Work with aircraft from 1954, apprenticeship pilot training interrupted by father, brief work selling books, then sheet metal work and Air Force employment around twenty-first birthday.
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What the page says
AIRCRAFT
Aircraft are my love, always has been. I started work in 1954 and I did quite well for a few years until once again my father started interfering again.
At Fisherman Bend we were on the building side of aircraft. We helped get aircraft ready for test flights. It ended up I walked out at the end of my fourth year with another year yet to go. I was attempting to be an apprentice pilot and obtain a pilot's license. I had gotten into the flights and I had to give it up because my father backed down on a deal he had made with me. I told him that was it!
Next I sold books but I wasn't very good at that! (chuckle, chuckle)
THE SHEET METAL TRADE
I went back to sheet metal work which I was good at and at the same time I ran around to the Air Force to see if I could get a job with them. About the time of my twenty first birthday I got given the job with the Air Force but I had to knock it back because I had injured myself at work!
People: DISTEL
Places: Fisherman Bend, Air Force
Interesting facts
The Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation. Set up at Fishermans Bend in 1936 so Australia could build its own aircraft. It made the Wirraway and the Boomerang during the war, and by the mid-1950s was assembling Sabre jet fighters - the shop floor an apprentice walked into in 1955.
An indenture was a contract. A five-year apprenticeship was a legal agreement, low paid and binding. Leaving early forfeited the certificate, and without the certificate a tradesman could not be paid as one.
