Bunter 20s and 30s

The transcript is a conversation between a father and son discussing the father's past. The father talks about how he ended up studying accounting in university after winning a scholarship. He also mentions his lifestyle during his university years and how he met the mother of the son. They discuss the motivation behind their marriage and the challenges they faced, including the father's father's death and the responsibility of supporting the family. The father reflects on the wedding day and the impact of his father's death on their lives. Hi Dad. Morning Chris. How are you today? Tired. You're tired? Yes I'm tired. Okay well we're off to a good start now then. We won't be jumping out of here. It's good that we're not putting on airs for this situation. I wanted to ask you, we talked about your childhood yesterday and I wanted to talk about as you're approaching the end of high school and you're just about to consider going to university, do you remember what made you, what were the facts there? You ended up studying, was it accounting or what did you choose? I got the leading, my father walked in one morning and said to me, how does accounting sound? And he was reading out of the newspaper because in the newspaper they publish scholarship winners. And so I had won a scholarship to uni and he thought accounting. I was thinking dentistry but I was only half thinking dentistry so I ended up doing accounting. And so you won a scholarship, was that, and which university did you go to? It was Waite then? Curtis. Curtis, okay. And you won a scholarship to go there. Yeah, did they pay all the fees or what? The top 15% of students got scholarships basically. So as I say, it was a completely different thing. Yeah. Not everybody is a leading so the people doing it was a limited field. So yeah, there was an achievement and yeah. But now the scholarship, it's not yet carried away. The scholarship was means tested. It paid all the fees and it gave me an allowance to live on of $3 a week, which wasn't enough for anybody because being means tested, there was nothing left. So yeah, so that was basically the start of B4 for the next 60, 70 years. And so you start university, you're still living in Elk Grove. Never. Were you working at this time? Did you have any employment? No. Because you had this allowance and you were living in Elk Grove so it was okay. Yeah, yeah. I remember it. I was working at Walsh's then still on the Saturday morning. I don't remember. But yeah, I would have gotten an allowance from the old man as well so. And so what was your lifestyle like back then? You were still close to your group from high school. What was sort of a week in the life of Dad once you were at university and so? It was the same as it had always been. We had this group of schoolmates and we did everything together. And most of them, in fact all of them, went into full-time employment straight after school. And so they were working full-time and I was a full-time university student. So I got to walk the streets and play sneaker all day. Yes. And then we would meet up somewhere after school. Whoever had the car would pick us up and we'd do something. Whether it was just stay home or we'd stay home with just normal everyday stuff. No change of friends. Yeah. The university years didn't produce any new friends. Yeah. Just like the work years didn't produce any new friends. Just like the TAFE years didn't produce any new friends. You had some friends at some. We all did. Yes, but we didn't do any. Yeah. I had my group of friends. Yes. And they're still there. They are. And they're the ones I basically do everything with. Yes. You have other friends, but they're not part of that life yet. And so talk to me about a young lady who comes on the scene and her name is Beverly Florence Land. Yes. How did you meet her and tell me about that extract? Part of my group was Tony Farnourish and Tony Farnourish ran a church group as such. YCW, I Gay Friends, young Christian workers. And he ran that. And they used to have a games night type thing at the I Gay Church Hall. And they'd table tennis, pick up music, best place to meet and hang out. It didn't basically involve drinking there. But we went out there one night and met up. And then Beverly was up here going to Teacher's College, which meant she was funded. The Teacher's College was a funded training for teachers. And she was up from the country, so she got whatever money. It wasn't great money, but it was a lot more than three dollars a week, I can tell you. And I paid for the rent. She lived in a flat with two other girls. And I actually had met one of the other girls first. Must have met one of the other girls first at the YCW, because that's where... And then I met mum. And what did you like about mum initially, but then after you were dating for a while, why was it that you picked her? Well, she was good looking. She was better looking than the first one I was dating. She was a part of a group and we were just... It was just, she was a part of a group. And yeah, I decided to take her to watch a game of footy one day. And it's very romantic. Well, another bloke was there as well, shepherding me, making sure I wasn't taken advantage of. And then we just... Their place became, we as a group hang out. Your friends as well? Yeah. My friends basically lived at home. They didn't move out of the house. And now we had a venue. So the mum's unit was the venue for the next, it was probably six months, I reckon. It was the second of her two years at uni, or whatever, teacher's college. And at the end of it, she got a post-it. So yes, it was that six months leading up to December that... Her second year. And your second year. Yeah. And leading up to that, then mum got posted to Katanning. When she was in Katanning, she used to stay in Katanning one week because part of her job entailed going to, or living at a camelia, which was a private school. And she was a house, whatever they are. So one week in three, she had to stay in Katanning. One week she would go down to Albany, and the other week she'd come to Perth. And our relationship just stayed on. So that was it. Then that's what sort of brought about the marriage that didn't suit us one week in three. The only way to get around it was to get married because they would not have got a posting to Perth. It was not easy to get postings to Perth. So your main motivation, one of the reasons you asked mum to marry you was to spend more time because you're only seeing her one weekend every three. Yeah. And do you remember when, like I think from what I understand, you went down to Albany to speak to... Been to Albany a few times. The group YCW went down there, and we stayed out at Two People Bay. Was that partly because mum was there? I was there. Or was that just by chance? No, no. That was just by the fact that they decided to go to Two People Bay, which was there. So the group went down there. And so we met. I'd met Ted and Joan then. And Peter Lynch and I, on one occasion, just drove down there around Christmas time as a surprise visit. Oh, when mum was there? Yeah, mum was at home. She didn't know I was coming. So we drove down there. Communications weren't the same. I think we stopped when I got to Albany and went to the public phone. And I rang her just to say I was missing her. I wish I could see her. And then locked at the door five minutes later, which was impossible when you lived in Perth. Yeah. But yeah, so Lynch and I went down there. And you, after you spoke to Ted and Joan... Not there. Not there. This is pre. This is pre. This is another time. Then there was another time when I went down there and I arrived down there riding early in the morning and was sitting on the back step waiting for Ted to wake up. He normally woke up at five in the morning, one in the morning. But now I was sitting on the back step. Condition says you asked for the hand in marriage, which we did. And everybody obviously said yes. Terrible. Obviously a lot of reservations by people. Which people? Parents. Yeah. I'm 20 years old and have never worked. I got my first job. Yeah. I got, I got employed by the tax department in December 69. I'm the base rate clerk in December 69. We got married in May 17. When we got married, I'm still a base rank clerk. Yeah. Working for the government. Yes. And I know my pay was $1,500 a year. Yeah. And so, and our parents, well, my mother and their parents sort of did try to advise us that we were probably at 20, not having worked, we were probably a little bit young to be getting married, but no opposition, nothing, nothing like that. Yeah. People did try to tell us correctly as I would tell anybody. Yes. To tell you, especially in my case, probably mother's, mum might've been marginally better because she at least worked and lived out of home. Yes. I hadn't. Yes. So, yeah. And what do you remember about the wedding day? What were your best memories from that day? Don't remember a lot of it, but really remember a lot of it. Yeah. Yeah, no. Wedding is interesting. So, I think sometime while you were dating mum, your dad. Yeah. When mum was in Catania. Yeah. The old man died on the 26th of October that year. And so, well, what happens is he had a heart attack at the opening of the Celtic club. It was on the bowling green of the Celtic club, which had just opened. And he had a heart attack and died, sort of. Couldn't really say he died at home. Yeah. How old was he? I thought 52. He soon thinks 54. Oh, okay. And how did that affect you at the time? What was your experience with that? Well, it wasn't good. So, we are left with, well, mum never worked. Okay. So, she can get left the house and some shares, but not a lot. So, and that was one of my relatives. My only uncle sort of suggested I, by getting married, I was doing the wrong thing, that I am now the man of the house and I should be using my pay and money to support my younger brother, who was still at home and going to school, and my mother. This is probably partially true. It's not what happened. But yes, he did call me aside. He's a very reserved man. I took out a life insurance policy as soon as I was going to get married, and he didn't want me to put Berta's name on it until we were married. I'm taking out the policy in February, getting married already in May. No, we shouldn't put their name on it, because if something happened to you between now and then, it should go to your mother. Look, it's a very conservative man. As I say, there were reservations about the marriage. And so, shortly after you were married, mum got pregnant with Mel, and then Mel was born. Tell me about that experience. I would like to tell you about that, but previous conversations this morning indicate my attention to detail about some things is not of interest to you. But I could say that when we got married, my plan was that I've got a job, and I will get promoted. The first promotion in the government was huge, and would put me on a pay. Mum was already on a good pay, because teachers get teachers' pay from day one, essentially. In those days. In those days, anyway. It is a good way. Not in those days. It is a good way. Teachers' wage is fine. And my plan, I didn't have a problem. I had the deposit for a house. And four years, mum worked for four years. We pay up the house. Life's a dream. I'll have a reasonable job in the government, because I knew sort of roughly what the promotional scales would be in the government. Which house was this? This was Toowong Street. That's the first one we bought. First one. And that was in which suburb? That's better. Then the Greenwood one. It was about less than a kilometre from where I spent all my life. It was four streets further back than Rosebury Street. So you bought that as you were married, or sold out here? No. We got married, lived in a flat for a while, and then bought the house a bit after that. As I say, my plan when we got married was that we'd buy a house in Tardock in four years, and then go through life without a mortgage, which makes life really easy if you can do that. So that was what your dream was, because you didn't want the financial stress. You wanted to have the house. You wanted a good quality life. I don't know that I thought that deeply about it, but what I wanted to do is pay off, own my house. I never intended to earn money and spend it all as such. Yes. Not too lots of pay. Yeah. Travel then wasn't like it is now. People weren't going everywhere back in the 70s. Just didn't happen. So that was about what I thought we would do, but it turned out that your mother wouldn't go on the pill, and so we ended up having a child. So that plan wasn't long-lived. You've got to think of it, that when you're seeing all these things. We didn't have a long engagement. Plan wasn't long-lived, but when people would ask me, how are you going to survive it? This is what we're going to do. And then it was, what, five or six weeks later, mum says she's pregnant or something. Yeah. So yeah, well, we got married, Melbourne, 10 months later. It is 10. But that's what I mean. That plan didn't work. Yeah. So after that, we bought a house. Originally bought one out near where I lived, and then decided we'd move out to Greenwood into a newer suburb with younger people. Did that. So a couple of years later, Jan comes along. Yeah. We're still living in a flat. We haven't bought the first house before then. Okay. So the house in Bedford. Bedford came after I had two children. Oh, after, okay. But what was the experience like being a father and having the two girls? So how would you describe that when they were little? Having children, it's good. You enjoy it. It's a buzz. And having financial problems, you just get resigned to them, and you resolve how you're going to handle it. And there were plenty of times when we had no money. Plenty of times. But was there ever plenty of times when we had no money that it was urgent enough for mum to work full time? That did not happen. So yeah, you just make ends meet. And we didn't have financial support coming from anywhere else. Yes. My mother didn't have money. And Beth's parents did not have money. They were a living hand to mouth. But all of your money was accounted for in those earlier type years. So you just got by doing whatever you did, getting it. Entertainment was homegrown basically. And so what was day-to-day life like in your 20s? So you've got the two little girls, you're working, but then you had that social life with your friends. But yeah, talk to me about what it was like. Well, for the kids or for us with kids, it was very, very convenient that Ted and Joan lived in Albany, and that your mother was a teacher. Because our children had a holiday to go to, a holiday place where everybody goes to Albany. So they had holidays, every school holidays. So now when you think of that, now they were the type of holidays people had. Back when I started work, government employees got two weeks leave a year. School teachers got 10 to 12 weeks, longer than they get now. There were three terms. So you had the May school holidays, the August school holidays, and the long break over Christmas. So those gaps were always counted. Then we had the YCW Tony connection. And as a group, we would go away for things like Easter and long weekends as a group. And that sort of meant we might go to Lansing. We would hire a marquee, a 40 by 40 foot tent, put this huge marquee up and divide it off into family zones. And the family went, the girls too? Yeah. The girls went everywhere. Every year Tony got, he worked for the Department of Army. He got accommodation down in the army barracks at Rotto. And when Martin would come over with the girls, she just got to choose whatever bedroom she wanted. That was our bedroom. Because all these guys were part of bringing up the children in a way. So they got a protected life. And as I said, then Ted and Joan, not much later, started going on holidays. So not only did your children get to go to Albany, you got to go to Moor River, you got to go to Geraldton. Wherever they went, they would want to take you. Joan would want to take you. Because mum was always on holidays 12 weeks a year. And we would start off with, okay, you can take them, but we'll probably only be four hours behind in the car as it turned out most of the time. So providing that sort of entertainment, the lifestyle for our kids wasn't that difficult. Yeah. And the rest of the normal type of entertainment thing was we'd go on picnics and things like that. But we were always as a group. Yes. So the Atkinsons, the Joneses, and some of the other guys, most of them. The biggest problem is nobody else got married for a lot of years. So that was an advantage and a disadvantage. If somebody was having a party, parties would be a time. Our car would be driven up. The driveways used to go through. Our car would be driven up the driveway because that's my spot. My kids would be, Mel and Jen, would be asleep in the back of the car with the little station wagon where the party was. So yeah, it wasn't. It was very much, if you look at it now, you'd say we're country bumpkins in a way. Back in that era, we were. And all those things were normal. Your kids going to Bali when you did, that was a really early holiday for kids of your age. So the only thing we didn't have was money. We just didn't have it. As I say, hard to keep up with your mates who are working full time, don't have any expenses. And yeah, that was probably the hardest. What were the things they could do that you couldn't? How did that actually impact you, the fact that they had money? They didn't have to ration themselves quite as much. Maybe if we went to, they didn't have to buy last. They weren't so concerned with it, making sure they got an even share of everything. Because you could, no way, no one was in a position to say, we've got eight guys practicing for the cricket side that we always had. I'd go to the pub. I didn't ever want to buy first because if I've got to buy two rounds, 16 beers and I'm only going to get 10. I don't have that spare money. So yeah, a little bit of pressure on that. But as I say, all they had to attain was their time. You bought a carton of rock and you drank. We had barbecues, you take your own beer. So yeah, it wasn't as painful. The only painful thing is, yeah, you don't have money. We wouldn't have been in a position of having two pair of Reebok shoes. We didn't have one pair of the cheapest shoes. Technically that was virtually all we could afford. Yeah. And what about your working life during that period, during your 20s? So you mentioned you started, I was at the tax department, all of it, up until I was born. Yeah, basically. Yeah. And how was that experience? Working at the tax department was a great experience. I loved it. There was nowhere else on this earth where you walked down to a floor and around you were 25 guys within a year of your age doing the same job. You know, you're all there and the difficulty there was, they go off to work and have a beer, but they weren't all married. So of course, two things. One, if I can't have a beer, I was married and my book was on, which wasn't always popular. But the other thing is the cost of it. They had a good pay to spend on themselves. Yeah. And we didn't. But the great place to work, I was never diligent, which when you worked in the government, in a big office where not being diligent was the main thing they rated you on was diligence. And if you weren't seen to be seated at your desk and then there, your pathway through was a little rockier. It wasn't. Yeah, it was okay, but it was rockier. But no, I loved the years at the tax department. And then when I left that, I went with some bloke who, he was a financial planner. That's what, around about how old were you when you made that search? 30? That's around about when I was born. Yeah. Just when you were born. It was when you were born. I left there and he had offered me a job and a partnership and I was on more pay, more pay, a car. Oh, you got your car? Yeah, a car and the prospect of a partnership. But he was in fact a superannuation salesman and not an expert on trust and financial planning. And the idea was we'd put people into trust, which was innovative at the time. Then they could pay super and they could put a lot more in them. But the big part, and we'd do their accounting too. So they're always going to get an accounting practice built for me, sort of thing. Unbeknown to me, he got commissioned by selling you a super policy. Commission rate was about 140% of the first year's premium, put in. So he'd talk them up and sell it to them. But a year or two years later, just before, as soon as he didn't have to repay, he switched them out of that. And people say, but I've lost all this money. Don't worry, you're able to put more in the new one. And then that took off then. And I've got these clients, when am I getting this free from? You're not now, but Richard's here, but you're not. But he's still my partner through. Uncle Bob came and worked with me too. So you were adhesive with that? No, I couldn't be comfortable. Another one of my friends, he went with another guy doing virtually the same, but that bloke didn't rewrite every contract as soon as the no claim thing was up or whatever it was called. So this was a little bit easier to tolerate. So then Robert and I decided to try and start a business. And that's when we found out that if you don't start with a client base, if you don't buy a client base, the client, you don't grow. Yeah, because you might grow 20% of your fees a year. But when your fees are nothing, 20% of it is still none. So we tried that for about six months, I think. Then Robert decided he would go back and I think- To ECU. I think he went back to ECU. At one stage, he was thinking of going back to the tax department because he also worked there. But it could have gone back to ECU and whatever couple of clients we had, I just kept them. And that was Martin Jones, John Edwards. There was a client from then, a couple of others, but not enough. So then I took on self-contracting with another guy. And I met a bloke who owned a bit or ran about 15 pubs and that wasn't that successful. Always going to make just enough to eat out of the living. But that had a dangerous side to it that involved a lot of drinking and he's just delicious. One of the waitress at Poxy Lake Tavern in town, that was probably not the right thing at the time. And that all happened. You're sort of intimate third in spite of that marriage where you're doing that. And so you're working with him and then what happened in your career after that? You went at some point. So I had a few clients and the subcontractor- Including the pub. The subcontractor wasn't there. And that was an hourly rate that one bloke paid me, but he didn't like paying. He was bad. He was mad. He was an absolute nutcase. But still a good bloke. Then a job came up at Kareem Tate. So I applied for that and got it. And so that's when I got into Tate in, I think it was 85. So they had five years from when I left Tate, when I left Tabs, to when I got the job at Tate. And those five years were financially very tough. And really tough. Tougher than that. They were. And I chucked in that, the access to alcohol continually. Yeah, it wasn't probably the best. So as soon as I hit Tate, everything sort of fell into a plan for me. And you had that base income? Well, I found a job that actually suited what I wanted to do. When I went to Tate, Tate lecturers got more than school teachers type thing. We were better paid. There were various levels of lecturing and I walked in under mid-level. But I only stayed mid-level for six months because the subjects I taught were in the top level. So automatic promotion, if you take so many hours of this unit type of thing. Because the task is more technical? Yeah. There are third year units. They were in that advanced diploma where something else is only in the diploma and something else is in the third, or something's in the third three, and only paperbacks is third one. And they teach you the course. And you get, they've nearly chopped that out and made it one greater lecturer. But then to walk into Tate and be told, yes, because you are a lecturer A, you'll have 18 contact hours a week. That's 18 hours of lectures and 12 hours of prep. You have to be on campus 30 hours a week. And then your boss after six months comes to the conclusion that you do everything better than him. So he gives you the timetable and he says, as long as I'm doing these two subjects, I don't care. So from that day on, I never worked a Friday in my whole career at Tate. Yes. And again, I got to schedule. Now, if you did hours at night, they counted one and a half. So I did 12, two four-hour nights, six to 10. That was 12 hours. I had to be on campus six hours more. Hence, I coached a lot of basketball, a lot of T-ball. Yes. A lot of events over all those other years. In addition to that, I still had that much time off. I used to get 10 hours overtime a week. Yeah. Because I scheduled it. Yes, yeah. So the pay was, with overtime and that, was absolutely brooding. Yes. And the conditions, all those conditions got watered down over time. But when I needed the money, in today's hours, those 10 hours, that's what Luke Jen does and gets you $100 an hour a year. And hey, when I needed the money, that was great. And as I said, the flexibility. Yes. I was at Kareem Tate two minutes from home. You never cook up. Yeah. And I got teacher's holidays too. So, yeah, Tate was great. Yeah. And did you enjoy the job? Loved it. Loved every second of being at Tate Lectures. Yeah. Because you enjoyed the teaching part. I've never met anybody who doesn't like standing in front of people and knowing they think you're smart. And people like standing up there and giving out opinions. So I'm pretty safe working in tax and accounting. I basically copied and renewed all my debits just on the left and credits on the right. And there wasn't going to be any person who's going to come to a Tate class or a uni class for tax. Yeah. There's really going to ask a question I can't answer. Yeah. But even if you couldn't answer it, you didn't try to answer it, you just tell them, well, look at that. Because if they're dumb enough to think everybody knows everything, well, they're dumb anyhow, so. Yeah. That's what I mean. You're just in that sort of position. Yeah. And during that time when you were at Tate, you still had clients in your front of the practice. Yeah. That in itself was a problem as well because that side of my work is never diligent. And back in those days, the tax department systems were sort of not as regulated. You didn't have to put this in every month, which was fine, but you did have to put it in once a year. And when you had to do it, because you hadn't done it once a month, you had to do a whole year in an hour and a half and you couldn't. So I'd have stages where I was scared of the because it could be somebody ringing up, where's my tax refund? Where's my tax return? Because I hadn't done the work. So yeah, the phone nearly became like a hand grenade. Can you do that? No, I'm not entering it. Yeah. You're going to be disgruntled client. Look, I worked at Tax Depot. Yeah. Those were the disadvantages, but Tate didn't have any of that. And those disadvantages, you get over it. But yeah, there was many a nights, I would wake up in a cold sweat in overtax. Yeah. Many a night, but those problems among themselves. And around about the time, I think from what you said that you started work at Tate, you also built the house or moved into the house at Fort Roswell. Why? Well, we'd moved from Bedford to Greenwood and leaving Greenwood coincided basically with you being bored and leaving tax. Bad timing in a lot of... Leaving tax, yes, I went to a job that was paying more and had a glamorous future. Yes. But I was wrong. I didn't end up with that. And that guy got stumped with this shitty job and get driving out to Rivervale and that. And yeah, then we had to go and have a rental property. For a while, we bought the block. Bought the block basically when I was still at tax and you got four years to build it. Then I left. It couldn't build because I didn't have the money type of thing. So there was a delay. Then we built that house. When we moved into that house, there were no carpets. I'll never forget on one occasion when Sacred Heart came around, first year we were there, first year the girls were at, one of them is at Sacred Heart. They come around with the, we'll get donations from the parents and we're convinced that they picked the people who were living in the good areas, the nice houses to get the main loads of donations. The blokes walked in and they have the chatters and it's on the concrete floor. You're sitting on wooden boxes, not white, but nearly. Then you got the impression that we're not going to give in here. We didn't. But it was tight. Yeah. See, the money was tight till I got to tape. Yeah. When I got to tape, it was still tight because I was paying for the five years of sin or non-earning in between. So what was, I mean, it sounds like there were a couple of challenging periods during that time, maybe when Mel and Jen were very young and also that time. And when you were young. Yeah. When I was young and you were transitioning, what was the toughest time and what did you learn from that period? The toughest time was probably with you around then. Yeah. Because we didn't have a house and we wanted a house. And yeah, we just didn't have the money. You were just born. So mum was not going to be working much for a while. And I think that mum might have worked 0.6 for a few years. But in the earlier years, it was 0.2s and 0.3s. It wasn't the full time for four years that was in my original budget at the time. Is she? That much I can still remember. Wow. Yeah. So we just beg, borrowed and stealed. And yeah, we have the stories like mum always paying the bills. Except when there was no money and she couldn't pay them, it came back to lead the pipe. I can't handle this. Yeah. You do. I can't do it. Yeah. Well, because there was, if you haven't got the money, you haven't got the money, you can't pay it, you get around it. So yeah, there was periods and it just, everything just seems to be tough. But there wasn't, all the way through you're playing sport, you've got your bikes, you've got whatever you need, you've got your holidays, everything was always there. So inwardly, for mum and I, yeah, it was tough. I don't think any other people knew how tough it was. That's not what we showed. Yeah. So none. And in terms of your fondest memories of our times as a family and when we were children, when Mel and Jen and I were children, what are your fondest memories of that time? That's a really hard question, the fondest memories. Mel and Jen were brought up under the rule that, yeah, you've got to scratch and do whatever you like to each other, but not when we're out. Not when we're out. And they didn't. Mel would defend Jenny when they were out, sort of thing. Yes. But not at home, or no. But there was just a rule that, a family first rule, that we don't put each other down. And so yeah, I loved it when those things happened. All my life, I'd just go and watch it and I loved it. And the family defended each other all the time. And we were just a family. Yeah. That's what a family is. And I loved it. That's what I wanted to see happen regularly. And so they're good. And then all the other little things that happen, we have a lot of fond memories or non-certified memories. And I know one time I'm over at Rottnest and my son's there with me. And we had an arrangement where all the parents would give their child $5 for the day. And all of us but one did. There was only one child whose parents broke the rule. And it wouldn't have been a Jones member. It wouldn't have been an Atkinson member. And it wouldn't have been a Popodo member if they were there. But it could have been a Rainer, because I think he was allowed more than $5. Anyway, one day my son has come up to me with a can of Coke in his hand that he had bought at the local shop. I had a rule we never paid more than 50 cents for a can of Coke. We had a lot of Coke. And I said to him, Chris, why are you spending the money on that? We've got an esky full of cold Coke here and you can have it here. And he answered me back in some fashion. I don't really remember his answer. But I do remember Stephen Jones's comment to me. The difference doesn't make 40. You've got to spend it, isn't it? His attitude was that $5 is gone and you're not getting it back, which I accepted. But it was just a different attitude. I just didn't. I thought it was a waste. But he straightened me out. He gave me a lesson in life again. So everything comes down to a perspective, son. I had no problem with you spending the $5. That's what you got it for. Just to spend it on something. And let's be $2.50 when it's here. Yeah. And I said, little things like that. I remember a number of dirty things, but nothing. The thing about it, yeah, you couldn't have had better Christmas days than we had at our house. I mean, we had everybody there. And that's when family was family again. So fortunate that probably both mum and I had the same similar feeling around family. Yes. And might have had a different opinion on what we fed them and what we should be doing and all that. But we had the same sort of fundamental points there. So that helped. Yeah. That's great. Well, thank you for that, dad. I really enjoyed the chat.