Maurice O’Keefe

About Maurice O'Keefe

Maurice O’Keefe grew up in Preston, Melbourne and being one of seven children.

It was his mother who found him his apprenticeship at George Rath’s in North Melbourne. He describes George Rath’s, as “a top place with fourty staff and about three or four apprentices.” At Rath’s he packed cakes and dipped lamingtons but he remembers watching the cake decorating and in particular the cake that Rath’s made each year to celebrate the Queenie, the elephant at the Melbourne Zoo’s birthday cake. Maurice rode his push bike to and from work – from Preston to North Melbourne. He credits his good health today on this exercise when he was young and eating cake when he got to work.

William Angliss Food Trade School opened up not long after he started at Raths and he went there ½ a day a week. He says he didn’t have to work hard there – just put in an appearance. He does remember that Jock Martin was the pastry cook teacher and that he was brought out from Scotland.

Maurice was 16 when WWII broke out and he joined up as soon as he turned 18 joining the Airforce. Maurice was 16 when WW11 broke out. As soon as he turned 18, he joined the air force. He eventually became a radio operator on Lancasters with the 460 Squadron. The transmitter and receiver are under the starboard right wing, and it is on display in the aircraft in the war memorial in Canberra. After the war he went back to Rath’s to finish his apprenticeship but found it difficult as he had changed due to his war service as a Lancaster Bomber, and the people at Rath’s treated him as if nothing had changed. At William Angliss a Swiss teacher Mr Seedemon challenged him about ruining German cities.

Maurice finished another 2 years as an apprentice moving to a small bakery in Preston Frank Berry.  This suited him and he learned a great deal – making sponge drops and other products. Everything was made by hand. When Frank sold the business he decided he didn’t want to work making cakes any longer. He took time out to work as a manual labourer – free of all responsibility. At the same time as gaining his apprenticeship he had been ‘swatting morse code and studying to get radio ticket.’

He took off to Tasmania to ride bike and ended up at the Bronte Park Hydro Electricity site and worked there from the start to the finish as a sweets cook. Earning enough money to buy his own home and to set himself up in business.

Thinking a small country bakery would be the best option he went to Warracknabeal to learn bread baking skills but realised that he was too late to make the bakery business work. There had been a great deal of change in the small bakery business and it was not a good time for small operators. Instead he bought a newsagency in Bendigo and worked at that business for seventeen and a half years.

His advice to apprentices: “there are opportunities out there. You just have to work hard at finding them and then work hard at them.”