Blog No. 270 – Successfully Dealing With Terrible Situations, Part 6 – 6 June 2025

My purpose is to give hope to those who have lost hope. Without hope, we remain lost in the Shadow Lands.

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Although I had passed my exams and had qualified to get my university degree, I still had to find a job and make sure I was able to take care of my new family.

I was offered a job selling life insurance on a commission basis, but apart from selling insurance, the only real job offer came from the Commonwealth Public Service.  The CPS offered me a job in Canberra but it did not start until March 1970.

I had to find work long before then

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Margaret and I danced at the wedding of my son Chris.  It was a very good day.

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Chris and Mary on their wedding day in 2009.

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Chris with my daughter Sian on Chris’s wedding day – three people who were all very close and closely related.

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In the face of fear, be daring, In the face of anxiety, trust, In the face of impossibility, begin Forget misery and do your best, If there is ignorance, give knowledge If there is disillusionment, give purpose, Where there are so many reasons for concern,  Reject despair. When failure beckons, hold on to hope, When facing death,  Believe in your own future life, Always give the sacred gift that money cannot buy Give Love Always

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To do the impossible, we have to keep going when “common sense” says we should give up.

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Go with a clear, open and receptive spirit, and the universe will not treat you badly.”

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“With You” – Sung by Jai Jagdeesh Love opens up the day Guides us on our way Illuminates the path we are to walk Love lifts us high Precious love we hold In the centre of the soul My love embraces you Long after we have said our goodbye

Margaret radiated love.  She taught me the meaning of love – simply by always living when she gave so generously to everyone he met.  I insisted this song be played as I wept at her funeral.

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My first job after finishing the exams was as an unskilled labourer with a company called Presha Engineering.  My job involved wrapping asbestos around boilers to insulate them.  The main products made by Presha were boilers.  Dad had made boilers at Presha since 1961 and worked with a large amount of asbestos before dying from mesothelioma (sometimes called asbestosis).  Asbestos is a deadly substance.

Presha ran out of work for me after 4 weeks.  It was Christmas 1969 and most factories including Presha closed down over the Christmas holiday.

My next job was also a labouring one - this time with a company called  Noble & Son.  Noble & Son made wire cables and one day I was ordered to cut a thick steel cable with a contraption made by the company.  An angle grinder had been fixed into a frame and a foot pedal was added.  By pressing down on the foot pedal, the angle grinder came into contact with the wire rope and cut it.

The cutting edge on the angle grinder consisted of sandpaper discs and sandpaper discs disintegrate under pressure.  While I was cutting cables with the angle grinder, the centre of the sandpaper disc disintegrated and the disc (minus the centre bit) whizzed past my ear at about a million miles per second.  It would have disintegrated my head if it had been just a fraction closer.

When I refused to use the contraption any more, I was told to go home and not come back.  

I was glad to have been fired instead of being killed by the flying disc.

Next, I worked as a labourer with Pethard Industries.  This job involved wrapping cladding around metal pipes so they could be insulated.  In those days, Ford Motor Company used to make cars in a Melbourne suburb called Broadmeadows.  The cladding needed at the Ford factory had to be wrapped around pipes that were about 1 foot, 6 inches in diameter (45.72cm) – and they were about 20 feet (6.096 meters) in the air just underneath the roof.

It was a scary job.  

A long ladder was placed against the pipe way up there in the ceiling and I used to climb the ladder with my arms loaded with cladding stuff – and then crawl along the pipe to the spot where the next load of cladding had to be installed.  The cladding was made of fibreglass and a thin metal skin had to be wrapped around the fibreglass to hold it in place.  

There were no safety harnesses and if I fell I would break my back and die.

The fibreglass worked its way into every piece of clothing I wore; it was agonising the way it irritated my skin..

It was a job though and I was paid a wage.

I used to hitchhike to Broadmeadows every day to start on the job.  The Morris Minor had irretrievably broken down by January 1970.

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Becoming a lawyer was now out of reach.  I needed to earn money to support my family.

Times were hard, but times were hard for all working men and their families back then.

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Terrible situations can be overcome.  Whatever you do, do not panic.

Add meaning to your life by acting with purpose.

When you add meaning to your life, the way out of the terrible situations becomes clearer.

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I refused to panic.

I worked towards the new goals I had set.  My wife and soon to be born child needed every piece of my love and care.  I would never let them down.

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I will tell you more tomorrow.

Blog No. 269 – Successfully Dealing With Terrible Situations, Part 5 – 4 June 2025

My purpose is to give hope to those who have lost hope. Without hope, we remain lost in the Shadow Lands.

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When I finished the last Blog, I had just passed the exams needed to graduate with a degree from Monash University.

I passed the exams by refusing to panic and by mapping out the only course of action that I thought might enable me to graduate.

There were some significant obstacles to overcome before I ever had the opportunity to sit the exams.

Today, I will talk about the Hong Kong Flu.  It should have killed me, but I threw it off me so I could do something I had to do.

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It rains a lot in Ireland and Margaret loved going to Ireland – so we went as often as we could scrape the money together.  It poured with rain when I walked in this forest in Ireland on the 13th of December 2017.  We were hoping for a White Christmas.

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Margaret always wanted to spend Christmas in Ireland so I surprised her and we went to Ireland before Christmas, 2017.  I took this photo on the 13th of December 2017.  Margaret loved Christmas in a country where it rained and was cold.  At home, a cool Christmas Day is one where the temperature does not rise above 30 degrees Celsius.  We do get Christmases like this, but not often.

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I found a plaque to one of Ireland’s greatest women in the forest when I walked in the rain on the 13th of December 2016.  The plaque to Nano Nagle reads:

In the face of fear, she chose to be daring, In the face of anxiety, she chose to trust, In the face of impossibility, she chose to begin To universal misery She proposed ministry to person, To ignorance, knowledge To disillusionment, tenacity of purpose, and to multiple vexations,  singleness of heart Faced with failure, she held fast to hope, Faced with death,  she believed in a living future, and programme for that future she gave in one word, love

I agree with every word the plaque says.  You do not have to be a saint to do the impossible, but you do have to keep going when you want to lie down and give up.

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Go with a clear, open and receptive spirit, and the universe will not treat you badly.”

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I got the Hong Kong Flu before I was able to sit my exams at the end of 1969.  It was a terrible illness.  As far as I can see, it was much worse than the covid pandemic in 2020.  This is what Wiki says about the Hong King Flu.

The Hong Kong flu, also known as the 1968 flu pandemic, was an influenza pandemic that occurred between 1968 and 1970 and which killed between one and four million people globally. It is among the deadliest pandemics in history, and was caused by an H3N2 strain of the influenza A virus. …. The pandemic reached Australia in September 1968, resulting in a severe epidemic among the general population of the Northern Territory; however, no further outbreaks were reported elsewhere until the following year. Generally mild outbreaks began to be reported in mid-May 1969. In Melbourne, influenza broke out in the suburbs in mid-June, developing into an epidemic that peaked about 20 July and had subsided by mid-August. In Sydney, the disease broke out at the beginning of July and continued into August. Another epidemic, more widespread and severe than the first, afflicted the Northern Territory in 1969.

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My fiancée came to visit me in my tiny flat in Elsternwick after she finished work on Friday 10 October 1969.  I was feeling unwell when she arrived but I still met her at the local railway station.

Shortly after she arrived, my health deteriorated rapidly.

The Hong Kong flu had been bringing much misery to Melbourne, including death.

I had Hong Kong Flu and I was very ill indeed.

As I lay on the bed, I had a very high fever.  

My friend wiped my face with a damp towel.  

I needed to have my face washed because the fever was making me sweat.  As I lay feeling terrible, I watched as steam rose around my face.  The fever had made my face so hot that the sweat was evaporating off my face.  I have never heard of this happening since then, but I know this happened to me.

I wondered how my fiancé was going to get home.  It was a cold, wet Friday night in Melbourne.  If she travelled home alone, it would be a dangerous trip indeed.  I decided I could not let her go home by train, even though she insisted she would be fine on the train.  It would not be a single train journey.  She would have to get a train to Melbourne, change stations, get another train and then wait for a bus to take her home from the station.

The only safe way for my fiancé to get home was if I drove her in my Morris Minor.

Before I could drive her home, I had to finish the fever, stop sweating, stop evaporating sweat into the air and get out of bed.

Half an hour later, I was driving her home.

We arrived safely and I collapsed onto a bed.

I banished the fever for the time I needed to banish it – just long enough to do the 40 minute drive to get my fiancé home.

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Terrible situations can be overcome.  Whatever you do, do not panic.

Add meaning to your life by acting with purpose.

When you add meaning to your life, the way out of the terrible situations becomes clearer.

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I will tell you more tomorrow.

Blog No. 268 – Successfully Dealing With Terrible Situations, Part 4 – 3 June 2025

My purpose is to give hope to those who have lost hope. Without hope, we remain lost in the Shadow Lands.

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After two weeks sleeping in the Morris Minor, I got a Saturday job at the Queen Victoria Market in Melbourne.  It paid me $8.00 and that was the total money I had available to survive on. $8 counting for inflation would have been $117.40 in 2024 according to the RBA. 

Even in 1969, $8.00 was nothing like enough money to survive on – but because this was all I had to survive on, the $8.00 had to be enough.

So, $8.00 per week was enough.

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Margaret in the morning before we got married for the second and third times – 30 July 2009.  I was overjoyed she had survived the long trip from Adelaide because her health was abysmal.

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Some decades after I had survived being made homeless by mum, I visited her childhood home in Bootle, Liverpool.  Mr Smith had lived next door to mum when she was growing up.  Mr Smith still lived in the same house when I visited in 2002.  Mr Smith remembered mum as a young girl.

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The Liver Building is still the most impressive building in Liverpool.  I stood in front of the Liver Building in 2002.  It was built to house an insurance company.  There are very few parts of Liverpool that instantly attract the label “pretty”.  Liverpool is a gritty town where life can be hard.  Those who live there are inherently kind because their lives have mostly been so very hard.

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Go with a clear, open and receptive spirit, and the universe will not treat you badly.”

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I had bought the Morris Minor on the very day that mum threw me out of home.  To become owner of the car, I had to pay $5.00 per week.

At least for the first two weeks, having the Morris Minor proved to be a blessing because it ensured I had somewhere to sleep.

Once I started working in the Market, I had $3.00 per week to live on after I made the car payment.

Financially, life was hard.

Luckily for me, a friend decided to move out of home and he rented a tiny flat.  He let me live in his flat for zero rent.

I was able to stop living in the Morris Minor and I had somewhere safe to sleep.

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My attendance at lectures was more miss than hit and miss.  I needed to get the degree, but my physical environment was poor – and my morale was even poorer.

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The final exams arrived in the blink of an eye and I had barely attended lectures in any of my subjects.

I needed to pull off at least four miracles if I wanted to graduate with a Bachelor of Jurisprudence.

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I did not read for the exam in Politics.  I decided I would trust what I picked up from the media and hope for the best.

I passed Politics 1.

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I studied hard for Constitutional Law.  I got a copy of the course outline and asked myself what questions I would ask if I was an examiner.  I then wrote out the answers to those four questions.  The exam was “open book” so I could take anything I wanted into the exam.  I knew nothing except what was in my model answers to my model questions.

I passed Constitutional Law even though I needed a mark of at least 62.25% out of the 80 marks available for the exam questions.

Every question I had decided would probably be on the exam paper, was in fact in the exam paper.  I had come out of the exam thinking I might have just passed it. 

Clear thinking, a refusal to panic and simple determination enabled me to pull off the impossible.

I passed Constitutional Law at Monash in 1969.

I studied Constitutional Law once again at University of Adelaide in 1984.  In 1984, I was the top student in the subject and was awarded the Howard Zelling Prize in Constitutional Law.  Howard Zelling was a very eminent South Australian Supreme Court Judge.

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I studied the course outline in Property Law and ignored Professor Jackon’s “Principles of Property Law”.  I could not understand what the professor was trying to say.  I concentrated on the course outline, selected four model questions that I decided were likely to be set in the exam … and hoped.  I knew nothing except what was in my model answers.

I got lucky again.  The questions I had set myself were in the exam and I transcribed my model answers to my own model questions. 

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That left Administrative Law – the only subject where I had consistently attended the lectures.

I was given a Credit for my Administrative Law exam.

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If you are in a terrifying situation, this is my advice.

NEVER panic.

If you panic, you will always fail.

While you are making sure you are not panicking, think through a plan that involves the least work needed to obtain your goal.

Follow your least effort plan to the letter.  

Never deviate from your plan just because you are in a panic and convinced the plan has no chance of success.

You have already worked out that your ONLY chance of success is to follow your plan.  If you are going to fail anyway, follow your plan.  You will at least have a chance if you do that.  If you are going to fail without the plan, there is nothing to lose if you actually follow the plan.

Trust yourself and refuse to panic.

The worst that can happen is that you will fail knowing you have given yourself a chance to pull off a surprise success.

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Terrible situations can be overcome.  Whatever you do, do not panic.

Add meaning to your life by acting with purpose.

When you add meaning to your life, the way out of the terrible situations becomes clearer.

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I will tell you more tomorrow.

Blog 267 – Successfully Dealing With Terrible Situations, Part 3 – 1 June 2025

My purpose is to give hope to those who have lost hope. Without hope, we remain lost in the Shadow Lands.

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Because I had zero money, I had to continue sleeping in the Morris Minor for the first two weeks after mum threw me out of home.

My most urgent needs were simple enough.

I needed to find a job that enabled me to have at least some money.

I needed to find somewhere to live that I could afford on my income of zero.

I needed to attend my university lectures often enough to be able to pass the examinations at the end of the year and graduate with a degree

I tried not to panic even though my whole being desperately wanted to panic.

Somehow I knew that in this terrible situation, I needed to come up with a plan – and that would be impossible if I panicked.

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I loved Margaret pretty much from the first moment I ever met her.  This photo was taken at Victor Harbor in South Australia when we sneaked out of town for a weekend away.  Margaret was fun loving and so generous with her wisdom and knowledge.  She brought joy to everyone she met.

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The love that Margaret and I shared was complete magic.  I cannot imagine how she could possibly have loved me more or how I could possibly have loved her more.  This photo dates from 1999.

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Even my family loved being with Margaret.  This photo shows me, Margaret and Peter Hankin in 1999.  Could any two people have possibly been more in love with each other?  I had won First Prize in the Mega Lottery and I definitely knew it.

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Go with a clear, open and receptive spirit, and the universe will not treat you badly.”

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In 1969 I was sleeping in my Morris Minor, I was studying third year law at Monash University in Clayton, Victoria and I needed a job that would not prevent me from getting a degree at the end of 1969.

I was 19, I had zero money and I had no idea what I ought to do.

I decided that sleeping in the car worked, so until I found somewhere more permanent to sleep, I would keep sleeping in the car.

As for finding somewhere more permanent, my options were very limited.  I would ask friends to let me sleep at their homes and I did ask.  Unfortunately, most of the people I knew then were still living in their family homes.  Not many parents wanted to have a stray university student sleep on the floor in their son’s bedroom.

I tried attending lectures. It was impossible for me to take in what the lecturers were saying.  I was enrolled in four subjects:

• Politics 1;

• Administrative Law;

• Constitutional Law; and 

• Property Law

I estimated that if I kept up with the news, I ought to be able to pass Politics 1 even if I missed most of the lectures.  I began skipping most of the Politics 1 lectures because I was too mixed up to take in what the lecturers were saying.  In any event, Politics was so boring.

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The lectures in Administrative Law were the usual boring legal lectures, but I was able to force myself to keep going because I sort of understood what the lecturers were talking about.

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Constitutional Law was almost impossible.  I had no idea what the lecturers were talking about and my brain refused to make sense of the subject.

Shortly after I became homeless, I had to submit a written essay on constitutional Law that was worth 20% of the maximum 100% available in the subject.  I submitted nothing.  I understood nothing and I was definitely panicking.  Because I did not submit the assignment, I needed to somehow get my 50% pass mark by getting a much better than average result on my final exam..

I was in big trouble with constitutional law.  I would need a significant miracle to pass the subject – and if I did not pass Constitutional Law, I could not get a degree.

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The lecturer in Property Law was Professor David Jackson who had written a book called Principles of Property Law.  The book was a dense legal work that probably only Professor Jackson was really able to understand.  I certainly had no idea what Jackson was trying to teach me and many of the other students in the lectures seemed to understand as little as me.

The whole concept of property law was impossible for me to grasp – and Professor Jackson’s lectures did nothing to help me understand.  My homelessness was definitely having an impact on my ability to study.

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It was two weeks before I found a job and that job paid $8.00 for working on a Saturday at the Victoria Market.

At about the same time I got a job, a friend found a flat and told me I could share the bedroom with him.  He knew I was unable to pay any rent.

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My situation was still desperate and terrifying, but not quite as bleak as it had been.

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Terrible situations can be overcome.  Try not to panic.

Add meaning to your life by acting with purpose.

When you add meaning to your life, the way out of the Pit becomes clearer.

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I will tell you more tomorrow.