Hans Erikson in Melbourne

In Sir Sidney Myer’s Footsteps

Apart from his far-flung Outback adventures, Hans Erikson seems to have spent most of his time in Australia living in cities. In this regard, he was a typical local. 7 out of 10 Australians live in crowded, sprawling, unplanned, polluted cities on the coastal belt of the continent. Of those 7, 6.5 drive around in huge 4WD utes, wear RM Williams cowboy hats and try to act like the stars of a spaghetti Western. It’s a ridiculous macho façade Erikson would have seen through easily having himself experienced the real hardships of the Outback for many years. From the wilderness, he went first to Melbourne and then Sydney. Australia’s two largest cities are different in character and temperament and remain bitter rivals. As the tedious cliché goes, Melbourne is a European-style city founded by free settlers whereas Sydney is an ex-convict jail that is now USA hip. It was the stupid rivalry between these cities that placed Australia’s new national capital, Canberra, in a frosty sheep paddock west of the Range in southern New South Wales rather than on a tropical island off the north Queensland coast where life would have been much sweeter for the politicians and public servants. Erikson was no stranger to foolish intercity rivalries. Sweden’s two largest metropolises, Stockholm and Gothenburg, are ancient adversaries. All the bright and talented young Gothenburgers usually end up in Stockholm, attracted by the lure of the Royal Court and big money. This was a temptation cast before Uncle Willy who steadfastly turned his back on all invitations to leave his beloved Gothenburg and join the crowd at Arty-farty Central in the royal capital. And, as I now know, Gothenburg repays his loyalty by erasing him from her memory banks! She is a cold-hearted mistress, indeed.

In The Rhythm of the Shoe, Erikson tells us that his world collapsed when he received news from his father that Uncle Willy’s estate had been squandered. The silver spoon he was expecting to jiggle about in his mouth suddenly turned into a wooden toothpick. After he pulled himself together, he heard about a refugee who had arrived in Melbourne with nothing and ended up a millionaire. His name was Myer. So Erikson set off for Melbourne with plans of doing the same. He would be a millionaire even if he had to earn it himself.

But, of course, he soon found that “whatever Myer had had I didn’t.” He tried everything: vacuum salesman, shire engineer, insurance inspector, surveyor for Lloyds, fitter, toolmaker, census taker, lift driver, butler and “an efficiency expert in a furniture factory (lasted six months).” For a while, he worked as a sales manager with a real estate company on the Mornington Peninsula. He got the job by concocting his own glowing reference from a fictitious real estate company in Durban, South Africa. With typical bravado, he pretended to know everything about real estate selling and was soon left in charge of the office while the boss went on a work trip to Sydney. During this time, clients of the firm began to appear in the office complaining that the block of land they were shown by the salesman and thought they were buying – sitting on top of a hill with glorious ocean views – wasn’t the block noted on their contract. They were actually buying a block of land “in the middle of a swamp.” A true Robin Hood/Ralph Nader, Erikson gave them all their money back. Not surprisingly, his boss returned from Sydney in a rage and sacked him on the spot. His response: “at the time I felt very hurt as I knew that I had done a mighty job for the good name of the firm.”

It was time to leave Myer’s Melbourne and move to Sydney, Australia’s first city, built on the blood and toil of Old England’s worst criminals: swindlers, forgers, pick-pockets, rapists, murderers. Maybe he would fit in better there?