This is a story that has nothing to do with Sheep, Wool or Shearers.

It is a story best categorized as ’interesting people I have met’.

It is 1949, I was just a boy, and wealthy Marple relative, Cliff Cooper, the man who invented Cooper Louver windows, has just posted our family a cheque to cover the costs of return airfares to Sydney. 

Cliff had the inspiration to pay for all the Australian Marple relatives  to meet up in Sydney with the view of ‘getting together’.  

​Our family knew of Cliff, but had not previously had contact with him.

So off we set to Essendon Airport bright and early one Saturday morning – my father, Edwin Balfour Marple; Marion Joan, my mother; my sister Yvonne and eight year old me.  We caught an Australian Airlines plane, a twin engine D-C-3 made by the McDonnell Douglas Aircraft Company, USA.

The family had great expectations of a fantastic flight and a capital city awaiting us with open arms.  However, what really happened was that we arrived in Sydney in the semi-darkness due to a coal miners’ strike.  Sydney relied on coal fire generated electricity, so street lighting was at a minimum and I remember the main city area having a browny glow.

The next day we arose to see this bustling city of around one million people, our next stop for the day was to meet and greet Cliff Cooper.   We caught a taxi out to Dee Why and found Cliff’s house.  To our surprise his house was without a garden or any other adornments.  I asked my Mother what had happened to the garden – I think my father indicated that Cliff had drunk the proceeds of his invention.

I anticipated, as an eight-year-old, that Cliff would be an effervescent business man in a shiny suit, but on the contrary he was hung over and a little worse for wear!  He lived alone apart from a live in Nurse.  That was also a mystery – the Nurse could have well been a sexual companion.  I was only eight at the time, so I wouldn’t know about that!

We returned to our hotel in Sydney to get ready for our trip to Cliff’s beach house at Ettalong Beach.  The hotel had shared bath rooms.  This was the first shared bathing arrangement I had ever encountered, with people’s shaving gear and stuff I had never seen before – deodorant, mouthwash, scent – it was all too much for me!

Tomorrow came – whacko!  Off to the beach!  I remember my parents’ advice to my sister ‘Don’t talk to strange men’.

Beach houses at Ettalong Beach would make one to two million dollars for even the cheap ones, so Cliff had really hit the jackpot with his invention.  All he had done was to have the glass panels of a sleep out or ventilator converted into equal panels, connecting a housing to a lever mechanism that would open or shut to keep the rain and other stray objects out.  That mechanism* made Cliff absolute millions.  He sold the patents to, I think, Wunderlich and other window manufacturing companies.

​The highlight of the visit to Ettalong Beach was Cliff driving us there in his latest car, a huge blue Nash which could pass anything on the road.  I particularly remember a round knob fitted to its steering wheel so Cliff could hold a beer bottle in one hand and steer.  This brought a new meaning to the phrase ‘drinking and driving’!
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The roads around the Hawkesbury River in the late 1940’s were extremely dangerous with curves and unsealed roads.  My mother travelled to Ettalong with Cliff, but declared that she would not drive home with him due to his erratic driving - she did not want to die in the car with her son (that’s me, Godfrey)!
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*'Cliff Cooper's louvre mechanism'... still being sold today...

Having worked as a Station Hand on a Sheep/wheat property at Culcairn in New South Wales under the Federal Pastoral Award system of conditions and payment I thought, as my nineteenth birthday was coming up, I should look into my current terms of employment.

I asked my employer if I could have a look at a copy of the current award and conditions.  Hours of work were a forty four hour week, 7.30 am to  5.30 pm Monday to Friday plus four hours on Saturday morning, a total of a 44-hour week.  Payment was £8 per week minus £4 for food & lodgings (I lived in a sectioned part of the veranda), less tax of £1, a total of £4 take home pay.

I asked if I could be paid the Award for a 19-year old which was an increase in money.  “Sure I’ll pay you under the award” he said.  Little did I know that I had to provide my own bedding, ie. blankets, sheets, towels, for up to this moment my employer had been paying me under the award and “lending me the blankets”.

On arriving at my sectioned off part of the verandah that night I couldn’t help but see the blankets had been confiscated – obviously stored away in the homestead.  I asked for the blankets and was told I would have to arrange to phone my father in Melbourne to ask if he would send up a set of blankets, sheets, towels etc on the next available goods train.  In those days this took some time. 

My birth date is in late April, so I had to sleep in my work clothes from mid to late April.  April in Culcairn is one of the coldest months in the year, especially when sleeping on a verandah without any bed clothes.

I thought this was about the lowest act my employer could do.  Surely he could have given me some warning that the blanket offer had been withdrawn.

My experience in later years in employing people is to ensure all employees are aware of their rights and responsibilities and do not have to face returning home on a freezing night to a bed without any blankets.
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That is why, wherever I worked, I made sure I was a union member. 
 
Godfrey Marple
September 2016