Born at the Right Time Page 7

  Every morning in late 1972, I would turn on my short-wave radio and listen to Radio Australia, where the main topic was the federal election campaign. The election was to take place on Saturday, 2 December, and that morning I got up early, turned on Radio Australia and heard our new Prime Minister Gough Whitlam say a few words. Yes, after being the official opposition for twenty-three years the Australian Labor Party had won the federal election. I picked up my phone and tried to dial Harry Glasbeek’s number in Toronto, where he was over on sabbatical leave with his wife and their two small daughters. As soon as the phone was picked up I yelled, ‘We’ve won, we’ve won!’ Back came an unfamiliar man’s voice with a Canadian accent: ‘You’ve won what, buddy?’ I didn’t know how to explain my exuberance to this stranger, so I simply hung up the phone.

  That afternoon I sent a congratulatory telegram to Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, and several days later I received a telegram in reply. It was doubtless written by one of his staff, but now I am sorry that I did not take better care of that piece of paper, which is no longer with me.

  In late 1972 I began to experience my first, very cold, Canadian winter. On 14 November I saw our first snowfall in Kingston, an event for which I had been longing for over a month. Geri took me out in the snow and I picked it up, held it, sniffed it and played with it. When it snowed heavily—and this seemed to occur on and off from late December until early March—it blurred any differences between the footpath, the gutter and the road. It altered all of the sounds around me and forced me to re-think my sonic landmarks. As much as I could, I would wait until the snowploughs had been by before I ventured out, because they made walls of the snow, and by following these snow walls I could keep on the footpath.

  Walking in the snow was okay, but when the temperature dropped and turned some of the slush into ice, walking became treacherous. Both Heather and Eric taught me the correct way to walk. If I was going to slip, then the best thing to do was to slip backwards and to fall as gently as possible onto my bottom. This was far better than falling forwards. I had fun practising the bottom manoeuvre, and on a couple of occasions it came in rather handy.

  By February 1973, in the depths of my first Canadian winter, I became run down; I lost a lot of weight and caught a solid dose of the flu. I had never before experienced such cold and it really seemed to affect my metabolism. After a few days of lying in my bed at the Graduate Residence, I was driven by Heather to the house of her parents, Rosemary and Bob. I think that for a couple of days I was delirious.

  Rosemary nursed me as though I were her own son. I remember her holding my head and saying, ‘Darling, you must eat something.’ When I eventually came around, I found that I was in bed; I noticed that I was very clean and was in fresh pyjamas. After two weeks or so of Rosemary’s loving ministrations—which included hamburgers, chocolate-chip cookies and Coca-Cola—I felt whole again and went back to the school.

  Eric Lifton is an American who had been involved in criminal activity. Once, when he was in Canada, he was arrested after a shootout in which a policeman had been killed. As he was under twenty-one years of age, the Canadian Government showed clemency and he was not hanged. After being a model prisoner for about ten years, he earned the right to be released into the community during the daytime, so long as he had tasks to perform there. He met Gordon Simmons from the CNIB’s Kingston office, and Gordon suggested that one of Eric’s daytime tasks could be to read to me.

  Thus was born a fine friendship between Eric and myself. As well as reading me law, he also read me lots of other interesting material. One afternoon during the 1973 summer, he read me Albert Camus’s The Outsider, which had a special poignancy for him because its leading character had also been on death row.

  In 1973 I joined a group that went to the nearby Collins Bay Jail on Tuesday evenings to spend time with the prisoners. I became an honorary member of the Ten Plus club, whose members had been given sentences of ten or more years. During the 1973 summer, when most of my fellow students had gone home, several of the prisoners volunteered to read to me. As one of them put it, ‘Ron, we ain’t going anywhere these days.’ It was extraordinary to me that several of these men, who had not had the educational or life-affirming opportunities that had been open to me, gave up their time to assist me with my postgraduate work.

  Each week I would go to the jail for a couple of hours and have coffee with the guys. During these visits, I learned the power of deep listening. What these prisoners wanted was what we all wish for: for people to spend time with us and to take our side in what we say and do. I learned to listen fully and carefully to their stories, to their hopes, loves and fears.

  For my thesis I chose as my topic a comparison between Canadian and Australian unions. Canadian unions operated within a collective-bargaining framework, meaning their unions would negotiate directly with employers on behalf of union members. Australian trade unions at that time operated within a system of compulsory conciliation and arbitration—in other words, a system in which unions and employers had to meet to discuss the issues in dispute and, if no agreement could be reached, a decision would be made for them.

  Another significant difference was that Australian unions were, and remain, political creatures: they believe legislation can be of equal advantage to workers as arbitrated settlements concerning wages and conditions of employment. Canadian trade unions, on the other hand, were focused on favourable collective agreements flowing from successful collective bargaining. In other words, Canadian unions were focused on wages and conditions of employment at each individual workplace, rather than on advancing the lives of workers through legislation.

  To write this thesis I had to have read to me a great deal of labour law material, and the Queen’s students, Collins Bay Jail prisoners and other friends filled up tapes with copious amounts of material.

  By September 1973 I became a little crestfallen. Assembling all of the material for this thesis was more arduous and difficult than I realised. Rosemary, sensing my low spirits over the phone, invited me to go and stay with them for a couple of weeks. A few months before this, she and Bob had moved from Kingston to Kitchener, which is a city about two hours’ drive west of Toronto. I took the train to Toronto and then another train to Kitchener, and Rosemary met me with a big hug.

  While there, I roughed out the bare bones of my thesis on an ordinary typewriter. When I returned to Kingston, I wrote further drafts on a typewriter; then I had to wait until a fellow student or friend could read it back to me. Several helped me go through drafts and were able to make pencil corrections under my direction.

  One evening in December 1973, this being my second Canadian winter, I went back to my law library carrel after dinner to work on my thesis. At about 10.15 p.m. I put on my snow boots, coat, scarf and hat, and got ready to walk home. While I had been in the library a snowfall had occurred, and of course the snowploughs hadn’t been around. I set off for the Graduate Residence and got lost. A security guard came up to me and asked if I needed help. I explained that I was trying to get back to the Graduate Residence and he took me there.

  A couple of days later at morning coffee, the Dean had a quiet word with me. He said rather playfully that he couldn’t prevent me doing foolhardy things; however, could I at least think of him. If anything did happen to me, he would have to fill out a mountain of paperwork for the Australian Government, which would give him a great deal of trouble. I promised that in future I would ask someone to take me home.

  By December 1973 I was thinking about my return to Australia: how would I find an academic appointment, assuming that I successfully completed my postgraduate studies? I applied to several universities that were advertising entry-level legal academic jobs.

  In February 1974 I got the blues. I later learned that this is not uncommon in wintry countries, where February is the coldest month. So, I gritted my teeth, confined my diet largely to chocolate-chip cookies, Coca-Cola and a little scotch, and eventually got the job done. A fri
end typed out my final thesis. I submitted it on 11 March 1974.

  I well remember the spring morning when I had my oral examination, which was known as a viva. A large panel was assembled in one of the seminar rooms. I was ushered in a few minutes after 9 a.m., dressed in my only suit, which had been dry-cleaned for the occasion. I think that, as I sat down, my hands may have shaken a little. A favourable outcome was so very important to my career and, I must now admit, also to my private notions of myself.

  Apart from a short coffee break, they asked and I answered questions up until a quarter to twelve. At the end, they solemnly informed me that I had been awarded my LLM degree. I later learned that, before calling me in, the panel had decided that my thesis had fulfilled all of the requirements of the degree, but that I should be tested to clearly show that it was all my own work.

  In early March 1974 I received an offer from Monash University of a tenured lectureship in law. A tenured lectureship is one where, after three years of satisfactory work, the lecturer is given a permanent position in the faculty. I excitedly accepted this offer. Its annual salary was the princely sum of $9280 per annum, roughly equivalent to a solid starting figure in today’s professional market. It was more than anyone in my family had ever earned. I was over the moon. After all, I was still only twenty-five years of age.

  6

  Learning to Be a Law Teacher

  One of the biggest challenges facing people of working age with disabilities is simply obtaining stable and fulfilling employment. After all, for most of us we need to find work to support ourselves and our families. Undertaking remunerative tasks enables us to utilise our skills for our physical and spiritual health; equally as important, it is for the betterment of our nation. One of the first questions people ask one another on meeting is: ‘What do you do?’ In other words, what sort of person are you, and what is your contribution to society?

  In 1974, when I returned to Australia, a goodly number of blind workers were still employed in sheltered workshops, like the one across the playground fence at the Blind Institute School. Many of my friends with disabilities found it exceedingly difficult to obtain satisfying and fulfilling employment, even when they had good qualifications.

  Looking back, I realise that my entry into the workforce in 1974 was extraordinary. True, I had done rather well in my law studies and had successfully completed overseas postgraduate qualifications; but why, at the age of twenty-five, did I easily find tenured employment at the Monash Law School? In large part, I am sure, it was because the senior staff at the Monash Law School knew me well, and because the Law School was open to persons with disabilities. It was also the case that the Law School had a vacancy for a labour law teacher. But I didn’t think much about this at the time, because I was champing at the bit to get on with my academic career.

  I arrived back in Sydney from Canada on the morning of Saturday, 27 April 1974. Mum, my brother Max and his four-and-a-half-year-old son, David, were waiting for me. The plane had been scheduled to land the previous evening, and the plan was that we would spend the night in Sydney together before flying back to Melbourne the next morning. However, my plane’s delay meant that, after hugging one another, we left the international terminal and immediately transferred to a domestic flight home to Melbourne.

  Coming home was wonderful and it was so special to be with Mum again. However, my return was a little too speedy for me. While I was physically in Melbourne, my thoughts were back in Canada. Queen’s University, Kingston and so many friends were half a world away. A Canadian friend had given me a soapstone carving, and I loved its feel so much that I wore it around my neck on a strap. I think that I was still on a Canadian high and, like many young returnees from overseas, I was filled with new ideas and even with extravagant expectations. After all, this was the ‘It’s Time!’ era of the new Whitlam Labor government.

  Given my recent travels and experiences, our family home suddenly seemed tiny. In truth it was a small house. As an eight year old I had felt every inch of it. I don’t think that it was until I went to university that I realised the huge variations in the sizes of houses. I knew that some homes must have been bigger than our two-bedroom place, but I had no idea how comparatively small our bayside house actually was. My rather cosseted existence meant that I also had little appreciation of the differences that existed in household incomes and family assets. I knew that we were not wealthy, but, after all, we always seemed to have enough to eat.

  After settling in for a few days, I journeyed along my old student route and took the bus to Moorabbin station, the train to Ormond station and then the bus along North Road to Monash, to sign on as a tenured lecturer. It was a little strange entering the Law School now as a fully-fledged member of the staff. A delightful room was found for me on the third level and it became my academic home for the next fifteen years.

  I had a short interview with the Dean, the now late Professor David Allan. David said he would like me to commence teaching in the second semester, which meant that I would be lecturing in a couple of months’ time. He went on to say that he wished me to take a class in Common Law 1, and also to share a stream of Administrative Law. As I had just spent two years specialising in labour law, I politely asked whether there were any labour law classes to take. David said that there would be plenty of time in the succeeding years to teach labour law, but that coming in halfway through the 1974 year meant that he, quite reasonably, wished me to familiarise myself with some subjects that all law students were required to study.

  After my interview with the Dean I sat in my new room, which was still filled with the books of a departing colleague, and pondered the situation that lay ahead of me. There were three big challenges I needed to confront.

  First, how would I find enough people to read all of the cases, statutes and articles I would need to digest as a teacher? This was forty years ago, and at that time I imagined that tape recorders would remain the dominant technology throughout my entire life. I needed to build up my own tape-recorded law library, filled with audio tapes containing textbooks, legal decisions and statutes enacted by Australia’s parliaments. The Dean said that the Faculty would give me some extra secretarial assistance, but this alone would not fulfil my voracious reading needs.

  The second challenge was how to become a fully-fledged academic—first, by teaching, and second, through the undertaking of research. Would I have the skills and the determination to become a truly fine teacher? Would I be able to competently assess student papers and exam scripts? While I had, of course, completed my LLM major thesis, I wondered whether I would end up having the time and the energy to conduct labour law research and to publish books and articles?

  The final challenge related to my own personal growth. After living on my own in Canada, albeit in a student residence, coming back to my family home was a little confining. I didn’t want to go backwards, and it seemed to me that sooner or later I would need to find a place of my own. Ah well, I thought to myself, I just have to get on and overcome these challenges, or else my master’s study in Canada will have been a great waste of time.

  As for the hidden challenge of meeting and dating women, of sexuality, of falling in love and perhaps finding a life partner—this just seemed a challenge too far. So, I resigned myself to sublimated sex and sexual feelings. Of course sexuality was in my subconscious thoughts and in my DNA; but the three challenges that immediately confronted me were going to use up all of my waking hours.

  The first step I took to find readers was to contact the Royal Victorian Institute for the Blind. Their headquarters was still in the old Blind Institute School in Prahran, which I had attended some twenty years earlier. They were now assisting blind tertiary students by having books read onto tape and by providing students with readers.

  Mrs Lois Doery phoned me. She said that the Blind Institute had told her about my special circumstances as a young academic needing help, and that she would be happy to assist me. I learned much later that,
prior to me, Lois had been helping a blind woman who had recently died. Lois had wanted a break from helping blind people, just to get herself together again. However, she was prevailed upon to help me for one month until further arrangements were made.

  Looking back, our relationship over the next dozen years was truly extraordinary. If Helen Keller had her Anne Sullivan, I certainly had Lois Doery.

  Lois had agreed to meet me at the Monash Law School. There I was in my new room on Wednesday, 5 June 1974 at 10 a.m. waiting for her. Of course, I don’t know what Lois looked like. However, when she knocked and came in, I was struck by the warmth and timbre of her voice. I don’t think Lois ever walked anywhere slowly. The speedy patter of her feet carrying her small frame is something I will hear for the remainder of my days. Lois was forty-five when we met, and married to Keith Doery, who was a dear and special man. They had three children, their youngest being about sixteen at that time.

  Lois asked me what she could do to help, so I showed her the Administrative Law reading guide. Then and there, she set to work and read it to me. We had a tape recorder going in the background so I could consult the guide whenever I chose. Lois not only read me material at the Law School, but during evenings she read material onto tape for me at her home.

  Over the coming months Lois began, very patiently at first, to assist me with grooming. She taught me so many life skills, especially when I moved out of home in January 1975. Later, Lois became my surrogate mum.