Apollo and Thelma by Jon Faine

Author:Jon Faine [Jon Faine]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781743587607
Publisher: Hardie Grant
Published: 2017-02-14T00:00:00+00:00

Former volunteer Premier John Cain launched the Fitzroy Legal Service Law Handbook, 1987. [The Age]

About this time, I moved from the ten-person share house in George Street. Years of saving meant I managed to put down a deposit and bought a house. It was a wreck of a place held up by structural paint but with what the real estate agent called ‘good bones’. Unbeknown to me when I signed the contract, it was also in the path of a planned road upgrade. When I belatedly found out and made panicked enquiries, I discovered that the government and local council were already well advanced in abandoning the plan to turn my new street into an arterial road, and with reckless enthusiasm I then borrowed the unimaginable amount of $25,000 to get a builder to graft a new but very basic bathroom, kitchen and living area onto the front four existing rooms. As I moved out after six years in the warm embrace of the George Street gang, I broke up with Andrea too – a time of tumultuous change.

Appearing for multiple clients every day in one of the local courts we covered, supervising the roster of volunteers and checking each and every file they worked on, running law reform campaigns, test cases, visiting clients in prisons and youth detention centres, lobbying politicians, chasing funding, editing the Law Handbook, feeding the media – my job was relentless but more fun than anyone was entitled to have. We also established a 24-hour, seven-days-a-week emergency legal help service activated by pager, with a roster of volunteers available for after hours and weekend bail applications. The police hated it as they were suddenly being called to account in the police station for the first time. Working like a demon was easier when doing it for the underdog rather than in a commercial environment doing it for straight cash. Trying to make ‘the system’ function fairly is worthy but frustrating and, although I threw myself into it, after three exhilarating years with barely a break, it was not surprising when I hit the wall. The ugly signs of burnout were showing – I was on edge all the time, still trying to be cheerful but often impatient with the occasional volunteer who didn’t know what they were doing. Sometimes I was just plain rude. When a drug-addled homeless client broke in to the service one night and used the office floor as his toilet I decided that I too had seen enough crap and it was time to move on.

A more pressing reason to spend less time working was that I had fallen in love. My now wife Jan was then the boss at Coburg Legal Centre and it was almost but not quite love at first sight when we met at one of the mostly boring committees we were both on. One night I needed a lift back to Fitzroy and Jan was heading that way. Her kind offer turned comical when she ran out of petrol, but once the car was started we went on to dinner – our first date.

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