First job was busier than Bourke St

We received most of our groceries by train once a week and much of it was in bulk.

My brother and I were set to work taking things like potatoes, onions and sugar out of the large hessian bags and weighing them in brown paper bags which were tied with string.

We also had to syphon products like vinegar and lighting kerosene out of drums and into glass bottles.

Sugar was packed from a 70 lb (31 kg) hessian bag into brown paper bags weighing 12 lbs (5.5 kg) or six pounds.

On a Saturday morning we would be sent to the baker's shop to pick up 20 loaves of bread and bring it to the store where we would use the bacon slicer to slice 10 loaves for sandwiches for the football afternoon teas and 10 loaves for the sandwiches for the supper at the local dance.

The bread slicing was done free for the footy club.

It was all very labour-intensive but gave us as school boys the chance to earn a little pocket money.

After that, my first real job was in boys’ college wear on the fifth floor of Melbourne's Myer Emporium on Bourke St, where I spent my days fitting college students with their school uniforms.

Myers was a great learning curve dealing with the college students and their parents. I well remember the arguments with some students who fought with their parents about the size of uniform they would wear.

The Myers staff were well trained and were taught how to deal with customers under the company motto ‘value and friendly service'.

At the same time, I attended the Lee Murray Announcing College in Exhibition St four nights a week because I wanted to be a radio and TV announcer.

My Myers job changed somewhat when the college wear management found out that I had been attending announcing school. I was then urged to be an in-store announcer working on the store's public address system promoting the specials.

I also worked at a landline radio station in St Kilda on either Saturday or Sunday, or sometimes both days.

I enjoyed my time at Myers, but I was delighted when I graduated from Radio College to work at Radio 3UL Warragul and then 3SR and Win TV.