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Later that year Len persuaded Lloyd to return to Ayr and was backed up by Alma, who was
concerned about Len's mental state. Lloyd said: 'I was supposed to run the service side of the
business, all the garages, fitters, turners and mechanics, and John would look after sales, and
Len the cane farms. At the end of the year, when I married Chris, I'd be made a partner. Len
also said: "We'll get you a house." So I resigned from IH and went back to Ayr in July. Within
two weeks all that stuff about a house fizzled out. It was going to cost him about $800 - which I
didn't have - and now he couldn't afford it.'
396
Lloyd returned to Victoria in October to do a two-week course on Cummings diesels, and in
Colac on 5 November 1966 he married Christine Joy Flowers; she was 20 and he was 22.
'Len rang up the night before I got married', said Lloyd. 'He said: "We need you back up here.
Please hurry back as soon as you're married. We've got everything lined up, and we'll have a
nice flat for you." So straight after we married - we spent three days in Victoria and three getting
up to Queensland -we were back in Ayr, only to find that Len was in bed with a fit of
depression, and nothing had been organised at all. So we went and lived in the beach chalet
down at Alva beach.'
Lloyd lasted in Ayr for a year. Overworked as an expert mechanic, he resented playing second
fiddle to John and having his ideas for improvement ignored. They were too used to being
bosses', he said. There were two sets of rules, one for John and one for me. I was getting the
raw end of the stick. I was pushed out, and decided to get a job somewhere else... In January
1968 we left Ayr and moved to Melbourne. I got a job as a Class 1 naval architect, engineer,
with the Department of Defence in Williamstown.'
Nine months after Lloyd and Chris left Ayr their first son, Andrew, was born, in September
1968.
They had two other children: Paul, born in May 1971; and Alison, born in 1973 - two weeks
after Len died in New Zealand.
But there was then no teaming up with John, for Lloyd's career was flourishing and he loved his
job and naval types. In 1972 he had applied to join the Navy, but a motorbike accident
damaged his right ankle permanently (in cold weather it used to seize up) and his schoolboy
ambition of being in the armed services was never realised - although it would be by both his
sons.
Early in 1974 he was sent on a two-year practical experience course to the UK, and worked in
virtually every naval and civil shipyard in England and Scotland, learning their techniques. His
family went with him. He was back in Williamstown at the end of 1975. Then in 1977, aged 33,
he became superintendent naval architect in charge of about 900 people, responsible for the
design of the superstructures of warships and for outfitting and modernising them. Ships that
Lloyd worked on in this ten-year period included the destroyers HMAS Swan, Vampire and
Vendetta, and the oceanographic research vessel HMAS Flinders. He used to go on sea trials
but was sea-sick.
Increasingly impatient with managerial incompetence and weakness, Lloyd resigned in 1978 and
joined Australian Reinforced Concrete (ARC). He became works manager; the company
produced 90,000 tons of steel products a year. For several years he was ARC'S marketing
manager in Singapore, living with his family in a house that had been occupied by senior British
officers before and after the war. But eventually he returned to Melbourne and to Williamstown
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