Day 19 – Tuesday 23rd November - “Of all towns, times and places I ended up walking into my old housemate”

Another early start, 7am. Have to be in Marrickville for a whole day for 8am. Of all towns, times and places I ended up walking into my old housemate Matt Hill in Kings Cross train station. He had been in Brisbane and had just got into Sydney that morning. I said I’d catch up with him later. I ended up missing the train I was meant to be on for this reason so I was a few minutes late getting there.

Artists Impression of my Lungs

Experienced a whole day of the same tedious, backbreaking, body sweating, lung destroying, eye scratching, cleaning and moving bricks about. The reason we were actually doing this was because the bricks it had been made of were old school original sandstone bricks that are very popular nowadays and can fetch a really good price when you sell them.

It was just me and this other kid Rory; he was extremely boring and barely spoke to me at all throughout the day. Would have been so much better if I was doing it with somebody interesting or even a mate would have been key, at least then we could talk through it. It was so hot the whole day. I could never see myself doing it as a full time job day in day out. It’s just not me; I’m definitely more of a visual person, maybe even an office pen pusher as a last resort.

I must have consumed a whole house full of brick dust throughout the day. I didn’t even get given a dust mask until about an hour from the end, I thought it was getting too ridiculous because of the wind so I went and asked him if he had one, was nice of him to offer me one first. Ended up getting paid $260 cash in hand for 1½ days work. Nice little earner. But it had destroyed my lungs.