I had two jobs that I consider firsts. One was a casual job I did working in a supermarket (grocery store) in the lead-up to Christmas of 1975. The other was my first full-time job, which was in a school office. I worked there for six years from 1978 till December 1983.

After I finished a secretarial course at the end of 1977 it only took two interviews for me to be employed. I was the junior office assistant at a high school in the Australian island state of Tasmania. It had a population of about 600 students. I worked with another young woman, who had just become the senior office assistant. She had been in my position until the woman who was previously the senior retired.

We were a good team. She was very efficient - which was just as well because apparently the woman with whom she had worked before used to spend a lot of time sitting with her feet up on the desk smoking and reading the newspaper. I expect her junior did way more than her fair share of the work in those days.

A few years after I left that job and moved inter-state I went back to visit. Funnily enough, by then they had three people working in the office. I was incredulous at how they had squeezed a third desk into an office only big enough for two. Apparently they could no longer cope with just two office assistants - even though the school population was no bigger. That made me feel chuffed about what a good team my colleague and I had been.

I have many happy memories of my time working there. I never really had any desire to leave for promotion purposes even after I turned 21. When I left it was only because I was going to college to train as a Salvation Army officer.

I loved being in such a busy office where I had so much interaction with staff and students alike. My memory was phenomenal back then. I came to know every one of the students by name. Over the six years I was there I guess that must have been approximately 1,350 kids. When they would come to the counter to buy school stationery items or for some other need, I would always speak to them by name. Sometimes one of them would look startled and ask how I knew their name. I really don't know how I could have been such a whiz at putting their names to their faces back then. These days I have trouble remembering people's names in even a small group I've just been introduced to.

I also knew how all their names were spelled. I remember Tracey was a popular name then - and there were four variations

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