A Rocky Way to Paradise

About the Book

This is about a young lad who lost his father, his only parent, and had to survive through hard and good times. The book was written in a simple language to aid adults in learning to read.

About the Author

My name is William ‘Bill’ Cecil Keech and lived in Gladstone, Queensland. I am one of fifteen children. I grew up in Beecher via Gladstone and was schooled at the West Gladstone public school until I was thirteen. My father would take me out of school to work with him. When I was thirteen and a half, my father left to look for work himself. I too left home to work on a dairy farm, sending my weekly pay of five dollars home to my mother to help the rest of the family. At fifteen, I was homeless, living under a road bridge in Rockhampton while working at Lakes Creek meat works. I falsified my age to get the job. At sixteen, I went out west as a stockman. At seventeen, I came home and got a job at the power station in Gladstone. I became a leading hand and jackhammer operator. In May 1972, while on the mail collection run for work, I was involved in a road accident, being the motorcycle victim of a drunk driver, resulting in the loss of my right leg above knee, 25 percent loss of function of the right arm, and ABI (acquired brain injury). The attending police officer didn’t have the heart to book his uncle, the offender of the accident, which resulted in no TAC, no insurance, and no payout of any kind. I was in the hospital for three and a half months. Work was hard to find when I left the hospital as nobody wanted to hire a one-legged person who couldn’t read. I spent many years working at odd jobs and trying to survive, which included fishing, fruit picking, crabbing, furniture making, welding, and markets until the year 2000 when I accepted the disability pension. Being unable to read and write after the motorcycle accident due to the ABI, a friend suggested that I should write a book which will assist in learning to read and write again. With that in mind, I decided to go ahead because not only will it help me, but it will help others as well. Writing this book was very hard but was of enormous help to me, and I hope that it will also be of help to others. If I don’t read and write daily, I have to start from scratch again. The publication of my book would be of enormous help to many.