It's Only a Job Book Review

This is how writer Phil Thornton best describes the job of a wharfie

in a book he has published with photographer Paul Jones.

It's only a job is about workers - abattoir workers, process workers,

sex workers, nursery workers, window cleaners, winemakers and

wharfie Kenny Carruthers.

And while Kenny bitterly recalls fingers ripped while carrying

frozen pigs and sheep and the loss of good mates killed on the

job, scaffolder Kari Crollet tells how he had to turn his head

rather than see his mate fall to his death. Forensic assistant

Julie Sinuks works in "a refrigerated room containing the body-bagged

dead" and grave digger Gary Smith drops back into the cool darkness

of a half dug hole, " a statue of Christ on the Cross painfully

white against the sharp blue sky."

Far from being only a job, work is too often a matter of life

and death.

But Thornton and Jones also celebrate the extraordinary people

who fill the 50 jobs in this book, the tremendous passions and

experiences of these 'ordinary heroes' - the rescue pilot, lifeguard,

ringmaster, noodle maker, the tall ship rigger, ranger, ring master,

jazz musician and market gardener.

"Choosing workers for inclusion in this book was not based on

any scientific formula or demographic methods," writes Thornton.

"Directions and suggestions came from friends, union organisers,

casual contacts along the road and our own gut feelings."

And so we travel with cattle drover Mary Kernaghan as she pushes

big mobs of cattle up and down stock routes between Jerilderie

and Mungindi, 105 kilometres out into the ocean in a fibreglass

boat with Mario Basile in search of the "black-blue, torpedo-shaped"

southern bluefin tuna, down 1500 metres of rock into the thick

blackness of a coal mine, abseiling precariously down the cliff

face of a city sky scraper with window cleaner Brett Bragg, and

back in time to the Wailing Wall where bosses walked the line

of men feeling their muscles before giving the nod to the bulls.

Paul Jones is a veteran photo journalist who has covered the war

on the West Bank and the end of apartheid. He uses his powerful

images to make political statements, penetrating the mesh that

separates us from the beekeeper and the haze that blurs the marijuana

smoking Nimbin museum curator. He captures the passion and intense

concentration on the jazz musician bent over his bass, the control

and creativity in the hand of the Aboriginal artist, the tools

slung around the waist of the building worker, the coal dust in

the pores and crevices of the miners' face.

Phil Thornton describes himself as a journalist who likes documenting

the lives of working people. He captures with words the sound

of struck metal, 'the tired yawn' of the slowly opening caravan

door as 'the sky cracks with dawn' and the 'deafening rumble from

thousands of fans above the dancing football club mascot.

He records the wave of economic rationalisation sweeping the workplace,

casualisation, lost jobs and the long queue of hungry people outside

the church soup kitchens.

Also recorded is the wisdom workers draw from their jobs:

"I've learnt how fragile humans are," says nurse Gaye Hudson.

"But also the tremendous strength they can have."

"They come in here in expensive suits, but when they drop them

they're just like everyone else underneath" says sex industry

worker 'Jason'.

"People are getting more selfish," says church worker Reverend

Bill Crews. "We're obsessed with winners and losers - and losers

are like the new leprosy, people are afraid of catching it."

But above all else Thornton and Jones capture the satisfaction

and pleasure people get from their jobs:

"Some days I stand out here in the sunshine, feeling the warm

breeze of the water," says Melbourne wharfie Kenny Carruthers.

"And I say to the young blokes, 'Where else would you rather be?'"

It's Only a Job, By Phil Thornton & Paul Jones, New Holland Publishers

Pty Ltd, 2000 is available from all major book stores or from

the publishers.