From Squiggles To Pearls Of Wisdom ...

This is a book about life as a Stenographer in the 1970's private enterprise and Commonwealth Public Service. It is about my experiences working in Adelaide, Canberra and Darwin before moving to Tasmania. I mention the various businesses which my husband and I operated as well as my time working as a Stringer for The Advocate newspaper whilst living in Circular Head. I have attempted to highlight a moving history of when everything was done manually to the modern era where computers and information technology have become commonplace. It is not all serious - the journey through my public and private life is peppered with funny anecdotes along the way.

“From Squiggles To Pearls Of Wisdom … A Lifelong Love Affair With Pitman Shorthand” by Pamela Smit They say “an army marches on its stomach”. This is a book not written by one of the movers and shakers of the sixties and seventies Australian corporate and public world, but by one of those women who devoted their lives to supporting those movers and shakers by dealing with the everyday minutiae of business which truly enabled the Corporate and Public Service world to march. Pamela did so at a time when Australia was undergoing a transition from the old style business model to the modern one we take for granted today, which includes such a heavy reliance on information technology, unseen and unheard of when she first started. All this is set against the backdrop of the great transition in Australian social life that occurred after twenty plus years of moribund Liberal Government and the fresh generation that ushered in the Whitlam era. Pamela writes an accurate and sometimes moving account of those days and the characters that inhabited both the private and public worlds that she moved in. She has dedicated the book to her Mother because if not for her tireless support, Pamela would never have had the unique opportunity to experience this momentous change in Australian business and public life.

“From Squiggles To Pearls Of Wisdom … A Lifelong Love Affair With Pitman Shorthand” by Pamela Smit As a child, Pamela and her family emigrated from England and settled in Adelaide. On completing her basic education at Henley High School, she entered the Australian workforce when it was on the cusp of great transition. Her unique insight into both private and public enterprise and the workings thereof, is testament to Australia’s own coming of age as a modern nation. Starting her working life in an old fashioned Solicitor’s office in Adelaide, she learned “the ropes from the ground up”. Pamela’s journey saw her move to the Australian Public Service in Canberra as a Steno-Secretary. Present at the dawn of the Information Technology revolution and the changes it has wrought in Australia’s offices, she has a unique perspective on this period of transition. Her journeys through Australia’s private enterprise as a Shorthand-Typist and the Commonwealth Public Service working at the coalface of the country’s political hub as a Steno-Secretary are peppered with anecdotes of the unique characters that she met along the way. She has dedicated this book to her Mum, without whose support and encouragement to attain the highest results possible in Pitman shorthand, this book would not have been possible. Pamela now lives in Tasmania with her husband and has two adult children. She operates her own Proofreading and Editing business and is uniquely positioned to comment on the changing standards prevailing in the modern workplace and the declining standards which have so often become the hallmark of those who simply place their faith in technology. Pamela has written and had published at EzineArticles.com, book reviews as well as various articles focusing on politics, social justice, animal welfare, crime, editing and proofreading, computers and technology, in addition to health and fitness etc.