After finishing school in 1978 I desperately needed to earn some money, for Mum, Alison and Steve, as well as myself, but my prospects were poor. My less than impressive academic performance in the Higher School Certificate meant that I wasn’t going to university or even into any kind of job that offered a decent salary and a future.
I bided my time playing football for Bondi United; my dream was to be graded with the Eastern Suburbs Roosters (this was before they became known as the Sydney Roosters), hooning about Woolloomooloo, and going out with girls. When I was eighteen I had a girlfriend who lived in Kings Cross with her father and brothers, two of whom worked at St Vincent’s Hospital, running, respectively, the stores department and the morgue. Through my girlfriend’s brothers’ connections, I scored a job as a cleaner and porter at the hospital. That, I figured, was the best I could do.
There I was, sweeping the corridors and wards, picking up rubbish and wheeling patients around on their trolley-beds or in wheelchairs. Joe Bloggs needs to be taken from his ward down to X-ray: get Dack onto it. A stack of cigarette butts by the front door needs sweeping away: Dack’ll do it. When I wasn’t cleaning I was waiting for a call to take a patient from point A to point B and back to point A again. The lousy pay I collected each week reflected my lowly role in the hospital.
Predictably, I fell in with the other cleaners who, by and large, were a pretty low-rent bunch, it has to be said. A couple of them were heavily into pot and spent their days stoned. One bloke sniffed amyl nitrate, which gave him a quick rush and an accelerated heartbeat. He didn’t last long, and drifted off away from the hospital. I have no idea what happened to him, but probably not a lot that was good. Snorting amyl nitrate can damage your heart and lungs, destroy the mucous membranes of your nose and make you prone to cancer.
My duties at the hospital often took me to the morgue. At first I was a bit queasy about going in there, terrified of seeing a body. Then, with time, I grew blasé. The morgue was just another part of St Vincent’s. I did not recoil when I saw the corpses in the morgue’s freezer room. I coped just fine when the awful wailing of people viewing their loved one’s body in the adjoining grieving room filled the morgue. It even came to pass that I didn’t gag when I walked in and smelled the formaldehyde, the embalming fluid, whose smell seemed to seep into your clothes, into your very skin, and which you couldn’t get rid of no matter how hard you scrubbed in the shower.
There was a young attendant in the morgue nicknamed Archie. Archie made an alcoholic drink from the embalming fluid. ‘James,’ he’d say. ‘Here, mate, have a couple of sips. It’s really good. It tastes like ouzo and it’ll blow your head clean off.’
Archie had a routine. He’d arrive at his post early and eat a snack while he read his copy of the Daily Telegraph. At morning tea time I’d drop in and borrow the paper that he’d already read from cover to cover.
One tea break I strolled into the morgue for a read and a chat with Archie. He was busy. I heard a sound – brrrrrrrrr – and then I saw what was making that sound. Archie was conducting an autopsy and holding a small circular saw and with it he was cutting off the top of the skull of a corpse that was laid out on a gurney. As I stood there, mouth gaping, too stunned to move, I saw Archie remove the crown of the corpse’s head as deftly as you whip off the top of a boiled egg. Then he scooped out the poor bloke’s brain and put it in a jar.
One day a family came to view a body only to find that it had been stolen by other mourners. The police were called and there was bedlam.
It wasn’t too long after this, when I’d been a dogsbody at St Vincent’s for twelve months or so, that I experienced a life-changing moment. This encounter did not start out auspiciously. I was being a lair as usual, trying to brighten up another deadly dull day by skylarking. I thought that it might be fun to climb onboard an empty trolley-bed and zoom down a ramp in a long, long corridor, gathering speed as the ramp grew steeper at the end. This I did, slamming into the walls on either side of the corridor. The wheels roared and rattled on the concrete ramp. It was a wild ride.
Two-thirds of the way down, a figure materialised at the bottom of the ramp. I was hurtling towards this man at about 20 kilometres an hour and I didn’t think I could stop. My heart was in my mouth. The man didn’t even try to leap out of my way. He just stood there, looking at me, his eyes wide with shock and fear at the collision that was about to take place.
Thinking fast, I jumped off the trolley-bed and, hanging on somehow, managed to slow it down and derail it. The runaway bed, with me, wild-eyed and dishevelled, still holding on, came to a screaming halt one metre from the man, who continued to peer at me impassively.
He was a big fellow in his forties, I guessed, wearing a smartly tailored suit. He looked at me and said calmly, as if his life had not just been in mortal danger, ‘Who are you?’
I pulled myself together fast at his challenge and shot back at him, utilising my best Woolloomooloo sneer, ‘Who are you?’
‘I’m John Ireland, the CEO of this hospital,’ he declared in his rich voice.
‘Well, I’m James Dack,’ I said, trying to maintain a tough and begrudging tone to my voice. ‘Pleased to meet you.’
We shook hands and he gave me a warm smile. I was instantly impressed. I beamed back. He could have sacked me on the spot or he could have been intimidated by my aggressive response to his question and backed off. But he did neither. He said, ‘James, how long have you been working here?’
‘A year.’
‘How do you like it?’
‘I don’t like it at all,’ I said.
‘How come?’
I told him I felt I wasn’t getting anywhere and I was cut out for better things than the miserable jobs I was doing, although I was thankful to have a job.
He thought for a moment and then he said, ‘Come to my office tomorrow and we’ll have a chat.’ Obviously, he was thinking, Maybe if I give this guy the ball and half a break, he’ll run with it.
That night at home, I thought hard about what had happened. What’s this bloke on about? Why should he care about me? What’s his motive? If I turn up at the meeting he’s just going to let me down, maybe shout at me for stuffing about on the hospital’s time … and nearly killing him into the bargain. I imagined him yelling at me, ‘Dack, there is no place for you in this hospital!’ I went through all of these depressing and alarming scenarios in my mind. I tossed and turned all night in my bed. Then I got angry with myself. I gave myself a serve: James, you are a dumb, weak person. Be a man for a change. You have nothing to lose and plenty to gain by facing Mr Ireland in his office.
So I did, and we talked for two hours. He must have seen something in me that he liked. He quizzed me about my life, my family, my opinions, and the way things happened at the hospital. He spoke to me with genuine interest and respect, as an equal, even though I was anything but. I was even bold enough to ask him about his own life and family. Finally, John said, ‘You seem to be an intelligent young man. How about I look at a bit of a career change for you?’
‘That would be unreal,’ I said gratefully.
John appointed me to a job as a clerk in the stores department.
I vowed to give that job my very best shot. Yes, I wanted to get ahead, and the extra money I’d be paid was sorely needed at home, but, as much as anything, I did not want to let John down. He had shown faith in me, acting only on his intuition and compassion for the existence I’d led, and I was going to justify that faith, and more.
I kept running into the charismatic and flamboyant John Ireland over the next few years. He continued to take an interest in my progress at the hospital. If we passed in the corridors or met in the cafeteria at lunchtime he’d always enquire how I was doing. He had a big heart, was super-intelligent, and if he talked, you listened. I began to get a good handle on how the hospital worked. Because John made no secret of his respect and liking for me, it was said at the hospital that I enjoyed Papal Protection. By and large, I was left alone to do my work.
While working at the hospital, I got to know the guy who was in charge of the hospital’s cleaning department – for the sake of the story I’ll call him George. I didn’t mind George, and nor did my brother after I persuaded George to give Steve a part-time cleaning job. George was always polite to me because he knew John Ireland had my back, and he really took a shine to Steve, like just about everyone has always done, because he was such a funny and lovable young man. George gave him all the cushy chores. Not everyone liked George, however. In fact, many despised him. George could be a bully and if he didn’t like you he could make your life hell. One who was always copping it was a cleaner who, again for the story, I’ll name David. George abused David viciously and reserved for him the nastiest cleaning tasks.
One day, George barked an order to David, and finished with, ‘ … You got that?’ Davd replied, ‘Yeah, I’ve got it,’ and then he added quietly so only one or two heard him, ‘ … and you’re going to get it, too.’
Next morning, when George arrived at work, David was waiting for him with a shotgun and he shot George dead.
I attended David’s trial. I sat there looking at him in the courtroom, unable to believe that this mild-mannered man could kill another human. Some said the killing was race-related. I don’t think so. I think George simply pushed David too far, pressed buttons he should not have, and David had a brain snap.
I worked my way up in that hospital. Ability and hard work whisked me through the ranks of clerks. My progress would have been even more rapid were it not for the public service mentality that prevailed there. Everybody jealously guarding their job, never offering praise for fear they’d be giving a rival a step up on the ladder, watching you to see if you make a blunder and then reporting you. It’s a poisonous atmosphere. I ended up spending ten years in the hospital system. Too long; I should have left earlier. Yet the system didn’t beat me. In fact, it taught me a lot about people at work, about the need to stay calm and think clearly in a crisis and dodge some of the emotional hand grenades that get thrown at you. These lessons have all come in handy in my business career.
Despite the grind of day-to-day petty office politics, I was lucky to find a strong spirit of generosity and integrity among senior staff at St Vincent’s. Of course there was John Ireland, but he wasn’t the only positive influence on me. Human resources manager Ian Thorley was kind and taught me plenty, as did his successor, Geoff Braithwaite. Sandy O’Sullivan was a great girl at the hospital, and taught a green kid the ropes.
For giving me a chance, and for helping me find my work ethic, I thank John Ireland. I will also be forever in his debt for his kindness to me when my mother died.