The shortest path from Art to Woodwork – photo by sundstrom

Looking back on Grade Eight – from Grade Nine – I was kind of disappointed in it. In many ways it was old ground recovered. Language and gender-related subjects aside, everyone had the same syllabus. Boys did woodwork, metalwork, and technical drawing, girls did typing and cooking.

I think the intention of the first year at high school was to even out any differences in primary school teaching. Everyone got the same grounding in basic subjects of English, History, Geography, Maths and Science. The big difference from primary school, where one teacher had taught everything, was that here in high school we had different teachers for different subjects.

I’ll talk about each subject in later posts, but looking back on high school as a whole, it’s strange that the most useful learning came right at the beginning.

When I eventually got a job in the public service after university, the minimum educational requirement was matriculation, i.e. senior high school graduation. But for the five years I worked as a clerk in the Department of Defence, so long as I could read and write, the most advanced learning I needed was arithmetic and percentages, so that I could calculate discounts on claims due for payment. That was an exciting job, that was!

Computer programming in Canberra, I was mostly self-taught. Discovering the computer room in Griffith University pretty much put an end to my arts degree, but I didn’t care. Computers were the big thing and paid a lot more than I could ever expect to gain from a career in the humanities.

As a political journalist, cynicism was the main requirement for success, and finally, as a second-hand internet bookseller, a dab hand with packing tape and enough strength to haul crates of paperbacks about in my garage was about all I needed.

I doubt I’ll ever find work as anything but a taxidriver now. What else could possibly be as much fun?

Which brings me to the useful stuff from high school. Useful in employment, that is. Statistics and probability have kept me out of casinos and away from games of chance.

Geometry. Fair dinkum. Right from the first day at Sunnybank, learning about circles and angles and triangles has helped immensely in plotting the shortest paths between two points in Canberra. The Parliamentary Triangle, where I do a lot of driving, is all angles and circles, and it warms my cabbie heart to hear a passenger say that “that took less time than I thought!”

“Oh, we can drive around a bit longer if you want,” I venture, but they never take me up on it.

View Larger Map

The classic case is Captain Cook Crescent. It’s a double-size wedge of pizza and which is the shortest distance between the two ends? If that angle is less than 360/π, then it’s the chord. Which it is.

S&P also comes into working out the best areas to go to get work. I look at the Stats screen on the taxi despatch computer, which shows the number of radio jobs in the last hour, divide by the number of cabs in the booking area, and whichever ratio is higher is my best bet.

–Peter Mac

Australian Top Ten – 28 February 1970

–Go-Set Magazine

Pete’s Jukebox

Rolf Harris. Funny man. He did funny pictures with cans of housepaint. He sang funny songs. He looked funny.

He was funny. I loved his corney jokes and his silly paintings, his winks and beard and big thick glasses. He was a role model to me. A dork made good. Except he was obviously a great deal more extroverted than me, and that was something I had to work on.

I’m getting there. Never you fear. One day I’ll be Rolf Mackay and I’ll be painting portraits of the Queen and amusing a smile or two out of her. You’ll see. I can even tell jokes to my passengers once they are strapped in and we are hurtling through the city at well over the limit. I know where all the speed cameras are. I’m careful. I can pick my moment to tell corney jokes.

I sail through the last moments of an amber light. “Taxi green,” I wink at them, and they smile. Possibly to humour me, but it’s a smile nonetheless and that’s a bonus.

Anyway. Rolf Harris could make people smile and he could sell hit records with the most ridiculous material. Six White Boomers. Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport. Jake the Peg, for the love of God. So long as it had a catchy tune and got people smiling, Rolf was laughing. All the way to the bank.

Two Little Boys was as silly as they came, and people loved it. Funny thing about it is that it isn’t funny at all. It’s a story of two boys who later become soldiers, where one rescues his wounded and dying comrade. That’s poignant stuff. It’s straight out of a previous age when gallantry and chivalry and cavalry still had a place in the front line.

We were fighting the Vietnam war in those days, and for half a generation of male Aussies, there was a very real chance of ending up dying. It wouldn’t be a comrade on a horse, but some hero in a Huey doing the rescuing.

Years later, well six years, to be precise, the war had ended, we weren’t likely to get into another scrap for a bit, and I had joined the Queensland University Regiment Drinking Club, any resemblance to a military unit pure coincidence.

We sang Two Little Boys in our own lusty manner, fuelled by a few Fourexes, leaving out a word here and there, making a “blank” motion as we hushed.

Two little boys
Had two little _____s
Each had a wooden ____
Gaily they played, each summer’s day
_____s both of course

One little chap
Then had a ____ ____
Broke off his ____s head,
Wept for his ____
And cried with _____
As his young playmate said:

Did you think I would leave you ____ing
When there’s room on my ____ for two?
Climb up here, Jack will soon be ____ing
“I can ____ just as fast with two!”

As I said, silly. And funny as all hell to we little boy soldiers.

–Peter Mac

Bonus video – Rolf Harris paints and sings

Related posts:

1. 21 February 1970: Mental blocks.
2. 7 February 1970: Smarties
3. 14 February 1970: Hearts and soles