Source: University of Otago
Transport Operator Keith Garraway leaves the University this week after 29 years.
When Keith Garraway started working casually at the University of Otago through an employment agency, he never suspected he would become fulltime and stay for 29 years, until his retirement.
At the time, the trained carpenter was actually leading hand in the Fortex meat processing plant’s fellmongery on the Taieri, where staff used chemicals to remove wool from skins then treated them in preparation for their conversion to leather.
He did the work three days a week because it paid the same as five days as a carpenter, so “I thought I’d give it a bit of a bash”, – after working on the Clyde Dam, helping to build a house, and doing carpentry jobs in homes.
University to the rescue
But by 1992, Keith was wanting to pick up work for another three days as well because he was doing up a house for himself, so he contacted employment agency Adecco and became a part-time carpenter at the University.
Then Fortex collapsed in 1994 so Keith turned to our University for help, and while there was no more carpentry work, a fulltime job as Transport Operator was coming up.
“I asked ‘what does it pay?’ Because I’m not going to work for less than I get now,” Keith says.
It paid well enough, “so I started on the transport and just sort of carried on since then … it’s not stuck in an office with the same people”.
On the job
Keith is always out and about, moving offices and equipment, transporting hazardous goods, transporting cadavers, preparing for graduation ceremonies.
A big part of the job for Keith and Transport Assistant Marko Draganoff is regularly unpacking and setting up about 900 chairs and tables for exams in the Union Hall, College of Education gym and Smithells Gymnasium, then packing them all away afterwards.
That work also used to include setting up 800 chairs and 800 tables in the Town Hall – “there were a zillion rooms to do” – for the Undergraduate Medical Aptitude Test, which assessed whether applicants had the personal qualities a doctor needs. Then those exams moved to a single room, the Edgar Centre basketball arena. Now, they are all online.
Keith has liked his job because it is full of variety, he gets to organise tasks himself, and “you inevitably see lots of different things”, at the medical school, marine laboratory, animal breeding facility and the many other types of places around the University.
Recycling work
Recycling furniture has always been part of the work, moving it to a store until someone else needs it, but as demand grew about 50 people were showing up during the two-hour opening times each week to find furniture and “it was just chaos”.
So a third person was hired a couple of years ago to run the stores, Trina Brown, because “everyone’s on the band wagon”.
Work relationships
Keith also has work to thank for partner Amber Marshall, who got a job on his University truck while she was studying at Otago, about three years after his divorce. A relationship developed in 2000 that has since led to “two lovely boys”.
Keith has always been more likely to show humour on the job than anger: “You can say things nicely and have a forceful point. People sort of know when you’re getting serious.”
Looking back, he “wouldn’t really change anything if I could … (all is good) as long as you’re basically enjoying your life I think”.
Family plans
And as for the future?
While Amber will continue working at our University’s Central Library, Keith will be taking care of their children more often, six-year-old Zac and 11-year-old Ben: “I think it’s better the second time around. You know how to deal with it from the first time around.”
Keith also has two sons from his first marriage, 38-year-old Nic, a therapeutic masseur in Dunedin, and 39-year-old Chris who works in a mine in Australia, after time in the diving industry.
Recreation plans
The Garraway family crib in the Taieri Gorge – which can only be reached through a tunnel for the trains – will also continue to feature in Keith’s life.
His grandfather used to live in the red and white house at Parera while running the railway station between about 1936 and 1945, so when the house came up for sale in 1960, Keith’s father bought it.
“It was pretty rough in those days,” Keith says, but a lot of hard work has gone into getting the crib into immaculate condition and keeping it that way.
He and his two siblings now own the crib.
It is a great base for swimming in the river, fishing, hunting deer and pigs, and having a few beers. Keith also has a “scratch around in the creeks every now and then” to see if he can find any gold.
While people are wanting him to do a few projects too, first he will spend a couple of months just getting his head around no longer working so will be catching up with friends, and he is sure Amber will have a few tasks for him around their home in Mosgiel as well.
