Wesfarmers made me homeless
In 1993 Wesfarmers had a whole lot of businesses and one of them sold liquid white stuff. This particular business I had been getting the white stuff from for seven years with no trouble except for one time when they filled some of the containers it was sold in with cleaning fluid so the customers were a bit upset and blamed me for supplying bad stuff. Some even stopped being my customers. This business, Masters Dairy, never did acknowledge, apologise, or compensate me or the other milkmen. Well, not me, anyway.
The employee who took my money each week to pay for the milk I had used during the previous week had a bright idea to make a lot of money by selling a solid white product which was worth an enormous more for a little bit of the white powder. How did he do this, you ask.
Masters make a good choc milk. Well, it is normally good.
He organised a container load sent up to Singapore to be definitely not good so the whole lot was rejected and sent back to Australia. Well, choc milk was supposed to be on its way back but, look, some of the liquid choc milk had metamorphed into solid white powder. Magic. Well, magic with a bit of help.
Now the accounts guy had a product and needed customers.
My son had looked after the milkround a couple of years before when I went to Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand looking for items to buy and for me and other milkmen to sell. The trip was great but not so good for products but good for I came back with wife number two. You will have never met a more charming woman.
I had an interesting time obviously and my son had an uneventful time looking after the milkround customers and paying Masters each week.
Fast forward to 1993. Wife number two had worked in tourism and we were about to start a tourism business in Thailand. Wife and I went to Bangkok leaving son looking after the milkround. Like before in 1991 except I would not be bringing back a new wife.
I don’t know if you started a business in Thailand in 1993 but I hope they were faster with you than with us.
Ten weeks.
And the worst part was to find Masters had been taking the money for the white solid and not the white liquid. Well, that bit of a realisation did not happen then and took a few years before it all became clear.
How?
How could it happen?
Why did it happen?
A couple of his friends had been carted off to hospital while we were in Bangkok suffering from overdoses of drugs. One was permanently incapacitated and the other was on medication for the rest of his life. But for some reason that bit of knowledge did not elicit useful thoughts for years either.
I guess I was just in shock as to the hows and the whys.
The milk bill was $3,000 a week so the bill was $30,000 and the money to pay it had gone. Where was obviously the next appropriate word.
I could not pay it and refused to try because the money should have been taken by Masters because that was where it was supposed to be.
Prior to 1993 any time the milk bill had not been paid each week I got a reminder to hurry up and pay it.
So why had there been no “hurry ups”?
Why had it not been required before milk was supplied.
Two years later the Western Australian Government decided to put me out of business and all other similarly sized milkmen with household customers and a few shops. The Government came up with a ridiculously low value for the milkround of $16,000.
That was all they gave me.
I obviously tried to get their representative who met with objecting exmilkmen to realise it was too low. I was the first to meet him. A chap called John Negus. A whole lot of words should be there before his name but that would make this unprintable. He thought it was reasonable.
So I was to get only about half of what was still owed. Now it was to Wesfarmers as I guess when they got rid of Masters in 1994 any debts did not go with it. Obviously I suspect they found out about their employee and his/her heroin sideline and dumped the whole shebang.
So Wesfarmers took me to court.
I always wonder why the magistrate was so keen on blaming me for not paying the milk money. Just do not get it. I would have expected a magistrate to be impartial.
Anyway Wesfarmers got the $16,000 and the keys to my apartment, making me homeless. Well done big business. Next time just acknowledge that it was your employee that caused the loss.
It was a few years before I became aware that I had supported a whole lot of my son’s friends with ten weeks of joy or whatever you get from the white stuff. Completely depressing.
Just as depressing was that the Western Australian Government decided in 1998 that they needed to give me an extra $53,000 for my milkround. Bit late donkeys.
I have tried to get Wesfarmers and the Western Australian State Government to compensate me for making me homeless but their failure has been the cause of Andy One writing in his diary in 4587 that he and the other humans on Maxwell 01 have been viewing the result of the west coast of Australia sinking beneath the waves with commensurate death and destruction.
Email to Wesfarmers 18/12/2023 after phone call.
Email to Wesfarmers with above and several attachments from 2022, 2019, 2014, 2013
“We’ll give him a good funeral.”
This was the response from two devout Christians with respect to their brother and uncle who is completely disabled and becoming homeless on January 9th and planning to commit suicide as a result.
The suicide risk has not been a good Christian but has never purported to be one.
The other two have.
Church every Sunday.
Roles in their Church group.
What is God thinking that this is acceptable behaviour?
Are you listening God?
You are supposed to hear all.
You really condone this behaviour?
What about getting the Western Australian Government to assist this helpless individual God, rather than just telling him he is a hopeless case and telling him to go away.
So his rellies will not help him.
The Western Australian Government will not help him.
Perhaps Wesfarmers can help.
They gave two million to Albo for his racist referendum.
A million recompense to me for having taken my home away thirty years ago because of the actions of one of their employees would provide a home for the poor bastard and his cat.
