A lot of the rum my Dad drank in his youth was consumed at The Globe Hotel in Rylstone. That was the working man's pub he tells me. And from what I can gather, he was in there far more often than was necessary, or healthy. Still, The Globe Hotel wasn't just a place to drink. It was a place to socialise, catch up on the lastest news, and find work. Dad would often go and have a few drinks and a yarn, and see if anyone was looking for a worker. He was a shearer by trade but in the off season he'd do any work he could get. He was looking for work one day and got yarning away to a bloke in the pub. This bloke was looking for a dozer driver so Dad said he was one. Gone are the days when you could say you were a dozer driver and be put straight on without anyone sighting a license or any other qualifications. So Dad got the job of dozer driving on a property that needed clearing, and it was pretty obvious very early on that he didn't know the first thing about driving a dozer. The boss kept him on though, because he was a damn hard worker. "They'll never sack a worker" is one of Dad's favourite expressions. How true that is in the current political and economic climate I don't know but it's something Dad has lived by. He's worked hard his whole life. Another time he said he was a carpenter and was put straight onto a job. He didn't know one end of a hammer from the other. When I ask him how that went he jokes, "What I lacked in experience, I made up for in stupidity." That was another job where the boss kept him on. I guess hard-working people have always been a bit hard to find and worth hanging on to.