We all have our go-to strategies when life becomes difficult. Sometimes that is work – whether it be a full-time job or just a few hours – sometimes it is a hobby, maybe the garden. Roger Clark, who publishes The Waterline News and The Western Port Times on theBassCoast inVictoria, shares his journey from schoolboy to businessman and tells what kept him going when he hit a hurdle.
•••
I always wanted to be a writer. From the age of 12, after my mother’s death, I mowed lawns on weekends until I had enough money to buy my first typewriter. I wasn’t allowed to take typing lessons at high school – that was just for the girls – but I used to type all my homework, which got me into trouble because teachers claimed I hadn’t written it.
I saved enough to buy an old ink duplicator and started printing greyhound form guides. I sold them outside the track for a few weeks until I was banished. My interest in greyhounds had started as a toddler. An uncle was a trainer and I used to crawl around between the greyhounds’ legs.
I was expelled from high school midway through third form, for slack attendance when I lost interest and was having trouble coping with my mother’s death. I started my first job the next day at a shoe shop near Springvale Railway Station. Six months later, I was sacked for taking a week off work when my father died. I headed off to the CES (Commonwealth Employment Service), now known as Centrelink, and they got me an extra two weeks’ pay from the shoe shop owner and found me another job in a wholesale grocery warehouse in Dandenong. I worked there for almost five years and became store manager at 19.
This was the start of a 50-year career in sales, marketing, management and logistics, which took me into my own business in the 1980s. I managed three record shops inMelbourne’s CBD, which fuelled another lifetime passion – jazz.
In 1973, aged 24 and married (for the first time) I got a call from a new greyhound paper in Melbourne, asking me to write a story for their first edition. That was the start of a weekly column that ran for 43 years until the last Victorian greyhound paper closed two years ago. This led to the start of my own online greyhound magazine, Greyhound Weekly, which just had its second birthday.
Over the next 30 years, I produced a variety of small newsletters, including one for a tourism group at Tarwin Lower, where I headed for a sea-change in 1998. I also started a small nursery and gardening business.
In 2004, my second marriage ended, for whatever reason; but a new life began when I met Vicki. We married in 2008. In 2009, when Vicki was diagnosed with a serious lung disease, she said she had always wanted to live by the sea. Therefore, we came to live at Grantville, where we are now firmly established.
A couple of months before the move, I was diagnosed with chronic rheumatoid arthritis. It was so bad I couldn’t even open a door, and I had trouble dressing myself. Within another month, I was diagnosed with bladder cancer, and had the first operation.
My mother died when I was 12 and my father when I was 14. Looking back, I suppose my mother’s death was due to cancer. I know my father died from an inoperable brain tumour, probably caused by exposure to all the chemicals he used in the market garden business he ran for many years in the 1950s.
I found my own initial diagnosis of cancer and operation confronting, but I coped well until the first check-up revealed another tumour that had to be removed.
There was one bit of positive news. In 2010, I was invited to join a trial of a radical new treatment for rheumatoid arthritis. I made a remarkable recovery, and within three months could do some work and started another small gardening business.
Just as the arthritis was starting to improve, another tumour appeared, and that has been the pattern. I have now had more than a dozen operations to remove cancer, the most recent in November 2017. The last three years have been very difficult, punctuated by a spell in hospital with shingles and a gall bladder operation that led to pneumonia and two partially collapsed lungs, during which time they found an irregular heart beat, which continues to cause problems.
Through all of this, The Waterline News has helped keep me ‘sane’.
That all started when Vicki saw an ad in the Bass Valley News for a volunteer to write a few feature articles. I think I was the only applicant.
Not long afterwards, I was asked to take over as editor. Did I want to do it? Not really! I had always wanted to start my own magazine, fully independent, but they were in trouble. I was charged not only with taking over as editor but also stemming the losses. I did a crash course in ‘Publisher’ and was very happy with what I achieved.
But my dream of starting a magazine was still at the back of my mind, so I decided to put 50 years of sales and marketing experience, together with 40 years as a journalist, to good use. The Waterline News was born.
In four years we went from 12 pages to 44. We started by distributing 800 hard copies to around 70 shops, community centres and other outlets. We now deliver 1700 copies to 130 outlets. We also send out almost 500 e-copies and have a terrific website. As one edition hits the streets, work begins on the next.
Two editions of The Waterline News last year were published from my temporary office atCaseyHospital. The battle with arthritis – now controlled by strong medication – and cancer goes on. But I am thankful that I am still here to tell the story and that I can continue the dream that started more than 50 years ago.
Do you have a story to share with YourLifeChoices? Or any other observations? Do you know any amazing characters? Email newsletters@yourlifechoices.com.au. We’d like to hear from you.
Related articles:
Life in the ‘burbs in the 1950s
Lesson learnt on a long journey
Lila’s story: When cancer hit
