I had, yet again, become tired of travelling to the city for work. I guess the fact that the previous employer, in Gladesville, nearer home, in Ryde, had redunded me out, made me nervous about "spreading my wings" looking for a new position, again.

Maybe "Penfolds" management was sensing my need to move, and this brought about their offer of a "soon to be" promotion. However, after scanning the  "Positions Vacant", in the Sydney Morning Herald, our major newspaper, again, I was successful in getting a job and learning a new skill at  Macquarie University, at North Ryde. Being only 5 minutes in my new car from home, was the extra bonus. My new position was as a projectionist assistant in the Centre for Advancement of Teaching- part of the School of Education at Macquarie University, in North Ryde.
 
This position began at a time when I was reaching a new peak in my spiritual life. If it wasn't a peak, well, it was a period in my life when I began to take more notice of things of a spiritual nature. So over time - although I really enjoyed the time at Macquarie - I had to decide how far I was to go there.
 
One of the men with whom I worked, Charles, was a Sunday school superintendent in his private life. He had a fair way to travel to work from Hurstville, in our Southern suburbs, from the opposite end of our metropolitan area, as we were working in the Northern suburbs of Sydney. A knowledgeable person, in things electrical and film, Charles and I became good friends over time. Although we may not have agreed on all things pertaining to scripture and "denominationalism,"  I felt he was supportive of me, as a fellow believer. Near the end of my tenure at Macquarie, it was he that advised me I should have been trained in more aspects of the job, there.
 
He shared, confidentially, that I was supposed to be taught how to operate the old 35mm Cinema Projectors and the single 70mm projector they had, then, in the Macquarie Theatre. The boss had said,  mostly unbeknown to me, of course - I was too short. You should have seen him - we were about the same height.
 
However, it was a general opinion amongst other staff, that he (my manager) did not want to share all the overtime he got from running movies in the theatre at night, with some lesser mortal. I guess it never really concerned me, at that time,  as I was not aware until Charles told me, how it should have been.

My boss was the one, also, that smoked like a chimney and as someone claimed "changed the flavour of the yucky Ryde area water" by consuming tonnes of the old "Vincents APC's". (Headache powders...later withdrawn from sale as a known carcinogen.)

Alas, as a result of many nights working in this theatre, as in many others, previous to this, he became very dependent on the said cigarettes and Vincent's powders, to keep him awake.
 
One of the other inconsistencies about the man was that he was the local union branch president as well as my boss. In the NSW Public Service, which Macquarie University was funded under and the overall employer of all staff, it was considered necessary to join the relevant Union. I am not sure it was compulsory, and up to this time, I had never been a member of a Trade Union.  I think I joined to keep relationships "sweet" in the workplace.

 The "conflict of interest" if you like, of my boss, also being the local branch president may not appear to you to have been a problem. However, as a result of a certain issue of staff parking in the university carpark, it caused quite a deal of confusion for me. You see, the union branch had voted to refuse to pay the parking fee the university wanted us to pay - we were told to write a letter to the Bursar of the Uni, refusing to pay it.
 
At a subsequent meeting, they changed the branch direction from "writing to the Bursar", to "sending the letters of refusal to pay through the branch secretary" - not individually by us to the Bursar. My boss had me set down to work, at the time of the subsequent meeting and did not tell me about the change.

So I, dutifully, sent the letter of refusal to the Bursar.  As a result, I was called down to the Bursar's office in the company of my boss/branch president. I even asked him...

"In which capacity are you accompanying me?" -  but I got no response. Fortunately, it didn't work out too bad, after all, but it certainly left a bad taste in my mouth about unions for a while.


When I worked at Mac Uni, the Red Cross brought the Blood Bank Bus, with all its equipment into the big E7 building. I loved donating blood, back in those days but these days I am on so many meds I doubt the blood bank would be interested. They started on my right arm, that day at the Uni. The thing is, I am left handed and they had a real job getting flow from my right arm. I then suggested they go to my left arm and all was ok. 

Sometime after this, I went to donate in Parramatta, opposite the Tax Office Building in George Street, in the early '90s, where I then worked. However, as above, all my drugs and stuff I was already on, precluded me giving that day too.
 

I learned a lot about "campus culture", or university lifestyle, in my time at Macquarie.  The outside world has absolutely no understanding of some of the things that go on in the University realm. Unless of course, you have been either a staff member or a student there. We even had our famous "Occupation Of The Vice Chancellor's Office" by the students, in my time there.*

The most enjoyable thing I had to do, happened only a relatively short time before I left the university to start bible college. I think back to this as being my favourite time at Mac U. I got to do the "lighting controls" for the "Dramac Review". My job was to follow along with and carry out the programme's changes of lighting settings right through the shows. Fortunately, I got out of the initial manual setup of the lights which involved getting up on the catwalk- about twenty to thirty feet or more above the seats. I had an enormous fear of heights!

Macquarie students would put on the "Review", every year - but I had the honour of being a part of it, just that once! This was a play highly satirical of whatever issue, or event of renown, at the time, they wanted to send up. Maybe we could draw some comparisons between the 'Dramac' Reviews and Gilbert and Sullivan Operas. A satire of Government and whatever.

The year I worked in conjunction with the review a lot of the music was from "ABBA"! I really had a great time, "doing the lights": the temptation being, not to leave for bible college. Guessing there would have been many other opportunities to do this work, later. There was, however, an over-riding consideration -- at that time, anyway.

On a number of occasions, during my time at Macquarie, there would be material I had to run (on 16mm film) for lectures which, quite strongly conflicted with my newly adopted spiritual position. Some of the "Behavioural Science" material quite seriously went in opposites to my beliefs. I suppose that was good in one way-- at least I had to think about where I stood on a lot of the issues presented. However, only being in the session to run the movies, I couldn't really judge whether current thought, at the time, would agree or disagree with these philosophies.

I could have, till fairly recently probably recited, completely, "B.F. Skinner's Behaviour Theory in Practice"; "Reinforcement Therapy" and "The Attica Prison Riot!" I ran them for lectures so many times. As a matter of fact, I would have run some of these programmes 35 to 50 times, for different groups over the three years I was employed at the university.

During the breaks at the end of terms and yearly shut-downs, we were often involved in pulling communication and video cables, underground, from one end of the university to the other. Apart from that, and some Summer Schools run for different Departments where our services were required -- there was quite a bit of free time during the summer shut down.

It was during this period in 1975, I wrote three of my now, four "Christian" Christmas carols. I sent them to a publisher in Sydney - and had them returned, in a week! I also sent them to three publishers in the USA and got much the same response from two of them. The third one, John T Benson in Nashville, Tennessee, (now known as just 'Benson's) was the only publisher to give me some advice on how to get my work published, or accepted for publication. My "Really Truly Christmas Carols" are here on Fanstory for anyone interested.

There were some Christian Student Groups on Campus. One of these was the "Student Life" Movement, a group run by the "Lay Institute For Evangelism," an arm of Campus Crusades For Christ Founded by Bill Bright. I got involved with this group and went to a camp with them during one of the Uni breaks. I went also as the Camp projectionist, with equipment on loan from our Department. We ran "Ben Hur" in Cinemascope (Wide Screen)on 16 mm with an Anamorphic lens for the 'Wide Screen effect" and a screen made from a large sheet across the dining room. I was reminded only recently, that I also gained a "nickname" at the camp.

The Bible studies were led by a Lance McClintock and most of the students were equipped with "JB Phillips" Translations of the Bible. During one of the studies Lance commented on a point he was making saying that the part we were looking at "literally meant" such and such! I forget what passage we were in, but I looked at my KJV translation and shouted...
"Hey, that is exactly what my bible says!" So from that time onwards for the rest of the camp, I became known as the "KJV" man!

I went off to sleep on a number of occasions while running the movies in the Theatres and lecture halls. I know one day during my snoozing, it turned out I had selected a WRONG SIZED take-up reel. So here is the movie running along. Me snoozing and, on waking, seeing the 'taken up' film still nicely in line. But way over the limit of the take-up reel, I had chosen. Perhaps I proceeded to the end of the movie or we stopped the film. So long ago...I was behind the screen in a rear projection lecture theatre, so the class or lecturer had absolutely no idea of the crisis occurring in my "projection room."