Sconeite Snippet – Billy Clarke

Filed in Recent News by January 24, 2016

BILLY Clarke is a well known Sconeite who is as at home on his verandah watching people go by, as he is in a cabin cruising down the Rhine.

Billy Clarke sitting on his front verandah

Billy Clarke sitting on his front verandah

“I like to travel, last year I decided to go to Europe, to Belgium, Austria, Holland, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, I went on the Rhine river cruise, I’d seen it in the Sunday Telegraph and I went down to travel agent and I travelled over for three weeks and I met a lot of people,” Mr Clarke said.

“You know Belgium is not the size of Tasmania but it has 30 million people in Belgium,” he said.

“People say overseas, see I’ve been to Tasmania, it’s over a sea, but it’s not overseas,” Billy said.

Billy did his schooling in Scone, but has worked up and down the eastern seaboard, before settling back home when he was older.

In Tasmania Billy worked as an aerial man on the power lines.

“Building the power lines from the ground up, no safety belts in those days, this is going back in the 70’s,” said Billy.

“You had to be a mountain goat to work up in there,” he laughed.

“Up there you are sitting on a thin piece of board and you’re up there 170 feet.

“From Tasmania, of a winter time I used to go up north, up around Gladstone.

“I worked in Whyalla for a while at BHP, then I left there and went west.

“I’d seen a piece in the paper about the Windarra nickel mine, so I hopped on a bus and went west for a while, but  didn’t stop there for long, I had to sign something to say I’d stay there for a while and I thought I’m not stoppin’ here so I went to Melbourne,” said Billy.

“I worked for Ford in Melbourne at the truck plant.

“When I first went there I was stuffing pouffes with rags, you know the things you put your feet on.

“I worked in a flour mill, then they closed down and I went to New Zealand for a while on a working holiday.

“Then I went back to Melbourne and worked at the big hospital in Melbourne, the Alfred.

“My brother was working there and I went and had a talk to the chef in the kitchen and I spent 20 years there.

“But eventually they privatised those things and we kept up the productivity, but it wasn’t good enough, not with this company, they cut back all our penalties and you can’t survive like that in the city.

“I had some great times there, it was the biggest hospital in the southern hemisphere we had 3,000 patients, 1,000 working there, two cafeterias going day and night, then you’ve got to have food for when the kitchen is closed.

“I never thought I’d stay there for 20 years, but I liked working there with the Greeks and the Yugoslavs and Italians and everyone,” he said.

“I love horses but there’s no money in it,” Billy Clarke said.

Billy said his family dates back through the racing industry in Australia and he’d like to go to Ireland to have a look at where his family came from and to see Coolmore while he is there, but Darwin is one place he will not go.

“Oh no, not Darwin, I wouldn’t go there,” said Billy.

“Well there’s better places than Darwin, I’ve been across the Nullarbor in a bus it’s not only too hot, there’s nothin’ there; I haven’t been to Weipa, but there’s nothing there anyway,” he said.

But the people of Darwin are in good company, because Billy ‘didn’t go much on Paris’ either, explaining the old houses there are too small and the bread rolls at McDonald’s were tiny.

Growing up Billy was one of thirteen children and worked at the old cordial factory.

“If I got a hole in my school shoes, I’d have to put a bit of cardboard in it and it if it got wet it was bad luck,” he said.

“I was born on the Tweed and we moved here with dad’s work.

“I went to the old public school and the high school and I left at 14 and nine months.

“I went to the principal, old Fitzpatrick I had my bagged packed and everything ready to go.

“In those days we had three years of drought and my first job was old Dudley Arnold as a handyman for five quid a week and then I went to the cordial factory, called it the funny farm,” he laughed.

“I was a packer at the end and one day my foreman came out a bit you know, he’d had a night out and he sacked me, so I said right-o and I walked out and all the bottles were coming off the conveyor belt, bang, bang, bang, it was coke on the line at the time,” he said.

“But one day we were doing soda water and I had check if there was anything wrong, any chips and put them in the bin, and up at the fish and chip shop in Murrurundi they found a rat in the bottle.

“They bought it back, but I didn’t get a wrap over the knuckles because I’d been set up, it was a bit of a surprise for the fish and chip shop though,” said Billy.

Billy plans to spend more time traveling with his next trip likely to be to Ireland, with some time in South Africa.

With Billy’s form though, who knows what might catch his eye in the paper and he could be off on his next adventure.

In the meantime you can catch a wave from Billy as he watches the world go by from his verandah in Scone.

 

 

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