And I won't except to say that in a long career spanning fifteen countries and more than fifty jobs and assignments, Cecil Burgess was by far the worst boss I have ever encountered.
Of course, in hindsight he did me a favour because, without his obnoxious, stubborn, and ill-mannered behaviour, I may never have left Thursday Island again but succumbed to its soporific lure and, like Dorothy in the poppy fields of Oz, fallen asleep and dozed away the rest of my life there.
I bought this little book, written by one of his sons, online for $4.99 which is a small price to pay to find out more about this man who, for the only time in my life, made me dread to go to work for the six-or-so months I had the fortitude to bear his presence. Chapter 7 describes his bombing missions over Germany during World War II; perhaps he thought he hadn't quite finished the job when he found out that I had once been a German.
I had always thought of Cec Burgess as a dyed-in-the-wool bachelor but from reading the book learned that he had divorced his first wife Jane in Tasmania in 1971 on the grounds of alcoholism and then joined the Presbyterian Church's Aboriginal mission service on Mornington Island.
There he met the Aboriginal woman Edna Roughsey and they lived together in Cairns when he got the job of accountant with the Island Industry Board (IIB) on Thursday Island which ran a store and supermarket on Thursday Island and on the surrounding islands.
In 1977 the Island Industry Board hired me as their accountant. Cec had become the manager and during my time on the island was in an on-and-off relationship with Doreen Yardley who worked in the same office.
Later, he started writing to a woman in the Philippines. He made a couple of trips to Manila to meet Mary Romaro. At the age of 67 he married her on October 31, 1981, in a ceremony on Thursday Island. They divorced again in 1989, all of which seems to prove the theory that God gave men a brain and a penis but only enough blood to run one at a time.
Cec Burgess retired from his job on Thursday Island in 1983, and died in Tasmania in 2008, aged 94. If you want to order the book "His Own Man", click here - but be warned: the book is as boring as the man was himself.
