This is the final column in which I detail my experiences of having to work to get money for my university fees. I am writing this to show all the university students who want to go to university and not pay any fees how much real-life education they are missing. I think this is a real tragedy.

At the end of my third year at university, I applied for a job at the West Driefontein gold mine. I had worked there before, three years earlier, when I was 17. As a result of being so young, I had no car, was not allowed to go to pubs and stayed in the old single quarters, which were truly awful. Things had changed. I had acquired a car (an 1100 Ford Escort – a true friend) and I was billeted in the new single quarters.

I was working at 2 Shaft, mostly underground, with the underground electricians. I had only been there for a week when an event occurred which, even 40 years later, I remember vividly. Three Australian students had written to Goldfields of South Africa and asked if they could work on a gold mine for eight weeks to gain experience. The students were all studying mining engineering.

Today, if they are still around, they will be in their sixties. It is possible too that they have risen to great heights of management. All I can tell you is that, when they were at West Driefontein, they did things which it took years for the town of Carletonville (5 km from West Drie) to recover. Their names were Peter Winder, Bill Lannan and Dudley Isles. I met them in the bar at the recreational club and they soon adopted me as a friend because I had a car. Under their tuition, we worked underground during the day and went jolling at night. It was no exaggeration to say that they drank until they dropped, each and every night.

Occasionally, Winder would stay relatively sober but Lannan and Isles made up for this. They had the Australian familiarity approach to everybody they met. Thus, for example, when introduced to the resident engineer, Isles clapped him on the back and “Howzit, mate?”, while Lannan enquired if he wanted a ‘tinny’ (can of beer). Short of female company, Isles asked the personnel manager if he would mind if he called on the personnel manager’s daughter. She was all of 17 at the time. Isles was invited around for supper, drank six beers in quick succession and then told them that he did not want to hang around the house; shouldn’t he and the daughter go for a walk? Strangely enough, the manager refused his request. But he did continue to see the daughter.

On the mine, we had to work on Saturday morning, and so the three of them decided it would be a good idea to take a couple of tinnys underground and have a braai in the underground fitters workshop on 18 Level. Now it happens that 18 Level is about 1 800 m from the surface. Thus, when you drink alcohol underground, it is absorbed in the blood and, when you return to the surface, owing to the air pressure change, the alcohol returns to the brain again. At about 11:00, the three of them staggered out of the cage into the bright morning sun, totally wrecked. Lannan keeled over.

On their final night at the mine, they had a huge party. They made so much noise that the police were called. The police officer very calmly asked them to quieten down and, since they were wearing shorts and nothing else, to put on their shirts. Their reaction was to remove their shorts and bend over with their backs to the police. And then they ran away and climbed a tree. I left them and drove home. I thought I had seen the last of them, but no – the following day was Christmas Day and, while my mother was taking the turkey out of the oven, they walked through the back door. Although uninvited, they became our Christmas guests.