Many of the deliveries we did were to places that were hard to access but I think the worst was the one we had to do to the café on the platform of the railway station. To get to the platform of Gosford station you have to go down a double flight of steps or use the lift. Every Tuesday morning we would have to take a large order to the café. Our little car was too small for us to carry trolleys with us so we would fill the car with the order and hope and pray that there would be two supermarket trolleys left lying around that we could use to carry the goods down. How we hated Tuesday mornings! We would try to get to Gosford Coles as early as possible to get started early but if we arrived too early the Coles staff would not have finished putting the order together and we would have to wait. Once the girls had finished working on it the groceries would be loaded in to the two trolleys and we would have to take it up a long escalator to the car park and load it into our car. Being very careful not to squash any of the twenty or so loaves of bread as they would be rejected by the café if we they were misshapen. Then we would drive to the station and look for a parking space as close as possible to the entrance. Next we would look for trolleys, there were usually a few there as people would wheel their groceries from the supermarket and just abandon the trolley when they were at the station. Next we would load the order from the car into the trolleys (watch out for those 20 loaves!!!) and we would start our decent. From the parking space to the actual entrance to the station was up a short but rather steep hill and the camber of the pavement also sloped towards the road. We could not use the first entrance as that had steps but had to go to the furthermost one that had wheel chair access. Then things improved as the ground was level and it was much easier to propel our heavy loads. To get on to the platform without a ticket we had to go to the security office and fill in a form saying who we were, why we were there and if we knew where the emergency evacuation area was. At least they did not ask any of our family history or what our political affiliations were but they would not accept one form for the one delivery, we had to fill in a form each and fill them in each and every week, but they were always friendly and helpful.

Then we would be let through and were able to get into the lift. The slowest lift in the whole of the southern hemisphere, would take us down to the platform. The little café had a step up into the shop and it was awkward to get the trolleys up but with Jonny at one end and me at the other we managed quite well. The trolleys were then negotiated around the end of the counter and into the back room where we unloaded all the bread, litres of milk, cans of cool drinks, tinned goods and frozen items. The order was checked and when the young lady who was serving the public had time she would sign our documentation and pay us for it. Then we would have to take the trolleys back up and we would try to leave them in a position that they would not be spotted by the trucks that patrolled the area looking for abandoned trolleys to return to the stores. We wanted them to be there for the next Tuesday’s ordeal. In the event of there being no trolley we could use one that was stored in the café but that meant that we had to go down to the café, come up again with the trolley, load up half of the order, take it down, come back up again for the second load and then take that back to the café. This was bad enough in good weather but when it was raining we would get soaked through.

As this was a Cash On Delivery order when we had been paid we had to take the money back to Coles. Back to the car park, down the escalator and then we had to find someone who had the authority to accept the money and give us a signature for it. Sometimes everyone was “in a meeting” and we would be delayed. Then we felt like having a temper tantrum right in the middle of the store to get the attention we needed. All this for a payment of $9.00, why did we do it? We did it because we felt that we were getting other work form Gosford Coles and had to take the bad ones as well as the good ones but looking back now I think we were silly not to tell them that we wanted more money or we were not going to deliver to the Station.

I was always so pleased when it was Tuesday afternoon and we had finished doing our Station delivery then we could think “A whole week before we have to do that again”.