My introduction to the South Brisbane Club

We have a new Swiss electrician who started on Monday. He is Werner Utzinger and he is from Winterthur in the canton of Zürich.  He has come up from Melbourne to look for work in Brisbane. Werner tells me his father is a Police Sergeant in Winterthur. Werner and I become mates, two Swiss electricians in a strange town. He comes to my place and teaches me to cook pizza, it’s very easy he says, and he makes it look easy. Mix dough, roll it onto a pizza pan and fill it with ham, cheese, kabana and other stuff and bake it for twenty minutes. It’s great, I love pizza. I’m grateful for some new food variety.

Werner teaches me to cook Pizza

I still keep borrowing twenty dollars from Urs every week, paying him back next payday. He doesn’t mind, but insists I start working on Saturdays to earn some overtime. That’s the only way you will start saving, he says. Ok, I agree, so next Saturday morning I’m off to work. The factory is shut except the electrical workshop where we are building and wiring switchboards. Eleven o’clock Urs turns up and invites us all for lunch at the South Brisbane Club, his club he says. Brian declines, he doesn’t drink or frequent clubs. I leave my car in Carrier’s car park and get a lift with Urs.

We play snooker on company time!

It’s a nice club, the lunch is good and we have quite a bit to drink. After lunch, Urs challenges us to a snooker competition and by four o’clock we’re in full swing in more ways than one. By six o’clock Urs says he has to go and get changed to go to a party. We’re calling for cabs to get back to Carriers to pick up our cars. When we get there, the yard is shut, locked up with our cars inside.

What are we going to do? We can’t leave the cars here till Monday morning. Someone tries to phone Urs at home but there is no answer. Great what are we going to do now?

Someone phones the company accountant at home. Charles Thomas, the accountant tells us to wait; he’ll be there soon.

It’s embarrassing,  Saturday night six o’clock and the electricians are drunk with their cars locked up in the company yard. It’s moments like this I’m glad I have a language problem. Ray, who is quite familiar with drinking situations tells the accountant that we were all called on a job to a breakdown and couldn’t get back to the yard until we had solved the problem.

Yea, yeah, I believe you, the accountant says, nobody else would, he mumbles as he walks back to his car after he has unlocked the gate. Good night everybody, he adds.

I’m worried about Monday morning. Is he going to dob us in to the Manager? But then, our engineer invited us to his club.

Monday comes and nobody mentions anything. We got away with it. Urs comes to the workshop for a chat with Brian and behaves as if nothing had happened. Brian keeps quiet.

Friday my pay has increased by about thirty percent. That’s great, I even got paid for having a great time.