Peter O’Callaghan interview 22 July 2009

I was educated, or attended the Brigidine Convent in Horsham, and in 1945, my father suffered a ruptured duodenal haemorrhage and he was hospitalised. I was then in sub intermediate, but because of that fact, I then left school. Now let me stress that my leaving school in 1945 at the age of 14, would not have got a headline in the Horsham papers. The vast majority of children in those days left school at 14, they obtained their merit, and went about their work. So I then worked essentially as a mechanic, I played football, I did all those sorts of things, until later on. I think I should mention that I was a member of the Young Christian Workers Society, which was a society for men or boys by Canon Carter. And we used to meet every Monday night, and I think this is relevant to what I’m about to say, that you were obliged, at least on every second Monday, to make a speech of 5 minutes about something. And that did not produce a great deal of difficulty for me, as I was prepared to speak about anything. But I would like to put in this little anecdote, Korda and Mentha are now renowned, the Mentha is the nephew of Tootsie Mentha, who was a butcher, and he was required to speak at these mandatory speaking things, and he chose the subject of the construction of a sausage, and it was the most riveting speech that lots of people had heard. But that, and I went into other areas of parish and public life, and made quite a few speeches around the place. Such that I think it can be said that on these occasions I was wondering what it was. I had the opportunity to buy into a service station called Nigel Heard Service Station in Dimboola Road, and my father strongly advised me against doing that, but I was pretty keen on it, particularly because a great friend of mine, Jack Hanlon, who played with me in St Michael’s Football Club, the junior football club, assured me as the representative of Esso that there would be a moratorium on service stations, there would be no more service stations. Jack later became the Victorian manager of Esso.

An edited version of an interview conducted for the Victorian Bar oral history project by Juliette Brodsky, filmed by Stewart Carter at Owen Dixon Chambers and edited by David Broder.