John's Story

Resident of an Unlicensed Boarding House in the Inner City John has a way with words. He’s one of those fellows who can weave a tale seamlessly to keep your attention for hours. He told me a little about his life recently while visiting him at the unlicensed boarding house where he has been living for eighteen years.

John was born in Brisbane in 1919 and is the youngest of eight children in the family. His mother died when he was 2 years of age and shortly after this his father left the family. The five youngest children were put in homes.

At 13 years of age, John left school and went to work on a farm at Mt. Cotton in Queensland. Despite his hard and diligent work he couldn’t please his boss, a middle aged woman who owned the farm. She thought he was “too wild” because he rode bear back and refused to comply with all her demands.

One day after refusing to read the bible to her, she asked him to leave. He moved on to work at a dairy and pig farm where the owners treated him with much more respect. He stayed there for around two years and was often included in family gatherings. After this job, John moved around working from farm to farm, mustering cattle, milking cows and performing general duties until the Depression hit and life became very difficult

“I ended up carrying a swag and jumping the rattlers on the railway, they were full of bag men and women too…it was shocking then, we had to find accommodation where ever we could, on riverbanks, anywhere…there was 30% unemployment. By the time the war [WWII] came I had found work in a wool shed. I joined the army in 1941 from Richmond in Queensland”.

By this time John was 22 years old. He joined the army’s home defence troops and worked in munition factories in Brisbane until 1945. After being discharged John found work cutting cane in Ingham, Queensland but became sick and returned to Richmond to work. He found work operating a wool press in one of the local shearing sheds.

“It was the hardest job in the shed. I was only 9 stone 12 pound, but the contractor reckons that pound for pound, that I was the best wool presser he’d ever seen. I was in good condition, I wasn’t a drinker, didn’t have a drink until I went in the army, still don’t drink much and I gave smoking up eighteen years ago”.

When wool pressing became mechanised the wage level dropped, so John packed up again and moved onto another shearing shed. This time he worked as an assistant to the cook and so began his career as a Shearer’s cook. He spent the next forty odd years cooking in shearing sheds up and down the east coast of Australia.

It was work he enjoyed, but the lifestyle did not lend itself settling down and marrying and having a family of his own.

“I was moving all the time. If I wasn’t in the shearing sheds I’d take a stint cooking on the oilrigs, you have to take the work anywhere. Interesting the oilrigs, all you ever see is dingos. More or less a wasted life I guess because you just never settle down. In the breaks I used to come to Sydney for some life”.

In the mid 1980s, when John retired, he moved to Sydney, choosing to live in the centre of Sydney because “that’s where the action is”. John is fit man and a great walker. He spends most of his days walking around the city and harbour areas.

John has lived in the same unlicensed boarding house for the past eighteen years. He has one of the largest rooms in the boarding house, equipped with a refrigerator, cupboard, bed and a radio.

Housing value in the area has increased dramatically in recent years and the owner of John’s boarding house has sold some of his other residences. John fears that he may be tempted to sell this boarding house. This would be a major disturbance to the life John has established in his older years.

“I don’t have anyone checking to see that I am alright, I get along well by myself. If I don’t pay the rent then they will know that there is something wrong with me and come knocking on my door…I have kept healthy and fit and like I say, I have never been a drinker…I reckon I’ve had a pretty good life...”.