HELLO, fellow readers of Have a Go News. From time to time, I hope to write an occasional opinion piece for this much-loved publication, mainly about personal experiences, snippets of my media career and lessons life has taught me.
I welcome your comments and questions.
Warmest regards,
Bob Maumill
“My mother called me a dreamer. My school teachers often said I appeared distracted. More than once, Mr Dolan, one of my high-school teachers, said: “I don’t know where your mind is, Maumill. If you have a mind, it is not here.”
A few weeks after my fifteenth birthday, I left school and began work as a messenger boy. It did not last. I was a hopeless day-dreaming employee. My nose was often in a book, and my thoughts were of places afar. Places I longed to see.
Before my sixteenth birthday, I left home and wandered through outback Australia, working on farms, in shearing sheds and droving cattle.
Sometimes penniless, unemployed, and hungry, I slept rough. I lost contact with my family. I scorned the advice of well-meaning people who said I should find permanent employment, establish roots, and build a normal life.
While still in my teenage years, I worked on a cargo ship, travelling the world and visiting exotic ports. I celebrated my twentieth birthday aboard ship on the Pacific Ocean bound from San Francisco to Manila.
Returning to Australia, I fell in love, married young, and started a family, but continued my wandering ways. Moving from job to job, state to state, dragging my wife and two children with me. I found work as a stable hand, abattoir employee, farmhand and racehorse trainer. I remained unsettled, a part-time husband and father, forever finding reasons to move from job to job and house to house.
I stumbled into radio at the invitation of race caller and wit, the late Barry Thomas. I had found my niche.
Despite the good fortune, my nocuous behaviour continued, deeply hurting the wonderful woman I was married to during those turbulent years. Our marriage ended in a divorce caused by my selfishness.
Divorced, without roots and family closeness, I foolishly believed I needed no one. I lived alone, unmarried, in mid-life, with nothing to anchor me. Devoid of the emotions that bind us to others.
The wider world beckoned, and a job opportunity in London offered a range of new experiences. Yet I hesitated, beset by a melancholy sense of loneliness. Lovers were shadows that came and went. I descended into a period of self-loathing.
I unexpectedly met Sabrina, my soulmate, in a life-changing, uplifting moment. (Where else than at the South Fremantle Football Club.) She accepted me with all my faults. Her influence has made me a better man. Forty two years later, we are still together.
In my 80th year, I fell ill. To survive and function, I relied on other people. The doctors, nurses, my wife Sabrina, and a few close friends saved and sustained me.
I was initially angry and resentful at becoming reliant on others. That resentment soon changed to thanks for the life-saving care I received. I have learned to appreciate and embrace help when it’s offered.
Since becoming facially scarred by surgery and suffering from mobility and balance issues, the attitudes of strangers have surprised me, especially young men. Many times in recent years, seeing me struggle, a young man has asked, “Need a hand, mate?” and extended a strong arm.
The day I slipped and fell in the street, young men and women rushed to assist me. Almost every day, I benefit from unexpected acts of kindness for which I am grateful.
When explaining how we are connected and reliant on each other, the poet John Donne wrote, “No Man is an Island”.
Those words, written and expressed in a Christian sermon, remind us we are members of a community, thereby collectively responsible for extending a helping hand when needed.
No Man is an Island is one of many lessons life has taught me.
Regards,
Bob
