The Admiral

When I finished my last HSC exam, I had about three days off before I started my first full-time job (no schoolies week back in 1987). The job was not what you would call glamorous. It entailed cleaning rubber press machines at Empire Tyre and Rubber, an ancient business in Bendigo that used to make rubber suspension bushes and the like for car manufacturers. My role was to spray kerosene from a compressed air spray gun onto the machines that pressed the rubber to get rid of the accumulated layers of “carbon black” that was used to colour it. This left me covered in black each day and when I blew my nose it would be blue with the kerosene that I had obviously been breathing in – it was fun times all around.

My first day should have perhaps alerted me to the reality that things at Empire Rubber were going to be interesting. I got a bit of a tour with a bloke who obviously took this role quite seriously. He showed me around and then sat me down for a bit of a man to man type chat. “You have to watch some of the blokes around here mate” he said. “Oh” I said, “Why”. “Well mate if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys, and this place is full of monkeys”. Right.

He then went on to tell me about the horrendous OH&S history of the company and how he believed the payouts for this were going to ruin it. He walked over to one of the rubber presses, a big hydraulic unit for making windscreen seals, where molten rubber is pressed under pressure into a mould. The press essentially a lower and upper table which opened to allow the rubber to come out and for the mould to be cleaned and then pressed closed with great force for the next seal to be made. “You get your finger cut off by a knife”, said my guide earnestly, “and they can sew it back on”. “But get your hand caught in here, and it ends up looking like a fucking tennis racquet, and what are you going to do with that?”

But I digress. This story is not actually about giant hands.

To get to Empire Rubber I had to ride my bike. This was 20km each way and I used an old single speed road bike that I had long before this means of transportation was appropriated by bearded hipster types. As I generally did a 12 hour shift starting a 5, it meant that I was up long before the sparrows started farting, usually leaving home just after 4. As we lived out of town and I could take a number of back roads, I didn’t worry too much about lights. What I would do was just ride along the white line in the middle of the road and just get off the road if a car was coming.

One morning I was running a bit late and so I had the head down as I negotiated the first part of the ride. On the route in there was a long downhill which took you to the edge of the town. As you looked down the hill you could see the street lights, which did have an effect on your night vision. Anyway, as I was late I was hurtling down the hill, going somewhere between 40 and 50kph, when all a sudden I hit something and before I even knew what was going on I was on the ground and rolling. This was in pre helmet days so I just hit the ground like a sack of spuds, it still the most I have ever had the stuffing knocked out of me.

As I lay there in the dark, I thought I must have hit a kangaroo, I sat up and started checking myself over, and suddenly there was a loud voice in the darkness. “YOU STUPID BOY”. As my eyes adjusted a bloke of about 80 limped up to me. “What the fuck are you doing without lights you fucking idiot?” Then softening, “Are you alright?” I said I was and he told me that he lived just down the road so we walked back there, me pushing my bike.

When we got to where he lived, which was an old people’s home, I could see that he was bleeding. It seemed like my brake lever had hit him in the forearm and it had peeled the skin back like a banana. I then realised that I had peeled the skin of both of my hands, and was sore just about everywhere. The old bloke told me that he had been in the Navy all his life and that he could not sleep after 4 so he got up and went for a walk each morning. He said he walked on the white line. I asked if he wanted me to call an ambulance, but he told me he was fine – he was as hard as a cats head that old sea dog. He then told me that I had broken his umbrella and that he expected me to buy a new one. He asked for my telephone number and said he would call that night.

I rode into work and can tell you that working with kerosene with no skin on your hands is not fun. It was not until I had gotten home that night that I could clean the wounds that included hands, elbows, knees and arse. Just before I was going to bed the phone rang and it was the old sailor. He asked to speak to my mum. They chatted for a few minutes and she told me that he wanted me to drop him in a new umbrella the following day and to also bring the lights that he expected me to purchase. So my mum took me around to him place the next day and I gave him a new umbrella, he showed me his bandaged arm and I showed him my first ever bike light. After a brief chat he said fair enough, we are square – not sure it would happen like that these days.