04 1972-75 CCAE

1972: Arrival in Canberra

So, at 0515 on 28 January 1972 I left Adelaide in my HQ into the yonder. In those days there were no speed limits on open roads (although you had to be in control of your car, however that was judged), and I did not want to waste time. I had to stop three times for petrol. In those days four full tanks were needed (now only two - even in similar cars only one pit stop is required for this run, via Pinnaroo, Ouyen, Tooleybuc, Balranald, Hay, Narrandera, Wagga Wagga, Gundagai and Yass). I stopped a couple of times for snacks, and I drove safely in my view but above later speed limits.

The CCAE had thought about me staying like a tutor at a student college, but this was a new era in which such people were taboo. So instead I had been booked in to Gowrie Hostel, a government hostel for single people. I actually rolled to the front entrance on Northbourne Avenue, Braddon, at 1630, a trip time of ten and three quarter hours which cannot be achieved legally anymore, checked in to my room N-3-28 (a south-west corner room on the third floor of north block, facing Northbourne Avenue), and then went down to Civic to the Post Office in the Sydney Building, at 1650, just before closing time, to send a telegram to my parents to advise I had arrived safely.

Gowrie Hostel was a nice way to start life in Canberra. It can be seen here in 1972 looking south with the north tower at the left, then the identical south tower, in the distance the Canberra Rex Hotel, where LBJ had stayed a few years before and was regarded as Canberra's most prestigious hotel at the time, then Northbourne Avenue on the right. Except for a new building blocking the Canberra Rex in 2013, and of course the models of cars on display, these are a part of Canberra which still look exactly the same 41 years later.

Life at Gowrie was very social. Whereas the earlier days of public servants living in more primitive establishments such as Reid House may have had stories more of a pioneering nature there were lots of single people now in Canberra and it was easy to walk across to one of the four bars at the Rex over Ipima Street (pictured above from the south block at the time courtesy of my friend Richard Blavins) The two most upmarket bars were the Mariners' Tavern and the Jet Club.

In the three or four days before I was to report to work I was to meet Lois for the first time. I checked in for dinner on my arrival night I was greeted by a maitre de in charge of the room. She allocated me a seat at a certain table and told me I had to always sit at that same place. On that particular evening there was just one other, a young guy, a telecom technician, called Terry, working in Canberra for a few weeks from Newcastle, with reddish curly hair. He said there was only one other regular person at the table, someone called Lois.

I had arrived on a Thursday night. Lois actually materialised briefly on the Sunday night. She said she had been involved in the wedding of a friend, Anna Hammill, over the weekend. It transpired that Lois had been bored by the people at her table, and had asked Maria, the maitre-de, to place a good looking man at it. I apparently was the outcome. For the first week or so I didn't see much of her. I assumed she was someone with a busy social life.

1972: Canberra CAE

In any case I was here to work and I presented myself at the Canberra CAE on Tuesday 01 February for work.

In those days the CCAE only had buildings 1, 2 and 3 (and only parts of what they are now) and there was a sport facility as building 4 across the oval. This was basically just two squash courts at the time. Above can be seen buildings 1, 2 and 3 in 1972, with the boiler house on the left, as seen from what is now College Street.

At the time this was the only institute in Bruce. Haydon Drive followed roughly today's line until it had a fairly sharp turn to line up with what became College Street. In fact a girl was killed on a motor bike on that sharp bend, equivalent to what is today the T junction with Haydon Drive and College Street, in my first year there. Above is the view looking down to Buildings 1, 2 and 3 from what is now the College Street entrance.

And this is the view across the Oval to the sports centre from the same entrance.

I was the fifth appointment, or equivalent thereof as someone had left, to the mathematics staff, whose head and Principal Lecturer was Ivor Vivian, who had interviewed me. He had come down from Newcastle and this was for him a big promotion. He was into Numerical Analysis (which may have been a factor in my appointment), had a Masters in it from Brunel and was proud of his Welsh heritage.

There were three other members of the Maths staff, two Senior Lecturers in Peter O'Halloran and John Munro, and a Lecturer, Neil Porter. Peter is discussed in much more detail elsewhere. John had also come from Newcastle, with a strong background in training teachers, but he was taking up a serious interest in Operations Research. John was older than me, at this stage still single, but I was to mix more sociably with Neil, who had come from the ANU with a Masters in Pure Mathematics, specialising in Analysis, where he was in my view very good.

Between all of us we were preparing accreditation for a bachelor degree in mathematics, with the emphasis in application, one available major in Operations Research and Combinatorics, the other in Numerical Analysis and Differential Equations, whereas we had adequate support in Pure Maths. It was a very exciting time, starting from scratch in a positive environment.

Our Head of School, the School of Liberal Studies, was Peter Mosedale (still living in England in 2013), who had been one of my interviewers. I had a very good chapter in my PhD which I wanted to publish in a refereed journal, and had started talking with Ernie Tuck on more research with him. I wrote up my PhD chapter to submit to the Journal of Ship Research and gave it to the maths typist to type up. Five minutes later I was called to Mosedale's office. He treated me very sternly, telling me this was a teaching institute and no research was tolerated. He told me never to work on this again and handed me back my manuscript.

So I took my manuscript down to the ANU and found a maths typist who was happy to type this up if I paid her, and the paper got accepted. But I realised I had to rethink my career options and look to something other than research for stimulation, or career prospects, if that was possible at this place.

Ivor was not to throw me into the deep end with lecturing. For the first semester in 1972 I was given no lecturing, just a number of tutes, including night ones as part timers were a main part of our market, and a small third year unit on Numerical Analysis in the second semester.

The School of Liberal Studies was a a little different. In those days CCAE had been built around mostly traditional disciplines, and our School was like an Arts Faculty, with disciplines in English, Languages, History, Geography, etc. In fact in my first year there was no office available for me and I needed to share a large office in Building 1 with new academics from across these disciplines.In this fairly large room which I shared with others, there was George Tuck, a rather crusty Geography Lecturer with good sense of humour who seemed to come from Goulburn, Peter Biskup, a Librarianship Lecturer, and Jonathon Dawson, a Professional Writing Lecturer, probably down from Sydney, but had set up in Braidwood, who had apparently been a writer of episodes of Number 96 and The Box. We were all in the same room and heard each others' phone calls in full. We were all newly arrived.

There were several exciting aspects of the early CCAE, which seemed to grow rapidly. One was that ANU had refused to take mature age students and teach them at night. There were many people in Canberra in need of tertiary education and many of these were of high quality. Among our most qualified students were F-111 pilots who wanted to study differential equations and numerical analysis and who wanted to get some insight to what was in the black box which let them sweep low above the ground.

I had great students who later rose to the top. Charlie Balnaves (son of Librarianship Principal Lecturer John Balnaves), in my first lecture class, became a senior executive in BHP. Tony Henshaw became a senior Executive in Telstra and he later told me the unique CCAE offerings across mathematics, statistics and computing laid the basis for his success.

And with the traditional disciplines and our ability to mix and match, we were able to let students design really interesting courses. I remember one doing majors in mathematics and geology. Another doing maths and Chinese. And these were students who later succeeded.

1972: Squash

Squash was my main interest outside work, and I was super-keen, it was almost my life. On the court I was wound up like a clock for competition matches. I was well-known to Canberra squash players as many of them had been to intervarsities. It seemed I had got to a better standard than I realised. I had not ever been selected in the All Australian Universities team, but by my last year I had probably got fairly close. In any case they knew I was coming, someone found out my phone number at home, and I had been offered a position as number one in a first grade team by November 1971. In fact as I later found out Don Aitkin had just left the ANU for Macquarie, and I took his place.

The Canberra Times came out to squash in the first week of matches and took file photos of all 8 Number 1 players. The above is the one of me and one taken that day actually made the paper a couple of years later (see below).

My last six months in Adelaide had apparently got me playing better than I realised. In the first competition only ACT Champion Graham Pollard and Australian Universities Number 1 John Robertson, who had both played for Sydney University, were able to beat me, and I was ranked Number 3 player in Canberra for 1972. Actually Canberra was quite an interesting place for squash as Heather McKay lived there and I sometimes practised with her. I did not play enough to see who was better. I won practice games and lost them also.

1972: Lois again

I had bought a new car in Adelaide and a couple of weeks of arriving I was sitting at the dinner table with Terry and Lois and told them I had been sent a sponge that day as a present from the company in Adelaide where I had bought the car. Lois got super-excited and then I realised she thought it was a cake. Terry and I discussed this afterwards and felt that to ease the disappointment we should buy a sponge cake on a coming night and invite Lois. She accepted and a friendship seemed to develop.

I soon found myself in Lois' circle of friends, which included people like Richard Blavins (who has proved in the long term a close personal friend), Judy Bembrick and Alison Raison, as well as Lois' next-door neighbour Ainsworth McDonald, and later John Williams and Craig Patrick. Among us we got into various things, including weekend drives, as above where Lois is on the left on Mt Kosciuszko and Judy on the right. I had obviously not lost the habit of wearing long socks with shorts, as was the habit in Adelaide and apparently Brisbane. But sometimes some of us went further afield including the Flinders Ranges, where Lois stayed at our house in Adelaide a couple of nights, and at the Warrambungles camping. But a relationship certainly started in 1972. I could see the possibilities but I was not keen to get too involved without being more sure.

The above is atop St Mary Peak (1171m), the highest peak in the Flinders, in May 1972, with Richard on the left then Judy and Lois.

Here is Lois on the climb up past the Breadknife in the Warrambungles in June 1972.

1972: Squash again

By this time I had been selected as a member of the Australian Capital Territory squash team, which was competing in the Australian championships for the first time in its own right. So I had to train hard. I had been to a couple of country championships in Albury and Narranderra, where the standard was high with players from Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth participating. I also went to Sydney for a few days to play in the NSW Championships where I got a forfeit in the first round and had to play NSW No 4 Greg Robberds in the second. I lost this 3-0 and they wouldn't let me play in the plate as a result of the forfeit win.

Other members of the team went to Brisbane for both weeks, but I was under work pressure, and it was difficult to swap my classes, so I went only for the interstate games. I don't think I have ever had adrenaline run so hard for so long. I lived this experience very hard, and performed very well, I felt. I started winning a game off New Zealand and then had a fairly tight straight setter against the Australian Under 23 team. And in the next match I got beaten by the uncompromising Dave Prickett of Queensland, in straight, to 8 points.

Then I had one of my best matches, against Peter Gilson of Victoria. I won the first game easily and led 6-3 in the second. The sniff of a possible 2-0 lead against Victoria was encouraging. Then he lifted and just managed to get up 9-7 in the second. In the break Vic Hunt (the father of great squash player Geoff Hunt, who I had got to know in Adelaide) came down and absolutely laced the guy. It was quite satisfying really, listening to this, but he did lift then for 9-0 in the third, although I got back to 9-4 in the fourth.

Then followed my best match, in which I beat my Western Australian opponent Dan Mossenson 3-1. For several years I was the only ACT player who was to win a match against a player from a mainland state. Then followed another good match just going down to Alan McCulloch of South Australia 9-6 in the fourth. Alan had been the number 1 player in my Semaphore District team in the previous year, when I was number 5, and I had also beaten number 2 player from that team, David Pinnington, while visiting Adelaide in a competition match there in May.

So then followed the match against Tasmania, which we so much wanted to win. Unfortunately I was gone after all this. I had no petrol in the tank against veteran Ian Hocking. The team did recover and win however.

I was photographed by another newspaper, in Brisbane at this event, practising with teammate Geoff Walsh.

September 1972: Move to Curtin

Gowrie was proving rather expensive for me and I was probably paying for some services I didn't need. I must have let it be known that I was looking to get out. Michael Ronai, a squash player who I had known since Intervarsity times (by that time a Commonwealth public servant, he played for Sydney University), offered me an opportunity to fill a vacancy and join him and someone else I didn't know at Curtin. Whereas I was happy with the social life at Gowrie it was time to move on. It did turn out to be cheaper overall and help me in my ultimate aim to buy a place. The drive to work from Curtin was further, about 8 kilometres, but it was very pleasant, across Scrivener Dam and through the Stromlo Forest.

1973: Consolidation and looking for a home

The following three years were not so memorable, basically years of consolidation. I had not been given much lecturing in 1972, but from then on I taught some of the really big classes such as Calculus 1 and Linear Algebra, which was very enjoyable. Squash did not get any better. I still played at the top of the competition but I did not feel as though my training was keeping up, new people had increased the competition and I started playing golf at Federal Golf Club up to three times a week.

One of the main aims was to stop paying rent and try to buy a property. This was really becoming difficult in 1973 as the prices went up and the land supply went down. My father as a Bank Manager in Adelaide tried to help. I could have raised a 10% deposit but in those days banks required 33%, although I satisfied the long-term-customer criteria. Eventually a way to finance a house became clear, with the CCAE having a scheme to guarantee the difference between 10% and 33% for tenured staff.

Armed with this news I went to an auction in July, looking for a block of land in the developing areas of north west Belconnen, as close as practical to work. But it was hopeless. As the Canberra Times reported, each time a new property came up there was a forest of hands. The situation was so difficult that Minister for Territories closed the supply of land pending a new system.

A couple of months later he released a new scheme in which even the top blocks would cost no more than $10,000. Some blocks were being released also to builders, pending new auctions, and I started hanging around building displays and got known to some builders.

One day I got an invitation to go to a meeting with AV Jennings, where an interesting house under the new scheme was for sale. It was a nice place, more than I needed, and it was decided I could not afford the repayments, although I suspect I could have. The following week a more likely house came up and I reported in again. This time there was no doubt I could afford it, it looked good and I decided to buy it.

But I was not alone, for this property on the land shown above (me standing by my long-term Holden HQ, which also appears two photos below on expedition). A young couple, with the wife noticeably pregnant, also wanted it. After some discussion, the Jennings guy decided the only way to resolve it was to toss a coin. He got a coin out. The woman said she was not prepared to make the call because it might be wrong and she would not forgive herself. She insisted I call. I called heads and heads came up. Since then I have always called heads. The Canberra Times reported that lotteries were being held in some cases with many bidders until the system did eventually settle down.

So I was now the owner of a house, with view taken from the block, above, down towards Lake Ginninderra.

It was still bare land in the upper two streets of Melba, as seen above, which was later to become a normal built up suburb.

1974: Squash continues

In 1974 I was still playing at number 1 in first grade, but my form was sliding and there were more good players. During the latter of the rounds, in May, I had my photo in the Canberra Times after a come-from-behind win.

1974: House is built

The conditions imposed by Jennings were tight but reasonable. I had some choice, like paint colours, but basically they had decided the structure, etc. As the house gradually appeared I started buying some furniture, and my colleague Neil Porter was happy for some of it to be used at his house at Duffy.

In late July I was able to occupy. On 26 July a work colleague Charlie Clark enabled me to access his trailer to take my furniture at Duffy and effects at Curtin to be moved out to Melba in his trailer and I was now living in my own house. Now to design also the garden and other external effects. My colleague at CCAE at the time, former Adelaide PhD student Ken Noble also moved in as a tenant for some time while he was also going through the process of building a house nearby at Flynn.

My parents came over to help and my mother made all the curtains from material I had bought from Cusacks, where my father had been able to get me a discount. This is the house in August after the curtains had been finished.

During the latter part of the year the garden started to take shape, with planting of a lawn in the spring and a number of native and other plantings.

The whole period of 1972 to 1975 was one in which I would take the occasional holiday in Adelaide or my family would visit me in Canberra. I had started playing golf a lot in 1972 and joined the Federal Golf Club, where I often played three times a week, getting my handicap to 15. I would play with my father quite often, either at his Adelaide Club at Mt Osmond, or my club, but here we are on the 9th green at Royal Canberra in January 1974, where cousin Max Williams had invited us to join him.

1975: Towards the end of an era

Life in 1975 was much the same in many ways than in the previous three years. I was still with Lois, but basically only saw her on weekends.

In December 1975 Lois was off to Africa again. This time she had an ambitious plan, which looked like taking months. She was to start in Mauritius, go on to Madagascar, Tanzania, around West Africa, terminating in London where she would come home.

After she had been away for a week or so I realised that I wanted to marry her and needed to take the plunge. I would wake up restlessly in the morning and go walking around Melba to think about things. I wrote to her at a range of Poste Restante Post Offices in Africa to tell her my feelings.

But I decided I had to go to Europe to try to find her at the other end. I went to TAA’s office in the city and discovered I could get an excursion ticket on Lufthansa to London, with one stop-off in one direction, for just over a thousand dollars. I found finance for this by taking out a personal loan, and made the booking. I needed to take out a passport at short notice, and in a nearby office found that Ralph Richardson, a fellow squash player, was prepared to endorse my application. I also bought a Eurail pass, for about 14 days, at a cost of about $300, and a Britrail pass for a week at a cost of just over $100. I also decided to join the Youth Hostels and went out to O’Connor to get my membership card.

First I had to host my family from Adelaide, which was coming over for Christmas. This was pleasant as usual, but on my mind most of the time were my expectations of what was to come. Even if I was not to find Lois I would be venturing on my first long distance trip. Europe had always been merely part of my imagination. It was difficult to comprehend that it would now become a reality. The fact that it would be winter did not bother me. I decided to pack light, with just a rucksack, having learnt the errors of taking a suitcase to New Zealand when I had hitch-hiked around there a few years before.