Neville Gibb
Photographed in London revisiting old haunts!

My gap year was our ‘OE’ (or Overseas Experience) back in 1979…
 
My new wife (of less than 6 months) was wanting to travel extensively overseas, having spent the last university holiday in Australia travelling all the way up the east coast to Cairns with a group of backpackers. When I met her, she was the happiest person I had ever seen. She told me that although I was a newly graduated military pilot, she didn’t want anything to do with life in the Military, as her parents were WW2 veterans (Dad a Pathfinder Pilot, highly decorated and Mum was in the fighter control centres for No 11 group in the RAF) also her brothers were in the Military in New Zealand.
 
So, when the time came, I resigned, as I was always away from home in New Zealand and across the Pacific.
 
I have never regretted this move as I wanted to be there as a partner for my wife and our future family.
 
So, we packed up, with two packs and departed for the USA, Los Angeles California. There we were, staying with my wife’s mothers’ friends (also a Canadian bomber pilot WW2). He took us to all the theme parks such as Disneyland, Knotts Berry Farm, Universal Studios etc. We had Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner out every day for 30 days.
 
We departed USA for London and landed in Stanstead as we were flying with Laker Airways. We were met by another family contact, my father-in-law’s Navigator during WW2. They were a great contact.  We prepared for out next move, exploring London and buying a vehicle to head off to Wales (Caersws).
 
Our experience in Wales was shearing and wool handling. Most of this was done in paddocks with small flocks and off the mobile shearing platform. I commenced shearing as a weighty 15 stone, as I had given up smoking the year before and was eating lots and not much exercise!!
The shearing was very hard work.  I lost 4 stone (25 Kg) in 2 weeks and was eventually able to achieve more than 200 sheep per day, including the Welsh Jacob sheep which were known to have up to 6 horns!
 
The most memorable experience for us was in the local pub. While we were in Caersws we drank at the pub every Friday night. When the bar closed at 10.00pm the locals started to sing (as Welsh folk do), the magic end to the night. However, when we had our last night before departure, they closed the bar, made us the centre of attention and sang for us, a beautiful experience and memory.
 
We went on to travel around UK and Scotland going to northern Scotland near Lochness (no Nessie!!), as my father-in-law had trained at the RAF based in Lossiemouth.
 
We went back to London and scored a pub job at the Crown at Westerham in Surrey (the owner was a Mosquito pilot in WW2. I must admit that my having been a military pilot and my wife’s parents having contacts in UK meant that we experienced great hospitality at all times.
 
In October 1979, we booked our airfares to Israel, my wife’s dream, as her mother’s family was Jewish from Australia. This was a wonderful experience.  We milked cows, milked sheep, the locals took us on trips all over Israel (always had people with guns with us!) We also travelled across the Negev desert to Eilat down past the Dead Sea.
 
After 6 months our Israeli experience was over, and we went back to the UK.
 
Over the next 6 months we worked and travelled all around Europe with a Eurail pass on $10 per day (Arthur Frommer). We both arrived back in UK very skinny and, as the English weather was “normal”, we booked back to the USA and on home to NZ as our siblings were producing babies. as you do!
 
We spent the next 6 months shearing all over NZ and then booked our one-way trip to Australia in 1981.
 
That was our Gap Year, a wonderful challenging experience (not enough words….)
 
James Davey
15 July 2024

​My gap year was never planned or intended. It was due to unforeseen circumstances and quite a tragic event. I had decided to quit my job as a long-distance truck driver due to the long hours and the pressure that I was having to cope with.

I was becoming more aware of more shrines on the side of the highways. Flowers, crosses, memorial sites.

I was involved in a serious accident, where a lady was critically injured. I was told she wasn’t expected to live.

Although I found out later that the lady did survive, she was in a really bad way with several broken bones and internal injuries.

I had a couple of weeks off work. I went over and over the accident in my mind. I became more depressed, I met with a Counsellor who suggested I find alternative work and cease driving for a while, if not permanently.

I was driving to most of my clients every two weeks and had been doing this for over two years.

So naturally I met and became friends with a lot of these people, all around Victoria and parts of New South Wales.

I was missing them, they were missing me, and due to the reason why I wasn’t seeing them, only became more depressing.

I tried working from home for myself by mowing lawns and a bit of gardening. Not driving too far. I hated being on the roads. Every other driver was an idiot, they didn’t know how to drive. No wonder there were so many accidents, and the road toll was so high.

Needless to say, my depression got worse, my patience was wearing very thin. And yes, road rage became a problem too. I’m normally very patient and a caring person, but this was going over the top. My wife and family were really struggling trying to cope with me and my moods, my psychologist wasn’t very happy with me either.

Something had to be done, but what?

My wife came home from work one day and she said, “I have to take Long Service leave”.
I asked her how long she had. She had twelve weeks. Due to her working in the education department, she had school holidays at both ends of the twelve weeks.

In total she had seventeen weeks holiday. With me, at home. What would prison be like I thought, how many years would one of us get for murder?

I had been in Australia for thirty years, coming from England. My wife had been here nearly fifty years from Germany. We both had relatives in both countries.

The village where I had come from never changed that much, so I assumed a lot of old school mates and their families were still around. My wife had a sister and her family still living in their same town in Germany.

My wife and I got passports, I got naturalized (my wife was naturalized when she arrived from Germany), we bought plane tickets.  We went to Germany for a few weeks, then England and anywhere else that caught our eye.
​
We had a ball, a great holiday, met old friends and made a few new ones.

We spent thirteen weeks away.

Our future son-in-law had a brother who was a fencer and needed a helper, so I joined him.  After about twelve months I set up my own fencing business.  I never looked back.
​
 
Tom Barnaby
July 2024

For most students, education covers two successive periods – primary school and secondary school.  My schooling covered 2 non-successive periods:  1937-1944 primary school and 1946-1949 secondary school.
 
What happened to 1945??  Let’s just say, A GAP YEAR.
 
My primary schooling was with the nuns at Villa Maria in Ballarat where, at the end of Grade 8, I obtained my Merit Certificate.
 
In those days boys from farming families generally, with a Merit Certificate, obtained outside employment or worked the farm.  However, my guardians deemed that I was too small to join the workforce.  I don’t know my size at 12 years of age, but 2 years later at age 14 I weighed 5 stone.  I was a tiny kid and was nicknamed ‘Titch’ or ‘Midge’).
 
The alternate to work was secondary school.  The nearest High School was 20 miles away and there were no school buses.  Secondary boarding school was out of the question as I didn’t have a family and there was, simply, no money.
 
Ned and Mary Caine, farmers of Swanwater North were my guardians, Mary being Dad’s sister.
 
Ned had a brother Mick, 2 miles away, who had 6 children, all of whom went to the Swanwater North State School.  The elder three had obtained state government scholarships at the local boarding school and had then proceeded, at no or little cost, to secondary boarding schools at Ballarat.
 
Any chance that I could obtain a scholarship?
 
Research revealed that I could, by attending State School for 12 months then sitting for the examination.  And so, I did, and I passed and was eligible.
 
Mick still had three children attending the Swanwater North State School and he lived just on 2 miles away.  I could go to the school with them.  It was 5 or 6 miles away.  The three children were Patricia, aged 11, Angela 9, and John 7.
 
I would ride my pony, Denny (Dennis Boy), to their place, then the four of us would proceed, in an Irish Jaunting Car, with another pony, Lady Mortimer, in the shafts.
 
There were seven students in the school, we four, and three other girls whose surnames were Bath, Gilmore and Pilgrim.  Their Christian names elude me.  I was the oldest student and John Caine the youngest, with the five girls in between.
 
We had a young female teacher, Carmel O’Connell, just out of Teacher’s College.  It was a very leisurely year.  Carmel would occasionally go to a mid-week Ball, (dance) and arrive at school at 10 o’clock or after the next morning.
 
As a small mixed age and mixed sex group of children we played well together, mainly ball games.
 
On one occasion, though, Patricia Caine got in a snitch, attacked me, and gave me a hiding:  the only physical fight I’ve had in my 92 years.  The air was a bit thick on the trip home, but all forgotten, the next morning.
 
On the home front I became familiar with farming operations, learning to drive the tractor.d
 
Consequently, I learned to pull a plough, the harrows, the combine, the binder and the harvester.  I was well apprenticed.
 
During the year 1945, World War II terminated; Europe in May and the war in the Pacific in August.  I remember the processions of jubilation in the streets of St Arnaud on those occasions.
 
‘Welcome Home’ dances were held in the Gooroc Hall to celebrate the home coming of local soldiers.  My brother Pat had served in the Middle East for 4 years but was not acknowledged.   Could it have been because his father, Jack O’Shannessy, was a ‘nobody’ in the district?
 
Having earned my scholarship in 1945, I then went on to complete my secondary education at St. Patrick’s College in Ballarat.
 
And so ended MY GAP YEAR.

​Ray O’Shannessy
26 June 2024