The factory was producing canning machines for the Shepparton canneries. And this was when I also saw what was happening to the blanks for the steering worms that we made in South Melbourne. After being checked by a government inspector, who rejected about a third or even more for being oversized or undersized, which was completely unnecessary since the ones they didn’t throw out were then put on a grinding machine which took another 35 thou off them and gave them a beautiful finish.

Of course, the inspector had shares in the company. All of these factories were on a cost plus basis with the government. Whatever the cost, the government paid them a healthy percentage of profit. So it was not in their best interest to produce cheap things. The more they cost, the more profit the owners had. So much for the war effort.

Suddenly I was demoted from tool setter to casting cleaning. I wasn’t allowed to use any machinery of any kind, I had to clean them with a file and emery paper, by hand. I think there were three reasons they did this to me. First, I was the bloody foreigner. Second, I had been chosen out of all the others to run the factory in South Melbourne. Thirdly, I was the only one that managed to get Moira Scott, the best looking girl in the office, to go out with me. Everyone hated my guts.

One day I had bought the most expensive pair of shoes I had ever bought- a pair of English Brogues which had cost me half a week’s wages – and put them in my locker because I was going out with Moira that night. The bastards took a grease gun, filled it with grease, not clean grease but the grease with graphite in it from the machines, and pumped the shoes full of it.

And after some weeks of this, I decided to write a letter to the Department of Labour and National Service, complaining that I was a tool setter and had to clean castings by hand.

In reply to my letter, I got a notification to report to the Labour Council within 7 days. I was to be sent off into the bush to join a road gang, building roads up and around Alice Springs. As it turned out, my letter of complaint had been received by an official at the Department of Labour and Industry, who happened to be a major shareholder of the engineering firm who had employed me and got me out of camp. In Alice Springs I surely would be out of the way, and out of harm’s way for the rest of the duration of hostilities.