Life is Full of Ups & Downs - Part 14

ON REPAIRS

Cleeco Shirts

In the area shown in the above photo (click it for full-size), just off Broadway, in Mountain Street near the Grace Bros emporium, was a small three-story building which housed Cleeco Shirts.

We were doing major repair or modernisation work which entailed working in the pit, digging old brickwork out, because I recall using a Kango electric jackhammer......something like this:-

George Farham was the fitter but I can't remember who else was there....Dave Rutter possibly.

At the time, George owned a blue Morris 1100 and would drive it to that job, because there were all-day parking spots in the street at the time we started work, which was before the office workers in the area arrived.

George lived in the Eastern Suburbs somewhere.....around Maroubra or Randwick, I think.

His route took him past Centennial Park, or through the park, because he usually took the shortcut.

Back in those days the park was accessible to road traffic all the time...I don't know if that is still the case today.

Anyway, one morning George arrived at work with the front of his car covered in black ash and he didn't know why. He hadn't been near anything which would have dumped cinders all over the car and it was a bit of a mystery. Any damage was only superficial......paint was not burnt off. It was just covered in blackened bits of leaves and grass, particularly in the grille.

The mystery was explained the next day.

George retraced his route and when driving through Centennial Park he noticed a mound of cinders and ashes where the park workers had been burning a pile of prunings and grass cuttings. (You could do that back then).

Apparently he had meandered off the beaten track after having had one too many at the pub on the way home and had simply driven straight through the ash pile but couldn't remember it when he got up the following morning!

Aaah! The perils of driving under the influence before breathalysers arrived some 18 years later (1982).

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Dave Rutter and Bobby Coates "Fix" a lift.

50 York St. on right, with Grace Blg in the background on the left.

It may have been at 50 York Street, it's old enough.....but then again, it could have a been the building where the scaffolding is seen. But it was just down the road from Grace building.

The lift was a manual passenger unit, driven by a sulky old lift driver who always had something to whinge about.
On this particular occasion, Bobby Coates needed a hand with something or other so Dave Rutter and I strolled with him from Grace Blg - where Bobby had his maintenance depot.
When we walked in the front door - the lift was just inside the foyer - the driver started to moan and groan that something was wrong on top of the lift....I can't remember exactly what it was....something to do with a noise..... but the looks that Bobby and Dave exchanged indicated that it was most likely a load of rubbish.

We got into the lift and Bobby asked the bloke to take it for a run up and down, so that they could see or or hear anything odd.
We then stopped at one of the upper floors, where we got out and the driver was instructed to take it down so that Bobby and Dave could get on top of the car.

When the roof was at floor level they climbed onto the top-bow and the two mechanics had a good look around and had the driver run up and down the shaft again whilst they sat on the roof, listening and watching for strange happenings! They found nothing out of the ordinary....no bits of loose equipment, nothing hitting anything as the car moved up and down the shaft. Everything was fine.
They then came back to the floor where I was waiting.

Dave and Bobby exchanged whispers and then one of them asked me to pass them a hammer from the tool-bag.
Dave then started hitting various bits of the roof superstructure, with loud metallic sounds echoing up & down the shaft and, at the same time, he and Bobby were grinning like monkeys as they exhanged a running commentary along the lines of:-

"How's it look now, Dave?"
"Pretty good, Bob...maybe just a bit more to the left. What d'ya reckon"?
"Yeah....okay (BANG!). How's that now?"
"Looks good, mate.....I think that's fixed it".

Of course, the driver couldn't see what was going on and I was struggling to contain my laughter!

With the little one-act play over, the guys got off the roof, the driver brought the car back to floor level and we went for a few runs up and down the shaft.
The driver was pleased that everything seemed okay once again!

Life is Full of Ups & Downs - Part 13

ON REPAIRS - AFTER GRACE BUILDING

Eventually the modernisation job came to an end and we relocated to other jobs, several of which I can recall with ease:-

Tomasetti House

I think that this building was located on the corner of Kent & Bathurst Streets. (The Google Maps photo is of the building we worked in....I think). It was down the back of the Town Hall, if memory serves correctly, but it's hard to recognise many of the older, insignificant, buildings now that their facades and surroundings have changed over 50+ years.

EDIT. 25-October-2017
My thanks to Bob Deahm for correcting my original location, which I had as Sussex & Bathurst Streets.
Bob is sure that address was "Sunderland House" and I agree.

I'm not sure exactly what the repair job was at Tomasetti, although I do remember rewiring door locks and doing some "stuff" in the motor room.

The bods on the job included myself, Dave Rutter, George Farham, the Hudson brothers...Kevin and Dennis... and another apprentice by the name of Frank, who wore glasses.

(More of Frank below, under Washington H. Soul Pattinson).

It was at this job that George Farham threw away his perfectly good pliers after he latched onto what he thought was the end of a bit of old VIR wiring. It was in the somewhat dark and dingy lift pit that this incident occurred.

When George gave the "wire" a good yank the skin of a decomposed rat appeared...complete with eye-watering odour. George tossed his pliers - and rat - across the pit and that was the last he saw of both!

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332 Kent Street

Not sure of the crew on this one or even what the work entailed (other than setting a lot of conduits) but I can definitely remember working here because it was directly opposite the Kent St. entrance to Radio 2UW ....... "Eleven-ten on your dial"!

We would watch Ward "Pally" Austin arrive & depart in his Cadillac, usually with a group of teenage girls hanging around the door waiting for him.

This is what the two buildings look like today......looking north, with 2UW on the left and our building on the right.

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Washingon H. Soul Pattinson, Pitt Street.

I have mentioned this building in an earlier item but we now come to the time when an electrician by the name of Helmut Nehls (nicknamed "Crash-hat" by George Farham!), the mysterious Frank and myself were doing something electrical here.

I refer to Frank as "mysterious" simply because I know nothing else about him - can't recall his surname and I don't think I ever worked with him other than here and at Tomasetti House.

The drama occurred.....SEE THE FACTUAL DETAILS IN FRANK'S REPLY, BELOW MY INCORRECT VERSION! .... when Frank was standing in front of the control board ready to test which of the 415 Volt A, B and C phases had dropped power.

Instead of using a test lamp (every electrician carried a test lamp in his leather bag), for some weird reason Frank took one wire and touched it to one of the other two!

Needless to say, the two he touched were the live ones.
There was a blinding flash accompanied by a very loud BANG! and the entire building lost all electrical power and, from what I understand, so did several other adjacent premises.
Frank was very lucky that he was wearing glasses because at the very least they prevented flash burns to his eyes and quite possibly saved his eyesight. As it was his face was blackened and he had no eyebrows left.

I think he went up to Sydney Hospital (Macquarie Street) for first aid.

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