Who Knows Where The Time Goes? Part 1

I had some PC related issues yesterday and was unable to write (or at least type) anything. I have it sorted now, touch wood.

28 years ago yesterday, on March 5th 1992, I touched down at Adelaide International Airport and set foot on Australian soil for the first time. It was not without mixed feelings. There was the sense of wonder and adventure – everything looked familiar in some ways, but different in others. (At least they drive on the correct side of the road.) But I was also trepidatious – what if it doesn’t work out, what if I hate it and go running home with my tail between my legs after a few weeks?  Still, I was in good hands for the first few weeks, as I’d be staying with my sister and her family, who had emigrated to Adelaide in 1989, and after they moved interstate a month later, I moved in with their friends for a few months.

My original intention had been to stay for 6 or 8 months and then come home. My working holiday visa was only good for 12 months anyway. There was absolutely no question of me not returning to Ireland to live. But of course, as Mr. Lennon sang, “life is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans”.

During the course of my time in Adelaide, I got a job in a leather tannery, as a trainee Leather Technician. Leather tanning is part chemistry, part craft and a lot of filth and bad smells. It can also involve arduous physical work and is in fact a lot of fun. I got hired for this gig partly on the strength of my chemistry background, and partly because I was from Waterford. It turned out the company, Michell Leather, were building a tannery in Portlaw, just a few short miles out of Waterford City. So the proposal was that I’d stay in Australia for a few years and complete the training (there was a three year apprenticeship of sorts to become a technician) and they’d eventually send me back to run the operations of the Portlaw tannery.

By this time I was enjoying Australia immensely, and was more than happy at the prospect of staying a few years, and having a great job to return home to, if I should choose to go home. (It was not stated overtly, but was implied that if I eventually chose to stay in Australia permanently that was fine, they’d send someone else to Portlaw, or hire locally, as there had been a tannery in the area some years before, so there was local expertise around.

So there I was, 24 years old with any and all options  on the table for me, talk about a tick in every box! It really felt like I’d landed on my feet. (My late father often used to say that I always do). There was merely the small matter of my working holiday visa conditions which said that I could not work for any one employer for more than three months, but crucially it also said “without written permission from the Department of Immigration”. So I told them that and they said they understood.

Fast forward a few months and they transferred me to a satellite tannery in a tiny town in rural New South Wales called Culcairn – population at that time, 982 – plus me. This was a big change, and initially I wasn’t at all happy about it, as I saw myself as very much a city boy, but I settled into country life surprisingly quickly. I’m nothing if not adaptable. It didn’t hurt that my sister’s new home was less than two hours drive away, so every Friday evening I belted over there in my battered old Holden VC Commodore and we had some legendary weekend parties.

I remember spending Boxing Day 1992 alone in the tannery, running four massive tanning drums which were in various stages of the tanning process (you can see three of them in the picture – that’s the very same tannery, still operating but under a different company now). I was working from a platform about four feet under a corrugated tin roof – the temperature on the platform was easily 45 degrees and I was hauling 25 kilo hides (more actually cos they were wet) in and out of drums with a long boathook. I may have perspired a bit! But it was fun all the same. It would never happen now of course, this was before the days of the Health & Safety nannies. By this time however, there was only about five or six weeks left on my visa, so I thought I’d better check in with head office back in Adelaide and find out how they were going with getting it extended so that I could stay on. That’s when it all went pear shaped. Remember the three month rule? Well, it turned out when they said they understood, they meant that they thought I would get the necessary permission. Which is ridiculous, if you want to keep a foreigner employed anywhere, it is usually up to the employer to obtain permission. So in a nutshell, I thought they had sorted it, they thought I had sorted it, and nobody had in fact sorted it.

By this time I had spent six months with the company, double what I was allowed to. So I called Immigration and explained the whole story and asked what could be done. They said I was now illegal and had to stop work immediately, and the company would have to submit a detailed application explaining how this happened and why they want to keep me on, and a decision will be made based on that.

So the application went in – I found myself no longer employed (to be fair they paid me out a full month), and  the local pub saw a lot of me during the ensuing three weeks or so of waiting to find out if I was staying or returning to Ireland. When the answer came, it was not good news. I had to be out of Australia by the 20th of February I think the date was – it was less than two weeks away by now anyway.  So that was it. Instead of staying on a few years and pursuing a glorious tanning career, I was returning home from an Australian summer to an Irish winter, with the sum total of bugger all barring a few quid I’d saved.

Two weeks later I was sitting in the unemployment exchange in Waterford waiting my turn to sign on, and it started snowing outside. I don’t think I ever felt such misery before or since.  However, when things go as bad as it seems they can, there’s only one way they go after that, and that’s up. It all did get better in due course 🙂

To be continued…….