Another one bites the dust

When Terry Anderson worked his last day for the Department of Housing in September 2002, he took with him decades of fond and a few frustrating memories.

Even though retiree Terry started with the Commission as a kid, he still vividly recalled his racing nerves when he retired 41 years later. “I was a freckly-faced kid from the bush, on my way to the first day in the office,” he said.

When he was told he'd be working for the Queensland Housing Commission, he didn't even know what it was. “I finished school at Kingaroy on the Friday and started work on the Monday, so Mum had a mad dash out to the shops to buy me a new wardrobe,” he said. It was a collection Terry thought pretty impressive for 1961.

“My first pair of long pants – I think they were called stove-pipe slacks.”

What followed was a work history so diverse that the dates he started and finished in certain sections are but a blur. But something he vividly recalls is the direct contact with hundreds of tenants that many of his roles in the 'early years' involved. A work environment he described as frustrating, rewarding and sometimes “stressful as hell”.

“Here I was a 16-year-old just out of school and I had to sort out these people's money problems when I couldn't control my own money,” he said.

“You'd come across extreme cases of hardship, terrible stories and you would empathise with these people and often have to tell them a house was a year away – that was the hardest.” But it was a different story when he was the bearer of good news. “You'd think – 'you beauty!' It was a great feeling.”

Well before computers and hand-held calculators, when everything was done by hand, Terry tackled old adding machines he had to crank up a bit like a poker machine.

Decades before flexible working hours, Terry recalls having to sign in for work each day. “And if you were the poor bloke who missed your ride, then you had no hope,” he said. “You had to beat the City Hall clock chime 9 – it was a big thing.”

Another big thing was the change to decimal currency on 14 February 1966 . Terry was part of a team which worked the entire weekend changing about 30,000 rental and loan accounts from pounds, shilling and pence to the 'new money' – dollars and cents. “It was a tremendous operation and it was all done by hand, individually, card by card.”

Before moving to 111 George Street and later 133 Mary Street, Terry enjoyed 33 years in the same “wonderful, old building” with lots of timber and marble and at least 10 exits Terry can remember. It was a building with traffic noise sometimes so loud he couldn't hear himself on the phone.

All those years later, Terry still remembers it was only two minutes from his desk to the front bar of the old Gresham Hotel.