War's end

Historical Significance: Graham Sheil (1938- ) trained as an optical technician and established his own optical supply company European Eyewear, which has been very succesful, particularly in its specialisation in low vision aids. He is highly regarded for his expertise in low vision aids and frequently invited to speak at optometry conferences. He is also an accomplished writer having published several books and written a number of plays. In 1976 he was awarded the Sun News Pictorial Award for short story writing. He left school aged 15 and worked in several low level jobs and was later apprenticed as an optical mechanic. In this book Chapter 6 Workaday World is a short story based on his experiences as a recently apprenticed optical mechanic working in an optical company laboratory. He did deliveries of dispensed glasses to optometrists and the story in part recounts his meetings with the fictional Collins Street optometrist Mr Courtier-Artoud, which is thought to be an alias for a real optometrist Ernest Jabara, well known for his self-importance. For more information about Ernest Jabara see Cole BL. Profile of Bertram Nathan FIO FSMC Key figure in the history of optometric education Clin Exp Optom 2009; 92: 511-518, also on this web site under the tab 'People who made history'. Graham Sheil is listed in the Oxford Companion to Australian literature. He has published short stories in numerous periodicals and anthologies and in two collections, War's End (1981) and Islands (1986). He has also written a novel, Christmas Trees in the Sky (1991), and several plays including 'Mad Like Lasseter' (1977), 'Work-A-Day World' (1981), 'New Australians Rehearse the Working Man's Paradise', based on William Lane's efforts to create a Utopian society in Paraguay (1983), 'This is the Way the World Ends' (1987), 'Christmas Trees in the Sky' (1989), River of Fire (1991), Bali: Adat (1991) and The Dead Heart, a study of the explorer Edward John Eyre (1991).