This transcript was made by speech-recognition software, so names and some words may be misheard. The recording is the original: watch on YouTube.
Hello and welcome to this special edition of Here's Tom with the Weather, where we interview certain people who've been sober for quite a while and have an interesting story. And I'm really glad today that I have one of those. And now, my name is David Gee. I'm currently in Bradford in West Yorkshire in England. And I am interviewing this gentleman here. Would you please introduce yourself and tell us where you are? I'm in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. It's a pleasure to have you. So that's Bob A. And Bob, what year did you get sober with AA? 1960. 1960. Okay. May 1960. May 1960. So you're coming up for your...
61st. 61st. Wow, that's amazing. So, Bob, so... First of all, mate, just wanted you to give us a little bit of a background of you and what you were like before you got sober in those years. So what's your date of birth, if you wouldn't mind saying that as well, Bob? 21st, the 7th, 28th. 1928. Okay, mate. So could you just give us a bit of a background of where you were born and your life and what it was like and how your alcoholism started? And I guess what your spiritual outlook on life as well was before you got sober? Well, I was born in a place called Berwick and lived there for the first 12 years of my life on a farm.
It's all houses now, but it was a farm then. Berwick in Victoria, was it, Bob? That was in Victoria. Yeah. Finished school at 14. Cleared off the bush for a while. Then went on stations and... Went around a bit. Got into the booze early. Who were your mum and dad, Bob? Bob, if you wouldn't mind, who were your mum and dad? What were they? Did they have jobs? What did they do? Yeah, my father was a veteran from Gallipoli. 14, 18, 14. And my mother was a housewife. Your dad was a veteran from Gallipoli. And was that... I guess these days you'd call it PTSD.
Did he... What was he like when he came back? Well, he was knocked about a bit then. He wasn't a drinker or anything like that, but he had a short fuse. Right. And then he got a job during the Depression. He had a small farm which was given to him through the soldiers. He lost that in the Depression. He got a job on the estate out there. He didn't farm work. Look at him. He was a manager. And we lived there for the first 12 years in the war. Okay. And what about school? You said you left school early then. You left at 14. Yeah.
You weren't a scholar. No. Cleared off to the bush, went fruit picking. And it was wartime. The war was still on then. And there was a desert. You can see it. There were deserts, you know, the deserts. And folks on the run. Oh yeah. All sorts of the rough ends of the Earth, you know, because they'd been arrested all the way out of the war. Kind of like the French Foreign Legion was it? Yeah. And if I opened my mouth as a kid, I got a fist in it, so I had to learn to fight. All right. Were you pretty handy, were you? Well, early in the peace, I wasn't too bad.
But I was pretty good. I was a tough guy. I was a good fighter. I was punching bags with everybody. Yeah, I get you. I get you. And when you say deserters, so there were deserters from people who didn't want to fight in the war and ran into the bush to escape? Yeah. Wow. Running away from their wives and all sorts of crims and knockabouts, you know. Wow. That was pretty rough. Do you remember your first drink? How old were you when you had your first drink? I was 15. And it was amazing. I thought it changed things and then I could talk back a bit and fight.
I had a pretty bad temper. And I went bush from then on. I joined the Navy. At that time I was treated pretty heavily.