Mick Dolman

And then I got to Portland and he sent me home via train or whatever the case was at the time.

He hoped that that experience would get rid of my interest in going away to sea.

It didn't.

It actually made me more and more intense on getting away to sea.

You thought this is the life, did you?

This is the life.

Yeah.

Luxury.

Bloody luxury.

Why was it luxury?

Well, at home, I shared a bedroom with three other brothers.

And there was no privacy.

There was no nothing.

And once I got out of Dufton and ended up in Newcastle at the deckboy school, a famous institution for deckboys, one thing we learnt living in a pub on our own was

The access to the bar on a Sunday was via the lift whale.

And you'd go down the lift whale, the little fellas would open it up and then you'd help yourself to a few grogs and then back to work on Monday.

It is.

The world opened up for me.

And then I joined the ship, the Solon, which was a shell tanker, one of the biggest on the coast at the time.

And I got a train down to Geelong.