Metcalf On Customs and Coffins

A Memoir
1. Auflage 2020
ISBN: 978-1-922409-25-6
Verlag: Vivid Publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 206 Seiten

The sixties and seventies were a dynamic time to be a young customs officer in the west and north of Australia. The iron ore ports were opening up in the Pilbara, the rapidly growing Port Hedland was a colourful, if rough-and-tumble place, and Darwin airport was busy with American R&R flights coming through from Vietnam to Sydney. It was a time of great change as jumbo jets replaced passenger ships, container ships took over from general cargo ships and the fight against drugs supplanted that of illegally imported watches and transistor radios. Part 1 of On Customs and Coffins charts Michael Metcalf's experiences during a thirty-year career in customs, before he left to enter an equally challenging field of endeavour: the funeral industry. Part 2 of his honest, frank and humorous memoir tells stories from the next twenty years in which he established and managed a small funeral company in Perth. The stories are sometimes tragic and sometimes sweet as he recounts the day-to-day operations of a family-run funeral home. On Customs and Coffins is told with a twinkle in the eye and a light touch. It's a fascinating read for anyone interested in the social history of Western Australia over the last sixty years and the huge changes as seen through these very different industries.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Metcalf, Michael

Leseproben

What does a customs officer do? It’s amazing how a simple incident can change your life in the most incredible way. I can blame one man for the fact that I became a customs officer. His name was Colin Bungate, and I am eternally grateful to him. I left Christian Brothers College, 1 St Georges Terrace, Perth, the site now occupied by the multi-storey Duxton Hotel, at the tender age of fourteen and a half. It was the end of 1957, and I had completed just two years of high school. I had done well in my first year, taught by Brother Geoffrey Seaman with whom I stayed in touch, and whose funeral I attended sixty-two years later. But I bombed out terribly in second year with Brothers Doyle and Molloy. Needless to say, I didn’t go to their funerals! The plan, hatched by my elder brother John, and my parents, was for me to leave school, get a job in the Post Master General (PMG)’s Department, and attend night school so I could pass the ‘Commonwealth Third Division Clerical Exam’. The Commonwealth Public Service was divided into third and fourth divisions. Fourth division was limited in its promotional path but in third division you could go to the top, which appealed to me. I followed the plan to the letter, (except the going to the top part!) and it took me three years. In that first year, 1958, I was at age fifteen, too young to sit the exam. In the second year I passed English. During the third year I got serious, and started going to Miss Flynn’s private classes. Miss Flynn charged hefty fees and made you work. Really work. When I sat the exam for the second time, I passed it, and from the many hundreds who sat for it, achieved equal third place in the state. This, I must confess, was more a reflection of the level of the other candidates, than of my intellectual prowess, but don’t tell them that! At the level of those placements, though, I was in good company, and I don’t know whether it helped me get into customs, but it couldn’t have done any harm. As had been the plan, while going to night school I worked in PMG’s department as the office boy in the accounts branch. My official title was ‘junior postal officer’ and I was the lowest of the low, and also the youngest – aged fourteen-and-a-half, through to seventeen-and-a-half by the time I finished. The work was what office boys did in those days: make the tea, get the lunches, open and distribute the mail, post the mail. I spent a lot of time in telephone accounts and ‘posting the mail’ involved folding by machine, enveloping and dispatching the invoices for all the telephones in WA. That kept me very busy. But I was getting paid. In 1959, my salary was $578.00 on which I paid $22.00 tax and received a tax rebate of $6.20. I forget what I splurged my tax rebate on! Having passed the clerical exam, I was to be posted to a third division position, not necessarily within PMG. Everybody said that Customs and Excise was by far the best department. It seemed that the main reason people thought this was that customs officers worked overtime, and thus were financially better off than most public servants, and of course it was very popular. It seemed that there were no positions available in customs, and I would be going to Centrelink or Social Security, as it was known then. But then my good luck kicked in. Colin Bungate had a clerk’s position in customs, based in Perth, and he lived in Midland Junction, over 30 km away from Fremantle. He feared in those days the ‘immense travel’ involved in a transfer to Fremantle, where naturally there was a large customs staff, so he was applying to get out. He did not want to make the long train journey from Midland to Fremantle every day! In the end he did get a transfer to Social Security and I took his place in customs. I hope he enjoyed Social Security. Colin, having vacated customs, left his position vacant, so I was able to slot in to it. Did my brother John, who had contacts, pull strings to put me at the head of the queue? I do not know. But having been told to prepare to move, I then started to wonder, what did the workers – no the ‘officers’ – actually do in customs? I didn’t really know. It was down in Fremantle, and I hardly ever went there. I spoke with my PMG colleagues about it, but they didn’t really know either. ‘I have a Gazette… Let’s look in that.’ The Gazette was the erstwhile government publication that advertised all the jobs in the public service and also publicised the various promotions on offer. ‘Here’s one for a position: the senior jerquer.’ ‘What’s a jerquer?’ Nobody knew so I looked it up. It said, ‘a customs officer who searches ships for contraband.’ Well, that was not how the title was being used in this instance. In Customs and Excise the title was applied to the people who were like auditors. They checked everybody else’s work. Much further down the road, I had a few weeks working in the jerquer’s office. I hated it. But the word did appear again. Fremantle Ports, after they had delivered all the cargo off a ship, issued a ‘jerque note’, which listed surpluses and shortages, based on the actual tally of cargo off the ship, compared with the quantities shown on the ships manifest. In May 1961 I started in the excise branch of Customs and Excise in the Perth customs house, 11–13 William Street Perth. In June 1961 my annual salary was $906.00, my tax $70.00 and my tax rebate $18.00. I was very happy, although I didn’t quite know what was ahead of me, except that I wasn’t sure I wanted to be a jerquer! What in fact was ahead of me for the next almost thirty years was mostly – certainly not always, but often – work that could only be described as unique. It was unique in society, and in some cases, unique in customs. It took me to all corners of Western Australia and the Northern Territory, along the coast and inland. I attended courses and visited Canberra, Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. I met the young customs lady who became my wife. I travelled overnight on cargo and Navy ships on customs and Navy liaison business. I flew on helicopters and all sorts of small planes. I landed on an American aircraft carrier in a fixed wing aircraft. I boarded ships at sea, sometimes in very hazardous circumstances. I worked at Darwin airport, as well as Perth airport, where I held a number of positions including shift boss. And I grew to hate airports – a hatred that still exists today. I experienced the transition from general cargo to ‘containerisation’, from passenger liners to jumbo jets, and from being concerned about watches being smuggled in, to being concerned about drugs being smuggled in. Along the way, I had many lovely long lunches at the Roma restaurant in Fremantle. Customs was a department with diverse responsibilities, not all of them exciting, so I was occasionally stuck in stultifyingly boring jobs with no work to do, and all day to do it, but that was the exception rather than the rule. In going north to work as a young single fellow, I earnt lots of money, and living in government accommodation had minimal expenses. This financed my overseas travel, and ownership of an expensive-to-maintain Italian Alfa Romeo when I returned. I lived in Darwin for seven months, and my position there took me all around the Northern Territory. I discovered that the ‘customs’ of Customs and Excise related to all port and border activities: shipping, aircraft, tariff, parcel post, cargo, immigration and passengers’ baggage. The ‘excise’ related to collecting tax on beer, spirituous liquors, cigarettes and tobacco, as well as petrol and diesel fuel. ‘Under-bond warehousing’ also featured, as well as censorship of prohibited and obscene articles. And the registrar of British Ships was in there as well. I started to find out that customs was not just about examining baggage and searching ships, but was also involved with many different aspects of commerce and industry. As the Pilbara opened up in the sixties with the creation of several big new ports, customs was always there. I became very enthusiastic about what was ahead of me. The department did change over the years to meet changing conditions in social and political circles. Today, in truth, it does not exist as it did in my day (which is perhaps a good reason for this book to be written!). It is barely a shadow of its former self. It has merged with the Immigration Department and all of its ‘excise’ tasks have gone over to the Taxation Department. What’s left seems to focus only on border protection, (and that includes protection from people!) examining baggage and searching ships. Paperwork was, if not ‘king’ in my day, at least very important. A lot of the work I did was exciting and interesting, and took place in varied locations, but it all boiled down to making sure the documentation was correct. Correct documentation, backed up by physical checks, was the foundation of our work. And as for computers: what were they again? There was a lot of bureaucracy of those times, and strict hierarchies that existed within the organisation. When I joined, it was called The Department of Customs and Excise. The department had been established after Federation in 1901, when many new titles were invented to reflect the changing times and to differentiate us from UK customs, on which we were based. The ‘permanent head’ as he was known, had the title of ‘comptroller...