Chapter 9 - Building Industry Long Service Leave Board (Now named "Co-invest)

Web site -     https://www.coinvest.com.au

The Secretary of the Building Industry Long Service Leave Board was Keith Turner, the Administration Manager, Helmut Glenk and I was the Finance & Systems Manager. The Chairman of the Board was Mr Fred Watts of the Master Builders Association. The B.I.L.S.L.B. was created to provide portability of long service for workers in the building industry who changed jobs from employer to employer as each project was completed. The “Three Amigos” set up our first office on the ground floor of the State Superannuation Board building in Spring Street and started the process of creating an organisation to give effect to the legislation. We proposed an organisational structure that was accepted by the Board and the Public Service Board and started advertising for positions in the Government Gazette. In the meantime, I started specifying the computer system that was required to maintain the records to prospective members of the Building Industry Long Service Leave Fund. Once the three of us were happy with the results, the job was put out to tender. This was the first opportunity that I had of hand picking my staff and I made sure that the best staff from the State Superannuation Board and the Housing Commission whom I had worked with were given jobs that they were suited for.

Before staff started arriving, we selected two floors (I think it was the 6th and 7th Floors) at the Cinema Centre Offices in 140 Bourke Street, Melbourne. Furniture and fittings were ordered, together with in IBM Computer that was installed in a separately air-conditioned Computer Room.

It was a memorable day when the first staff arrived and set about establishing their working environment and documentation and procedures. It turned out be a mammoth task to find the retrospective records of all people who had worked in the building industry, going back some 40 years. Dale Orloff, a fellow burgher from Ceylon, Bob Simonton, Neil Forrest, Kevin Cassidy and others whose names I cannot recall joined me in the administration of the Finance & I.T.Section of the BILSLB.

BILSLB Offices at 140 Bourke Street, Village Cinema Centre

The mammoth task of verifying retrospective work histories of thousands of former and current workers in the building industry was no mean task and once this was finished, the recording of part-time and full-time work histories of the current work force began in earnest.
Arthur Anderson & Company installed a very good I.B.M. 360 Computer System that was sufficient to start the recording process and this, with the help of our I.T.Manager, Jim Anderson, was improved in time to integrate with other software.

An extract from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, explains the computers capabilities.

The IBM System/360 (S/360) was a mainframe computer system family first announced by IBM on April 7, 1964, and sold between 1964 and 1978. It was the first family of computers designed to cover the complete range of applications, from small to large, both commercial and scientific. The design made a clear distinction between architecture and implementation, allowing IBM to release a suite of compatible designs at different prices. All but the most expensive systems used microcode to implement the instruction set, which featured 8-bit byte addressing and binary, decimal and floating-point calculations.

The System/360 models announced in 1964 ranged in speed from 0.034 MIPS[1] to 1.700 MIPS (50 times that speed),[2] with 8 kB and up to 8 MB of internal main memory,[2] though the latter was unusual, and up to 8 megabytes of slower Large Core Storage (LCS). A large system might have 256 kB of main storage.

An IBM System/360-20 (front panels removed), with IBM 2560 MFCM (Multi-Function Card Machine)
Contrasting with normal industry practice, IBM created an entire series of computers (or CPUs) from small to large, low to high performance, all using the same instruction set (with two exceptions for specific markets). This feat allowed customers to use a cheaper model and then upgrade to larger systems as their needs increased without the time and expense of rewriting software. IBM made the first commercial use of microcode technology to accomplish this compatibility, employing it in all but the largest models.

It was hard work and a lot of over-time work was required to meet very tight deadlines.
Some week-ends when Joan was not working the family would drive down to Leopold to spend the week-end with Joan’s parents and visit her brother Peter and his family and her sister Sue and her family.

1961 Austin Healey Sprite “Bug Eye”

Like all good things, they come to an end one day. With the publication of Germain Greer’s “The Female Eunuch” and the women of Australia, including Joan, wanting to become more independent, the marriage started to unravel. We decided to live separate lives with no questions asked about where we had been, etc. Joan bought herself and Austin Healey Sprite sports car and I invested in an MG “B” and the Nissan Station Wagon remained the family vehicle.

The children were well looked after either by Joan or myself, depending on who was at home at the time and this continued until one day Joan advised me that she was moving out of the house, but would be leaving me with the children.

MG B Sports – 1961

The die had been cast and it was then up to me to arrange for child minders to arrive in the morning and get Jacqueline and Christopher dressed and given breakfast and then taken to School or Kindergarten and minded for the rest of the day until I returned from work in the evening. The pressure was horrendous, but I was lucky to have found two women, namely Barbara Anthony and Kaye Anderson, who loved the children, helped me to look after them and life continued as usual until the start of term holidays.

 

Camping at Lake Eppalock

Joan had moved into a rented house in Caulfield with two female friends and would pick up Jacqueline and Christopher once a fortnight on the Friday night and would bring them back home on Sunday night. During this period I tried very hard to not disadvantage the children’s life and on one occasion with Peter and Vernice Freer’s youngest daughter Jennie took the three of them on a camping holiday to Lake Eppalock, where we had been before. It was an interesting time, putting up the tent with their help and having several outings with them during the week-end. The Datsun Station Wagon came in very handy to transport us all and our gear.

This arrangement continued, until the term school holidays, when I got a telephone call from Joan to say that the children would not be staying with me any more and that she had made arrangements to look after them herself. I was devastated and confused and on the Monday morning made an appointment to see a lawyer. Unfortunately, I was advised that a legal battle would cost a small fortune and that in the end there was no guarantee that I would win. I reluctantly agreed to a custody agreement and went about changing my life without the children. The change had a bad effect on Christopher who at times would refuse to get out of my car when I took him back to his mother’s house and cry until I carried him into the premises. With time, they settled down and eventually, Joan bought a house in East Brunswick and moved in there by herself with the children.

This period of my life is like a bad dream, but one has to survive and this I did by joining a social group named “Parents without Partners”. They held a dance every Saturday night at various venues and one took oneself there in the hope of meeting someone who was in the same situation as myself.

I met my future wife Ruth Moyle (nee Hale) at one of the dances and we started going out together. We used to meet at her house in Ferntree Gully or she would stay at 10 Gillon Court, Oakleigh from time to time. Ruth’s children, Carolyn, Robert and Phillip got on well with my children, Jacqueline and Christopher and we then decided to live together after selling our own homes.

We had Jacqueline’s seventh birthday at 10 Gillon Court, Oakleigh with Christopher, Carolyn, Robert and Phillip, the neighbors children and their parents. A good time was had by all, as the following photographs show.

I had come to a financial settlement with Joan regarding our own assets and when we sold both houses we decided to build a home that would accommodate the five children and ourselves. After much looking we bought a block of land in Tecoma in the Dandenongs. We engaged “Merchant Builders” to build us their “Studio House” with certain modifications on a sloping block of land that overlooked Melbourne.

After both houses were sold, we rented a house in Boronia while the house at Tecoma was being built. I had met Neil Crozier, a fellow Burgher from Sri Lanka, when I started work at the State Superannuation Board and we became good friends with his wife Helen and their two sons, Damien and Mathew who were also about the same age as the five children of our combined family. We used to visit each other at regular intervals and I recall a wine bottling and BBQ that took place at our house with fond memories. It was during this time that Ruth’s Dad, Douglas Hale met his future wife Francis O’Kane and we met her for the first time when they came to dinner at our house in Boronia.

In the meantime, Joan and the children had moved into a house in Camberwell and the children would come for alternate week-ends to Boronia. Joan had purchased a Mini Moke and the children recall one time when she took all 5 of them for a trip in the car.

The Rowlands Merchant Builders Studio House in Terrys Avenue, Tecoma 

One day I visited the premises of a Consulting Engineer in Ferntree Gully to arrange for a soil test on the property in Tecoma. The receptionist was a Burgher lady who I recognised, but could not put a name to. A few days later I had a phone call from John Rodie who was a friend that I knew when we lived in Colombo – it turned out that the lady who I recognised was his wife Toni Rodie. I arranged to see them at their house in Glen Waverley and Ruth and I visited them at our first opportunity. We renewed our acquaintance and from then on have been good friends to date.

We had obtained the necessary permission from the various authorities who controlled the district and the building permit from the local council. I recall the day when we had to cut down a number of mountain ash trees that were growing on the building envelope. When the bulldozers started pushing the huge trees over, our neighbours who were “greenies” could not believe what was happening before their eyes. The Contractor removed the tree trunks and left behind all the branches of the canopy at the bottom of the block for us to clear. I questioned the Supervisor of Merchant Builders about this but could not get a satisfactory answer from them. The excavation of the split level was completed and construction started soon thereafter. We visited the construction site on a regular basis and one day noticed that the bricks on one wall had been erected with the face of the brick on the inside. We notified Merchant Builders who had the wall demolished and laid correctly. Other than some small deficiencies that were corrected, the house was finished to our satisfaction and we moved in our furniture with the help of friends.

After we moved into the Terrys Road house, Jacqueline and Christopher came to live with us. Our friends Neil and Helen Crozier and others visited regularly, especially when we had a wine bottling and BBQ night. It was during this period that Ruth and I decided to get married and arranged for Ms Belinda Lamb, (who became the Labor member for our electorate to be our marriage celebrant.  The children and our families took part in a simple ceremony and our friends, including some of my staff from the Building Industry Long Service Leave Board joined us for a wedding reception at our house. Their Large Pottery Planter wedding gift has gone with us to Yarrawonga. 

After the wedding ceremony.

Photographs in the garden.

We had an in-ground concrete pool constructed after the land was excavated.  When the builders left, the tree branches that had been removed from the large gum trees were left in the area that the pool was to be constructed. The sales person who sold us the pool offered to cut and remove the branches and tree trunks and I helped him in this task to keep down costs.  In the end we had sufficient timber for our open fire for a number of years and when we sold the house the new owners also had enough timber to last them for some time. When we were excavating the block, we struck a large rock shelf. After measuring the depth, we agreed to a pool that was marginally shallower that we agreed, to save having to blast the rock with explosives.  The pool was great, with solar heating on the roof and a retaining wall of red gum timber. The children and visitors loved swimming in this pool amongst the forest.

The view from the upstairs living room looked over Ferntree Gully and South East Melbourne and it was a pleasure to sit and absorb the view of the country side from our balcony.

After a swim at Tecoma

Cutting the huge logs from the pool development was a regular event during autumn, winter and spring to feed the log fire. The weather in Tecoma was at most times wet and cold and the log fire was a welcome attraction.

Birthday party by the log fire at Tecoma

We also bought two blocks of land in Venus Bay and the holidays we spent there were most enjoyable. We purchased a large tent that had a separate bedroom area and an annex that we used as the kitchen. I made a portable bench with a basin and had sufficient space for the gas stove and a work area.

We also had two large plastic drum that we took to the nearest public tap and filled them for washing the plates and cutlery. Each day we would go to the beach and the children had a marvelous time swimming and exploring the sand dunes. Once they dug into the bank of the dune and nearly were buried alive when the roof collapsed, luckily no one was inside at the time.

We would take both Ruth’s and my car and we each towed a small camper trailer that we used as the bedrooms for the children.

The pictures show that we were very happy campers.

Camping of our block At Venus Bay

The Kitchen/Lounge Tent and two Camper Vans for the Children

 Breakfast at Venus Bay

As we loved our holidays at Venus Bay as this was a safe environment for the children and the beach was a walk away, we later decided to rent a house at Lot 209 Lees Road, Venus Bay for our next holiday. As I could not get leave at the time Ruth and the children went off on their own and I joined them later. We all had scrap books and became “artists”, drawing our surroundings, etc. Some of the drawings are shown below.

Drawing of Venus Bay here we come in our Holden Station Wagon

The Venus Bay Beach where many an hour was spent.

On the way to the beach one had to walk through a mangrove forest and Robert captured this in his drawing.

The girls were into birds and the boys mechanical objects and Ruth and myself into our surroundings, etc.

Ridge Tracks

Hill Climb Track                                                                                           

Pound Creek Track

As the picture above shows, the Sherbrook Forest was on the other side of the road from 131 Terry Avenue, Tecoma. One of our favorite pastimes was taking walks through the many tracks that went through the forest. The eucalypt trees were very tall and many a time we thought we were lost after taking a wrong turn, fortunately if you kept walking the track would intersect with another that was more familiar and we would find our way back home. The three most popular tracks were “The Ridge Track”, “The Pound Creek Track” and the “Hill Climb Track”.

The boys and girls also loved going into the forest and playing among the tall gum trees.

Our biggest worry was the starting of a bush fire in the forest, but we were assured that there were fire fighting pipes established in the forest that could be used to suppress a bush fire if one did start. While we lived in Tecoma, the closest we came to a bush fire was one that started in Ferntree Gully and spread towards Upwey. We saw the smoke from our balcony, but thankfully the bush fire was contained in Upwey and did no cross the Burwood Highway.

As Christopher and Phillip needed their own rooms, I divided the second floor living area and also built a large book shelf to store our collection of books. This also created a small parents retreat where we had our cane suite. This was a great space to relax after a long day at the office.

Ruth in our Parents Retreat

While we were living in Tecoma, Ruth stopped working for the Education Department and we decided to purchase a “Sun Tan & Slimming Clinic” in Boronia. The business was situated in the Boronia Shopping Centre in which the main retain store was “Kmart”.

Our little silky terrier

The business was purchased as an on-going concern and the figures indicated that it would be a thriving business and something that Ruth could handle. The premises of the clinic were on the first floor of the building, reached via a walk-way between Boronia Road and the Shopping Centre. There was ample parking for the clients and even at night was safe for the men and women who attended for sun tanning and slimming. We had two sun tanning beds in separate cubicles in the main area that also had the front and waiting room. The slimming part of the business was in another room that was partitioned with beds and slimming machines. We later rented another room and installed a gymnasium as an added facility. The children would at times, after school, get off the train at the Boronia Station and walk to the clinic and I would pick them up after work.

At the business, Ruth employed Denise to help with the work and life was good until Paul Keating brought on the “Recession that we had to have”. As the majority of our clients were women and the prospect of their husbands loosing their jobs due to the recession and slimming and sun tanning was a luxury, the clients disappeared over night. We kept the business going as long as we could, but eventually had to concede defeat and advise Denise our only employee that we would be closing the business. We arranged to have an auction of all the equipment on the premises and managed to sell the sun tan beds, gymnasium equipment and sundry items. The proceeds of the auction was just sufficient to pay off the leases on the equipment, but we could not cover the balance of the lease on the premises, that the owners agreed to write-off.

This was a traumatic time, but life went on. It was at this time that we used to take the children to various activities in Boronia, Box Hill, Ferntree Gully, etc. Ruth would take the girls to their activities and I would take the boy’s to theirs, we would meet for a drink at a pub in Doncaster, while they took part in their activity and go back and collect them and meet back at home.

When we moved to Tecoma I sold the MGB and my father purchased an ex-sales GMH station wagon for us. I installed a bench seat in the rear with seat belts and Chris and Phil sat facing the rear. A full size roof rack also saw manufactured for us to carry all our luggage when we went on holidays. This wagon was of great help when we went to Bermagui in NSW for a holiday. 

We finally decided that we would have to come down the mountain to Boronia or Bayswater, so that the girls and boys could take themselves off to their activities with our help or on their own. The time was also right as they were now teenagers and find work to pay for their expenses from their own pocket money.

We put the Tecoma house on the market and had no trouble selling the “Merchant Builders - Studio House”.