MEDIA RELEASE
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28 November, 2017
The year was 1963. A Liverpool teenager by the name of Tony Bleasdale stepped off a ship into the streets of Sydney.
Alone except for a group of ragtag boys from the UK and a kindly woman who found them paid work and lodgings.
One of his first Aussie acquaintances was a knockabout lad called Peter Cosgrove.
One is now a successful businessman and Deputy Mayor of Blacktown City with an OAM and the other our highly decorated Governor General.
They bumped into each other last week when Governor-General Peter Cosgrove (AK, MC) was in Blacktown to shoot a video as part of his televised Australia Day address to the nation.
“The look on people’s faces was amazing when he said: “G’day Tony” to me as I walked in, Deputy Mayor Bleasdale said.
“It was absolutely fantastic to catch up with him and have a chat, considering it was 50-odd years since we were running around Paddington together as kids,” Cr Bleasdale said.
“He’s a kid from Paddo, just like me.
“We grew up in that area at a time when Paddington wasn’t the salubrious place it is today.
“Paddington in those days was Struggle Street: people didn’t have a penny to rub together between them, but it had a great sense of community.
“There was no work in Liverpool at that time and the city was in dire straits in terms of the bombing that had taken place in World War II,” he said.
“I heard about an employment scheme that was sending British boys to Australia.
“I came ashore in 1963 with a group of 15 boys after travelling for six-and-a-half weeks by ship.
“We were met by a lady named Mrs Ferguson who took us to a boarding house in Paddington and she organised immediately for the older boys to commence work at the Anderson Meat Works opposite Victoria Barracks.
“I would earn five pounds a week and I’d send two pounds over to the UK to my mother.”
The young Tony Bleasdale said he met Sir Peter at the Paddington Police Boys Club, where they were both members.
Similar to the now PCYC, the Police Boys Club was an organisation run by the local police that offered free activities for boys.
“The other day at our catch up we talked about some of the venues and personalities we used to know: local pubs and the characters you could find in them.
“One of my favourite memories is at a pub in Paddington. Sitting at the bar one day I looked over and I saw this man in a magnificent blue suit smoking a cigarette.
“It was Chips Rafferty, one of Australia’s most famous actors. He was like the Paul Hogan of that era.”
After a few years working in the Paddington Meat Works and “running around the streets of Paddo” Cr Bleasdale got a job in the construction industry.
This was the beginning of a long and successful career, which included 12 years as the assistant secretary of what was then Australia’s biggest construction union, the Building Workers Industrial Union, and later as the Group Industrial Relations Manager at the W McNamara Group.
In addition to his work as the Blacktown City Deputy Mayor and Ward 5 Councillor, Cr Bleasdale runs a national construction labour hire business and is a supporter of many charity groups.
For his part, Sir Peter went on to have an illustrious career in the Australian Army, rising through the ranks to become the Chief of the Defence Forces, before being appointed as the current Governor-General of Australia.
“It just goes to show that you can achieve anything in life, no matter your background and circumstances,” Cr Bleasdale said.
“You can go from being a working class boy running around the streets of Paddo to being Governor-General of Australia.
“Australia offers those opportunities and there aren’t not too many countries that do.”
Blacktown City Deputy Mayor Tony Bleasdale at Blacktown on 15 November with his childhood friend, the Governor-General of Australia, Peter Cosgrove (AK, MC).
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