I was working at RAAF Fairbairn as a civilian employee when GWB Snr came a calling. The day after his arrival (I wasn't so crazy as to go anywhere near the flight line the day he arrived) I had to go down near the flight line to sort a problem out as I was the senior civvy on base and we had a lot of civvies with military supervisors - mega conflict time.
As I got nearer to the flight line I got very edgy, as if I was being watched. Just short of my destination I stopped and had a good look around. I'm sure I didn't see them all, but I did tag eight different people watching me through the scopes on their rifles, most high on buildings, but a few not so high. Boy was I glad to finish up there and get back across the other side of the base.
On another occasion I had to visit a special unit we were administratively responsible for. Before my walk through to be able to write up a report to justify the expensive refit, they had to sanitize the whole facility and stop work until after I left. I almost had to do a strip search on entry and exit.
I had to laugh as the security officer up there, an acting Squadron Leader, was very into his job and going on about the need to make sure only authorised personnel got within cooee of the material. Two weeks later he came to HQ for a file and I couldn't open my safe to give it to him as he didn't have a high enough clearance. He'd not bothered to check my security clearance and it was higher than his, but I didn't mind not being exposed to another secret I didn't need to know. The file was eventually collected from me by the Wing Commander in charge up there with an armed security escort and a chained briefcase. I was glad all the seals on the sealed package were still intact as I did NOT want to know what it was about.
The greatest fun I had about security was when I first started work. I was sixteen and worked in a bank. About four months before my seventeenth birthday the manager called me in to his office, gave me a pistol and counted out forty thousand dollars in notes. I just got given the task of taking the money three blocks down the road to another back as an urgent cash transfer. He had a nice briefcase with a chain to carry the money in. I refused and shoved the bundles of notes into various pockets of my coat, stuck on my overcoat (it was a cold winter day), stuck the pistol in the left pocket of my overcoat, and walked out the front door of the bank with another member of staff at the first lunch start time. We talked about what to buy for lunch as we walked up the street. they turned into the take away four doors up, and I kept going towards the sandwich shop further up. The manager at the other bank was surprised when I walked in and just unloaded the money on the desk. Later, I checked up and found out we'd violated four laws and seven bank policies in that money shift, but it went well. The funniest thing was I had no qualms at all about walking down the street with all that money stuffed in my pockets, I was more worried about that old pistol going off by accident, it was a bloody relic.
