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Exploring the younger years and turning point moments of authentic, outstanding and inspiring people. See the world through the eyes of someone who may have grown up in an entirely different way to you.
Pat’s story – When I Was Young – Episode 3.
Nina: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to When I Was Young, the podcast that explores the younger years of interesting people. This podcast is a chance to slow down and hear about the world through the eyes of someone else who may have grown up in an entirely different way to you. In each episode, we explore the younger years and turning point moments that help people discover who they really are.
Each guest is someone quite remarkable with a great story to tell. So relax and enjoy your time with us today. I'm your host, Nina Fromhold. For the last six years I've been making audio recordings of people's life stories in private podcasts for their families. This [00:01:00] year I'm launching When I Was Young, a podcast that will share some beautiful life stories with you.
All stories are true and affirmed by my guests. Joining me today is Pat. Pat is retired, a prolific traveller who has sailed some of the most beautiful seas and oceans in the world. Pat is a reflective and questioning person who is always interested in people. He follows world events, reads widely, is a lifelong learner and someone that is interested in making the most of this one precious life.
Pat is based here in Melbourne and was previously an e-learning expert who shared his work internationally. He also taught in some of Melbourne's most challenging school environments. Today we're gonna delve into Pat's childhood, his teenage years, and the [00:02:00] life-changing moments that helped him become the person he is today. And he's got some great stories to share. Thanks for being here today Pat, and for sharing some of your story with us.
Pat: Not a problem, Nina
Nina: Pat, when and where were you born?
Pat: When? 1959. Where? I originally thought I was born in Melbourne because at one stage when I was trying to decide what football team to follow, I said to mum, where was I born? And I thought, she said Melbourne. So for ages, I was saying I was born in Melbourne and one day she overheard me. She said, what are you talking about? You were born in Malvern. So I definitely got that wrong. We lived initially with my grandparents and auntie and uncle in Bentleigh. I was the first born grandchild, so the only time they ever saw my grandmother drunk was the day I was christened. 'cause they had drinks afterwards at the Bentleigh home. And I think she realised that the first [00:03:00] time that she was getting a little bit old.
Nina: Is there a story behind your name?
Pat: I am Christened James Patrick, but called Pat. My father was Christened Francis Clifford. And my grandfather, his name was also Francis Frank.
My grandfather served on the HMAS repulse, so he wasn't home all the time. And there were times when he would come home though and my grandmother would yell out Frank and they didn't know whether she meant Frank the child or Frank, my grandfather. So one day he got a little bit sick and tired of that and he turned around from my dad and said, from now on, your name is Jim.
So they called my dad Jim, and I don't know why they christened me James, but they didn't wanna call me Jim Junior. So I was called by my middle name, which is Pat.
Nina: What can you tell me about each of your parents, who they were and what was important to them?
Pat: So my mother was Lucy, Patricia, and she [00:04:00] grew up in Wangaratta. She was a child of the depression. They didn't have a lot of money. Her job in the family growing up was to be the ferret hunter. So she would put the ferret down, the ferret holes and catch rabbits. And when she caught a rabbit, they had meat for dinner, and if she didn't catch rabbits, they didn't. She graduated with some sort of business degree, but when we moved to Frankston, she couldn't get a job in that area.
So she worked a whole lots of different jobs. She was a school cleaner. At one stage, she worked for Nylex, the plastics factory. Eventually she got a job at a school in the office for 40 years. She was a business manager, so she finally got to use her qualifications. I think family was always really important to Mum.
Education was definitely important to her and she was really big on you learning new things. She was an avid gardener, and I used to help her a lot in the garden. It was one of those [00:05:00] things where you'd be waiting or whatever and you'd just be chatting away to Mum. So that was great.
My father was Francis Clifford. He was a roof plumber, as eventually was my grandfather. When he left the Navy, he went into roof plumbing and he was a master slater. So when they came out to Australia, he worked on many of the churches around Melbourne because of his slating expertise. Both of them were really strong on work ethic. One of the things, my father used to say, “if you only do what you're paid to do, you're doing too little”.
He was very big on education. He served as an 18-year-old in Korea, served two tours, and that had a lifelong effect on him.
Nina: In what ways Pat?
Pat: I had a photo of my father from a book called Our Men in Korea by Eric Linklater. And it was the old man as an 18-year-old carrying the company radio on his back as they're paddling [00:06:00] across whatever the river in Korea was.
He was a good man, but complicated. None of them came back undamaged. In my teens I had some fractious times with my dad, as you do. And my grandmother pulled me aside and she told me some of the stories that he'd told her and some of the things that she'd observed about what he was like. It was interesting 'cause it really helped me understand my dad a little bit.
I was 15ish and my dad was an avid reader, so there were always books around the house. So we were reading one night and there was a war movie on, and I turned to the old man and I said, did you ever kill anyone? And he said, “you're asking me that question because you still think war is this a heroic adventure. And it's not.” He said, “I'll talk about one day”. So 20 years later, I'm in my mid thirties and I pop back for a weekend to see the folks and we're sitting in the same spots, different chairs, reading books, war movie on, [00:07:00] and the old man puts down his book and says, “here, do you ever remember asking me if I'd killed someone?”
And I went, “yeah, actually I do remember that”. And so we had a conversation for hours and he told me all the stories my grandmother had told me, but a whole heap of others. It was the only time he ever spoke about that stuff.
Nina: Did you feel more connected after having that conversation?
Pat: I think I understood him better, where he’d come from. I'm the first generation in quite a while in my family who's never been to war, the suggestion that I might join any armed forces is not met with much glee from either one of them really.
Nina: So they wanted to protect you from that life?
Pat: They wanted a different life for me.
Nina: Nice. Do you know how your parents met?
Pat: Yes, I do. My father, when he came back from Korea, had problems settling down. He started working with my grandfather on the roofs and they would typically catch a train to work. So my grandfather had this big Gladstone bag. Anyway, they were in a train [00:08:00] and there was a big sign up in the carriage saying, “come join the railways in Australia”.
Pat: And I think my grandfather said to him, “you should think about that”. Dad said, “you know what? I think I will.” So he applied to join the railways in Australia, shipped over on the boat, met a bloke called George, and they became really good mates and got to Victoria and they were shipped off to work in Wangaratta.
Pat: They met Mum and her sister at some dance function and they ended up marrying the sisters.
Nina: So not many years off the boat. And was that from Ireland?
Pat: Dad was from Folkston in England.
Nina: Let's get to you. Where did you live when you were growing up and what was your home like?
Pat: I lived in Frankston North. It was a housing commission estate. We lived in a concrete home as most of the homes there were. They weren't all the same, but I think it was like three or four different designs. [00:09:00] You could pretty much guarantee if you went to a friend's house, you knew where the toilet was, you knew where everything was. So we lived opposite the footy oval, and we could sit on the front wall and we'd watch the cricket games, could watch the footy games.That was pretty good.
On the left-hand side, a hundred meters was a place called Fisher's Farm, where we used to go yabbying and all that sort of stuff, but eventually became the tech school. A hundred meters to the right was the primary school I went to, which is now an old people's home. A couple hundred meters up there's the high school, which has since been pulled down. When I grew up, there were just kids everywhere. It was a new estate.
Nina: And so when you were there, what did your neighbourhood feel like Pat?
Pat: There's a strong sense of community, which is really good. We do a lot of sport, so there was the footy club, there was a basketball thing and my dad started the First Scout group on the estate. So there'd be [00:10:00] camping, there'd be hiking. So there was a lot of good stuff like that around. There was also lots of alcohol and there was a bit of violence around.
Nina: And would you say the violence was quite normalised, like Friday night at the pub? Bit of a punch on kind of feeling there?
Pat: There was a particular bunch of blokes whose idea of a good Friday night was to go down to a pub and try and start an all in brawl. In Frankston there were three pubs on the one corner. There was a lot of alcohol, there was a lot of drunken people around at times. I was actually working at the pub one night when they had the Justice of the Peace read the Riot Act for people. It wasn't typical, but it was an interesting time.
Nina: So take me to your earliest memory from when you were a child.
Pat: So my earliest memory, not a particularly great one. My youngest brother had neuroblastoma, which is a childhood cancer. Starts in the spine, goes up to the brain, and he had that when he was [00:11:00] about two it started. He died when he was just over three. He was being treated at the Children's Hospital. So to get from Frankston to the Children's Hospital, mom would take the train. I remember the train, I assume probably a tram, but my earliest memory is hearing my brother scream when they injected him with whatever drugs they were doing at the time to try and cure it. I was about seven or so at the time. That was probably my first memory.
Nina: So you used to go with your mum to the hospital and go on that journey as a family?
Pat: No, just the three of us.
Nina: And so if that's your earliest memory, do you think that any part of you in adulthood has really held onto that?
Pat: I'm sure of that. I’m not very good with needles, Nina. Interestingly, years and years later, I had to do some work with the Royal Children's Hospital, and walking in was fairly confronting. But the other thing I couldn't stand for years is the smell of hospitals. [00:12:00] It was a trigger bringing back that memory, that's for sure.
Nina: Absolutely. Especially because your family then went on to lose your brother.
Pat: Yeah. It's a disease that strikes kids, and the success rate back then was extremely low. It's much better now in the last 10 or so years.
Nina: Absolutely. So this would've been in the sixties. So talk to me about the role your grandparents had in your childhood and whether you had a favourite grandparent?
Pat: So my mother's father died at 37 of stomach cancer, so I never knew him. My mother's mother and I had a very problematic relationship. After my brother died, I think my mother and father experienced a fair amount of stress for a while. And it was a couple years later. Must have been Christmas holidays 'cause it was a place that we would go to for [00:13:00] a Christmas break. Went there, I think with my cousins. I would've been nine or 10 and my brother would've been eight.
Nina: And this is at your grandmother's house?
Pat: Yes, so we went there and we both swim reasonably well. So the three of us went to the pool. I think my brother must have got a little bit of heat stroke or something like that. We're told not to go into the deep end. So the very first thing we did was decide to jump in, touch the bottom. So we dive in, we touched the bottom. I come up, I look down, and he's still sitting on the bottom of the pool.
And I'm going, yeah, not good. So I go, okay. And I get him and I push off the bottom of the pool and he hits the surface. So I grab him and drag him to the side and he's still breathing. Thank God. And we get out and I go, I think we should go back. Anyway, we walk him back. To clarify, so he's one of a twin and my mum is quite small, she's about five four and she didn't carry the twins to term. So they were born three months premature. [00:14:00] And our sister died about an hour after birth. And there are elements of my extended family, which are extremely religious. In fact this particular cousin went on to become a Catholic priest. So we walk him back and he goes, “yeah, there's something wrong with your brother”.
I said, “what do you mean?” He goes, “your sister didn't survive inside your mum. 'cause he poisoned her.” Not a very sophisticated insult to him, but I said, “you should find the biggest Catholic pool you can, jump in it and drown mate.” So he runs off and he gets back to the house, obviously before us. We get in, I said to my grandma, “he's not too well, we did the wrong thing. We jumped in the pool. Nut I think he had a bit too much sun.” And she said, “well get him to lie down.” And then she said, “I wanna talk to you.” And I thought, I'm in deep trouble anyway. She says, “we don't take the Lords name in vain in this house, Catholicism, blah, blah.” And I'm saying, “no, I don’t have to put it up with this.”
After tearing strips off me about [00:15:00] God, Catholics, Catholicism, blah, blah, I said to her, “can I use your phone please? I wanna speak to my father.” And she said, “what do you wanna speak to your father about?” And I said, “we're not staying here. We're going home.” She said, “no, you can't use the phone.” So I walk into the bedroom, start packing our stuff and said, “Mitch, just when you feel better, I'm packing both our bags. We're going home.” And I think our parents had given us some money. I said, we're catching the train. So I'm not sure what a 10-year-old and an 8-year-old turning up at the train station wanting tickets back to Melbourne and Frankston would've been met with, probably a call to the police saying, Hey, we've got a couple of kids here, but the next thing I know, my grandmother says, “your father's on the phone.”
He wants to speak. He said, “what's going on?” So I went through what was going on and he said, “pack your bags. I'll be here in a couple of hours.” So that sort of set the colour for my relationship with my grandmother. From then on, we didn't really have [00:16:00] a lot to say to each other, but we continued to have family holidays up there, but that was the whole family would go up and I would keep a fairly low profile.
Nina: Absolutely. So from 10 years old, you were pushing back on religion Pat?
Pat: Pretty much. It was the vehicle to have a crack at my cousin, yes, because I knew the family were religious, and I wasn't gonna put up with that crap about my brother. When my brother died we stayed with my grandparents when he died and I remember them taking a phone call late at night and coming in and telling us, and I dunno how we got there, but the next day we were back home and I was in the lounge and the local priest knocked on the door. Dad had opened the door and he said, “oh, it's God's will.”
And the old man slammed the door and turned around and said to my Mum, “he never sets foot in this house again.” Religion. There were a couple of things that made me go, you know what? Not for me.
Nina: So that was the story of your least favourite grandparent. Have you got a favourite grandparent and what is special [00:17:00] about them?
Pat: My dad's parents. I worked with my grandfather on the roofs from about the age of nine during the holidays and stuff, and I adored him. He was a little man, but tough as rusty nails. My grandmother was called Bertha and she was a tea lady and she was always full of laughter, always full of fun. My grandfather could have, as far as I'm concerned, walked on water. One of my jobs when I worked for my dad and him was to bring tiles up onto the roof and they used to put on aluminium tiles, so my job was to take up tiles and put 'em on the roof, so they didn't have to come down and waste time. One day my dad, I think he called me up and he said, “listen, go down the street and just get us some salad rolls for lunch or something like that will you.”
And the story behind that was apparently my grandfather said to my dad, up on the roof. “Have you got any tiles on your side?” My old man's gone “you know, hardly any.” Anyway, Come and have a look [00:18:00] at my side of the roof. He couldn't move. I thought he was, God. I thought back at the old man, I'm gonna look after my grandfather here. And that's when, my grandfather said to him, “I can't move for tiles, send him off somewhere to do something will you.”
Nina: So your favouritism was a little too much love?
Pat: It was too. He was amazing. I've only seen him mad once. Occasionally we used to pick him up at train stations and he'd have his big gladstone bag. We'd pick him up and then go to whatever job it was. And one time he turned up at this train station and he's absolutely fuming and Dad’s gone, “what's going on?”
And he said he was getting off the train with his tool bag and some bloke was waiting to get on the train, and he just pushed my grandfather outta the road and he went flying. His tool bag went flying, and then the train took off and he was not happy. So he said, “I'll be here tomorrow morning, I'll be on the same carriage [00:19:00] and I'll have a go at that bloke.”
And Dad said, “how do you know he's gonna be here?” “Because people are creatures of habit. I bet you he catches that same train every day and I bet you he gets on the same carriage.”
So the next day the old man's gone, “I think we might have to get there a bit earlier.” So we get there and we're waiting for the train carriage to open. And sure enough, this bloke bolts to get into the carriage and the door's open and my grandfather reaches up, grabbed this bloke by the throat, boom, drives him back onto the wall and then gives him the talking to about watching yourself when you get on there and you knock me over. And it could have been someone else. It could be a pregnant woman. Anyway, bloke missed this train and we went to work.
Nina: So don't mess with your grandfather.
Pat: Oh no. I learned a lesson about that too. He was fantastic, but there was a steel core to him. As a family, my auntie Linda was a bit younger than my dad and his brother and sister, and that was because my grandfather was [00:20:00] home on leave and there was a sound of a woman being slapped around next door, and my grandfather said to my grandmother, “what's going on there?”
Pat: And she goes, “it happens occasionally.” So he goes next door and knocks and says to the bloke next door, “I don't ever wanna hear that stuff again. And if I hear that it's happening or I get told it's been happening while I'm away, I'll be here to sort you out.”
The woman came over to my grandparents' place and said, “I'm leaving, but I can't take the baby with me.” And my grandfather said, “that's all right. We'll raise her.” So that's how we got my Auntie Linda.
Nina: Oh my. So they adopted their neighbour's child.
Pat: I don't even know what the process was back then. I assume there was some sort of formal thing, but they just went, yeah, no, we'll raise her.
Nina: Amazing. And so did your Auntie Linda grow up her whole life knowing that she was adopted?
Pat: Yeah, little bit of age difference between us, but yeah, she was almost like an older sister, really. She was great.
Nina: So you've talked a little bit about [00:21:00] your siblings, but just to be really clear, how many children did your family have and where are you in the birth order?
Pat: So I'm the oldest. I guess there were six of us. I had a sister who died, a brother who died, and a sister who is adopted. Mom really wanted a little girl and she had three boys. She didn't want to take the chance of getting pregnant again and have another boy. So they adopted a little girl.
Nina: And do you know how that adoption was done?
Pat: I think the, the name Berry Street Baby's home is in my head. I do remember that we had to go meet her before she came home with the family and she looked at us and cried. 'cause she was a little toddler and I don't think she'd had much exposure to boys or men. I think the only male she'd seen was the doctor at the home. So she was like all these tall boy things. But I dunno the [00:22:00] logistics of how they did it all,
Nina: Your family experienced quite a few significant losses of children. Tell me how you think illness and grief impacted your family life over the years?
Pat: It was clearly a strain, particularly with my brother. You lose a child to cancer and it was long, it was over 12 months that they had to work through that. And I think my mother became obsessed for a couple of years. It felt like a couple of years after he died, we would go to the cemetery every Sunday, fresh flowers from and all that sort of stuff.
And I remember a trip home with my father where he said, this has to stop. We can't keep doing this every week. It's not good. Not good for you. It's not good for the kids. It's not good for us. And there was a bit of a, I think it was a yelling match, I think, “stop the car, let me out.” But it did stop.
We did [00:23:00] obviously keep going, but not at that regularity. It became far less than that. I looked back at photos of my dad before and after. And before, he was a young man. He was a relatively good looking bloke, and after, he had lines on his face, he looked aged. He had definitely aged considerably. It was something that we all were in the brunt of in different ways.
We were upset as kids, but I think they, experienced the loss. And he died at home. He'd been through every treatment the children's could give. They had put him on experimental protocols. None of it had taken. They told Mum that they could give him some drugs, which would prolong his life by six months or whatever it was, but he'd be in incredible agony for the last couple of months.
Or she could take him home and he could die at home. So she chose to take him home. Mum wasn't working. [00:24:00] Family needs money. So my dad would go off to work everyday and Mum bore the brunt of looking after a child with cancer. It was really tough.
Community came in. We would have, people would come and help us. Neighbours would cook meals, and by that time my mum had a 1-year-old baby as well. He was almost raised by one of our neighbours. She, you know, looked after him for considerable amount of time. It was good that a community comes together around tragedy.
Nina: And what about for you? Was there anything that really stuck with you from your brother's passing
Pat: For a long time, I didn't like the dark left, the light on. Thank you very much for that. I guess we were young and you become resilient, but yeah, it was obviously, like I said, needles not so good with.
Nina: What about an interest in health and wellbeing?
Pat: Yeah, well there's a couple of things about that. I’ve always been very sporty and always [00:25:00] interested in human body, but I also have vasovagal syncope.
Pat: In my high school and certainly into university, and then the rest of my life really, I would pass out at the drop of a hat. So I have a weird vagus nerve and it does some weird things to my aorta and arteries. Occasionally, when I was growing up, I think I was in year eight or something, and they give you injections and I got the injection, didn't like it much, but then walked out the door to go outside and I lost my eyesight.
I was just black, turned around, walked back inside and I put my hand along and walked to the teacher's lounge and knocked on the door and said, I can't see. So I laid down on the sick bay, nurse came out, looked at me. I got my vision back after a while. I laid down and shut my eyes.
I had to do a medical check for uni and I was the family doctors, fantastic BLO driver. He took my pulse and I went down like a rock, bang. [00:26:00] And he goes, that's not good. And he just looked at me going, I don't think we'll include that in the form. Thank you very much. And then I was hospitalised, well a couple of times, but as I've gotten older, taking my pulse doesn't trigger me off.
The new type of injections are just ching and you're done. Blood pressure, I need to lie down. Blood tests not so good at. Went to hospital with something at one stage and the bloke said, oh, I need to take your blood. And I said, I need to lie down. I said, can you be quick though? And he goes, you're lying down. No one passes out when they're lying down. And I said, watch me.
So having a medical condition that lasts your lifetime. In fact, when I was working, I got hospitalized 'cause I couldn't bring my blood pressure back up. And I went back to work a couple of days later and, and a colleague said to me, she [00:27:00] said, oh, a girlfriend of mine had what you've got. One day she just dropped dead. I was like, really? And I looked at her and she went, oh my God, what have I said?
But then I went back to my GP and I said, is this correct? And he goes, yeah, he says it does happen. Some people do. He said, but you can't live the rest of your life thinking you just gonna drop dead. And I went, easy for you to say, mate, you don't have the condition. But he was right.
It was one of the things I think that made me interested in the human body. 'cause I was never gonna be in the medical field, but I did really like the human body and because of sport as well, it became something I was really interested in. I was good at it. I won a couple of titles when I was younger for 800 and 1500 meters and played a fair bit of basketball.
Nina: So let's go into sport because sport was one of those game changers for you, wasn't it?
Pat: Absolutely.
Nina: Talk to me about your love of sport [00:28:00] and the kinds of new experiences that really opened up for you in your teen years.
Pat: Whole heap of reasons why sport is just really good for everyone. Apart from the fitness level, there's the physicality of filling your body move in time and space, which I find good. And particularly in basketball. I know that the ball is gonna be at that spot in a couple of seconds. I need to get my body from here to there so I can intercept it.
That sort of thing I found right. And it's a team sport too. I enjoyed working as part of a team and in running it's a bit different. You might run for a club, but you're really running as an individual. I like the feel of running, I like the feel of my body moving and speed and all that sort of stuff.
And it was something that I became really good at. And the way it was structured was that you would go to a different venue each week. So you might go to Mentone, you might go to Box Hill, you might go to Olympic Park and [00:29:00] you'd run against some people that you'd run against before and you'd run against some people you hadn't run against before, and you met a whole lot of different people.
For me, it was a game changer because all my friends, everyone I knew was all about a low socioeconomic area. So you get to recognise these guys 'cause you're running against them all the time and you have chats. And I was talking to one guy and he said, oh, what'd you do last night? And I said, oh, been to a mate's place. I was walking home, I said, I get a bit sick of walking down the middle of the road, the smart thing to do.
He's gone, don't you have footpaths where you live? And I went, yeah, what sort of idiot would walk home on the footpath at night? And he's like, what do you walk down the middle of the road? And I said, you're kidding? I said, if you're walking down the middle of the road and someone jumps out behind from some bushes or whatever and wants to have a crack at you. Firstly, you've got a little bit more time to decide whether you're gonna stand or whether you're gonna run. And you know what? If you decide to run, [00:30:00] get that lead on 'em. So that's why you do it. And he was like, where do you live? And I was thinking, clearly not where you live.
And so it did start to make me think that there were other ways that people lived rather than the way I was living. And I had actually seen it one time, I had been walking down the middle of the road and a couple of guys were walking on the footpath and a couple of blokes did jump out from behind a bush and gave them a clip across the head. Someone's been kicking the dustbins over on midnight, you blokes, whack. And I thought, yeah, boys, that's why you're walking down the middle of the road.
Nina: So the interactions with other kids playing sport opened up your eyes to other ways of living.
Pat: Yeah, I mean, 'cause you've got kids from wealthy backgrounds, you've got kids from middle class backgrounds, you've got kids from low socioeconomic backgrounds all on relatively level playing field.
And so you talk. And you talk about what did you do last night. [00:31:00] Where did you go? Oh, we went sailing. What people do that? Okay, we'd been down the beach, we'd seen boats and et cetera. But you don't really connect the dots that that's something that was a possibility for you.
We were a meat and three veg family. We didn't have a lot of clothes. Our holidays were a family home in Wangaratta. One car. Dad worked from dawn to dusk. I think I told you. I started working on the roof with him when I was nine during the school holidays. So he would save the country jobs for the holidays and I would come along. Say in two weeks, he did two jobs. If I went with him and my grandfather to the country, he'd get three jobs done in two weeks. Plus there was a country bonus, plus there was an accommodation allowance. Rarely did we stay in hotels. We usually put a tent up in people's backyards, and I got paid apprentice wages, and learned to put on a roof.Not as good as the old man, of course, never as good as my [00:32:00] grandfather.
We took the tiles off a slate roof house once, and you'd just basically create a chute and sling 'em over the edge and collect 'em at the end. And my grandfather had his slate hammer with him. And when you put a slate on, you had this hammer, which has got this sort of hook thing at the end of it, and you tap it and you put a hole in a slate and then you nail it onto battens with a inch cloud.
My grandmother said, I'm gonna teach you how to do that. I smashed every tile. He said, watch me again. Tap perfect hole. I go, yeah, that's not that hard. Tap smash, tap. Perfect hole, tap smash. And he said, yeah, right. Don't worry about it.
Nina: So you never learned to make the perfect hole in slate?
Pat: No. No, it wasn't. No, it wasn't my thing. But I did look, I've gotta admit, I did try when he wasn't around, just to think, I gotta do this. How hard can it be? Right? No. Could never do it.
Nina: So is there anything else that stands out to you now when you were reflect back [00:33:00] on those early childhood years?
Pat: Yeah, sometimes you've gotta do stuff by yourself. You've gotta be resilient, you've gotta look after yourself. But someone very wise, Nina, once told me, you've gotta find your tribe. And I think if I put it in those words, that sense of community, growing up with your mates and the lesson that came out of that, you've gotta find the people around you who you can help and who can help you when you need it.
Nina: Absolutely. Let's talk a bit about school, because education has always been something important to you. So when you were in the later years of high school, you changed schools. Talk to me about what was significant about this for you?
Pat: Partly from opening up my eyes to alternatives and my parents had wanted me to go to a private school at the end of year 10, which is when I was running a lot and speaking to a lot of different people. And I said, no, [00:34:00] actually a girl in my class was pretty badly assaulted. And so I started year 11 with that. Yeah, that was pretty rough. And you start looking at things at a different length and I was thinking, yeah, I'm not so sure that I wanna stay here.
And so by the time I was coming towards the end of year 11, I thought, you know what? Yeah, let's see what the alternatives are. Let's see how other people live. Let's see maybe what the opportunities are if I go somewhere else. And so I said to him, you know what, I'll give it a crack.
So I did I to year 12 at a private boys school. And the contrast was fairly dramatic. So the buildings were nicer, the grounds were nicer. It had a gym, it had a pool, it had services that you could speak to people if you were really in need of some sort of help and that sort of stuff. And I think the big difference for me was expectation. So in the high school, the expectations were [00:35:00] pretty much that 95% of people wouldn't go onto uni. At this school, the expectations were that 95% of people would go to university.
And it was also, you'd discover the power of wealth. I know someone who is an aging news reader who went to the same school but knew he was gonna get a cadetship for Channel nine before he left. It was just like, yeah. And my dad's a journalist.
For my parents, it was about education because they wanted me to go to uni. A lot of it for them is about connections. You're connecting into industry. There's an old boys or an old girls network, there's an alumni association. That is the strength of a lot of private schools as far as I can see.
Nina: Absolutely. And for your parents being working class parents, they would've had to sacrifice quite a lot to actually put you through a year of private school.
Pat: I've thought about that a bit since we [00:36:00] spoke, is that there were a couple of things about what I said before about not having a lot of clothes, certainly didn't fly overseas, we didn't, didn't go interstate and Frankston was the boondocks back then. So housing commission estate in the boondocks wasn't that expensive. The housing compared to housing now is very different.
I remember saying to my mum, I think probably when I first started working, and I said to her, have you paid the house off? And she said, no. I said, you're going to? And she said, I owe $2,000, costs me $10 a month. I don't care if I never pay it off. And I thought, fair enough. There was an affordability thing. The private schools, I think the cost of that wasn't as much. We had one car, we had eventually one tv, no restaurants, meat and three veg, hand me downs.
And my mum was pretty switched on. She said, we're too poor to buy cheap stuff, got to buy stuff that actually will [00:37:00] last. So we did that. She was very big about if you want something, you save up for it. That was something I took into adulthood, that conservative view of money. I think you want something, you gotta save for it. And it wasn't until I was about 30 I think that I thought, yeah, I don't think that's totally correct mum. And that was because I met a bloke who had shares and he said, yeah, no mate. Borrow money for shares. Thank you. And I went, that sounds smart to me.
Nina: Did you come across any teachers that took particular interest in you, and what impact did this have?
Pat: There's a teacher called Ed Burston. He was the year 12 biology teacher, so it was a subject I really loved anyway, but he was passionate about it and he had a dry sense of humour and he peppered the lessons with stories and conversations. He did stuff that nowadays you wouldn't be able to do.
'cause he did this thing where he had the marks of the previous years up, [00:38:00] so he said, this is what I said this person would get. This is what they got midyear. This is what I said they'd get in the final exam at the end of the year if they didn't do this or this, and this is what they got. And he said, pick the boys who listened to what I said. And you looked at it and you went, oh, they've got that mark there. But oh look, they've got there. So they clearly have been listening to these instructions, how to sit the exam, all that sort of stuff.
And like I said, nowadays you have privacy. You wouldn't be able to do that. So he did stuff like that, which I thought that makes a lot of sense. And he encouraged us to read widely a bit. So I guess it was the final term was in the library and I was just looking through the biology section and there's a book by Richard Dawkins called The Selfish Gene. 'cause we've been doing genetics and I thought this might be interesting. And I'm a very quick reader. Years of sitting there reading with the old man, you speed read a bit. And so I read it and I thought, this is great. Really interesting. So [00:39:00] I went up to Ed and said, you read this? No, I said, you should read it. I said, it's really quite interesting. He said, okay, thanks. I will.
And in those days, the subject teacher actually supervised your year 12 exam. So he was sitting at the front of the class when we were there and he had set a certain way of doing the exam. And part of that was one of the first things you do is you look at the extended response questions. You decide which one you're gonna do first. His thing was get the easy marks. There's no sense doing it in order. If the first extended response is something that you find really hard, don't waste time on something that you find difficult. Do that last.
So I flick through the extended response questions and there's this question that says in his book, the Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins postulates that, and I looked at this and I just went, what? And I look up and Ed's staring at me and he's got this huge smile on his face. And so anyway, we have a chat after the exam. He said, that's [00:40:00] fantastic for you. He said, you've turned an analysis question into a memory recall question. And I had, 'cause I actually said, he also says, da da da da. So it was great. But that was 'cause Ed inspired you to maybe a little bit more
Nina: Nice. So when you look back now, who supported you to have aspirations for your life and what did they share that made a difference to you?
Pat: So I'm gonna go back to my grandfather. I'm in Fish Creek, school holidays, doing a country job. And typically as it was, I would knock off and hour before dusk and then cook dinner and the two of them would continue working and then they'd come down and eat.
And for some reason, I don't know why the subject of what I was gonna do in the future came up and I said, that's obvious I'm gonna be roof tiler like my father and my grandfather, which did set my father off a little bit. Are you bloody well not, he said, you are gonna work with your head, not your hands. I didn't send you to school, [00:41:00] so you do this job. He said, you are going to uni.
And I went, if I can't do that, I'll join the Navy like my grandfather. And there was a bit of silence and my grandfather said, come for a walk with me. If he told me to walk on water, I'd try it. And we go for a walk.
And he was the same as my father.If you'd asked a question, you would very rarely get a yes. No response. You'd get a story. So he said, have you ever heard of the Swan? I said, yeah, I've heard of Swans. And he goes, have you ever heard of the term Swan song? I said, not really. Well, the Swan has the most beautiful song, but only sings on its deathbed. He said, I want more for you than that. Don't be a swan. Wow, you're going to uni. So I walked back in, said, okay, I'm going to uni.
Nina: And have you applied “don't be a swan” to any other part of your life?
Pat: Yeah, I did. Later on, once the internet made information really easy to get to. I did look it up, and I think it's a myth. I think it was just [00:42:00] giving me a story, but I did come across like a bastardised quote, which was, most people live lives of quiet desperation and die with their song unsung. And I think. That's very much what he was talking about. That is in my head often as I live my life. Try not to live a life of quiet desperation.
Nina: You just gave me goosebumps.
Pat: I didn't mean to.
Nina: No, it's beautiful. I love that. Thank you. So we are moving into coming of age now. When did you leave home and how did you get on that first year?
Pat: So I assumed when I finished year 12 that I would stay at home and I had a very cheap Mazda 1300, which would run on the smell of an oily rag, which is what you want as a student. Yeah. I'd assumed that I’d stay at home, drive up to uni, which is Latrobe, drive back. I wasn't that far off finishing year 12 and getting results or whatever. But we were in the [00:43:00] backyard and the old man said to me, hey listen uni next year. I said, yeah. And he goes, yeah. He said, look, I want you to make sure that you ring your mum at least once a week.
I said, what do you mean I, I'll be here? And he goes, no. He said, no, we've clothed you, we've fed you, we've housed you and we've educated you. And now it's time for you to stand on your own feet a bit. And I was like, that's out of the blue. Okay. And he said, and by the way, the house had three bedrooms in it. And at one stage the three boys were in one big room. But my parents put on a bungalow at the back and my brother and I shared that. And he said, your brother wants that space to himself as well. So yeah.
And I said to my Mum, I'm not gonna be living here next year. She goes, yeah, yeah, you'll be good. You'll do well.
I can't play one off against the other. They're both in agreement. I'm out. So I was going out with a particular girl at the time and we were talking about it and she had gotten me to RMIT in the city and she said, why don't we move in together? And I was again, yeah. Alright. [00:44:00] So we got a place in Fitzroy and then we lasted about three months 'cause the conversation turned round to. We've got two cars. We probably only need one car. You'd get a bigger apartment and I'm thinking, I'm really not ready for jumping into marriage.
We split up and I had quite a few friends at the halls of residence, so I ended up living on campus, which was probably one of the most defining moments for me as well, because similar to what I was telling you about in terms of running and meeting people from different backgrounds, living on campus, you are meeting people from different ethnicities, different cultural backgrounds.
People here eat more than just meat and three veg. That's a curry. What's an enchilada? Okay, so what quesadilla? How do you spell that? It just became a huge awakening and also I was a pretty good student academically that all of a sudden you realised, so are they. You are part of the pack here sunshine, and I have lifelong mates that I went to uni with [00:45:00] and we catch up on a regular basis and rehash the old days and rehash the new days.
Nina: I completely relate to that. My friends from uni and I worked out recently, that next year we'll be friends for 30 years. What about you? You must be more than that, Pat?
Pat: Yeah, a couple might be 31. No significantly, there is a really good mate of mine who I met when I was, oh, I must have been 19 and he was 17 and I'm hitting 65. So it's a long-term friendship. You've been through everything together. You've been through deaths, marriages, divorces, highs, lows, welcoming a new baby to the family, going broke. All those bits and pieces of life. Sometimes you drift in and out, but in this particular case, we could not talk at the moment. We talk every Tuesday, but earlier on in our lives we might not have spoken for 12 months 'cause he was on the other [00:46:00] side of the country or wherever. But then we have a conversation, it's like I saw you yesterday.
Nina: You start back at that same level of trust.
Pat: Yeah, absolutely. And probably tell each other stuff that you wouldn't tell a partner. In some respects, it's a confidant situation. In his case. We have gone back to the very first day of university. We actually lived together on campus as well.
Nina: And so what did you study at university and what do you think higher education gave you?
Pat: So I studied PhysEd and biology. 'cause if you study PhysEd, you've gotta do a second major. I loved it. I loved all aspects of it. The course had scuba diving in it as an elective and all those sort of things. For me, if it wasn't for Gough Whitlam, I wouldn't have gone to university. I wouldn't have been able to afford it. As it was every break I worked at Safeway in their warehouse to get money. I would work Friday and Saturday nights a lot at a pub to get money.
But that was for [00:47:00] accommodation. There were times when I was so broke. I think the very first college ball I went to, a couple us had just enough money to pay for our tickets and so we bought Sherry to drink for the night. And it was just, that was the worst thing I've ever done. I haven’t touched a drop since.
It was that thing where free education, free tertiary education was a cornerstone for a lot of people I know who came from poor areas to make an upwardly mobile move into middle class eventually. And if I'd had to pay for it, I wouldn't have done, I wouldn't have gone, I would've had to get a full-time job.
The pub offered me a job. They said, we'll train you up to be an assistant manager if you want. And I was like, no, I can can't do that. I told my grandfather I'm gonna, but if it had been a case of me having to pay like a HECs type thing or whatever, no. I would've got a job. I would've probably had to save for a year or two.
And I dunno what the stats are on people deferring. I bet it's not great. [00:48:00]
Nina: Yeah, I was very lucky to get through right at the end of free education. I think it was about $1,800 a year to go through when I went through.
Pat: Yeah.
Nina: But if I'd been looking at $30,000 a year to get my degree coming from the background I came from, I wouldn't have imagined a world where I could earn enough money to pay that off in a reasonable amount of time.
Pat: Oh, absolutely. I totally agree.
Nina: What areas of fear, courage, or determination do you think were escalated for you in your teenage and young adult years?
Pat: Ah, the vaso vagel was a huge thing for me. The fear element of it. 'cause I would just keel over. I remember at Uni, it must been first term, we were doing a lab and it was very early in the morning and it was back in the day when you could actually prick someone's finger and get drops of blood into a micro tube.
So this particular tutor is. Boom, boom, boom, no blood from anyone. And she looked at me and [00:49:00] said, oh, you're last. And I went, I don't think this is such a good idea. I don't care about other people's blood, but I'm not very good with my own blood. Anyway, I'm sitting in the chair and she goes, kaching fills up the microtubule.
She said, that's great. Let's do another one. I'm going, yeah, not a good idea. And then I just go, bang. I fall onto her, slide off, hit my head on the marble floor, and I wake up with a little bit of amnesia. So I look around and in my head, my last memory was the science lab of my year 12.
And I'm looking around going, this is a science lab. This is not where I am. Who are these people? And it lasted for a split second or so, and they're going, Pat, I'm going and you know my name. And then I came to a bit and was like, oh, okay. Yeah, boom. But everyone in my course knew.
I had a lecture one time, there was an exercise physiology lecturer, and you're saying, that's [00:50:00] interesting. He went to take my pulse and he went, my God, he said, I could feel your heart rate plummet. It's improved in some ways as I've gotten older.
It nearly knocked me off the perch in 2019. So I'd always assumed from my university years that if I didn't die of cancer or whatever, I would go into the hospital having some sort of surgery or whatever, and that would knock me off, which almost came to bear and there was a certain amount of fear in it.
You get used to stuff. My resting heart rate is 60 beats per minute. It's been 60 beats per minute since I was 16. But yeah, obviously that did have a considerable impact on particularly those university, uh, sort of years, early twenties.
Nina: So when you finished university, you went on to work in Melbourne's northern suburbs, which at the time were quite renowned for being some of the most challenging school environments. And you did a number of years [00:51:00] there. Can you tell me what you observed working in these schools and what mattered to you in your role as a teacher?
Pat: So I spent three years at one. It was a good school. Kids were nice, aging staff though, and facilities were really poor. But the quality of teaching was pretty good, I thought.
And a good sense of camaraderie the kids wanted to achieve. But I just thought, not enough. I'll try something else. So I went west and managed a pub for 18 months, but I had been starting to see a woman before I left and ended up coming back. And then I thought, you know what? I'm not sure what I'm gonna do.
I might just do some casual relief teaching. Paid pretty well. My thoughts were you can work five days a week or you can work four days a week, whatever. But the other thing was you got to go around and see a whole heap of different schools and you got to see a whole heap of principals and staff and kids and curriculum and [00:52:00] school setups and et cetera.
So I did that for a few years and really enjoyed it. And then schools started being closed and there are always rumours about we won't be employing too many CRTs. And I was like, you know what? You might have to act like an adult and get a full-time job. I had deliberately chosen low socioeconomic schools 'cause that was where I came from and I could relate to kids not having money, not having correct this, whatever.
I remember there was a year 11 kid who was a really good 200 metre runner, ran at the school sports, and he was running in runners. And I was just like, why aren't you wearing running spikes? He goes, I don't own running spikes. Can't afford 'em. What size foot are here? He said, oh, 10 and a half.
So I went back to my folk's place and sure enough, stuck in the cupboard somewhere were two pairs of running spikes. You'd think I'd given him a Rolls Royce. I said, here, take these. And he, he was like, oh, that's great. Finally, he had something to run it, [00:53:00] which was competitive with the other people who had the right kit.
Then I spent 15 years at another school. Really enjoyed it. It was great. But there's nothing special about the way I taught you. You're doing the best you can to try and get the best results for the kids teaching in an overload sort of situation. You're always trying to keep your head above water.
If teachers could just go out and teach, it'd be a very different situation. But there's meetings, there's yard duties, and things are constantly changing, and you can see here's this new initiative, so you've gotta do this, and then the government changes and here's a new initiative. If you'd stay long enough, some of those initiatives recycle and I think that's hard for people to live in that sort of environment.
So look, I really enjoyed it, but I probably would say that when I started doing projects within the school or within different schools is when I really enjoyed it. I had a principal once who told me one of the biggest [00:54:00] issues that teachers face is boredom. You do the same job, you teach the same whatever, year in, year out, you can find yourself a bit bored with it.
I started taking on different positions of responsibility, got involved with education and a range of other ways. I started my own consultancy for a year, joined the department. It was all education. And I do tell people that there's a lot of jobs in education that aren't just teaching.
Nina: So in your career path you went from teaching phys ed and biology through to being an e-learning specialist?
Pat: Yeah, I did.
Nina: And was that just pursuing what you were interested in at the time?
Pat: Came about because I was doing consultancy work on curriculum and learning. And when you're doing consultancy work, you say yes to everything. 'cause you dunno when it's gonna stop and you work like crazy to make sure that you can actually do that.
A six week period came up in central office. Yep. Take that. So I worked [00:55:00] there and I solved a couple of problems for them, then went off and I got a phone call saying, Hey there's this project you interested in. And I went, oh yeah, I can do that. And it was around netbooks in schools. Anyway, I had an interview with the deputy secretary when I came back.
And he handed me one and said, what do you think about this? I said, it's great. I said, but it's a tool. In an effective teacher's hands I'm sure it'll be great. In an ineffective teacher's hands, it’s just a bit of hardware. Which apparently was the correct answer. So from there, I just started working on a number of those sort of educational IT projects. They were great initiatives and did stuff with the digital education revolution.
Nina: Did you have any moments of real connection with a student that you would like to share?
Pat: Teaching is about communication, relationships. If you can't communicate and you can't establish some sort of relationship with your kids, then it's over. I did have one student, she was a year 12 biology [00:56:00] student, we got along really well.
We talked about music, we talked about politics, world events. We had lots of good conversations. And then she finished year 12 and off she went to uni and got married and had a couple of kids. Roughly 20 years later, I'm walking down Bourke Street and she's walking the way and we stop and went, how are you?
That would've been about, I dunno, maybe 12 years ago. And so we catch up for coffee five, six times a year. We have a chat. 'cause I had this conversation with my father once about the satisfaction of finishing a roofing job. It starts off looking like this. You get to see the end result of what you do. Rarely does that happen in teaching.
Nina: When you look back across the breadth of experiences, influences, and disruptions in your life, what are you grateful you learned in your younger years that has helped you lead the life you have today?
Pat: So if you walk down Gertrude Street, there's a building on the edge of [00:57:00] a lane way. And right at the top of where that building is on that lane way, there's a quote that says, “the genius thing we did was we didn't give up.” And I think sport had a lot to do with that. You don't give up, especially if you're a team sport. You keep trying. If you run the 800 meters that last a hundred meters has less to do with fitness and more to do with willpower to get over the line.
So I think persistence was really good. Resilience is another thing that I learned when I was in Saudi. It was hard to know you're talking to someone, will they be resilient? Will they be able to handle change and adversity? But everyone goes through those sort of things, but it's how you react. That was something I learned.
Keep going, keep persisting. You are not gonna get it right every time. So what? Learn from it. Have another crack. I think sport did that for me.
Nina: Pat, tell me about the last time you [00:58:00] felt awe.
Pat: So I spent August, September in Provence, babysitting a house with a couple of mates, which was great, and managed to see an amazing amount of art. Ruon St. Paul Devon. Everywhere you look, there is this art, and whether it's sculpture or it's painting or it's just the ability to take a concept or an idea and express it in so many different ways. Impressionism or abstract or whatever it was. Or just going through these often little villages and looking at the quality of the art.
And then there was things like the Tate gallery, which has got, you know, very famous artwork as well. But I just found it incredible because there was so much of it in so many different places. It was really awe inspiring. There are some very talented people in the human race and there have been for a long, long time.
Nina: Do you believe in a life's purpose? And if so, what [00:59:00] does it mean for you and your life?
Pat: I think you create your own life's purpose. So if you're talking about higher beings and such, I have no idea. I think there is a, a notion that you go through life automatically, that you go to your day job and then you come home and do this and do that.
And I think you have to look beyond that and you have to really decide what you want, who you wanna be, what you like. I like photography, so I take photos. So your life purpose is created by you at any given point in time. To me, it's my grandfather. That quote really sends it home to me. Most people with lives of quiet desperation and die with this song, unsung. Don’t! Sing your song.
Nina: I love it. Thank you so much Pat.
Thank you Pat, for being my guest today and sharing insights into your world as a young person. [01:00:00] Your story is hopeful and it's challenging, and it's led to you having a rich and rewarding life. I met Pat at work more than 15 years ago, and it was his authenticity and unflappable kindness that started our friendship.
The Pat I know is pretty humble, and he said to me that he quite liked the podcast, but he was a bit flustered by the intro because I made him sound like such a legend. Well, Pat, to those of us who know you well, you really are mate. So here's to you. May you have every happiness and success in the years ahead.
You have been listening to When I Was Young, an exploration of the formative years of authentic, outstanding, and inspiring humans. I'm your host Nina Fromhold, and this is a Memory Lane Life Stories production proudly made in Narrm, Melbourne, [01:01:00] Victoria on the traditional lands of the Wurundjeri people. We have new episodes and guests each month. If you've enjoyed this episode, please follow the show to hear more of the series and share this podcast with your friends. Leave us a review wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps us out. Thank you for listening.