Page:Ian Charlton.ogg/6



Reload page to restart the player. (So do you remember any of the studio projects or the design projects that you were studying, what were looking at? Was it residential projects or were they having you design?) As a student? (As a student, yes). Well, in first year we started off with a fishing hut I think. It was the very first one. Fishing huts and all there, those little jobs, they are one of the most difficult things to design, as architectural gems and everything out there. Anyway so they tossed that to us and then we gradually worked up through the course to houses, through to small warehouses and office buildings and in our last year with John Hitch we did a great big council building with all the, if you could imagine a building for the Brisbane City Council. So we certainly covered a wide range, yes. (Yep).

(When you finished the course, did you go straight into working here or did you travel?) No. No. Once again its in here if you want, but I'll talk a bit. It sounds as thought I was very arrogant student but I wasn't actually. During thrid year, I decided that I wanted to get experience overseas. So what I decided in 4th, 5th and 6th years I would get different jobs and get a different experience. So what I worked in Thine & Hitch, John Hitch, and then in the same building and downstairs was Hayes & Scott who was the gurus at the time, I managed to talk my way into there for a year, and then, because I wanted to get some experience in a big office, thats when I went to Conrad & Margret and then the moment I graduated, I virtually got married, hopped on a ship, and went to London and I worked in London for a couple of years and I have listed the offices there, James Cubit & Partners, which was one of the top design offices at the time. They previously employed Rob Gibson actually and I had actually heard of it through Rob Gibson and when I arrived on the doorstep, James Cubit himself was walking out the door and he said "Yes", Well I have just come to see if there's a position within the firm and he said "You'd be an Aussie would you?" (Laughter) and he said "Oh we've had another colonial, Gibson." (Laughter). Typical Englishman. Anyway I got the job and great experience and while I was there, I was working on Hartfordshire schools, and after the war, the English, in their typical thorough thing they had this tremendous rebuilding programme that they had to do. So what they did was that they co-ordinated steel manufacturers to do one thing, other people to produce precast concrete, and in the Hartfordshire school system, all the schools were designed under this umbrella but it was on a module obviously. They were first class buildings. You just picked the shopping list. You would do a drawing and put a C1A and that would be a certain column, a certain cladding and all the rest of it was the very sort of thing that I had never come across and I thought it was fantastic. But by the end of the year I was at the stage, even though I say so myself, I was a Hartfordshire school expert you know and I thought well Ok, that's as far as I can go and in fact I went to James Cubit and the money was very poor and I said "Well look, is there any chance of getting some more money?" and he sort of leant back in his chair and he said "Look, I'd like to but if I give you more money, I'm going to have to up all the other people." And the other people because they weren't getting much money were just sort of taking it easy so I thought Ok and thats when I went to Chay & Powell & Bond and at that stage they were in the running for the Barbican scheme and they had just finished the golden lane scheme. These are famous London Schemes. I dunno if anyone had heard of them or not. While I was there I did the working drawings and all the detailing for a block of home units in the Golden Lane scheme and at the end of the year I had already decided that to get some experience with Call In at Canada to get some experience in at the other side of the coin and those days it was common for Australians to immigrate to Canada and you had to do this in order to get a job so I put all this in train and I had to gamble on the Barbican Scheme coming off or not coming off, whether to stay and I looked at it very hard, very seriously because it looked as though it wasn't going to happen next year and so I went to Joe Chamberlain and I said "Look, you know, I think I am going to go to Canada." He said "Well look, you stay and we will double your salary." (laughter). Which is really something because in the Golden Land Scheme I had been doing models and staying up all night doing whole shooting guise but as it turned out, I am glad that I didn't because it didn't get going again for another 2 to 3 years. It was in limbo land like all these things. So then I went to Canada and I rang Dan up and Dan was working in Montreal at the time and I said "What's it like in Canada?" He said "Don't come over." He said "There's a credit squeeze on." I said "Oh, no worries." Dan was in Montreal and I was going to go to elsewhere and I said "I'll get a job shovelling snow." Well it turned out that there were people all over the place shovelling snow. So I tramped around the [What's the capital of Ontario?] in the snow for a week with a roll of drawings and getting thoroughly soaked and I came across a bloke I was working with in London and I said "Well there's a job going up in Sunbury which is about 300 miles north of a mining town." Anyway to cut a long story short, I worked there for 6 months then we found that Penny was expecting and we didn't have any medical benefits so I had to go home.