Arbeit macht frei: - Fredrick Töben

is my home and I am going to make my home look nice. When I take my
walk after work on the track, I am pleased with what I see’.
The wire mesh cages that house the irrigation pumps also need a coat of
paint but I am a little hesitant about this because I can only rub off the rust
with some sandpaper. It should be done properly with a sandblaster, which
I hear is somewhere in the workshop.
One time I was called back to the dairy where the end of the concrete wall
needed a metre of white paint so that the truck driver picking up the milk
could judge his distance more effectively. And then there are the concrete
posts at the Officer’s Club House car park where students learn to drive a
car and practice their reversing skills – they need to be painted white.
Then it is the nursery’s path that needs framing, as does the main road
from the Cell Block Office to the intersection, which I also sweep and then
chip away the sand that has impacted like concrete on the bitumen. Luckily
I had the big backhoe tractor driver, Steve, chip off the stuff with the front
blade. Doing it for a couple of hours with a crow-bar strengthened my arms
but wearied me somewhat.
It is this job of running a white line along the road edge on top of the
concrete verge that will be the final task I set myself, and I am running out
of time – just a few more days before 12 November and I still have to do so
many little paint jobs. I begin to work on Saturday and Sunday mornings,
not in the afternoons because that would set another precedent. Besides, it
would interfere with visiting times.
I am not the only one who works Saturdays. Jim is off to do some job,
gladly, because for him there is always something to be done, to be repaired
or to be shifted with his green tractor – the Jimbo tractor. John does the trip
to the local rubbish tip. Of course, all the dairy workers are at it every day
and they are accordingly rewarded with an extra $20 a week.
I promised Noel and Tom that I would attend church service on my final
Sunday at CTC, but I am still 100 m from the end at the top of the oval
and the announcement has already been made that the church service will
commence in 15 minutes. I work mechanically and when someone passes I
ask for the time – 25 past 10. Yes, I’ll be a little late but I have made it! In
any case, I ran out of paint, and so I discard the brush and the tin into the
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