What a scorcher was that Melbourne summer of December, 1967. The Bureau of Meteorology had predicted bush fires for the Dandenong Ranges and fire bans were in place in early October. Residents perched on ladders were zealously clearing their guttering of dried leaves and other combustibles. Blinds drawn, windows closed, and where no blinds protected the bubble-glassed front doors, in vogue at that time, makeshift solutions prevailed. Our family’s remedy was to shroud the front door in blankets. The ever-present threat of fire and cinders carried by sweltering northerly winds sat heavily in peoples’ memories of previous summers that were the hellfire of Hades. In that summer of 1967, Melbourne was baking under day time highs of forty degrees Celsius and night time lows of thirty degrees.
But life went on. People still went to work, dragging weary bodies home on trains and buses that were saunas, as air-conditioning had not yet arrived in public transport. I had just completed my matriculation year at Oakleigh High School and was revelling in the freedom afforded by the conclusion of one chapter in my life, and the beginning of a new one; entry into Teachers’ College the following year.
In the interim I was toiling on a conveyor belt in a local potato chip factory in Clayton as a process worker. Because of the available overtime, I could earn a better wage than the salary provided by my usual summer vacation job of dog’s body in a local hairdressers.
I was part of a group of women who stood for eight hours plus on a concrete floor, along a conveyor belt close to the oven. The mouth of this furnace spewed out burning hot potato chips followed by splutters of scalding oil. Our eyes penetrated the flow before us, identifying the burnt chips and, grasping them with bare hands before the conveyor belt whisked them away. With equal speed we deposited them in the plastic bins on our right hand side. The rhythm of grab and dump, grab and dump continued hour after hour. As afternoon arrived, the pace slowed considerably.
Burnside Writers Group 