News Archive

Terry Young, Andrew Jefferies and Rebecca Joel have notched up 130 years of service to UWA.  To round off our Centenary year, when history has been in focus, they talk to UWA news about life and work at the University before computers, when most employees' desks had simply .....

Terry Young's first pay packet 47 years ago was in pounds, shillings and pence.  His second was in dollars and cents.

"I started work on January 29 1966, just two weeks before Australia changed to decimal currency," Terry said. "I can't remember what my pay was in the old money, but the first one in dollars was just $13!"

Terry was 15 and had just spent a summer confined to bed with what would probably today be called rheumatic fever. "My legs were paralysed but, when my Mum went to work, I used to get up and ‘walk' around, using two brooms as crutches.  I remember climbing the jacaranda tree using just my arms.  I was determined this illness wasn't going to stop me."

The determined boy won an electrical apprenticeship at UWA and has been here ever since.

"Electrical work now includes a lot of electronics of course, but, basically, the electrical trade is still the electrical trade and you need the same skills as you always did," he said.

Terry (63) remembers when all the executives had bar fridges in their offices.  "I was doing some work in the Vice-Chancellery once and it was a really hot day, and the VC, Sir Stanley Prescott, invited me into his office and gave me a Coke.

"That was when (former Vice-Chancellor) Alan Robson was a PhD student here, and one of the jobs was to keep a lot of his equipment going."

Terry recalls changing a light globe in the anatomy building while students were dissecting a cadaver. "I was standing on the gurney and they were working away right next to me.  I was 18 at the time and I still remember the smell!"

Terry became mechanical supervisor for a few years in the late 1990s, but difficult personal circumstances resulted in a breakdown and four months off work, and he returned to his electrical trade.

"Life deals you different things, all for a reason," he said.

He doesn't use a computer much at work but uses an online booking system at home for the stretched limousine he drives on weekends. Terry has never been overseas but has driven around much of Australia, with a caravan and a faithful dog.

"I've started to think about retirement, but I'm not sure when," he said. "I' like to discover some more of Australia by road."

Rebecca Joel has been at UWA since the days when married women were not expected to want to work.

"There was no rule about not being allowed to work," she said. "They just didn't expect young women to return to work after their wedding.  So they paid you a ‘marriage allowance' which was your accumulated long service leave.

"I think they were a bit surprised when I accepted the allowance, then turned up for work again after my honeymoon! I was married at 19 and they didn't pay that allowance to me until I was 21."

Rebecca started work in 1972 in the old University Bookshop (in the building now known as Admin East) as a 16-year-old.

"I worked in accounts and used to lug big bags of cash to the bank at the end of each day. Luckily the bank (and a Post Office) were both housed in the same building as the bookshop," she said.

She used a ledger machine which she describes as a typewriter and adding machine in one. The telephone exchange at UWA (and everywhere) still used the plug and board system. Female staff were expected to make tea (in a pot) and coffee (instant) for male staff.

"My first adding machine was about a metre square.  And it gave me an electric shock.  Nobody called an ambulance, but they did call the electrician (not Terry Young) and when he arrived, he asked: ‘Where's the operator? In hospital or dead?' I was back at my desk with burn cream on my burnt hand trying to complete my work. These days there would be an inquiry, but back then I didn't even go to hospital."

Rebecca now works in Safety Health and Wellbeing, and thinks that perhaps her interest in this field began that day. "But I grew up with it too, with Mum being a nurse and always interested in her work." Rebecca was featured in UWANews in 2008, after using her newly-acquired first aid skills to save the life of a young neighbour found floating in his backyard pool.

"I think the most interesting job I've had at UWA was in the library but I have loved all of my 41 years here," she said.

She took long service leave when one of her two children was born and even less leave with the second. When her husband got a job in Kununurra, she decided to stay in Perth. "It was only for six months and we needed the money, but my husband often says I'm more attached to UWA than I am to him!"

Andrew Jefferies is 81.  He doesn't quite know why people retire. "I enjoy my job, I have good health, why would I want to stop work?" asked the senior accounting officer in financial planning.

He works four days a week and will probably reduce that to three days a week next year. "It takes me a bit longer to get all the other things done at home now," he said. Home is a 1,200 square metre block in Mount Lawley with a big home and extensive garden, from which he brings flowers and vegetables to his colleagues.

After 21 years at pharmaceutical company Fauldings, Andrew joined UWA in 1971 as budget officer in the Bursar's Office. Since then, the budget for the University has increased by 1,500 per cent.

"The total budget for the whole university for next year is close to a billion dollars," he said.  "But, apart from using computers to do the work, the work itself hasn't really changed  You still have to add up, you still pay account and issue receipts for money coming in."

Andrew has filed paper copies of the University's financial statements from the mid-1940s to the present day in a safe. "There is information on microfilm but nobody has a viewer for it. And I suspect CDs and thumb drives will go the same way, so paper is best for retaining corporate knowledge."

He says after 42 years he is not thinking about retirement yet. "You want to be very careful of retirement. So many men retire, then die within six months!

Academic John Melville-Jones (56 years) and carpenter Kevin Bradley (50 years) are the two longest-serving employees at UWA.  Their stories have been told in UWAnews over recent years.

And 53 years ago, Lyall Munslow-Davies (now senior physicist in Safety Health and Wellbeing) first became associated with UWA when he was one of the State's first radiation safety officers in the Medical Department. In 1975, he became the University's radiation safety officer but worked out of Radiation Health at QEII Medical Centre and had his salary paid by the Health Department. It wasn't until 1993 that he actually became a UWA employee.