Paul Worden

I was abducted from England in 1959 by my parents when they migrated to Australia. The job my father had landed was managing a farm at Nullaware near Warrnambool in Victoria. I was hired labour (unwilling.) After eighteen months I had the obligatory argument with my father and walked out.

This led me to my first 'career' as a photo-technician; then a photographer in Melbourne. That lasted ten years, including six years working at Monash University. During that time I kept up the drumming; working with a country dance band around Gippsland.

I met my wife Val at a dance in Springvale and we married and moved to Portland, where I took up my second career as a Government Health Inspector.

I didn't want to take wedding photos for a living and there was nothing else that paid a decent wage. I still worked to pay for better percussion instruments (!) and after eight years, I left that job. I'd worked in and around the meat industry and there was a lot of rationalisation (is that what it is... for a moment there I thought it was cost cutting?)

I still kept up the band work - we'd moved from 'Swing' to 'Rock'.

And so to my final job with the American company Alcoa. They'd built a large smelter at Portland and I got a job as a computer operator (night shift) working with the Vax mainframes. For the next six years I worked my way up (!) to computer programming and got a Diploma in IT Management from Deakin University.

I'm now semi-retired doing Illustrative work for a Promotions company. I'm enjoying a new hobby 'digital oils' and I've sold quite a few locally.

No children. Married thirty five years. I have requested that I be given a New Orleans style funeral and my ashes be scattered in the bluebell woods in Cornwall. Ned Kelly said it all - "Such is Life".