Alex McAllister YHS 1935 sent some details of his background. “I was born in Scotland & together with my parents and brother Tom immigrated to Australia arriving in Melbourne in November 1926 at the age of three. We settled in Melbourne for a time and in 1931 my father obtained employment at Yallourn during the construction period and the family, which included my two brothers Bob & Jim who were born in Australia, moved to Yallourn. I had already commenced school in Melbourne and my first schooling at Yallourn was at the primary school in Fairfield Avenue ,then in grade six up to the high school building where our teacher was a Mr Whitely and the head master at the time a Mr Abrahams.
I commenced what was then termed the Higher Elementary School in 1935, the grading of the classes was then in four forms F, E, D, & C commencing at F & finishing up in C where you sat the Intermediate certificate. During the four years I was there, we had some excellent teachers. I particularly remember Miss Hooper who had us for English, French & History, Mr Staines science which at that time was a combination of physics & chemistry & Mr Tasker mathematics which covered algebra, trigonometry & geometry and at the technical college Mr Jones thermodynamics & physics & Mr Tyrell all the mathematics, I have no doubt it was due to their efforts that I was able after I left Yallourn to go on to higher education.
Yallourn was a fantastic town to grow up in, it had everything and in the surrounding area, we fished for trout and few species native fish in the Morwell River and Traralgon Creek, canoed as far as we could go in a weekend up the Latrobe River, skied on Mt Erica, caught rabbits out around Thorpdale way travelling on pushbikes and later, when we could afford them, motor bikes.
Like many other Yallourn boys I did an apprenticeship with the SEC, mine as an apprentice fitter & turner, after the war when the manpower restrictions were abolished Mr Boehm, who was then the senior Engineer at the Briquette factory, obtained a position for me through a friend of his, an Engineer with a ship repair company on the Yarra as a junior engineer with a British shipping company and I sailed from Melbourne in January 1946. I remained with the company for seven & a half years sailing out of Liverpool and Glasgow for twice circumnavigating the world & calling at ports in India, China coast, Malaya, Australia America and on the mainland of Europe, apart for eighteen months when I was appointed as second engineer on board a passenger vessel sailing between Fremantle and Singapore, It was during this period I married in September 1950 and then in April 1951 returned to England with Prue to attend a Marine college in Liverpool. After the examinations, I had some leave to take and we purchased a small car and travelled throughout England & Scotland from Johns O’Groats at the top to Lands End at the bottom - then it was sell the car and back to sea while Prue lived with relatives and worked in London. We continued to live like this, the only difference being during my leaves we toured the continent making use of the French I had learned with Miss Hooper & skiing in Austria. However all things come to an end and we decided it was time to go home to Australia in April 1953 and I returned to sailing again Fremantle to Singapore until August when I obtained a position as an Engineer at the power station. In 1960, I successfully applied for a position as Engineer & Ship Surveyor with the Western Australian Marine Authority from which I retired in 1986 as Chief Marine Surveyor. After six months of retirement, I set up a one-man business in Marine Engineering & Naval Architecture; however after ten years, I found I was giving away half the money I earned to the Taxation Department so I gave it away and again retired. We have three children - Ian 1954, Rob 1955 & Juliet 1959 and seven grandchildren. As I said earlier, I had a very happy childhood and young manhood in Yallourn and look back on my time when I lived there as a very pleasant period of my life - I would change nothing