ON REPAIRS - BUCKINGHAM'S
The first major repair/modernisation job on which I worked was the Buckingham's department store (colloquially referred to as "Bucks"), on the corner of Oxford & Riley Streets, Darlinghurst, which is now the site of Oxford Square. |
| A photo of "Bucks" taken in the 1920s |
The work that Arnold's was doing was the replacement of the (three?) lift motors/gearboxes etc with new units. This was the first contract to use the new Ziehl-Abegg lift motors (that link takes you to current technology, of course!). I believe that these had been decided upon by John Inglis due in part to their ability to handle high temperatures as a result of the windings being glass-coated.
I can recall several blokes with whom I worked at Buckingham's.
At this time I was assigned to be the apprentice assistant working with Dave Rutter, so we were part of the electrical team. There was also Garth Brook, another electrical apprentice and I think he came under Dave as well.
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| Dave Rutter circa 1964 |
Fitters included George "Flange" Farham and Ken Rousham, with Trades Assistant Ray Johnson.
There were one or two other bods who seemed to come and go as needed but I don't remember faces or names.
By-the-way....George was nick-named "Flange" for a rather distinctive physical characteristic, usually hidden from sight and only brought out when the need arose. 😉
There are quite a few memories which come flooding back to me when I think of this job, so in no particular order........
The Lunchtime Sleep.
It was a regular and common practice for the crew to go across Riley Street to the pub which used to be there (still is, I think) for lunch on Thursdays. After the normal half-hour had expired the apprentice would return to the job with instructions to say to any supervisor (Tom Moffatt or maybe Ralph Ledwidge) who might turn up that the men were down the shaft and "I'll just nick down and get them".....in which case he'd race across to the pub and warn the men.
This didn't happen often because if Tom or Ralph were delivering the pays around that time then they always knew where the blokes would be so they just went straight to the pub.
But on one particular occasion, when I was the designated cockatoo, I was resting my head on a pillow of cotton waste as I stretched out on the motor-room floor in the sun coming through the door.
I fell asleep.
The next thing I know is being nudged by the foot of Geoff Neville, the Sales Manager, who had brought a prospective customer to see the new Ziehl-Abegg equipment. The nudge was accompanied by Geoff telling me to go over the road and tell the men to get back to work.
I really thought I was for the chop but he never mentioned it again until many years later, when we were both working for Otis, and we were able to share a laugh about the incident.
An Arnold's Electrician, Roz and the Plasticine Phallus.
A certain electrician struck up a relationship with a girl by the name of Rosalie....or "Roz", as she became known. My only memory of Roz is that she wore stockings which had patterns of little beetles running up the back of the legs. This was, may I remind you, the height of Beatlemania and it was whilst we were working at Buck's, in 1964, that the Beatles arrived at Mascot on a very wet & windy day. I remember watching it live on a TV in the electrical-goods department of the store.
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| A lovely day in Sydney for the Beatles arrival |
Garth Brook and I used to refer to a particular electrical connector known as a Ross Courtney (see print advert, below) as "Roz's corsets"....which irked the certain electrician, particularly when he was with the young lady and Garth or I would say something like "Aaah.....certain electrician, we've run out of Roz's corsets"!!
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| Ross Courtneys looked nothing like Roz's corsets.....I hope! |
Anyway....the certain electrician and Roz were a bit of an item for a while and there was one time when he was chatting to her on the top floor outside the lift entrance.
Roz had her back to the opening and he was facing her when slowly descending from behind and above Roz appeared a large plasticine penis, gently swinging to and fro as it was lowered. This was being accompanied by much giggling and muffled laughter from the machine room immediately above as George, Garth and Bruce tried to control their hysterics!!
Roz had her back to the opening and he was facing her when slowly descending from behind and above Roz appeared a large plasticine penis, gently swinging to and fro as it was lowered. This was being accompanied by much giggling and muffled laughter from the machine room immediately above as George, Garth and Bruce tried to control their hysterics!!
I can't recall the outcome but have a feeling that the certain electrician was not overly amused!
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Footnote #1
You may be wondering why a team of lift mechanics had plasticine in their inventory.
You may be wondering why a team of lift mechanics had plasticine in their inventory.
Well, John Inglis was monitoring and recording the temperatures of the new lift motors and the most suitable method of mounting the thermometers to - and keeping them on - the motor casings was with plasticine. So there was a plentiful supply....certainly enough for George Farham to get creative!
An Injury.
An incident which I will always remember occurred when we were unloading a new machine bedplate at the Buck's loading dock and then rolling it - on it's edge - through the passageway to the empty goods lift shaft, where it would then be chain-blocked up the shaft and into the machine room, through the gap between the RSJ's.
We had half-a-dozen pairs of hands supporting and rolling the concrete-filled bedplate on lots of short lengths of 2" steel conduit. When one piece appeared at the end, then one pair of hands - mine - would pick up that roller and move to the front so as to place it on the floor, in front of the bedplate, where it would then become the next pipe to take a share of the weight.
No sooner had George (Farham) warned me to be careful than SCRUNCH!......the middle finger on my right hand also shared the load, trapped under the piece of conduit as the bedplate rolled slowly forward.
The end of my finger, from tip to the first joint, split open like a burst watermelon and blood went everywhere.
I didn't feel any pain initially but boy!...when it kicked in, it did in a big way!
Fortunately Buckingham's had a sick -room/first-aid room with a permanent nurse on the staff and she very quickly assessed the damage, disinfected & dressed the wound and bandaged my hand.
I went back to work. - NOT placing rollers!....never went off sick......and turned up for work the next day.
Do you know, I never had to go to a doctor and that split healed perfectly, without leaving a scar.
From that day onward I always paid heed to George Farham's cautionary advice.
Fun with Electricity.
The new machine room layout had the modern controller cabinets (in place of slate panels and horrible 480V DC contactors) aligned down the middle of the room, so that if one was standing at the doorway (at one end) then the controllers blocked some view towards the other end.
One day Ray was using a drill, up the far end of the machine room, and the extension lead ran down to the 240V outlet near the door.
I can't recall who exactly was involved (other than Ray) but someone was standing near Ray and was holding the extension lead and the other wag was at the 240V GPO - out of sight of Ray but able to be seen by his partner in crime.
When Ray operated the drill for a couple of seconds, the one at the door would turn the switch off and, at the same time, the one holding the lead and standing next to Ray would squeeze the lead as if it was a water hose. Ray would naturally look up to see why his drill had stopped, just in time to supposedly "catch" the bloke holding the lead as he let it unkink!
Ray reacted without thinking about it and told him to stop it!!!
The one at the door would then turn the power back on. Of course, when Ray put his finger on the trigger again the drill would work.
This had him totally bamboozled for a couple of rounds and it was only the fact that both apprentices burst into laughter which gave the game away! 😃
I cannot remember exactly how long we spent at Buckingham's carrying out the modernisation.
I do recall being there when the job was completed and we moved onto other work.
Sadly, in 1968, only three or four years later, Buckingham's was razed to the ground in a spectacular fire and it was only through the diligent efforts of the NSW Fire Brigade that more buildings weren't consumed.
The above photo became very famous, snapped at exactly the moment the wall collapsed.
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An Injury.
An incident which I will always remember occurred when we were unloading a new machine bedplate at the Buck's loading dock and then rolling it - on it's edge - through the passageway to the empty goods lift shaft, where it would then be chain-blocked up the shaft and into the machine room, through the gap between the RSJ's.
We had half-a-dozen pairs of hands supporting and rolling the concrete-filled bedplate on lots of short lengths of 2" steel conduit. When one piece appeared at the end, then one pair of hands - mine - would pick up that roller and move to the front so as to place it on the floor, in front of the bedplate, where it would then become the next pipe to take a share of the weight.
No sooner had George (Farham) warned me to be careful than SCRUNCH!......the middle finger on my right hand also shared the load, trapped under the piece of conduit as the bedplate rolled slowly forward.
The end of my finger, from tip to the first joint, split open like a burst watermelon and blood went everywhere.
I didn't feel any pain initially but boy!...when it kicked in, it did in a big way!
Fortunately Buckingham's had a sick -room/first-aid room with a permanent nurse on the staff and she very quickly assessed the damage, disinfected & dressed the wound and bandaged my hand.
I went back to work. - NOT placing rollers!....never went off sick......and turned up for work the next day.
Do you know, I never had to go to a doctor and that split healed perfectly, without leaving a scar.
From that day onward I always paid heed to George Farham's cautionary advice.
Fun with Electricity.
The new machine room layout had the modern controller cabinets (in place of slate panels and horrible 480V DC contactors) aligned down the middle of the room, so that if one was standing at the doorway (at one end) then the controllers blocked some view towards the other end.
One day Ray was using a drill, up the far end of the machine room, and the extension lead ran down to the 240V outlet near the door.
I can't recall who exactly was involved (other than Ray) but someone was standing near Ray and was holding the extension lead and the other wag was at the 240V GPO - out of sight of Ray but able to be seen by his partner in crime.
When Ray operated the drill for a couple of seconds, the one at the door would turn the switch off and, at the same time, the one holding the lead and standing next to Ray would squeeze the lead as if it was a water hose. Ray would naturally look up to see why his drill had stopped, just in time to supposedly "catch" the bloke holding the lead as he let it unkink!
Ray reacted without thinking about it and told him to stop it!!!
The one at the door would then turn the power back on. Of course, when Ray put his finger on the trigger again the drill would work.
This had him totally bamboozled for a couple of rounds and it was only the fact that both apprentices burst into laughter which gave the game away! 😃
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Footnote #2I cannot remember exactly how long we spent at Buckingham's carrying out the modernisation.
I do recall being there when the job was completed and we moved onto other work.
Sadly, in 1968, only three or four years later, Buckingham's was razed to the ground in a spectacular fire and it was only through the diligent efforts of the NSW Fire Brigade that more buildings weren't consumed.
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| Buckingham's goes up in flames, Anzac Day, 1968. |
The above photo became very famous, snapped at exactly the moment the wall collapsed.
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