If residents at the Carinity Clifford House aged care community in Brisbane want to know the time, they only need to ask Jock Findlay.
The walls and tables of the 91-year-old’s room are adorned with colourful clocks.
Jock currently owns 76 analogue clocks – wall, mantle, chronometer, torsion pendulum, sculpture and cuckoo varieties – which he makes or fixes including one he has owned and maintained for 70 years.
“When I was in the army, I kept it in the bottom of my kit bag and I brought it with me over here to Australia and made the case for it,” Jock says.
His passion for his timeless hobby began as a teenager in Scotland, working at a jewellery story in the small Highlands town of Kingussie where he dismanted and reassembled watches and clocks.
“My dad said, ‘There’s a job waiting for you at the jewellery shop.’ I didn’t have much time to learn but I learned everything,” Jock says.
Carinity Clifford House customer service coordinator Chris Profke is full of admiration for Jock’s creativity abilities.
You should never say you can’t fix something. There’s always a way around things, even if you have to make parts.
“Jock’s decorated all of these clocks...He painstakingly adds all of the sequins on and makes new hands for them and puts new numbers on them,” she said.
He also maintains a grandfather clock at Clifford House which is older than he is and said he's fascinated by the mechanics of what makes analogue clocks tick.
“If there’s problems with any of the clock’s movements I dismantle them and repair them.
"Even if it’s a battery-powered clock you strip them down and wash all the parts because there might be just a tiny speck between the teeth that is enough to stop it from working,” Jock says.
Chris says Jock is widely known as Clifford House’s “Mr Fix-it”. “Jock fixes other things too. He’s the resident cobbler and fixes a lot of the ladies’ shoes."
There isn’t much that Jock hasn’t tinkered with, from the Harley Davidson motorcycle he used to ride in his youth to Clifford House’s kitchen utensils.
“The food scoops in the dining area, sometimes the gears jam so I will dismantle and fix them. There’s a special way to do that,” Jock said.
“You should never say you can’t fix something. There’s always a way around things, even if you have to make parts.”