Retirement

It was starting to get a bit browned off, like it was getting a bit monotonous, but after seven years it was good, and after that I thought oh hell what am I doing. I wanted to change jobs because I’d been doing that for seven years. You know everybody you’re going to associate with on the settlements. They were all good people. I never had problems. Good travelling. You can drive from here down to Port Keats, good run, stop at Peppimenarti and Palumpa and Daly River. It was good.

So retirement wasn’t a difficult – some people, their whole identity is caught up with their work, but it doesn’t sound like you –

It didn’t worry me. I prepared myself years before about retiring, financial ways and social-wise. My father retired from work. He worked all his life in the one job. He was an engineer. He served his apprenticeship there and he finished up, and he retired from work, he sat down and died. He had nothing to do. He’d sit at home bored stiff, depressed. He wouldn’t do anything. So he just sat down and died. No, no, that’s not going to happen to me. I learned a very good lesson from that. Get yourself involved.

I’ve enjoyed my retirement, I keep busy and I’m able to do things that I hadn’t been able to do. Going to gym, I’d never been able to have time to do that so now I can just schedule it in and go. And I keep up my interest in seniors, senior Territorians, and my interest with children and education, I’m just able to do that now.

See I enjoyed my work life. There were not many years of my life that I haven’t worked. I worked until I was 24 then I had three kids. Then I went back to work when the youngest was six. Then I worked right up until I retired at about, I think I was 65 or something like that when I retired, so I’ve worked all my life. And it’s been interesting because you meet people, but the difference between working for volunteer and other, I had to give up work due to financial things. Because my partner’s firm was closed down and he was told on a Monday that they were closing down on a Friday, end of story. No job for him. So that’s fine. I worked for a couple more years but due to the rules and regulations I wasn’t able to get help regarding a pension card so I had to give up work and that wasn’t a good- The decision was made for me and that wasn’t good.

Well, there’s been a lot of changes as far as work is concerned. Because you suddenly find. And for me, for example, getting the stroke meant I left work years before I really planned to, and I think having the stroke was part of getting older.

So what changes did you notice after the stroke?

Well, I missed work like anything. It took me a long, long time, a couple of years, to sort of let go, because when you’re a teacher you get very attached to the whole environment and the children and suddenly I had no children to relate to. I didn’t mind not earning money, but I did miss the contact with colleagues and children that I worked with.

It can be, I would say – like I retired at age 69 and retirement is taken that you stop working in the major job that you’ve been doing. I didn’t want to do the major job that I was doing which was selling real estate, so I retired, but I’ve still got it for sedentary work. I think that should be taken into account, but they get this nonsense idea oh he’s 65 he’s got to go, he’s got nothing left to give. The factor of somebody who loses their job at age 50 now, they’ve got one hell of a job trying to get another job, because people just don’t want them, they’re scared to take them on because of what they’ve been taught. People over 50 are no good, and I think that’s something that we’re going to have to overcome.

Depends on who you are I suppose, but I’ve known a lot of people that have retired at 50 and had to go back into work because they get bored. I’ve trained a few ex politicians up here, they get out of parliament, can’t get a job so they go into real estate. But it’s all – it’s got to be well managed this, it’s got to be a matter of choice, if you want to retire, feel you can’t go on that has to be respected, but if you do want to go on well then they should let them. Use the people that are wanting work, I suppose every tax payers got about three dole bludgers to support in Australia.

Well I found it was great shock when at the age of about 66 or 67, it was suggested that I retire and I really grieved over retirement. I missed my fellow workers, if I called to see them at work it would be at morning tea or afternoon tea when they were not working and talking about their work and I found it very hard to be not involved in the research I was doing although a few of the papers that I was collaborating with others, were being published still but I miss the activity of being with the others.

It just wound down by itself up to a point because doctors don’t send them [patients] to people who are too old. I mean they know nothing you see, they’ve only had 30 or 40 or 50 years of experience but that doesn’t count.

But the time gets there when they say well that’s it, when you feel you can’t give enough. Because I have always found that in my work unless I’m fully involved I’m not going to do any good so when that stopped or became very difficult, not difficult but less easy to put it that way, I felt it was time to let go, it’s as simple as that.

Was that an easy decision to make?

No, I hated it but I felt it was unfair to whoever came to me.

So that’s quite unusual to be very active in your employment and your career well into your 80s, why did you want to work for so long?

First of all I needed the money, I mean this wasn’t over and above everything but it was something I needed in terms of livelihood. And other than that one of my main interests always has been people even in my own relationships or anything else, in a general form it always has.

What is it about working and your sense of self or sense of identity as you get older?

Well for me it means still being connected both to the people who are working as well as the people who come to see me. And again it’s more of an interest of people themselves, the interest in them rather than being interested in other things.

I retired at 12th of April this year at the end of term one, and I went back to the staff – it’s a very big staff, we’ve got 900, nearly 1,000 children at [the primary school], so it’s a big staff with ancillary staff, secretaries, gardeners – and I went back for the hat parade for Melbourne Cup, watching it in the staff room, and I just felt already that I’m already, after just one – since April the 12th, a non-entity there with people that, I relate well to most of the staff, but for a lot of the newies I’m just – they wouldn’t even know. Even [a senior colleague] didn’t acknowledge me and “Hi Gil”. So I felt gee it’s quick. I was at [the primary] school for 35 years as a teacher, and see people come and go, and seeing the new ones come in, and just yesterday I felt “oh, I don’t think I’m” – ”I certainly won’t go to the Christmas party at the end of the year, because I just feel I’m no longer a personality, a person that they – I’m gone, I’m lost, I’m out of there, and I mustn’t grieve for that, I just must move on and not grieve that I’m not a person that other people come up and – Already, just disappeared.

Well I don’t think I’m looking forward to it, because I get such a lot of satisfaction in my work, that I think if I don’t have some other thing to do, I don’t know how I’m going to cope with it. Because it’s not like doing voluntary work, I can do the voluntary work, but I don’t get any achievement out of it. This way I feel I do something, I can make my own decisions in my job. When you are doing voluntary you’re just like a cog in the wheel type of thing. So I need to be in a position where I can do things that are useful for the rest of the community.

And have you thought what that might be as you-?

I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and I would like to work until I drop dead type of thing, but I don’t know whether it’s fair by the association, you know? You must have an understudy that can take over from you, because I don’t know what will happen to you at any time. So that’s important for me as well, to make sure that what I have started, and what I have achieved can be continued without being dropped, saying they don’t have a proper person to be able to – But I can tell you that I don’t think it will be easy to find somebody as committed as I was in these last – maybe I have been working here about 22 years.

My sense of myself was not tied up in work in the same way that I’ve observed a lot of men particularly where their sense of self, sense of self-importance if you like, the ego, is tied up in work. I don’t think mine was. What work gave me was a sense of structure, purpose, and values, acting out deeply held values which come from my background really. You know, Scots, Presbyterian, working class, and the work ethic from that. And also a view that you are lucky to have a job. So work, it wasn’t about my sense of importance or being the boss of hundreds of people, it wasn’t anything like that. It was to do with a purpose, almost – I’m not a practicing Christian or anything, but it’s almost that vocation, if you like. It terrified me when I retired, that I wouldn’t have that structure and purpose, and I wouldn’t be doing things that were consistent with my value set, and I was very lucky in that I kept getting offered things to do. So I’ve never really had to confront it until now, and now – and my friends, they roll around laughing if they’re in hearing when people say are you retired, and I’ll say yes. I have kept working because I was afraid of losing the structure and purpose, and I was afraid – was, am – afraid of almost going into a lower gear which might, to be honest, end up in depression. But I am now making very conscious decisions, I am not on – I’ve got rid of several boards in the last 12 months, I said no to a project four weeks ago, and I’m confronting that demon, and I want to confront it now, and I didn’t before. I couldn’t imagine losing that structure and purpose.

What set off the need to confront the demon when that came?

Partly [my husband] and his health issues, and the realisation 12 months ago that time is finite, that that time is finite and I should be just around more, just to be with him, do things. Like he wants to travel around Australia and all that and I think shit, well as long as I’ve got some books to read that will be all right. Take my golf clubs, books, that will be all right. It’s partly that, and partly that I thought I really – I’ve always had a view that you should jump before people think you need to, and I had that view in my working life. Like everyone was stunned when I was 57 and a half and I resigned from being a CEO. People were – and I’ve always had a view you should jump before people are saying “God, when is she going to go?”

And I want to develop another shape of my life, so I’ve already got golf and other things, and I work as a volunteer at [a] prison, but I really want to shape another life so that in ten years’ time if I’m still here, I’ve got a life, I’m not just this person who used to work.

Nobody really factors in what happens when you retire. What happens when you lose the identity of being the mechanic that people always are looking for, or the manager of a group of individuals, or any different professional? Most people who have trained and worked in a career environment for most of their lives, see themselves through that career. When you retire it takes quite some adjustment and you no longer have the experience of the workplace, maybe interfacing with your peers, perhaps you are in the workplace, but all of a sudden you’re pre-retirement and you’re losing your grip and influence within that environment, because you’re on the way out the door. I think that probably everybody who is in the pre-retirement as well as post-retirement age group, has always seen retirement as a sense of freedom. To be able to exercise choice and the issue for me is to be able to manage my physical and financial environment so that I do have that choice.

Robin: I retired at the same time [as my wife], but again, I did some work for [a university] with the teacher education program, and then I also did some relief teaching, and I did some part-time teaching for two years. And about two years ago I decided that was it, you know, I am not going to go back to teaching. I started to feel the pressure. It was so enjoyable not having to work to deadlines all the time, so a few years ago I decided, no I’ll really be financially fairly secure. We don’t really need to work so why go through that, you know. I mean, I still do some tutoring of students. They come to my place, I go to their place, but it’s very relaxed and there’s no pressure really.

Lyn: But I think taking that extra time from retiring dead, and you’ve got nothing to do, it just took a few years to just gradually realise there’s life after work.

No, I don’t plan to retire. I plan to slow down. I have slowed down; I only do about probably 20, 25 hours a week, and I don’t go out, generally speaking, first thing in the morning and I don’t – in other words, I don’t go out in rush hour either in the morning or the evening, very rarely. I avoid that, because that’s all part of the daily loony bin, isn’t it?

Yeah, I do have an interpretation that if you retire, that’s the end. And I listen to so many people who are looking forward to retirement, but when you say to them “What are you looking forward to?” they don’t know. And I think that’s sad, isn’t it?

And I found that suddenly I had been feeling much more light-hearted about things, I was whistling in the street and I was happy about I’m leaving this god-awful department.

And the day after I attended a retirement seminar, a two day thing, and in between, after the first day I picked up the mail and here was a contract for the first work doing as a consultant after I was leaving the department, so that really cheered me up.

Well, a lot of them don’t want to retire. I’ve seen where people who do retire on the land, men particularly, a woman never retires. A woman’s always doing jobs, but a man, if they don’t have personal interests, it can be very, very devastating, and I think that’s when health issues really come about for the men, and it’s very hard. We often say, a leopard never changes its spots, and it’s very hard to change your attitude etc, etc and there’s nothing more devastating to see elderly people who’ve been active, sitting in a chair in aged care or whatever, if they go to town and live and that.
One good thing that has happened over the last few years, I’ve noticed, is the Men’s Sheds, where they go and work, and that’s a great asset to the men, something that they look forward to every week, or whenever they have it across the state, so they’ve been a great asset to our men.

There was nothing special about my life at that time, do you know usual; got married, had four children, struggled financially and eventually came right and I didn’t have any hobbies really, I made work my hobby. I think, because I worked and we’d had a few long holidays in Australia and I knew Australia as a holiday place, you know and, but because I worked and I worked hard up to the last day I was in Cape Town really and then got on an aeroplane and flew over here, I think it made it a lot easier, that I was retiring in a new country. As I said, I was really fond of walking, I did a lot of walking and I spent a lot of time walking around Melbourne city and the suburbs here. My wife started playing bridge out here before I did and she was occupied playing bridge and I occupied myself by walking around and I had a garden, which I’d not had time for before and I helped my wife with the housework and things like that. And it didn’t come as a shock at all I think, but as I say I think the timing helped a lot towards that and particularly the first year or two, I was looking, seeing new things and new places and so on, so I always had something to do.