I was sacked from my job and thrilled about it

If you need any manual labour done, don’t call Phil Brown. It was the one job he was happy to be sacked from.

There are two words that strike fear into my heart whenever I hear them.

Manual labour. Even writing them gives me the heebie-jeebies. When I’m asked how I like being a journalist I always say : “It’s better than working for a living.”

What I mean is that it’s better than toiling all day with a pick and shovel.

And I know because I did a lot of that when I was young.

Phil Brown wasn’t keen on his profession as a brickie’s labourer: Picture: AAP/ Ric Frearson

I have mentioned before that my dad had a quarry when I was a teenager and I spent holidays working there ... or shirking work there.

Did a dry cleaner borrow my jacket?

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It was hard dusty yakka and my favourite bit was assisting the powder monkey when he was setting his charges and blowing up stuff. Rocks that is.

I also used to do some mowing to earn extra money and that wasn’t such hard work.

After school I got a job working on the construction of the Hinze Dam and that was horrendous pick and shovel stuff building the foundations for the dam wall. It was like something out of Spartacus and I was thrilled when they sacked me.

Then I took a gap year before uni, went to Sydney and spent several months working for a couple of uncles who were in the building business around Sydney’s northern beaches.

For a time I was a brickie’s labourer working with a German bloke who had married my aunty’s sister. I made mud and wheeled barrows and carried bricks. We started work at 7am and finished at 3pm and then I would go surfing.

Manual labour is hard work, Phil Brown discovered.

I also did random tasks when required and one day my uncle and his foreman dropped me at a site at Mona Vale where I was to dig a trench for some footings for a home extension. They put up a string line for me to follow and left me there and I dug all bloody day in my King Gee shorts and blue singlet.

It was hot as Hades and when they came back to pick me up at the end of the day I was exhausted but proud of my work. But my uncle took one look at it and shook his head. “You bloody idiot!”” he said.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“It’s crooked!” he shouted. They called it the “banana trench”.

Not long after that I went off to study journalism which was probably best for all concerned.