What You've Got Within You

9: Sydney 1957-9

9Sydney 1957-9

James and Jenny arrived in Sydney in November 1957. They knew immediately that they had made the right decision.

Perth had been wide, bright, sandy and languorous. Sydney was also ablaze with light, but it was electrified by comparison. They could see the industry all around them. Factories, docks and power stations dotted the harbour. What an expanse of water! James thought. It put the locks of Scotland to shame. An axe had been used to cut a great jagged chunk into the continent. In poured a deep, dark, green-blue, powerful body of water, unable to be confined, clutching out with its twisted fingers into the heart of the land. And then there was the bridge spanning it all. Man had not simply connected the two sides of the harbour. He had mastered its constant, keen elements. He had left something of sandstone and steel as solid and enduring as anything in the environment. It was a place in which James and Jenny thought they could also take hold, put down roots, prosper, build a family.

But first James had to find a job. Fortunately, that was not a problem. The advertisement on the wall of the canteen in Scotland had been accurate. Men with a trade were in short demand.

James and Jenny stayed in a hotel while they reset their bearings to a new city. Jenny searched for a house to rent, and James turned up at a number of factories enquiring after work as a fitter and turner. He obtained a few weeks work in the Tooths brewery, a glass factory, the Goodyear Tyre factory and the Balmain Power Station. Eventually, through word of mouth, he learned of a full-time job available in an asbestos cement factory on the Georges River. James Henderson did not hesitate. He believed the combination of his skills as a fitter and turner and his experience with asbestos at Disaster Gorge, gave him an advantage over other applicants. He was right. In January 1958, James Henderson commenced work at the Henry King Industries asbestos cement factory at Riverwood.

Shortly before starting work at Riverwood, James rented and moved into a small fibro cottage in Bankstown that Jenny had found in the newspaper. The cottage was on a dead-flat, featureless block. The asbestos cement sheets were painted pastel green. The roof was unpainted corrugated fibro. Jenny liked it. It was new, clean and bright. Jenny, however, did not move in with James. She remained at a nearby bedsit in an elderly couple’s home until the wedding in June. As the couple planned to make the little rental cottage their first home together as a married couple, they did not wish to spark an unnecessary controversy with their neighbours about “living in sin” before their big day. Given how many times Jenny stayed over at the cottage, they need not have bothered with the pretence.

The Henry King Industries factory was a series of saw-toothed buildings of deep-contoured corrugated sheeting. It stretched down to the Georges River where sand and cement were regularly unloaded from dirty, low-slung barges. The asbestos fibre arrived on flat-tray trucks in hessian bags. The names of the mines from which it was sourced were stencilled in a variety of colours. There was black, red, green and blue lettering: “Disaster Blue”, “Cape Asbestos”, “Canadian Chrysotile”, “NW Blue”. The sacks were often torn or split. After all the bags were unloaded, the truck driver would sweep the loose fibre off the tray and onto the consignee’s tarmac – job done. They could clean up the mess.

James began as a fitter and turner in the blower room and tide mill area. It was a dusty area. Men grabbed the bags of raw asbestos and by brute force lifted and emptied them into bins. These “asbestos gangs” had the worst job in the factory. The hessian sacks leaked their contents over the heads and shoulders of the men. After the fibre was emptied into the bins, it was manhandled down chutes into the hammer mill, which pulverised the fibre into fine, feathery particles, which were then blown through ducts into storage hoppers. Once teased or fluffed out, the fibre was raked into the tide mills, where water was added. The slurry was mixed together with beaters prior to being mixed with sand and cement in proportions determined by laboratory staff to make the perfect asbestos cement sheet.

The blower room was not unlike the mill at Disaster Gorge. It was just as dusty. Looking into the area was like looking through frosted glass. You could only ever see blurred images, vague apparitions of men. As the tide mills were not separated physically from the rest of the factory, the clouds of dust generated by the process were free to float through the atmosphere. In August, when the cold westerlies swept through the open factory doors, the conditions were like a blizzard. Sometimes, it was so bad that handkerchiefs had to be worn over the nose and mouth.

The tide mills were always breaking down. James was kept busy bringing the paddle-wheeled contraption back to life. Standing, hands on hips, proud of his handiwork, he would watch the tornado of fibres spin into the air, the white, curly fibres of chrysotile “holding hands” together and falling to the floor; the dart-like amosite and crocidolite gliding through the air for hours like tiny paper planes.

The workforce was also not dissimilar to that at Disaster Gorge. There were many Italians, Irishmen, Scots and Englishmen. The chief difference was that most of the men were married and had young families. Few appeared as hungover or trashed as the men at Disaster.

The factory was dusty, but it was a good place to work. The company paid its workers well, especially those who worked in the tide mill. It was a family company. The workers were encouraged to feel part of the family. They felt that the bosses genuinely cared for them. James felt the same. The bigwigs from the city office often came to the factory to see how things were going. They chatted with the men from time to time. James even met Mr Gideon King one day. He seemed like a decent old chap.

It was a dirty job, but James’s pay was excellent. He thought that, by the end of the year, if he were frugal, he would have earned enough when added to his inheritance and savings from Western Australia, to buy his own home. Jenny had also found work at the Crown Street maternity hospital. Things were definitely looking up, James thought.

After a few months in the tide mill, James was moved into the finishing area. The liquid mixture from the tide mill was rolled out onto felt rollers. Layers of the wet sludge would be added to make sheets of a predetermined thickness. It was like making paper. The wet sheets were then rolled out onto a conveyor belt where they were cut and then left to cure. Once dry, these green sheets had to be sanded, trimmed and labelled with the distinctive black of the Henry King Industries brand ‘Genuine KIL Fibrosheet’.

The finishing area was also dusty. The belt sanders were not enclosed. As each sheet travelled under the belt, pale-brown dust belched out the sides. The power saws trimmed and cut the sheets into sizes corresponding to the Henry King catalogues. They also generated showers of dust into the faces of the nearby workers. James Henderson kept the machines running smoothly. Sheet after sheet of asbestos cement was churned out and stacked in piles, ready to be taken to the loading bay. The asbestos cement sheets were in high demand in the housing sector. James played his part in ensuring Henry King Industries met the demand.

He also ensured the Hendersons met their preconceived personal targets.

By June 1958, James and Jenny were married and ensconced in the rented cottage in Bankstown. Unfortunately, no relatives could attend the wedding, although their best wishes arrived promptly and enthusiastically. The honeymoon was less than auspicious; James had only been able to obtain four days leave for a honeymoon. Jenny was given five days. They began their married life together in a motel in the coastal hamlet of Kiama. Although the wedding was small and simple, and the honeymoon modest, James and Jenny were happy. They walked along the hard sand of the half moon bay of the town, dined out in the Chinese restaurant around the corner from the motel, and whiled away hours in each other’s arms. In fact, they could not have asked for more.

By the end of the year, Jenny was pregnant, and the couple moved into their own home, 12 Hibiscus Avenue, Bankstown. It was a humble structure, like all of the other homes in the suburb, but inviting. It was set back on a gently rising block. Apart from the terracotta-tiled roof, the house was made entirely of Genuine KIL Fibrosheets. The external walls were made of asbestos cement boards cut and patterned to look like the wooden planks of a weatherboard cottage. Inside, there were painted flat sheets on the walls of the bedrooms and living areas. The bathroom and kitchen were panelled with new wet area sheets known as ‘Genuine KIL Tileboard’. These sheets were made to look like tiles: bold, modern textures and colours, ‘Misty Blue’ ‘Seabreeze Green’ and ‘Kangaroo Paw Red’. Two, large gumtrees dominated the backyard. On the right-hand side of the property sat a garage big enough for the new Holden sedan James had bought. At the back of the garage was the laundry. Six large, square concrete slabs led from the laundry to the Hills Hoist clothesline. At the front, the same square concrete pavers arced up the front lawn to the door. The path was edged by uneven blocks of quartzite rocks, emerging from the grass like the dorsal fins of a school of dolphins, gaining speed as they bulleted through the earth from the crest to the bottom of the driveway. At the front of the block stood several wattle trees and bottlebrushes. Two bland, concrete tracks led from the road to the garage. It was a house in which to raise a family, to begin a new life, to become grounded. James and Jenny were thrilled with the progress they were making in Australia. Both encouraged their siblings to take the plunge. None were willing.

On 13 April 1959, Jenny gave birth to their first child, Robert Kenneth Henderson. Two days later, James gave his boss two weeks’ notice. He had found a job with a builder. James Henderson had been recommended to the builder, Reg Blaxland & Sons, by the man’s brother, who was a foreman at the Henry King factory. Blaxland was informed of James’s exemplary work ethic and his dream of working outdoors. Reg was happy to oblige. Hard workers were always in short supply. He was prepared to give James an ‘apprenticeship’ on a higher than usual salary as a general assistant, in return for a decent day’s work. Blaxland knew James was taking a risk with a new venture when he had just started a family. He soon realised the risk was negligible. James Henderson was, indeed, a hard worker. Nothing was beyond him – a new skill, an arduous task, overtime. James was prepared to do all the filthy jobs the other workers baulked at. Blaxland’s investment in Henderson had been sound.

James was sad to leave Henry King Industries. The company had been good to him. It had given him the start he had yearned for when he had first thought of travelling from Scotland to Australia. He enjoyed the company of his fellow-workers. They were a good-natured, uncomplaining, rowdy lot. He intended to keep in touch with some of them. Jenny had met a number of wives and had forged her own social life with them. They all had young families. Towards the end of his employment with King Industries, however, James had felt that all was not well at the factory. For a week, two men, rumoured to be from the Health Department, had wandered around the factory generally getting in the way.

They both wore pale, short-sleeved, buttoned shirts, fawn pants, thin, brown belts, long socks and brown shoes. One was short, the other, tall. Both were as thin as broomsticks. The short man had a triangular, almost isoscelean face. He wore a pair of heavy-framed glasses to which his hooked nose appeared attached. The tall man, in contrast, had minimal facial features. His eyes, nose and mouth looked like they had been fashioned by a child sticking its finger into a ball of dough to make holes. His eyes were so deeply set, one could barely discern their colour from the shadows. They were an odd couple. And that was partly responsible for James’s disquiet.

These two odd men were allowed to pry and poke into all aspects of the factory’s operations for a whole week. Instruments were placed in the vicinity of the tide mill, finishing area, in the loading dock. James had seen similar devices at Disaster Gorge. Towards the end of the week, some of the workers were asked to go to the nurse’s station to be examined. Presumably, one of the men must have been a doctor. How many were examined, nobody knew. Rumours spread about screening for tuberculosis. Some of the men were sent off for chest x-rays. Nobody was ever told the reason for the visit. Then they left. As quietly and mysteriously as they had appeared. James never found out why they were there or what they discovered. He was off, running as fast as he could, on yet another new pathway in his life. Building a future for his family.