Bradshaw, Wayne (2025) An Elegy. Sudo Journal, 6. pp. 96-99.

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Abstract

When I was a boy, my father worked for Queensland Rail. He had been spray-painting railway carriages for longer than I had been alive, and he retired in July 2000, suffering from crippling arthritis in his hands after thirty-nine cumulative—though not consecutive—years in the same job. I have only scattered documents and half-remembered stories recording his life as a young man. After leaving school at the age of thirteen, my father spent a few years delivering first bread, and then soft drink door-to-door. At sixteen he began an apprenticeship in housepainting and decorating at Queensland Rail. In a weighty leather photo album I have a yellowed copy of the letter to my father congratulating him on completing his apprenticeship on the seventh of September in 1959. Trade qualification in hand, he struck out for a while, working contract jobs on properties. My father spoke often and fondly of his time working on various properties in rural Queensland, drinking, leching, fighting and shooting kangaroos. In the 2010s I watched the rerelease of Wake in Fright with my partner and recalled my father’s stories of what he described as the best years of his life.

Item ID:	90840
Item Type:	Article (Creative Work)
ISSN:	2652-1776
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Date Deposited:	24 Feb 2026 01:33
FoR Codes:	36 CREATIVE ARTS AND WRITING > 3602 Creative and professional writing > 360201 Creative writing (incl. scriptwriting) @ 100%
SEO Codes:	13 CULTURE AND SOCIETY > 1301 Arts > 130103 The creative arts @ 100%
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