‘Healthy’. A huge sixth-form boy was ‘Lurch’, after the Addams Family butler. To fit in I tried to grow my hair long like the other boys, but it merely stuck out in thick wads like antlers on either side of my narrow head, so to my classmates I was ‘Bullwinkle’, after the cartoon moose.
However, I realised that good results would be a ticket out, and I was going to have a career in aviation come what may. I was selected for Mornington High’s team for a television school quiz show called ‘It’s Academic’. Our team won our first round against two other government schools. In the next round, one question asked was, ‘What was the name of the U.S. nuclear submarine that sank in 1963?’ I knew it! I pressed the buzzer and immediately blurted out, ‘USS Thresher’, but my impetuosity led to no points for the answer – I had not waited for Mr Webb, the quizmaster, to call my school’s name and direct me to answer. We were a state school up against two highly coached teams from private schools on this round and predictably, we lost, but we were proud to have made it to the semi-finals. However, impetuosity and thoughtlessness would cause problems for me in the future.
As the restaurant work petered out, the band became more important. The lead guitarist had to pick me up from my home for practices and ‘gigs’; I could not legally drive and even if I could, I was not able to afford to run, let alone buy, any car. Also, in those times, the state of Victoria stipulated a higher minimum driving age. On Saturdays, at least during summer, there would be our regular engagement in the Sorrento Hotel, but other work became patchy, and the reduction of earnings, weather and other factors conspired to reduce the amount of flying at Moorooduc. For the next few years until I finished school, my flying was a desultory mixture of dual lessons, much of it recovering past ground, and the very occasional solo flight, circuits and ‘steep turns’ in the training area and not much else.
My father arranged work for me at Mornington Racecourse: menial jobs such as picking up empty glasses around the bar areas, working on the track, cleaning and watering. I worked with a gang of labourers and was shown no special treatment as the boss’s son. The workers were down to earth fellows, not well-educated, but they accepted me as one of them and I enjoyed their company. I made it known that I was going to become a pilot, and even only with the stated intention, they often asked questions about aircraft and air travel, and in return, during our mind-numbing routine of ‘treading in’ the track (replacing the divots kicked out by the horses’ hooves), they spun yarns and told awful jokes. I was taught to drive the tractors, and I was occasionally allowed to drive my mother’s old Morris car on the course.
Ansett Airlines was one of two domestic airlines under the highly regulated ‘Two Airline Policy’ of Australia in the late 1970s. Its chief was still its founding father, Sir Reginald Ansett, one of Australia’s most accomplished and respected airline pioneers. My father’s secretarial job at Mornington Racecourse was onerous for him in one respect: the hard-working Sir Reginald devoted little time to pleasure but a rare pastime, as president of the Racing Club, was spending Sunday afternoons at the racecourse. On most Sundays, ‘Sir Reg’ appeared at the track in his big blue Cadillac. In would get my father and the head groundsman, and round and round the track they would drive, talking horses, race meetings and grass. I was introduced to Sir Reginald only once, shortly after we first arrived in Mornington; young and in awe of a knight and my father’s boss, I couldn’t bring myself to blurt out that I wanted to be a pilot. Therefore, guidance for an aviation career did not come from Sir Reginald Ansett; but he did have his own helicopter pilot.
Sir Reg famously commuted by helicopter most days from his bay side home to Melbourne’s heliport on the Yarra River, then to be chauffeured to the Ansett Airlines city office. His Bell JetRanger was also famous – its fuselage, as much as a helicopter’s can be, was streamlined, and adorned with the same Ansett livery of the day as its airliners: red, black and white, with a stylised red ‘A’ in a white circle. My father knew Cal, his helicopter pilot slightly. Cal had also flown fixed wing aircraft with Ansett Airlines. One evening it was arranged for him to visit our home. He had previously been a pilot in the Royal Australian Navy and had flown fixed wing aircraft and helicopters from its aircraft carrier, HMAS Melbourne. Cal talked of naval flying, and he awoke in me an appreciation that Fleet Air Arm aviators have something that no other pilots can boast: the ability to take off from, and land on, a ship at sea. He recounted naval life, the flying, the travel, the camaraderie in the tightly-knit Fleet Air Arm, which was a service far smaller than Australia’s air force. Its only land base was just outside the town of Nowra, which sat in lush country south of Sydney near the New South Wales coast. I had always liked ships – one of my prized models was a large sailing vessel. I had noted with interest newspaper advertisements for civilian merchant naval cadets, and although flying was my first love, naval aviation might just be a way to enjoy both. With the Cold War in full force, Australia’s navy operated Skyhawk attack jets, Grumman Tracker patrol aircraft and various helicopters, and the more I read and heard, the more my excitement mounted about becoming a pilot in the navy. Unlike the air force, you did not need a Sixth Form education to join! Fifth Form was acceptable.
I studied the material that the navy’s recruiting office posted out after my enquiries and at the age of seventeen, I excitedly travelled on the electric train from Frankston to Melbourne city to begin the selection process. Frankston Station had achieved mild fame in scenes from the film version of Neville Shute’s On the Beach. Along with Melbourne’s remote southerly location from the northern hemisphere’s nuclear war, Shute had chosen the city for his setting because of the massive reserves of coal that lay to its east in Gippsland. With the supply of oil non-existent with the approaching end of civilisation, Victoria’s coal continued to produce electricity for homes, industry and transport. This allowed Melbourne’s inhabitants to stoically live a ‘normal’ life to the end.
There were preliminary interviews and medical examinations: IQ tests, time/speed/distance problems, chasing a blob of light around a screen with a joystick, long cold waits in cubicles clad in a paper dressing gown for the medical tests … it all seemed to go well. I had bought paperback books of IQ tests, studied the Royal Australian Navy’s order of battle in ships and aircraft, and Lieutenant Commander Henry, the middle-aged naval officer who ran the recruiting office, was kind and helpful. My feeling about how I had done was correct, and some weeks later I was invited for more tests, with an interview by a Selection Board to follow.
I was elated. I was going to leave school early to become a navy pilot! Flying Skyhawk jets, wearing a crisp white uniform, travel and life at sea on an aircraft carrier – what a life for a teenager! I worked through more books of IQ tests, flew at Moorooduc when I could afford it, played in the band, worked at the racecourse and carried on with the initial term of Sixth Form. Finally, the great day dawned, and there I was again at the navy recruiting office in Flinders Lane for more tests in greater depth this time, and then to face the Selection Board.
I was directed into a room furnished with the classic green baize table, introduced to its occupants and told to sit. Facing me were men in civilian clothes – no brass buttons or gold insignia here. They were all naval officers except for a psychologist, and the questions commenced. Lieutenant Commander Errol Kavanagh, urbane and polite (wow! A Skyhawk pilot!), asked most of the questions. I answered the technical questions well, but I was awkward with those about my personal life, holidays, girlfriend (actually, the lack of one) and relationships. Well, what would they expect from a seventeen-year-old? Also, they alluded to staying at school and passing my Higher School Certificate. Still, I thought that it hadn’t gone too badly, and on the train home I wondered when I would hear the result. I looked forward to leaving home for an exciting life of flying with the navy.
Schoolwork was getting difficult. I never possessed a particular mathematical bent and I replaced two advanced mathematics subjects with French, which I had always enjoyed, and ‘general’ maths. I was coping but not particularly distinguishing myself, distracted by my social life and the notion that I was going to become a navy pilot and I wouldn’t need to pass the HSC (Higher School
