Growing up as the only girl in a large family I was not inclined towards “girlie” interests, such as sewing or fashion. My attempts at needlework at school were such that, as soon as I was given a choice I avoided it. I did learn to sew on buttons and do the odd piece of darning but that was the extent of my sewing capabilities.

However, my first job after University was as a biochemist in the Pathology Department of Wimmera Base Hospital in Horsham – the explanation for me being there remains to be told another time. The only person I knew in the area was a girl I had met at University. To widen my social circle outside the work environment I joined various groups such as the badminton club. However I also enrolled in a sewing class which was run by a business that sold sewing machines. Much to my surprise I really enjoyed this class and midway through the year after I became engaged and encouraged by the sewing teacher, I decided to make my wedding dress. To accomplish this I bought an Elna sewing machine. This machine is still in use today some fifty plus years later.

With the birth of my two daughters I continued sewing and made them simple dresses.
However, after the birth of two more children, both boys, the machine was used for mending or patching but not much else.

In 1978 we moved to Benalla and lived on 40 acres out of town. The two girls were enrolled at St. Joseph's Primary school. Pleading lack of time I bought their summer school uniform.

The dresses had fitted sleeves which the girls found restricting – they were both tomboyish outdoor types. I also found the dresses frustrating as I was constantly mending the sleeves.

I decided to make the girls dresses using a cape sleeve instead of the fitted ones. I did not seek permission or advice from the school. The first day the girls wore their new dresses I waited with bated breath  for the school's reaction. There was the odd comment from the Principal but as the dresses were in the right colour, no action was taken.

The girls loved them as the sleeves gave them more freedom and I was no longer forced to spend time repairing fitted sleeves. Gradually, under pressure from their daughters to have sleeves like the McCrohan girls, the uniforms slowly changed much to the chagrin of the “Naysayers”

This is not really a case of making waves but, rather small ripples which helped to make a few girls more comfortable in their summer school dresses.
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Margaret McCrohan
March 2020
 

Before going into business as a Chartered Accountant I held a position  as a senior clerical officer with a stock and station agency branch at Wodonga. My duties included recording financial affairs and involved authorising cheques. There were also outside salesmen whose job it was to  organise livestock sales with other agents, farmers, butchers, abattoirs and so on. There were opportunities for these salesmen to help themselves by dealing in livestock, using the employer’s funds. Such practices were frowned upon and forbidden.

As was usual in our branch office there was considerable trading negotiated by our salesmen. On one occasion there were several deals going through  and one of our salesmen, as a matter of convenience, in his own right and in his own name, negotiated a deal which  presented him with a handy profit and had the sanction of the branch manager.

This deal placed me in a predicament.

The manager approached me  to sign the cheque.  What should I do?  The deal was contrary to regulations and was expressly  forbidden.  Should I sign the cheque or should I make waves and refuse to sign?

As a conscientious and  responsible employee I refused to sign.

The manager could have approached another employee for a signature but to his credit he did not take this easy way out. He communicated with the managing director of the company and confessed to an unauthorised deal. This action certainly did make waves!  Never the less my manager was able to sway the hierarchy and obtained permission to complete the contract.

Where did that place me?

Despite my refusal to sign the cheque my manager acknowledged that I had acted prudently and our otherwise good relationship did not suffer.

I subsequently received instructions from Head Office to sign the cheque and the matter was resolved.  The waves had subsided!

Just to write “closed” to this situation, I was eventually promoted to the position of assistant internal auditor,  concentrating on the company’s fourteen country branches.

Making waves sometimes pays off!
 
Ray O’Shannessy  
1st March 2020.     

I am not normally a person who ‘makes waves’, however when I see injustice, particularly where volunteers are concerned, I feel the need to expose any wrong doing and correct the processes involved.

Samaria Fire Brigade had a very busy period from 5pm on 15th December, until later on 16th December 2014.
​
Later in the evening of 15th December, Samaria tanker was nominated to remain on-scene overnight, at the fourth of the fires already attended that day. We were to work on containment and blacking out. (The terrain at this location was difficult and experienced crew and suitable vehicles were needed to complete the task).  After refilling the tanker with water later that evening, we stopped at the control point to check on progress of the possibility of a replacement crew. At that time we were told that they had been unable to locate any replacement crew from Samaria. I then went back to the tanker and had a discussion with all of the crew, regarding availability to remain and/or the need to return home. At that point two crew members had commitments the following day. Myself and the other two crew, agreed to remain on the tanker overnight.  I took the crew down to the property homestead to get the crew something to eat and await transport for the two crew requiring transfer back to Samaria. It was 2am on 16th December at this point. Following the release of the two crew members, the remaining three Samaria crew went back up to the fire ground to continue to patrol and black-out.

At 3am on 16th December we had located two small logs burning inside the fence and stopped to deal with them. I was at the rear of the tanker when one of the crew rolled past me on the ground at the side of the tanker. I went over to check on him. I asked what had happened and he said that as he stepped down from the tanker rear deck, he missed the hand rail and fell. The crew member was carefully loaded back onto the tanker. From the tanker location, we reversed back down the hill a short distance where we were able to reverse turn the tanker whilst remaining on reasonably smooth ground and avoided rocks etc. We radioed ahead to the control point advising them that we had a suspected broken leg. Upon arrival it was assessed that due to pain levels, it was possibly only a sprain, however we continued to treat it as a possible fracture, despite the fact that the crew member was still able to wiggle his toes and move his foot without increasing the pain.  He was very carefully lifted from the tanker to the back seat of a car for transfer to Benalla Hospital.

Later in the morning, after refilling the tanker with water, the transport car returned just as we approached the control point. The time was around 4.30am on Tuesday 16th December. I went over to the driver and asked about the crew member’s condition. The driver did not wait for the full assessment, but according to Benalla Hospital emergency staff members, he would be kept for observation and released at 10am that morning. From this report I deduced that the staff had also assessed that the injury was possibly a sprain, rather than a fracture.
 
For most of the early morning the crews just monitored the fire ground situation until earthmoving equipment arrived at around 7.30am to make the area safe for crews to enter and extinguish the fire. Just as the area was made safe, a strike team arrived to relieve us. Following a briefing session with the strike team crews, Samaria tanker was released from the scene at 9.00am on Tuesday 16th December. At this point we still had no update on the condition of our crew member.

On arrival back at the station around 10.00am the tanker was refilled with water, cleaned, wet hoses removed and the drinks cooler restocked in anticipation of being deployed during the day. Prior to leaving, we checked again with the hospital, who advised they were still waiting on x-rays.

Both the driver and myself were exhausted after being awake continuously for around 28 hours and operational for almost 17hours of this time. We both headed home to bed. I arrived home at approx. 10.45am to be briefed by my wife following a phone call just received. The X-rays had confirmed that our crew member did have a fractured leg and he would be taken to Wangaratta for an operation to have the leg pinned. The crew member was eventually released from hospital some days later and returned home, but was unable to return to work.

This is when I started to ‘make waves’. The Kennett Government had passed legislation stating that loss of income compensation would not be paid to ‘workers’ over 65 years of age, because at that age they should be on either superannuation, or a pension. Our volunteer was over 70 and had regular seasonal work.

The CFA initially refused to pay ‘loss of income’ compensation. Following consultation with the volunteer representative body, Volunteer Fire Brigades Victoria, I compiled a report, and with a little assistance from a retired County Court Judge, a submission was made to the CFA pointing out that their policies were in breach of at least two Federal Government laws. Compensation was paid, and the CFA amended their policy. They confirmed this to all brigades in written form, in September 2016. Loss of income is now paid to all CFA volunteers, irrespective of their age.
Whilst I believe that the Victorian Act has still not been amended, the response from the CFA has set a precedent for all organisations in Victoria with a volunteer component.

Barry O’Connor.
22nd March 2020.

Do you remember the polio epidemic in 1949—50, or previous flu epidemics before vaccinations were available?    They were worrying at the time, but nothing compared to the present pandemic, made even more frightening because of the frequent TV updates, and no available vaccine.

I clearly remember the polio epidemic—most people knew of someone who had caught the disease and become crippled, or worse, ended up in an iron lung to enable breathing, or even died. The people were advised to avoid crowds.

My most vivid memory is of my first day at Benalla High School. Our family had just returned from a beach holiday on the Saturday,  for the start of school on the Tuesday. I duly went off on the Violet Town school bus with my local state school friends who started that day, decked out in my new uniform and hat.

When the bell rang, we assembled in the quadrangle, and it was announced that anyone who had not been at their residence in the last two weeks had to stay away from school for the next two weeks.

This was scary to a shy little country girl!

​There  were a few others from Violet Town and we had to fill in the day wandering the street and gardens till bus time at 3.30, then go back on the bus with the other children.  So much for isolating us from the others!

Another two weeks at home! Fortunately the local headmaster felt sorry for me and set some maths and English for me so I wouldn’t get too far behind. Eventually I restarted at Benalla High School, but the others had had their intelligence test and were allocated their form and their sports houses.

Not an ideal start, but I got going.

It was much later before a vaccine was produced.  Salk, an injection, and later perfected to a syrup, Sabin, which was successful.

Hopefully a vaccine for COVD19 will soon be available.

Margaret Nelson
March 2020    ​

​I was a bright student at school.  Maybe not the top student in the class, but not far from it.  My favourite subjects were the Sciences and Maths.  Back in the 1960s this was not a usual track to take for the girls.  And to be a better student than all the boys in the classes was just not on.

We had a male teacher for the extended Maths class and for Science, both subjects that I was taking.  He did not approve of females taking these subjects.  And he did not approve of working mothers – they should be at home.
 
So Mr R did not approve of my mother – why not “barefoot and pregnant” in the kitchen?  And he did not approve of my choice of subjects. 

There was one other girl in the Maths class who was perhaps marginally better than me, or at least she more often had higher mark on the tests. We sort of swapped who got the higher mark.  The boys in the class hardly ever managed to beat us.  In other words we were making waves by not sticking to the more traditional “girly” subjects.

Mr R tried to convince my mother that I was not able to do these subjects.  With a Chemistry subject he told her that I would not succeed by learning by rote.  Oops!  I was never any good at learning by rote which is why History with names, dates and places was not my subject.  The problem was that I had not understood that topic.  I do not want to judge his skill as a teacher but was it a failure to explain well enough?

There was some conflict in my report at the end of Form 5 (year 11).  Mr R suggested that I was not coping with the extended Maths.  The teacher of the basic Maths commented that it was the exact opposite of his experience with my grasp of Maths.  I now have a Bachelor of Science degree majoring in Maths.

There was a time in year 11 that he was not happy with me.  We were conducting a Chemistry experiment.  I forget all the details except that it involved a test tube and creating a gas.  It required us to place a finger over the top of the test tube.  My finger was not big enough so one of the boys held the test tube.  He assumed I did not know what to do and told me not to rely on the boys.  In fact I had been telling them what to do!  When I explained the problem, he brushed aside the problem telling me to use something else on the top of the test tube.  He never acknowledged that I knew what I was doing.

Mr R could not accept that girls could do the same as the boys, and sometimes actually do better.
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'Making Waves' by being as good or better at what had been thought as the male subjects.

​Joy Shirley
​March 2020

​I wish I could make waves, big waves which didn’t recede before the tide had turned…

But that hasn’t always been my experience. 

…. It’s 1981…a small country town in Victoria…

There was concern amongst many of the high school staff in which I worked that young people were leaving school before Year 12 who could have continued.  Spirited young people, they appeared disillusioned with the school setting and often tested out the school uniform policy.  
At the time, a number of progressive Melbourne high schools were addressing this issue by abolishing the compulsory school uniform for Year 12 students, to good effect. 

As Year 12 Coordinator in 1981 guiding Year 11 students making decisions about courses towards the end of the year, I was aware that a number, already testing the boundaries of the uniform requirements, were likely to leave.  

I canvassed potential allies among the other teachers, finding support for my plan to introduce a motion for change in the uniform regulations for Year 12 at our staff meeting.  I then presented a carefully prepared case at the next staff meeting; incorporating amendments which were presented, then approved, at a subsequent staff meeting. 

Success! 

I began to look forward to being able to present the new policy of optional school uniform for Year 12 students to the upcoming class.  It could encourage undecided students to see the last year of schooling fitting better with their view of themselves as young adults. 

The school’s Principal had chaired the meetings at which I had presented the motion, a motion which had been clearly accepted by staff.  I felt sure that a more progressive approach to uniform for the Year 12’s would be communicated to students and parents and proceed the following year. 

A day or so later, the end of year newsletter to parents was to be published.  Sitting at my desk in the staff room I was stunned to read, in the Principal’s column, ‘School uniform will continue to be compulsory for all students’.  Devastated, quietly in tears and feeling defeated, I sat with my head in my hands, despairing. 

It seemed that the Principal’s reading of the change was that it would not be accepted by parents and the community. 

A conservative rather than progressive leader, he would not have been able to brave the impact of the waves which I had set in train or support the change in an authentic way. 

He ‘drew a line’ in the sand. 
 
I'd made waves, for a short while, to little effect.  They receded before the tide had turned. 

Life at the school, with Year 12 students continuing to wear the still often complained about uniform, went on.

 
Beverley Lee,
March 2020