I was secretary to a ‘top man’ for twenty-five years. Then, as so often happens in large organisations, there were changes and he left, together with three of the four ‘top men’. That left me holding the cards. I was not holding the power, but I had the information – quite a lot of information.  I inherited my boss’ successor, a man I had loathed for twenty years. He was as nice as could be to me for about six months, then he thought he knew the job. I saw the writing on the wall. One day I decided I could stand it no longer, so I packed my belongings in a paperbag and walked out of a job of twenty-five years without any recognition or reward. There was no golden handshake for the secretary.

So, there I was, out on the streets and in middle-age. I turned to a competely different life. Some time earlier, a friend who ran a small business college rang me in desperation, saying: The shorthand teacher hasn’t turned up. Can you come to help us out?’ I replied: ‘I’ve never taught anybody anything in my life.’ Her response: ‘Well, you know your stuff. Will you come?’ I went, and found I liked it. I began looking around new and secondhand bookshops for whatever books were available on teaching, and particularly Pitman’s shorthand, which I had taught myself long ago. I bought every book Pitman’s College in England had ever published. This was my recreation.

I was fifty-four. Fortunately, I didn’t look my age, so I put my age back ten years, a sensible move. It meant I had no memory lapses about dates: instead of saying you were born in 1904, you said you were born in 1914. When I hear people remark, with a curl of the lip, about women’s ‘vanity’ in reducing their age, I recommend they try to get a job at forty-five or fifty-five. They will soon discover they need to lower their age. Vanity runs a poor second to necessity.

One morning I was on my way out when the telephone rang. A woman asked: ‘Have you read the “Daily Telegraph”?’ ‘I never read the rag.’ ‘Well, you’d better.’ She read out an advertisement. The “Telegraph” wanted a full-time teacher for the cadet journalists. At that time the Australian Journalists Association (AJA) insisted that everything but advertisements must be done by a cadet or a journalist. The cadets often did work that could be done by a clerk or a typist: television programmes, jury lists, weather information, you name it. But really good cadets wouldn’t stay for six months under those conditions. If after a fortnight you don’t give a cadet a job really worth having, she or he will be out. So I was given the nod to teach them all shorthand, to improve their training.

Before I came in to teach, the cadets had been sent out to shorthand classes. It didn’t work. Any journo – cadet or otherwise – woud sooner be in a pub than in a college or anywhere else, for that matter. Next they tried ‘in house ‘ training: the man who was head of the state parliamentary gallery was called in to teach the cadets on a Monday, when Parliament wasn’t sitting That worked fairly well. Nonetheless there were problems for some trainee journalists, who worked at weekends and had to have Monday off, so missed the lessons. The AJA then began demanding the cadets have a real opportunity to learn. The “Telegraph” called in another bloke to help, but he said: ‘I’m not having anything to do with it unless you get a proper teacher and a proper classroom’, and a proper this, that and the other. So that was how they took me on.

The first day, the cadets didn’t appear to be happy with the idea of lessons. There were eight of them, gazing everywhere except at the front of the room and me. I had a beautifully appointed classroom: white boards and blackboards and pin boards and flourescent lights – you name it. I had charts done. Money was no object.

Generally I got on well with the cadets. Jeff took me out to the dogs one night, giving me a winner in every race. I was invited to the wedding of another. Doug Parkinson, the singer, ran up 11 flights of stairs to see me because he was put on to weekend work, which interfered with his singing in pubs. What should he do, he asked. ‘You’re a big boy now. You’ve got to make up your mind.’ He turned in his cadetship. He probably made more money singing, anyway. Murray White was twenty-seven when the chief political writer in the state gallery died from cancer rather suddenly. Murray took over. ‘Congratulations,’ I said to him. ‘You did it, you know,’ he replied. ‘Oh, come off it, I had some good material to work on.’ ‘No, when I came in to this paper, I had no intention of being a political writer, and you kept at me to be one. Now I am.’

A lot of journos use politics as a stepping stone to other fields. I told them all to go into politics. That was the only area where there was a future. A cadet can run after ambulances;  would they pay an ‘A’ Grade reporter to do that? No way. I had no luck persuading girls to do politics. Pity. Maybe they weren’t given the chance.

One cadet, David Hill went on to become executive producer with Channel 9’s “Wide World of Sports”, then Murdoch took him over to Britain for Sky Channel. Many years later at a party I tapped him on the arm and said: ‘David, do you remember the day I threw you out of my classroom for giving me …’ He recognised me immediately, and took me around the room to meet his children. He told them: ‘This lady taught Daddy.’ The children looked at me as if I were the pyramids.

Frank Packer eventually sold the “Telegraph”. He kept the magazines, but sold the papers to Murdoch. I was with Murdoch for two further years, then I had a coronary. I was well into my sixties by this time. By the calendar, it was the seventies …

Artemis Publishing (c) 1998

Ethel Kirsop ws born on 16 December 1904 on the Scottish Border, of a long line of Border Scots. At twelve years, she emigrated with her family to South Australia, ten years later moving with them to Sydney, en route to the United States. This last move did not transpire: she and her family remained in New South Wales. Passionate about music, gardening, reading, travel, the cinema, watching cricket, tennis, eating, politics and anything grabbing her interest, Ethel Kirsop dedicated herself to adult education and progressing her firm conviction that conditions will be made better for women, by getting more women into Parliament.

Editor’s Note: This is an extract from Ethel Kirsop, ‘Not According to the Calendar’ in “Glorious Age – Growing Older Gloriously”, edited by Jocelynne A. Scutt, published by Artemis Publishing, Melbourne, 1998.