One year I went down to the South East of South Australia and fotuneately took my family with me, after leaving a drought ravaged place where the top soil of the cockies farms were ending up in the ocean to the the lush greenery of the South East was remarkable.

Beachport the town where I went, is a fishing town ,home of the crayfish (rock lobster )population of 600 which in summertime would swell to 2 or 3,000, the cray fishing season begins in October after the female crays had spawned ,or should have finished , and ends in end of April.

When we arrived and had unloaded the car into our accommodation , the bloke that I was going to shear with , a local, being a sunday he took us up to the local golf club to give us a knockdown to his golfing mates, me being a keen golfer, actually only taking up the game in this same year, my golfing equipment consisting of a couple of clubs and a putter and used to carry these in my hand, none of this fancy gear for me, lol.

Wont go into the shearing details, only to say that the sheep were same breed but entirely different to shear , the wool being so clean and soft and so much easier to shear, this shed was about 3 mile out of town and think lasted 3 weeks ,from then on we got further from town, but would be at home every night.

While at the golf club that first day met a few other young fellows that had just taken up golf , one in particular became my best mate, and most nights after working bloody hard all day he and I would play a few holes of golf, the golf course being just across the road from where we were staying.Went down to Beachport end of October and finished the run just before xmas, but meanwhile the local council (guess your county ) were advertising for a man to look after the town over the tourist season , and I not having anything to go home for put in for this job and got it, wow something new, a day job .

Being a tourist town this job entailed emptying all the rubbish( trash ) bins around the town daily and twice weekly on the tourist roads , also the rubbish bins in the caravan park, also weekly the town bins, plus keeping town tidy ,meaning street sweeping watering gardens and all that stuff, working 7 days a week ,was a bit strange to me, and going home for lunch was also something new.this time of year too all the rest of the staff were on holidays also , so I had to work things out for myself, but was given a list of instructions,including was all the maintenence of all the towns toilets and what ever else needed fixing , must have went alright as I had this job for 15 years,and watched as this town got bigger and bigger.

On weekends or public holidays , like xmas days and new years I would start work before daylight as I only had to do all bins in town and the caravan park and the sooner I finished the sooner I be on golf course.

The caravan park back in those days cosisted of one level of about100 vans ,then another level of about 50, and further on there was a long gully for the tents, and in my early years there it was always full , each morning I used to get 3 loads or more of rubbish just from the park, i had a small ute tipper with a cage on the back held by two pins and when not picking up rubbish would take this cage off, one day when putting cage on forgot to put pins in, oops,and where we tipped the load off was over this steep bank, so this cage finished up down the bottom with all the rubbish, had hell of a job retrieving it .

In the middle of the town was this swamp where all the storm water went, the surrounds of this swamp had been cleared at one time but had been left to go back to nature, there had been trees and shrubs planted also , the powers decided that this eyesore needed to be beautified so they dug this swamp out to a depth of 2 or 3 feetand made a lagoon out of it with an island and bridges and all landscaping,but, when this lagoon was full it would cause trouble for the populace as the water table would rise and upset the toilet systems as all houses were on septicsystems, so we had to keep the lake at just right level ,this meant they had to put a pump and pump the water out to sea about kilometre away another job for emu, also at this time they put a few bbqs around the place and guess who had to clean these every day.

also over the hill was another lake called the pool of silaom? or as we called the salt lake, this lake was seven times saltier than the sea, you could not drown here , it had very good recuperative powere many people would go there and feel much better by the time they left, this also was landscaped more work for emu, ah well!

Inland from the ocean there were quite a few waterlogged places, and in the late 1800 early 1900's they dug these drains and drain these places to make them productive, the drai that came through beachport was about hundred yards wide and drained into the very large lake maybe 6, 7 miles long and about mile wide, this lake had opening into the sea and when there was a high tide the mullet (fish ) would enter this lake and spawn ,so this lake being salty was a fisheman's mecca.

About 20 miles away was another town , this town was a sawmill town and I had to also pick op town rubbish from here also

, but at this stage the outside gang used to cut the grass etc, but eventually they gave it to me to do, more bloody work for emu, all the lawns in Beachport I had to cut with hand mower at that time, eventually the lashed out and got me a ride on, wow now I had time to even blow my nose.

After a couple of years they got me a larger truck and also an offsider, now I could sit back and just give orders,bloody beaut.

There was a nudist colony not far out of town and one day the boss told me to go out there and pick up some rubbish that was left there, whacko , so cleaned my eyeballs so as not to miss any of the scenery and away I went, big disappointment, place was empty, ah well! maybe next time, I wish .lol

By this time I had worn one offsider out and now had another one , and also there was another town that we had to provide a rubbish pickup, this place we had to sit on our bums for an 1 1/2 while they brought rubbish to us, we waited at the cricket grounds and of course to fill in the time I would take a golf club.

By this time they got me another little ride on , plus a larger one , wow we covered some ground now, one time we went out to Mt Burr ,that is the saw mill town , to build a playground, as u can see our duties were diverse, we built this monkey bars and we had the cage of the truck to stand on while working above ground, and this cage had two hooks on the back ,for the crane when we needed to take cage off, anyhow when finished building monkey bars found that we could not take truck out as these two lugs were to high , hmmmm what to do,

after getting a few splinters from scratching head, the brain went to work , why not tip tray then can drive out, and u bewdey it worked, away we went , much relieved.

Another two jobs i had was dog catcher and grave digger, wont go into dog catching but grave digging was interesting. of course at this time had to dig and fill in by hand, thank gawd it was sand, the first grave I done I lay down on the bottom ,as u know how unstable sand can be and only first 3 ft were stabilised,another one they wanted all the dirt carried away ,so me and my mate had to toss the dirt onto a truck parked along side ,and as we threw the dirt onto the truck the back wheels sank deeper into the sand, and when we were finished could not move truck, so had to go to nearest cockie and get tractor to pull us out.

Another one, this big wig died and was getting buried on the monday and it was saturday when we had to dig this grave, and had to be in this particular place, had just finished digging it when the whole bloody lot collapsed, what to do now, no two way radio in them days, must have got hold of boss ,and he had to call in the entire workforce to help me

even had backhoe, as we had to have this grave in this one place only, anyway we must have got it all under controll , but the cost of this one grave digging enterprise was exhorbitant as u can imagine having all the gang working and on a saturday too.

After that episode things changed dramatically,we had form work that was split into three boxes , and a back hoe would dig inside one and as the hole got deeper would bolt the next one on and so forth , much easier and quicker, and when need to fill in only had to lift out with backhoe and fill hole in , much quicker and easier. after being here for 15 years we packed up and moved to Adelaide.........