Personal Essay: Working the Night Shift at an Australian Blast Furnace

A job that changed me: I went off the rails in school and worked nights at a blast furnace. It was like gazing into the fiery pit of hell

It finally dawned on me that perhaps the teachers were not just getting in the way of my good times, they were actually on my side I arrived in Australia from the UK in 1983, at the sprightly age of 14. Unbeknown to me I was a historical figure, the very last of the £10 poms. My parents and I were a family full of beans about a new life but just over a year later tragedy struck when my mother was killed in a car crash. My father and I were left to carry each other in grief. We were wildly unp...

By Tony Jackson