Dorothy (Vietz) Gibson.
My life after Balwyn High School.
My first job was the Secretary to the Sales Manager of Commercial Machines Pty Ltd. Then at the age of 21, I shipped my way to London for the traditional “overseas trip”. I spread my wings between Britain and the continent. As a temporary secretary, I worked every minute I could. I only ever had the money I earned. I do not know how we survived; to pay for our travels we lived on the ‘smell of an oily rag’. One trip I really enjoyed around Europe, was with my now deceased, eldest brother John.
I really believed there was no place like home. However, after two and a half years I felt depressed returning to Australia. My second brother Robert, who at the time lived in Tasmania, helped. He got me to repack my bags to join him - overseas again! There, I spent a couple or more months in temporary work again. The second trip back ‘home’ eased the pain in settling down. I ‘won’ a proper job. I started work at The Southern Cross Hotel in the Public Relations Department. That was good fun. It was a bit of a ‘plastic world’ though! We would toss a coin to see who would avoid the 6.00 AM American tourist’s “Champagne and Strawberry” parties.
When 26, I spent several years working at GMH Fisherman’s Bend - a little time in the Personnel Department and more time in Public Relations Department.
After about six years of courtship, I married my Aussie husband in 1964. I had met David through friends I met on the “Fairsky” returning back from London. David was an Engineer with the State Electricity Commission in Berwick. We lived close to the office when Berwick was still a little township. I took up a Personnel Consultant Job in Dandenong. After this, I started the two decades or more in the Finance Industry. David, still with the SEC, started shift work in the city and we moved to Oakleigh to live. During this time I started studying part time, for what seemed a lot of years and gained a Business Certificate in Sales & Marketing.
Six years later, my marriage amicably broke down. I moved out to a flat in Glen Iris. Since then, I have had two long term relationships – The first was with an ex-boss. We bought a townhouse in Hampton and after our break up, I bought him out. I still live there.
I worked hard with “my head down and tail up surviving four takeovers. My first post was Supervisor with the Building Society “Arnott First City” (Does anybody remember them?) and then the “National Mutual Permanent Building Society”, “National Mutual Royal Bank” and finally “ANZ Bank”.
I was Manager of a branch at 160 Queen Street and then the Customer Liaison Manager and Lending Manager at the ANZ Gothic Branch at 388 Collins Street. Apart from a massive volume of home loans, I took tour groups through this 1850’s Gold Rush Building. I related many enthralling stories about the Cathedral Room, the gold leafed hand painted ceilings in the banking chamber and the management quarters upstairs. The apartment upstairs included a ballroom. In years gone by, its double glazed windows quietened the ‘clip clop’ of horses in the street.
The hours were long. The day came when I was told I held one of the Manager’s jobs that were to be ‘chopped’. I jumped across the desk and asked gleefully - “Does that mean I get a package?” I was told I could apply for another job within the bank. No way! I took the package.
After a short break I started working for a Finance Company chasing bad debts in all States. I loathed the management style. It was the worst I had ever experienced and I was unhappy every minute of every day. It took me eighteen months, to the day, to leave ---- life is too short to be miserable.
Through contacts, I then followed a dream. I started working in the Funeral Industry. Horror! shock! NO - I had never stopped thinking about how wonderful the woman was that looked after our mother’s funeral – I just wanted to do what she did so well. My introduction was a luncheon appointment with a Prepaid Funerals Manager.
My job now as a Preplanning Consultant, I follow up leads from Le Pine and Simplicity funerals, visit lovely people and sell Prepaid Funerals
As we are on the subject of dying – I have been directed to share the story of when I died!
For about a month I defiantly ignored a headache, thinking - “It will go away”. – Now read this!
The incident: After a monthly team meeting I was making phone calls in a back building of East Kew’s Le Pine office. No one knew I was there as I would normally be out on the road in my car. Something snapped in my head and my head pain became unbearable! I lay on the floor where, alone, I would have not only died but would have stayed dead. I startled when my mobile phone rang. I struggled to answer it.
1. My manager, by chance, had decided on the spur of the moment to unusually prepare minutes for our monthly meeting. (I could not remember back to when minutes had been prepared before!)
2. He was phoning me because he had forgotten what I said at the end of the meeting. I did manage to answer that and then relayed that I was on the floor feeling dreadful. He said “I’ll get someone to come and see you”. The office girls arrived and reported back to him my poor condition. By the time my manager got to me, I had died suffering a ruptured arachnoid aneurism.
3. Coincidently, another male happened to walk into the usually deserted building and between them, having the week before trained on the requirements for Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation, proceeded to work on me. With the aid of telephone instructions from an ambulance person, they succeeded in my resuscitation!
Was this all coincidental? I live to tell the story.
At St. Vincent’s Hospital, the surgeons proceed to plug the hole in an artery in the middle of my brain. Nine hours later the doctors tell Doug, my youngest brother, they are doubtful that I will make it through the night. However, I do! The following four weeks is in intensive care. Arnold my current partner would sit with me day and night… and I do not remember! I was not expected to work again. After many months in rehabilitation, I had to learn to walk and talk and months later, drive again.
You know, eight years later, I often tell this story! It helps me sell prepaid funerals!
I am now very grateful to be tossing up whether to retire at the end of this year or next.
I have always enjoyed dancing and through one of my finance contacts, after 20 years or so, I was reintroduced to the jazz scene. This is where I met Arnold. We enjoy Jazz festivals, dancing most Saturday nights and listening to Jazz at the Rosstown Hotel at Carnegie on Sundays.
Arnold holds several black belts in martial arts, he is semi-retired and very much an ex pom. We have travelled to the UK and Japan several times and when he goes back to England he takes his Akubra, showing on the hat band, badges of our flag and a kangaroo..
Life is good, as my late brother John said to me when I was having a difficult time with a personal problem: “This is the only life you’ve got. You are not practising for the next one”.
My life after Balwyn High School.
My first job was the Secretary to the Sales Manager of Commercial Machines Pty Ltd. Then at the age of 21, I shipped my way to London for the traditional “overseas trip”. I spread my wings between Britain and the continent. As a temporary secretary, I worked every minute I could. I only ever had the money I earned. I do not know how we survived; to pay for our travels we lived on the ‘smell of an oily rag’. One trip I really enjoyed around Europe, was with my now deceased, eldest brother John.
I really believed there was no place like home. However, after two and a half years I felt depressed returning to Australia. My second brother Robert, who at the time lived in Tasmania, helped. He got me to repack my bags to join him - overseas again! There, I spent a couple or more months in temporary work again. The second trip back ‘home’ eased the pain in settling down. I ‘won’ a proper job. I started work at The Southern Cross Hotel in the Public Relations Department. That was good fun. It was a bit of a ‘plastic world’ though! We would toss a coin to see who would avoid the 6.00 AM American tourist’s “Champagne and Strawberry” parties.
When 26, I spent several years working at GMH Fisherman’s Bend - a little time in the Personnel Department and more time in Public Relations Department.
After about six years of courtship, I married my Aussie husband in 1964. I had met David through friends I met on the “Fairsky” returning back from London. David was an Engineer with the State Electricity Commission in Berwick. We lived close to the office when Berwick was still a little township. I took up a Personnel Consultant Job in Dandenong. After this, I started the two decades or more in the Finance Industry. David, still with the SEC, started shift work in the city and we moved to Oakleigh to live. During this time I started studying part time, for what seemed a lot of years and gained a Business Certificate in Sales & Marketing.
Six years later, my marriage amicably broke down. I moved out to a flat in Glen Iris. Since then, I have had two long term relationships – The first was with an ex-boss. We bought a townhouse in Hampton and after our break up, I bought him out. I still live there.
I worked hard with “my head down and tail up surviving four takeovers. My first post was Supervisor with the Building Society “Arnott First City” (Does anybody remember them?) and then the “National Mutual Permanent Building Society”, “National Mutual Royal Bank” and finally “ANZ Bank”.
I was Manager of a branch at 160 Queen Street and then the Customer Liaison Manager and Lending Manager at the ANZ Gothic Branch at 388 Collins Street. Apart from a massive volume of home loans, I took tour groups through this 1850’s Gold Rush Building. I related many enthralling stories about the Cathedral Room, the gold leafed hand painted ceilings in the banking chamber and the management quarters upstairs. The apartment upstairs included a ballroom. In years gone by, its double glazed windows quietened the ‘clip clop’ of horses in the street.
The hours were long. The day came when I was told I held one of the Manager’s jobs that were to be ‘chopped’. I jumped across the desk and asked gleefully - “Does that mean I get a package?” I was told I could apply for another job within the bank. No way! I took the package.
After a short break I started working for a Finance Company chasing bad debts in all States. I loathed the management style. It was the worst I had ever experienced and I was unhappy every minute of every day. It took me eighteen months, to the day, to leave ---- life is too short to be miserable.
Through contacts, I then followed a dream. I started working in the Funeral Industry. Horror! shock! NO - I had never stopped thinking about how wonderful the woman was that looked after our mother’s funeral – I just wanted to do what she did so well. My introduction was a luncheon appointment with a Prepaid Funerals Manager.
My job now as a Preplanning Consultant, I follow up leads from Le Pine and Simplicity funerals, visit lovely people and sell Prepaid Funerals
As we are on the subject of dying – I have been directed to share the story of when I died!
For about a month I defiantly ignored a headache, thinking - “It will go away”. – Now read this!
The incident: After a monthly team meeting I was making phone calls in a back building of East Kew’s Le Pine office. No one knew I was there as I would normally be out on the road in my car. Something snapped in my head and my head pain became unbearable! I lay on the floor where, alone, I would have not only died but would have stayed dead. I startled when my mobile phone rang. I struggled to answer it.
1. My manager, by chance, had decided on the spur of the moment to unusually prepare minutes for our monthly meeting. (I could not remember back to when minutes had been prepared before!)
2. He was phoning me because he had forgotten what I said at the end of the meeting. I did manage to answer that and then relayed that I was on the floor feeling dreadful. He said “I’ll get someone to come and see you”. The office girls arrived and reported back to him my poor condition. By the time my manager got to me, I had died suffering a ruptured arachnoid aneurism.
3. Coincidently, another male happened to walk into the usually deserted building and between them, having the week before trained on the requirements for Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation, proceeded to work on me. With the aid of telephone instructions from an ambulance person, they succeeded in my resuscitation!
Was this all coincidental? I live to tell the story.
At St. Vincent’s Hospital, the surgeons proceed to plug the hole in an artery in the middle of my brain. Nine hours later the doctors tell Doug, my youngest brother, they are doubtful that I will make it through the night. However, I do! The following four weeks is in intensive care. Arnold my current partner would sit with me day and night… and I do not remember! I was not expected to work again. After many months in rehabilitation, I had to learn to walk and talk and months later, drive again.
You know, eight years later, I often tell this story! It helps me sell prepaid funerals!
I am now very grateful to be tossing up whether to retire at the end of this year or next.
I have always enjoyed dancing and through one of my finance contacts, after 20 years or so, I was reintroduced to the jazz scene. This is where I met Arnold. We enjoy Jazz festivals, dancing most Saturday nights and listening to Jazz at the Rosstown Hotel at Carnegie on Sundays.
Arnold holds several black belts in martial arts, he is semi-retired and very much an ex pom. We have travelled to the UK and Japan several times and when he goes back to England he takes his Akubra, showing on the hat band, badges of our flag and a kangaroo..
Life is good, as my late brother John said to me when I was having a difficult time with a personal problem: “This is the only life you’ve got. You are not practising for the next one”.
