TYPIST-IN-CHARGE

Episode 5

Typing Room 305, Head Office, Department of Education, Government Buildings, Wellington, NZ, 1960s

Along the corridor, next to the typing room was the small teleprinter room, with two operators.  There were two big machines that allowed us to type memos and drafts to officers at the Auckland and Christchurch offices who, in turn, could send work to us at Head Office.  A roll of paper was in each machine.  A teleprinter operator couldn't change anything in her typing, so accuracy was essential.  Incoming memos arrived in red type.  Our outgoing ones were black

above: google photo of 1950's teleprinters, similar to ours

I was often sent to relieve when one or other teleprinter operator was away.  The good thing about the machines was that we could talk, via typing, to real live operators at the other end.  I was typing away happily one day in the teleprinter room when the other operator, Gwen, said, "Oh, the woman on the machine in Auckland has told me that she's been sent home with the measles - "

Gwen looked down at her own chest.  It was summer and she had a low neckline.  "Noooo, I think I've got measles too!"

She was off work immediately.  We kidded her about catching measles over the teleprinter.

Another time, after I had confessed my love for The Beatles who were touring New Zealand, one of the teleprinter relievers from the Christchurch office somehow managed to get into a press conference as a photographer, and he sent me a glorious photo.  I still cherish it.

An education inspector in the Christchurch office who had some time back been relieving in Wellington sent a teleprint message congratulating me on winning a cruise.  This was Bill Renwick.   My boss, Mrs Rowley,  pointed him out when he was a young whippersnapper and said to me, "You keep an eye on that young man, he'll be director-general one day-"  And he was.

Whilst talking to the typists, Mrs Rowley often balanced backward on her chair, with one hand on the ancient water radiator under the window (the radiator had old-fashioned embossed Victorian-like curly twirls and scrolls on it, and over the years had been painted to match the wall colour).  Mrs Rowley's other hand would rest lightly on her electric typewriter.

"-owww!"  Mrs Rowley disliked the little electric shocks that went through her body when she regularly did this action.  With a sigh, she would try to remember not to touch the radiator and her typewriter simultaneously. 

Opposite the teleprinter room was a door marked 'ladies'.   Once through the door, the ladies' toilets were accessed by way of a steep wooden staircase to a narrow attic-type area.  Under the staircase was the kitchen in which the tea lady bustled around making up our morning and afternoon teas.   A discreet knock on our door at 9 45 am and 2 45 pm, and one of the typists would rush away from her machine to help manoeuvre the heavy tea trolley into the typing room.

Often we typists would go to the basins in a room beside the kitchen and get a drink of water.  For weeks we complained about the water looking brown (we still drank it).  Eventually when feathers started to turn up in the water Admin Section called in a plumber.

"The wire netting over the roof's water tank is torn," said the plumber.  "There's a dead seagull in the tank..."