are concentrating too much time on going up the ladder instead of being content with doing a job.
I am probably fortunate in that there is only one other person with a job like mine, so even though I am answerable to other people I am virtually my own boss. One of the big drawcards that has kept me here is the fact that I have job satisfaction in my own work and at tlze same time it is also my hobby. I can happily say that when I come to work I don't consider the boundaries of 8am-4pm as my zuorking time - I can quite often take my work outside and don't consider it work.
Therefore they were hesitant to use materials that they didn't know anything about. They needed training and Pat Greely, a lecturer in audiovisual media, not only taught the trainee teachers, he also taught the lecturers to be more aware of the use of audiovisual equipment and materials in the classroom. I was a follow-up service to the lecturers, especially for those who didn't want to operate the gear but wanted to use the facilities tlzat the gear could offer.
Audiovisual equipment demonstration
It is now a big concern - the other campuses all have a11diovisual services, but on a smaller scale. Kelvin Grove not only has the normal classroom service, we also provide a central service for all ca111p11scs in production and technical maintenance. We arc able to provide more polished productions on photography and video - we have a full TV studio. I have a more professional photographic studio than the other campus.
A lot of incoming work from other campuses that comes here to me and q11ite often I get called to another campus to do photographic work.
The College was very good to me - in 1973 I broke my back and was told then that I would not be able to walk for quite a while. While I was lying at home recovering and my sick leave was due to run out, I received a message from the Campus Principal saying that
if
I could get somebody to drive me to the College they would provide me with a bed and a TV set and put me back on the payroll. Gradually, I could get up and work as I got strength backin my body. Because of that attitude I have tried to put 110°/o of myself into the College since then; very rarely do I turn down requests for out-of-hours work because in the early days they were good to me.
In the Education Department in the late seventies photography was an elective area. It stopped in 1979 when I had surgery again on my spine and I didn't go back to it because the doctors didn't want me standing on my feet. Just prior to the operation the students would all crowd themselves around the bed and I would give the lecture. Now I am a full-time photographer here, with some part-time T AFE teaching.
Sometimes we worked very long hours. They were in my single days - wizen I could become so involved in what I was doing that I very rarely took note of the time.
I am a family man now and I am more conscious of the time. It does not necessarily mean that I am keen to leave what I am doing, but I have a built-in alarm that says my wife is sitting at home waiting.
Most of my contact now is with staff, rather than students. I am working at present with one of the Home Ee lecturers on food photography for magazines. I work with the lecturer - she teaches the content side to a class and then the students come and work closely with me on setting and preparing the food for photography. And I then actually take the photos of the food and they fill up a folio with those photographs to complement the written material they need to present for their assignments.
Hi-tech at Kelvin Grove, late eighties
Occasionally I run little workshops in here for staff on photography and I run a unit on photography at Griffith University for Artworks.
I used to have a lot of contact with the other activities on campus, in particular with the Flying Arts School, I photographed a lot of the paintings that were brought down or duplicated slides for them. For 4MBS the only work I do is occasionally a little bit of promotional work. Also some work for the College newsletter.
In the early days, when I was a teenager, I was closely involved with the inter-college snooker championships and many times when I should have possibly been up in the dark room, I was up practising. I got into the College team at one stage.
I have always enjoyed teaching and I have always enjoyed the instructional side of things so those years that I was instructing photography in Education in an honorary capacity, I found those years the most rewarding.
One big publication I am tied up with is the Who's Who? It is a book of all the staff within BCAE. It is a little publication, with a mug shot of each person in a particular department, and indicates what the person's job is, which campus they're on, and also little titbits, like hobbies and that sort of thing. That is an on-going thing, updated every couple of years; I have all of the staff come down here to have a proper studio portrait taken, which is used for many purposes round the University.
Material from an interoiew with Susan Pechey in 1990.