Bali 9: The Untold Story Read Online Free PDF Page B

workforce across the nation—up to 5000 casual employees in various states, many of them young and fit. Chan, Norman, Lawrence and Stephens were like many others who would be called up to help out at functions.
    Jobs for Eurest’s big casual workforce are both seasonal and dependent on the size of the functions being staged. Some months are always busier than others, especially when sport is involved. Chan, Norman, Lawrence and Stephens would be called to work in the lead-up to and during events like a cricket game or rugby league match. Sometimes they’d be required to work an eight-hour shift, sometimes even a five-hour shift. On rare occasions they might only be needed for three hours, but it was never less than that. And the boss had a rap on all of them: they were good employees—reliable and punctual, with a strong work ethic. Stephens had not been there long, but even in that short time he had shown that he was like theothers. And so they were called back often to work on all the big functions.
    By any assessment, the job was pretty mundane, and they all carried the title of food runners. At some events there could be up to 100 food outlets and it was important that stock never ran out. Norman, Chan, Stephens and Lawrence, along with all Eurest’s other casually employed food runners, would have to make sure that the food was delivered to the right outlet prior to the game. Get that wrong and the complaints would flow in. On some occasions, outlets would vary their deliveries on the day before the match. Other outlets might stipulate that they needed it one hour before kickoff. And then during the event—as any sports-lover can attest—it’s important that food does not run out, and the job of the stadium’s food runners was to ensure that it was replaced as quickly as it was purchased. It wasn’t brain surgery, but it required robust and reliable young workers, and they all fitted that bill.
    At first, none of the four young workers knew each other. They hadn’t been to school together, they came from different suburbs, and they were all different ages.
    Matthew Norman, whose father and sisters lived in Quakers Hill and whose mother lived at Port Macquarie, was the first to get employment at Eurest. A good worker, he had been employed for more than four years, starting with the company in February 2001. He started as a vendor, before moving into retail,and then finally working as a food runner. His employers knew he had another job as a forklift driver, but as far as Eurest was concerned, it was not possible to fault the nineteen-year-old’s work.
    Chan, too, had a good work ethic, and it was quickly apparent that he didn’t mind carrying heavy loads. He was always punctual, a stickler for starting work on time. Indeed, no one can remember him ever being late to work since beginning his job with Eurest in November 2002 as a kitchen assistant, and then as a food runner.
    Lawrence, whose family lived up in Wallsend in Newcastle, started in September 2003. A no-nonsense worker like her colleagues, she could average $2300 a month.
    Stephens was the last to gain employment there, beginning only a few months earlier as a cellar person. The young man who had come from Adelaide, but who had grown up in the Illawarra area south of Sydney, was only just getting into the swing of things; the seasonal rush when he would be rostered regularly was still some time away. But he’d had enough shifts to enable him to meet co-workers Lawrence, Chan and Norman.

VI
Growing up in Wallsend
    F rom an early age, Renae Lawrence was an all-or-nothing type of girl. She tipped the baby scales in October 1977 at a bonny 10-pounds-something, her father says, but the school photographs he shows off are of a wispy-thin adolescent.
    Renae lived with her mother as a child, swapping to live with her father during her teenage years. And then, after a fiery clash in the wake of her eighteenth birthday, she snapped off all contact with Bob