What a fund of good yarns he had hived away in that engaging, fertile mind.
e.g. - '"I had just put my Cat on the mooring . . . this was late '44.... and gone across to the shops to see my girl who worked in the Rose Bay Pharmacy.
Her boss asked me what I'd be doing when the war was over. I said I hoped to be able to use my engineering degree in civil aviation. He said that he was a friend of the Qantas engineering boss Arthur Baird, who was living in the pub just over the road and that he would introduce me as soon as he'd shut shop and walked over the road to the pub.
Well shortly after that there I am shaking the hand that shook the hand of
Lord Stonehaven, once GG of Australia, and a great advocate of the early QANTAS. Well that's what Arthur assured me.
Straight off he asked me about my career intentions and I replied as I had earlier to the chemist. Then he asked me, in his broad Scots - "So what's your tool-box like, laddie?"
I replied that I did not have one, but that I did have a slide-rule.
Arthur came back with - "What fool use that would be to Qantas, I'm sure I don't know."
Fortunately for me after a few beers he had a rethink and the next day I was interviewed at Mascot by Lester Brain, who managed to expedite my discharge from the RAAF. One of my first really interesting engineering jobs for Qantas after the war was to go to Japan and oversea the production of the galleys that we put into the first 749s."
Had Ron put down half the stories he had as good as that one, what a great read that would have made.
Last edited by Fantome; 29th Oct 2012 at 23:09.