Precious: The Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Man

By Rennie Sterle

The tale of an extraordinary life, told through the writing of thirteen songs.

For thirty years, Rennie Sterle has worked as a safety and rescue professional in the oil, mining, and gas industries. At the same time, he’s lived a second life as a songwriter, performing and touring the world, at times poised on the edge of fame and recognition.

But it was through his ordinary life, as a son, husband, and father, that Rennie found the meaning of his existence. In the commonplace, he discovered the extraordinary.

Here, Rennie tells the story of how his inspiration and moments of everyday enlightenment culminated in the writing of thirteen songs that capture experiences and themes from throughout his life.

You’ll see the world through Rennie’s eyes—and you may even see your own life in a new light.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rennie Sterle
• Release date: Jan 28, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370106882

Rennie Sterle

Rennie Sterle is a musician, songwriter, performer, drummer and sometime guitarist who has toured nationally and internationally, performing, selling records and appearing in video clips. For thirty years, he has also been a safety and rescue professional in the mining and oil and gas industries, working in the northwest of Western Australia. He has been married to Jill for three decades, and has three boys: Tom, an award-winning guitarist and composer; Jack, an award-winning bass guitarist; and Hugh, an exceptional guitarist, harmonica player and now pianist. He was born in 1962 and lives in Perth, Western Australia.

Book preview

1

Being an International Greeting Card Salesman

A nd who’s this distinguished guy Win? asked Brian, the inquisitive Century 21 Area Sales Rep, carefully surveying the gold framed photo portrait hanging on the wall.

That’s our eldest son Glenn. He’s a senator, Brian. He works in Canberra. Win proudly boasted.

Oh! returned Brian, nodding with a mixture of surprise and approval.

And who’s this lovely one?

That’s our daughter… she’s a lawyer.

You must be so proud Win?

Immensely Brian, Win chipped back.

Brian moved slowly along the wall surveying all the photos closely and displaying a deep commitment and consideration to Win’s family heirlooms to substantiate the bond of salesman to vendor, mixed with a hint of true interest.

Finally, Brian plucked up the courage to enquire one more time, So who is this one?

The tone of Win’s voice dropped slightly, Ahhh… that’s our middle child Rennie. A response that seemed to be tossed out to the world as a final surrender with a reluctant admittance to an inkling of an attachment.

What does he do? asked Brian, destined to be enlightened to a trifecta of successful siblings. He imagined… doctor, judge, ambassador?

There was a short pause, We don’t really know… but he tries hard.

Hi. My name is Rennie Sterle. I’m a try hard… apparently.

My colleague Sam reckons, You’re obviously the family gimp.

My parents, Winifred and Renzo love me dearly but have no understanding as to what I do for a living, where I go to make that living and how I manage to pay my bills.

I am a safety manager in mining, oil and gas and construction and have been for more than twenty-five years. I have a Grad Cert in Occupational Health and Safety (OH&S), a Post Grad Cert in Occupational Health and Hygiene and a Master’s Degree in Occupational Environmental, Health and Safety from Edith Cowan University in Western Australia. I also have a Diploma of Teaching. I consider that to be my Achilles heel. They get the teaching thing and they still refer to me as a teacher now, as do most of the extended family and all my parents’ friends. I taught for approximately four years, and that was it. But the legacy of these four years will linger on for eternity and is apparently all I have ever done. I bet they put teacher on my tombstone. I would rather they write journalist… wait a minute, no.

In my earlier years, I was a musician. They knew what that was but could not fathom it as a career. In their minds, musicians were drug taking hippies and surfers who lounged about doing very little. They were hoping that I would eventually get over that phase and get a real job. In the end, they chose try hard safety thingy guy as an explanation to people as to what I did for a living. It was a safer bet than musician and marginally less embarrassing.

My sister has always maintained that I should claim to be a secret agent, a spy and that I should pose as an International Greeting Card Salesman (International because I often travel with my real job). She’s right, my parents could easily comprehend what that job entailed, and I’m sure they would proudly announce to all visitors with gusto, That’s our son Rennie, he’s an International Greeting Card Salesman! while tapping their finger against a nostril and winking.

Both born in 1933, my parents grew up under the toxic environment that was World War II. Mum in southern England, devastatingly levelled on a continuous basis by the Lufthansa carpet bombing campaigns and Dad in Italy, no wait Yugoslavia, no wait Italy. Yes, it was subject to a number of changes, like a game of pass the parcel at a children’s birthday party. No one wants to get left with the ticking present. In the end he was titled as a displaced person with no nationality. How come everybody in my family has a title?

From a refugee camp in Germany at the end of the war, he eventually took a boat to Australia with his mum Chlotilde and four of his five sisters. He told me that he was not sure if they were heading off to Canada, USA, New Zealand or Australia. Obviously, at that time any of those locations were an appetising option.

Mum was a ten-pound Pom. Note: Don’t call her a Pom.

After leaving their beloved home in Bournemouth with her parents Thomas and Agnes Hughes Rice, they left for Australia from Liverpool. After spending a short semi-humiliating time in an immigration camp in Bicton (I think Dad ended up there too for a while) near Point Water in Perth, they eventually settled in Glen Forrest. Would it be an exaggeration to liken this camp to the current day Nauru Detention Centre? I’m sure any true tree hugging Lefty would be able to make the connection?

The weird thing about Glen Forrest is that that is where my wife Jill and I have lived too for the past twenty-seven years. My grandparents along with my mother originally had a house somewhere around the corner of Railway Parade and Cecil Street, with a small quarry in their yard. Our very good friends Leanne and Geraint currently live about that same spot, and yes, they have a quarry in their yard. The house is not the same one (I believe my grandparents’ house got torn down) but the location is likely to be the same. I have threatened Leanne and Geraint that one day I will march onto their property, install a tent embassy and slap a section 36 land rights claim on the place. I’m confident that I can show a continuous connection to country and if we set up a dig, there must be the likelihood that I will find palaeontological evidence of family existence. I would guess that an old pet must have been buried there somewhere?

Glen Forrest is a sleepy hamlet thirty-two kilometres east of Perth in the Darling Scarp with a scattering of houses and the odd shop, a school or two, a sports club and a park with a train type playground. The Darling Scarp is a low lying, densely forested, north to south running range that separates its inhabitants from the peasants in suburban Perth. Jill and I refer to it as our haven. My parents refer to our place as an Ivory Tower.

Our current place is wonderful. From the moment we saw it through the windscreen of the real estate agent’s car to now, we loved the place. We have five acres of semi-fenced scrub, densely populated with magnificent jarrah trees, karri trees, gum trees and the occasional oak. These majestic plants are amazing. Sturdy and strong, they project awesome canopies of leafy branches scattered in all directions. Not only do they waft a unique Australian bush scent, they also provide superb and much needed shade throughout the hotter times. They house a splendid array of local species of birds, bees and insects.

But it’s the birds that Jill and I love the most. Butcher birds squawking, magpies gossiping, parrots chirping, red tailed black cockatoos stripping trees of foliage (no wonder they are a threatened species), kookaburras cracking up with laughter, hummingbirds hovering over flowers, finches flittering around gathering nectar and seeds, owls hooting, Australian ravens bellowing out their obscene opinion… "fark!" and my favourite bird of all… the red breasted robin. This little fellow has to be one of the cutest guys on the block. Black and white with the most striking smudge of red/orange plumage over the front of his breast plate, just brilliant.

Another pleasing site from either our kitchen window or from my rear veranda reading chair starts with the odd flicking of a furry ear in the bush to an almighty thumping on kindling and dead leaf matter as our resident kangaroos bound gracefully across to the neighbour’s place. Dad first, then Mum with the occasional foot hanging out of a pouch and a teenage joey frantically trying to keep pace. Don’t worry, they will all be back. They roam freely between all the neighbours. On rare occasions, we see other marsupial things. The only one I don’t want is a possum. These beady eyed characters spend all night scratching in our roof space and urinating. Although, when you catch them, you can see that they are cute little buggers, but I always make sure I drop them off in a safe spot at a considerable distance from our place. Make sure the distance is considerable, or else he will be back.

Our immediate backyard houses an eighty-litre concrete swimming pool with bridge and waterfall, a large underground concrete spa lined with Toodyay stone benches and serviced by a gas heater, a double garage sized thatched hut, the size capable of housing up to three extended Samoan families, fitted with lighting and a ceiling fan, partly encapsulated with rainbow coloured hammocks sourced from Thailand, Balinese bamboo wind chimes and a roof sprinkler to wet the thatching down. Bring on summer.

On a visit to our ivory tower one time, my dad asked, Why woulda yu wanta to live-a here?

My immediate response was, ’Cos you guys live in Freo.

Freo is the colloquial name for Fremantle, a bustling city some forty-five kilometres from us.

We’d live further away from you guys if we could, but we need to get to the shops, I added. But seriously, what’s wrong with this place?

He continued, a frown appeared as he tilted his head slightly, Surely, yu woulda wanta to concrete da back yarda and geta way from… from dis dirt? he half nodded.

I turned to my wife and sarcastically apologised, I’m sorry Jill, but all I could afford to buy you was a cave.

It is a great cave, glamorous and majestic. If we sold it at the current rate, we could convert the money into a gazillion Thai baht and retire forever in Koh Samui. Imagine what we would get if we converted it into Drachmas or better still Zimbabwean dollars?

From that day onwards I would announce Dad as Renzo the Concreter… I came, I saw, and I concreted.

At this point I substantiated Dad’s suggestion, You’re right Dad, I should concrete the backyard. By the way, do you have any spare marble lions in your shed? I could grab them off you and mount them on the brick entrance wall at the front of our drive, then I’ll get the roof tiles painted blue, cut all the trees down, shoot the roos, poison the birds and whipper snipper the block.

If yu a gunna do dat, he added, Why don’ta yu put a vineyard in anda maka use of da land? Sadly, he wasn’t joking. Now my ivory tower, sorry cave, was also useless and full of dirt. I was buoyed at least by the knowledge that our cave had a forty-five-kilometre buffer zone.

My cave woman is a beautiful soul. I love Jill so much. She is intelligent, caring and thoughtful. One of her most striking qualities is her patience at putting up with me. My sister considers that quality as her only blemish. Being with her is always a precious moment. I have never told her this, but because I am often away with work, as an International Greeting Card Salesman, of course, I always consider her as home. You know that feeling you get when all you want to do is go home. Where ever she is, if I am there, I am home.

Jill can be really funny, although she doesn’t think she is. I recall one time when a local couple we knew announced in front of a pack of us that they named their son Jordan after a combination of their names Julie and Gordon. As quick as a flash Jill shot back, Luckily you didn’t name him Goolie. We all nearly wet ourselves.

We have a wonderful group of friends around the scarp. People in this area often refer to themselves as Hillbillies jokingly as we all live in the hills east of Perth. Jill will regularly go to discount movie night with the girls at the local cinema. They do this on what they refer to as tight arse Tuesday. She also meets the girls for drinks on Fridays at the Club. That’s the Glen Forrest Sports Club. Jill and I are members, and we have a stool donated in our name. This is part of our philanthropy portfolio. I bet Bill Gates hasn’t donated a stool to the Glen Forrest Sports Club!

We chose Glen Forrest to raise our family as there was open space, nature, fresh air, trees and bush. We considered it to be a safe place, quiet and free from the trappings of a big city, yet on that city’s door step for access to facilities, services and work. It was a guess but a very good guess. Our three boys seemed to love the place and still hold fond memories of the two houses that we have lived in throughout our twenty-seven years here. Our boys, now in their mid to late twenties, still have a substantial list of close friends from the hills.

When the boys were primary school age, they too had no concept of what I did for a living, and I don’t think they gave it a second thought at the time. They obviously have since as the first two both have Master’s degrees. The eldest, Tom has one in Human Factors Engineering (Health and Safety) and the middle one, Jack has one in Occupational Health and Safety. The youngest Hugh, thankfully and proudly, we can all say is a pilot. When I see his photo on the fridge in his uniform, it is a precious moment.

Once when they were young boys, I returned from Jundee Gold Mine after a six-week stint away. After leaving a taxi, I ran straight into my eldest boy Tom who was about eleven years old at the time. He was exiting the front door with a mate at break neck speed that would have beaten Usain Bolt when I stopped him. Hi Tom, how have you been?

Great! he returned, panting profusely.

Where are you going?

Out.

What have you been up to?

Stuff.

What do you know?

Nothing.

Did you miss me?

Where have you been?

On a mine site for six weeks.

Have you been away for six weeks?

Yeah.

He paused and pondered, I thought it’s been a bit quiet around here. Anyway, good to see you Dad. Gotta go.

Within the blink of an eye, he was gone and out of site, swallowed up by the adjacent seventy-five hectares of shire owned bush that leads towards the Mundaring Dam catchment area. I stood dazed and partly in thought on the driveway. Jill greeted me and asked, What’s up? As she hugged me I explained my encounter with Tom and his lack of awareness to where I’d been.

Glass half full, she explained. Young boys start developing strong cognitive skills early, and by eight to ten years old particularly, they have solid mathematical skills, become capable of solving complex analytical equations as well as displaying a command of the English language to the point of projecting this into impressive communication skills. At preteen/teenage times, boys revert to demonstrating the communication skills and abilities of a pregnant wombat and grunt their way through the next decade. Consider your encounter with Tom as a conversation. That’s more talk than most Australian dads get at this age.

She was always wise like that, so I’m calling it a conversation. Father of the year material, tick.

When I tell people what my name is, they don’t get it. The conversation usually goes like this:

My name is Rennie Sterle. They look at me as if I just said in a southern American accent, My name is Forrest Gump. Then they return with I’m sorry?

Don’t be, my parents named me that, not you.

Did you say Ronnie?

No, Rennie.

Randy?

Usually, but it’s Rennie.

Renee?

No, Rennie.

Remy?

Double n.

Rennie?

Yes, Rennie."

Is that short for something?

Yes, it’s short for Rennie. At this point, there is often a pause, and I can feel their brain actually ticking over. I usually have to break the silence and awkwardness with, Rennie, as in the antacid tablet, and Sterle which is sterile without the ‘i’.

I have had the enquiry, Steel? to which I have replied, That’s a cartoon hero who wears his undies on the outside.

I have also had, Stool?

To which I have replied, No, that’s a sample that you don’t want.

The best was a phone call enquiry asking for Irene Stool. It was handed to me by a work colleague who stuck out the phone and said: Call for Irene Stool. I took the phone and answered, Irene speaking. The guy spoke to me for several minutes and referred to me as Irene the entire time. The guys in the office fell all over the place laughing and spent several days calling me Irene.

My close friends and the family, especially my boys, call me Renzo.

I’ll get, Is that short for Larenzo?

I will then reply with, "La is the prefix aligned to femininity, I don’t need to sit down for a piss, so Renzo will do." There is usually a pause at this point as they think that through.

I went to Lynwood Senior High School. That was nothing to brag about.

The school buildings were brand new, and I was sentenced to five years there, having posted bail after finishing year twelve. Believe me that in those days, graduating from Lynwood was a lonely thing. I’m sure it has changed since then. I now guess that I was the case of the best of a bad bunch rather than being a true rough diamond, but at the time I was a school prefect and considered as a rising star to be watched with a career that would possibly be tracked as a gauge of excellence for Lynwood in the future.

Buzzzzzzzz! Wrong.

I can hear the game show buzzer ringing out loudly.

No doubt by now, the Office Registrar has shredded all known evidence of my existence, and it now will simply be a case of he said Vs she said if I ever try to claim ownership to an education from Lynwood Senior High School.

Rennie Sterle? Never heard of him.

Have you ever heard of Irene Stool?

Yes, he was a prefect here in 1979: wasted talent. It hurts to see the young go bad.

In my teenage years, I was determined to be noticed. I needed a game plan. I know, I shouted to myself, I’ll be a musician!

Musicians have the best life. It’s the only job where you can be drunk at work, and you only have to work about three or four hours at a time, two nights a week: Friday and Saturday. Besides, musicians get all the girls even if they are as weird as Iggy Pop, as ugly as Rod Stewart, or as gay as Duran Duran.

Now, all I had to do was to learn to play an instrument. I was lazy, so piano was out of the question. I had fingers like Barney Rubble from the Flintstones, so guitar was not going to happen.

Saxophone? Poor breathing technique… so no.

Lead singer… Buzzzzzzzz! Wrong again.

It was down to triangle or drums.

No matter how you looked at it, triangle sucked.

I thought, Hi, Irene Stool… drummer for ‘The Maggots’. Yeah! Kick arse, that’ll work!

So, I became a drummer … sort of. That is, I behaved like a drummer. I drank lots of beer and carried hefy fings. It suited me to be a drummer because I had little to no musical talent. Little was anyone to know then that this would eventually lead to an interim musical career on an international stage. No, I was not the fifth Beatle, nor did I replace Brian Jones from the Rolling Stones, and no I was not a roadie for The Clash. I was truly a musical nobody. Mind you, most drummers are nobodies. What’s the name of the drummer from Pink Floyd? It’s often a quiz night question (apologies to Nick Mason—respect brother, respect.).

It did thankfully lead me onto being an APRA songwriter. A dozen songs vs Paul Kelly’s three hundred songs may be worlds apart, but can I share your title Paul?

Same, same?

My brother and sister have regularly referred to me as Ruprecht, likening me to the character that Steve Martin played in the movie Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. They often conjure up the image that I should be kept in a dungeon and only led out on a leash, with my sister once presenting me with an eye patch to complete the transformation. They very much understand my career status, my sister being a senior manager for the company that owns the gas plant where I currently work at with a contracting maintenance firm, and my brother has toured the gas plant as a VIP on a parliamentary delegation. But, they still fuel the fire at Mum and Dad’s place. Siblings always believe that they have clearance or a licence to do such things. I try to do it back too, but I don’t manage to land any punches, I just try hard to.

Coincidentally, my sister once read a Far Side greeting card that had a picture of a dog on the front, and its owner was talking profusely to the dog. The extensive text was in a conversation bubble from the owner. The dog was not interested until he heard his name. The dog’s conversation bubble read Blah blah blah, Rex! At that point, the dog lit up and took notice. Rudely, they both cracked up laughing along with Jill, and pronounced from that point on to call me Rex as a reference to the fact that they suggest I only hear and respond to things that are intrinsically important to me, Jill concurred. The Rex name is still used frequently; both of them have introduced me to people as Rex. When I am looking pathetic or weird, they slip back to Ruprecht. They often complete the introduction as, This is my brother Rex… he tries hard.

As a successful health, safety and environmental (HSE) professional I have been blessed with a comfortable level of remuneration over the years. No, I don’t make the combined salary of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. I’m not on the gravy train like my brother, whom I jokingly refer to as Casey Jones, nor am I climbing the greasy pole as is my corporate performing sister but it pays the bills. My pay load is anonymity. Rex may get a guernsey with strangers. Sometimes when takeaway coffee makers need a name to call out, I’ll give them Bonky just to hear them yell it and not laugh.

Anonymity can be wonderful. It is useful when police, security staff or the media ask me who I am. When a name is required to be written down in a notebook, the name that is always offered on this type of occasion is Irene Stool, the International Greeting Card Salesman.

2

Where Are You, No. 3?

So far , our philanthropy portfolio consisted of Jill, donating her time and considerable expertise on the Variety Bash Board and me, donating a stool to the Glen Forrest Sports Club. But there was a burning desire, a call to do greater things. There was something pushing us forward. Okay, the truth was that it was pushing Jill forward and, thankfully, as usual she was dragging me along.

Jill had coffee with our friend Elaine, and she spoke of building houses in Cambodia. Elaine and her husband Jim lived in the next suburb, Parkerville. Elaine was also a teacher and had taught our son Hugh at Glen Forrest Primary School.

Elaine and Jim had been connected with a non-religious, not for profit organisation that was based in Western Australia and provided the funding and then the physical opportunity to building houses. Once committed, we then had to go to Cambodia and help construct these houses. That physical connection was the exact input that Jill and I were looking for.

We were invited to join a housebuilding group. The group we were connected with were all Perth hillbillies. There were fourteen of us. We came from Darlington, Parkerville, Glen Forrest, Mahogany Creek, Mundaring and Chidlow. Initially, we were to provide the funding for one house per person. Each house required A$1,500. That meant that Jill and I needed to provide A$3,000. Not a problem.

After submitting a working with children check, signing professional behaviour policies and lodging our upfront house payments, we were off to Cambodia. Jill and I were jettisoned into the exotic city of Phnom Penh, once the jewel in the crown of Indochina. We were excited and proud of our international philanthropy commitment. This was now real, and we were on the cusp of something amazing. I don’t suffer any feelings of guilt, poor esteem or disappointment in anything I have ever done in my life for any reason (you can confirm this with any of my family members), however I felt an extra feeling of pride in the good that Jill and I were about to partake in. I was going above and beyond in the care factor. Jill was used to stepping up to the plate in caring for strangers, but it was a warm, new feeling for me. For once, it was not about me. I liked it.

Glen Forrest is a spacious, calm, clean and conservative place where people go about their business in a gentle and rustic manner. Phnom Penh was everything opposite to that: It was chaotic. I loved it from the moment I arrived.

Architecturally, Phnom Penh is the bastard love child of an aristocratic Paris lord and some innocent and shy Indochinese house girl: a European veneer, smeared on layers of Khmer heritage, that has been shaped and embedded over centuries.

There were French boulevards swamped with motorbikes, pushbikes, tuk-tuks and rickshaws. The transport networks were excruciatingly bottlenecked, choked with the tangled web of vehicles and pedestrians in limbo. They were all wrestling for an opportunity to succeed through the maze, like a flock of seagulls fighting over a chip. And yet, it all worked. Amazingly, everyone got to where they wanted to be, on time, without a fuss, without a dent and unbelievably without a hint of road rage. That is definitely un-Australian.

I saw pagodas slowly strangled with jungle