Warning this content is graphic in explanation of the actions of abattoir.
Hello everyone ,
This is a story about the waiting period from when me and my partner Punk bought into what was to become coastal smash repairs and we had to wait for three months the title to come through before settlement on the business.
I was working for Greg Clune in this panel shop in Wonthaggi at the time that my mate
Billy Moresco nominated me for a job at O’Connors export Abattoir in Pakenham.
One night Billy rang me and said I was on and he’ll pick me up at 6:15 in the morning for my first day.
I was pretty excited at the prospect and thought I was doing the right thing and I put a note under the door for Greg to find the next day at panel shop thanking him for employing me but I was moving on, it probably wasn’t the best thing to do at the time but I thought it was fine, so that’s what happened .
So we start the trip down Pakenham me still half asleep and not used to getting this early and for my first day on the job at Pakenham.
When we arrived at the place I was amazed at its enormity the size of the buildings and the amount of cattle that were being delivered every five minutes and cars parked there it was big .
I think that they may were killing over six hundred a day .
Pakenham was an export abattoir and they had Kosher kill which meant that each animal was actually killed by a special Muslim slaughter man cutting straight through their throat bleeding it to death saying a prayer and blessing it and then with each beast individually inspected by a Muslim on the chain at the head stand to make sure that that was it’s method of death was by knife and if it’s not it was then condemned and there was a world of trouble.
When I first got there I was introduced to some of the bosses, to me it seemed like the place was full of Morescos , with both Jeff and his brother in charge of a kill floor and the boning room respectively,
their sons and relatives were also working there in both areas.
The bossed asked me if I’d like to go and have a look through the facilities as an orientation to my employment. Of course I agree and we started with the change rooms and the morning tea amenities area they were massive. They have to be 30 showers in a row kinda like an open footy rooms.
We were now entering the kill floor when I wide eyed saw the very start where I’ll be working in the knocking area when the cows are not unconscious and then the Muslims cut their throat. Then they hung up the leg on the thing called a chain which is a mechanical device transported the upside down beast through the processing factory of the kill floor I looked at each section in amazement.
I’ve never seen anything like this in my life. I could not believe how fast a beast would come in standing to be pushed into the fridge in-two separate halves , destined for the boning room to be sliced boxed and diced.
So then you send the packaged processed meat overseas to our Muslim brothers and sisters?
We will do exactly the same with our sheep when live exports finish up .
So that was my introduction to my job there I didn’t look at the boning room because that wasn’t the area that I’ll be working in.
This was the first abattoir workplace that I had ever entered.
That was union supervised and the meat workers union was one of the strongest unions at the time in the whole country ,
they had carved out some great working pay and conditions for the workers and O’Connors export.
Out of the three months I worked there, I was never home after lunch.
We always finished by 11 having worked really hard in that time in my mind. I thought who would want to spend all day every day doing this job ?
My job at O’Connors was to be what’s called a Shackler ,which meant that when cows were knocked un conscious and the Muslim worker was slicing their throat, I put a chain around their kicking leg whilst washing their ass with a hose to get the bum clean for the leggers and lifting up the beast at the same time with an electric button winch , it was a tight area with a slauterman in the area also to get rid off the wisdom pipe and rod it off from the carcus ,
So briefly that was my job description.
It was the most dangerous job in the place and not one for the faint hearted. Some grown men wouldn’t even last a day.
And be too frightened to work there again.
Some had the jaws broken arms broken legs broken and that’s the job they gave me.
So I was green and fresh and I embraced the challenge of it and I was about to be punished every day as mostly I was black and blue all over underneath my clothes.
I had plenty of interesting experiences in the knocking area as Jonesy the knocker was a chronic smoker so he will make us work like crazy until there was no room left in our area to hang another beast they were hitting against me , then he would go out and have like three chain-smokes and come then come back in with a gap nearly in the line we had to work like crazy again just to catch up.
That’s how my workday went everyday .
My travel mate Billy was on the first staughterman stand being the legging stand which started the skinning process. Before it hit the Hyde puller.
So for the first week I tried to learn everything I could as fast as I could just to stay one piece.
I did notice sometimes Jonesey wasn’t such a good shot with the knocking gun, the knocking gun was like a stainless steel skinny sledgehammer with a rubber ball on one end and a handle that you squeeze down to engage is percussion shot kind of like the soda stream charge to make the ball hit hard.
So sometimes he will drop a beast into the floor that was still absolutely wide awake and they were never very happy.
He mostly will catch it in the crush and pass down the knocking gun to one of the team to stun the beast again. I was watched this process over and over during the first week thinking one day I’ll grab that gun , and I’ll have a go at that myself.
So at some stage later in that week I will be summoned into the office by some bloke to come to the offices in the amenities area.
There were three other people present in the area. One was the shop Steward , one was the Onion delicate one was the boss and one was me. I started to get lecture about the rules of O’Connor’s abattoirs and lecture went on for awhile they told me that I was on my last warning and that next time my appointment and employment will be terminated.
I asked him can you please explain to me what you’re talking about? I don’t have a clue as to why I’m in trouble so they explained to me, that with my job I started work at 7 am but I have been getting to work late every day arriving at 7:10, as I had duties with my job to perform before the first beast was knocked at 7.15
And because I was late every day that they had to have to employ someone else to come in early and set my job up , with the chains and rollers and the hosing out of my work area.
I said to them we have a problem because my ride gets there when we get there, they said that’s your problem. If you are late again you’ll be dismissed.
So I went back to work for the rest of my shift. Someone named Sisco covered me for the 10 minutes of the meeting and I just went about business as usual.
I was still a young at heart so just to stir things up a bit I had some waterproof firecrackers so I’ll let a big one off in men’s shower block, it went off with an echo like out in the mountains and a huge plume of lingering firecracker smoke filled up
the place of course union reps and delegates and people come from everywhere to see what they fuss was about,
they tried to find out who left the fireworks off, asking everyone who it was but it’s not too many laggers in amongst the lads,
I think they knew it was me but they couldn’t prove it that would be an instant dismissal as well.
One good thing there on payday we’re all allowed to buy Krevack packs of meat strips to take home pretty cheap and top quality as it was all export meat, as a bonus part of our condition’s
I had a pretty tough week with bruises all over me and come the next Monday Billy picked me up at the usual time.
I’ve got to work late again. I walked into the change rooms to get dressed.
The union guy was there and the shop steward they both looked at me and just said good morning and I went to off to work.
Someone else set my job up that morning and for every morning for the rest of the time that I was working there.
So one morning later that week all of a sudden I looked around me and I couldn’t work out why there was no one around and there anywhere?
Inside I turned around and standing up beside me was a cow snorting heavily at me that was a very large unhappy and fully alive. The first thing I did was not run but was to pull a post a metal pipe post on the exit race so I pull one of them off the rack and held it up in the air thinking if this thing comes near me? I gunna drop it., not thinking that this will condemn the beast another sackable offence that was the further thing from my mind in that moment of time.
Eventually one of the slaughtermen Grub came to my rescue with the knocking gun in hand and he took care of the animal because if they happen go bezerk ,
They can cause a lot of damage to both people and equipment.
So it was an emergency averted.
I learnt the hard way how tough these animals are as Jonsie had loaded up the race so bad one day there was just no room. I was hanging up the last knocked beast when out of the corner of my eye. The last one that I hung up, saw me and eyeballed me and he gave me the most massive uppercut with his hoof striking at full noise under my chin with his front leg.
I swore and stood up and I kicked it as hard as I could in the head me with gum boots on, what a stupid mistake their heads are like a concrete block and gumboots are soft so you can imagine the results of the hardest kick I could give it , say no more.
Sometimes the chain like all mechanical items will have a breakdown and maybe equipment will breakdown somewhere in the line , stopping the chain so that stopes the whole line.
This will start behaviour amongst workers like calling out of names and cheering jeering all sort of things , to pass the time and stop the boardom usually then Jeff Moresco would turn up to see what was wrong everyone be hanging around so I sometimes would be cheeky enough to throw a bit of fat at Jeff as he was on the other side of the area he would of course try and find who it was and he would be so pissed off , but he never caught me.
So one day and I have wet hands all the time in that area as I’m forever washing crap off my hands in the sink there with a foot operated tap and one day jonsey had to catch another cow and he passed down the knocking gun.
I stuck my hand up and I thought now I have watched heaps of people do this can’t be that hard or bad so I’ll grab that gun in my hand , and squeeze down the lever at the end to engage the percussion shot and then I put the hammer behind my head right back to my feet and I smashed that hammer down like a sledge hammer to the shock and horror of everybody insight everybody as they ducked and took cover and embrace themselves for a loose flying hammer .
When the hammer hit and the percussion shot went off.
The gun flew backwards over my head as hard as I swung it forward.
Basically lifting me off the ground but I hung onto it and thought , whoops that was big. The next day I was informed by one of the managers that that incident if it was that incident had actually caused a beast to be condemned as it was a hole in its head that caused its death they didn’t then say anything else so I just went back to work.
A really important part of that abattoir was the Muslim team ofslaughter men their job was to cut each animals throat as a kill and to pray to Mecca at the same time .
They kept completely to themselves to the point of total ignorance of us westerners working around them. They had the job made in heaven as they worked roughly 2 hours a day three days a week so there was a quite lot of them. They would go to the extent of even completely avoiding eye contact with with us Aussies working close to them.
They had smoko on their own and their own change rooms and they stuck to their own , but of course maybe with me things changed just a little.
Their knives were so sharp that within three blows they nearly had removed the head of an animal.
Rarely you saw more than the three below method.
So one day I was in the knocking box and I just hung up a beast and I went to go to the sink to wash the manure off my hands when suddenly one of the Muslims approached straight at me with his knife held up
vertically in his hand it was facing me as I stepped toward the sink ,
I just watched as he stepped into me and he pushed his knife into the soft web of my finger, it sort of bounced and I looked at my hand.
I expected it to be split all the way to my wrist .
It was totally unmarked.
I held it up to him and I said to him directly your knife is blunt.
He took in silence my other arm by the wrist and he ran the bade of his knife up my forearm removing every single hair like a close cut razor blade.
That incident sort of broke the ice between us a little ,
I would say hi and he would acknowledge me, from then on ,
It wasn’t a lot but it was a start .
So very soon it was Christmas time and break up time and time for me to say goodbye as I went to my new venture in a partnership in a panel beating shop in Wonthaggi
Not long after I left there were new workplace laws introduced into the. abattoir that have changed that job forever and they have slowed down the chain to make it an eight hour day for all the boys which I really don’t agree with , especially in a job like that and in that type of atmosphere like that you don’t really want to be standing around with sharp knives all day with nothing much to do for things to change .
In my opinion you get in. You work hard at a reasonable and safe pace and you get to go home early and you have been paid good money for doing that job, but that’s my opinion so it doesn’t really count.
I hope you’ve enjoyed your story and it has brought back a few memories for me to go from the threat of being sacked in the first week to them enjoying having me work for them,
I saved them an absolute fortune on work I’ve claims
If I had to stay there as a full-time job I would’ve asked to be paid the same as a slaughter man for my job under the free trade workplace agreement as it was the most dangerous job in the place.
Cheers xxx
Curlyg