Keeping It Up: Experiences of a Power Line Worker

By John Cavuoto

John Cavuoto moved to Western Australia in 1981, seeking employment with the local energy provider. The provider rejected John's ''dubious trade certificate,'' and that was the beginning of all the fun.

John takes us through a journey that many others had suffered before him. However, there was a notable difference: John, along with a number of supporting, like-minded agitators, began what was to be a do-or-die mission. The electrical utility was at times dragged kicking and screaming from its aloof, autocratic business position to face up to twenty-first century business and community expectations.

The company and the government were soon to learn that new and emerging technologies wouldn't wait for them to catch up. They had to reinvent or face up to being left behind in a modern world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tellwell Talent
• Release date: Sep 20, 2021
• ISBN: 9780228864417

John Cavuoto

John and his family moved to Western Australia in 1981. His book Keeping It Up takes us through a humorous, real account of experiences in the industrial and electrical distribution field he worked in. The electrical utility came close to missing the boat due to poor business practices, poor insight, corruption, fear of change and no vision or regard to current unsafe and archaic practices. The take-up of rooftop solar generating systems was the last straw and a huge wakeup call, threatening to break the electricity utility with the loss of many long-term customers.John's experience in two Australian utilities gave him far-reaching skill, scope and strategies to deal with the most difficult people in the industry, as a whistleblower and as a call for change. John's dialogue in Keeping It Up gives the reader a cutaway insight into how the heart of a power company really beats.

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Making the Career Choice

I commenced working a four-year traineeship close to my home in the state of South Australia in the Adelaide hills, in a town called Mount Barker. The town is situated some 15 kilometres from the Mount Lofty Rangers tourist look-out point as the crow flies. The hills area surrounds the entire capital city of Adelaide in a north, east and southerly direction. The Mount Lofty lookout is a fantastic view point for tourists with distant views east and west, north and south of the city, including the ocean which is in a westerly direction. Further inland and adjacent to Mount Barker there are many little hamlets. I lived in the town of Mount Barker, when I was just a nineteen-year-old teenager.

This was the place where I engaged myself in an apprenticeship as a power line worker in the power industry, working with underground cables and the bare open wire low-voltage and high-voltage electrical distribution and transmission systems, from 66,000 volts (electrical pressure) to many other higher voltages. Mount Barker town site is some 34 kilometres from Adelaide’s city centre. I commenced the vocation at the age of twenty-one-years of age. The year I commence my training was 1974. Including all the time spent in Western Australia where I now live, I have had over 40 years’ experience, in the electrical-distribution industry.

The town of Mount Barker in South Australia, has very cold winters and very hot summers. Adelaide being the capital of South Australia, has the record of being the hottest capital city in Australia with a record set of 46.6 degrees centigrade as a new recent record in 2019. It has nothing to do with climate change as many of our honest politicians who are still breathing keep telling us. They have informed us that climate change is a misnomer, and they would know. If they didn’t they would have never been elected, would they?

Mount Barker sits at an altitude of close to 2,000 feet. In the year 2017 it snowed at the Mount Lofty lookout not many miles away from the city of Adelaide. In the winter months the temperature can be in the minus degrees, usually in the single digit figures, at the upper range and on some rare occasions it tips over to double digits. When it is as cold as that, in the winter months usually a pleasant sunny day presents itself. However, it is not, in itself guaranteed to turn out that way. It is possible that on those cold mornings that it can drizzle ever so slightly all day. Miserable weather indeed, so much so that continuous cold nights, can cause dams to freeze over. These dams on farms can remain frozen over, for a fortnight or more as sudden bursts of unrelenting cold snaps become a common feature of the long winter.

On some cold mornings, without the drizzle, if it is a blue cloudless day, the day temperature can rise to 10 degrees centigrade above zero. The wind is lazy it seems as it appears to travel right through the human body. That is how it feels, regardless of how well one may have dressed up for it. Thermal under-garment wear would be high on one’s considered winter, wardrobe. The population for the locality, when I worked there, was some 2500 people and that has now ballooned out to 30,000 people in 2020. As the town has grown it has blurred the boundaries of the surrounding towns or districts of Nairne, the famous German town of Hahndorf, Little Hampton, where there is a brick kiln, Verdun, including the small one-time lonely hamlet of Wistow.

The once small country town of Mount Barker has become an outer hills suburb of Adelaide as a result of the growth over some 40 years. It has become close to a mini-satellite-city. This is a common journey for small towns in many places throughout the world. As the population increases, and a locality becomes desirable, people move to that destination. People at some point in their life journey, deciding at times to move and live away from the noisy bustling cities. People inevitability have to live somewhere, so growth occurs even in the smallest of hamlets or towns, especially when these places are close to freeways highways and a big capital city centre, tucked away and hidden from that inevitable noise and constant humdrum. People have different needs and interests as they get older, in the process of ageing, people get sick of the rat race. This is the cause or the catalyst of some of the population growth in many small towns, villages or hamlets. Then along comes catch up infrastructure spurring on further growth, giving it a momentum all of its own.

What did most people need, before they needed a highway or freeway? One product: electricity.

I learnt my craft within the community in which I lived and ultimately that which I served. My descriptive job function or title was a ‘distribution electrical linesman.’ It was a career I chose. I didn’t have a clue what the job entailed, or what I was in for when I applied for the position mind you. Most people who applied for such a job, had generally no idea what the job entailed, unless they knew someone who was involved in the work: someone like their father, uncle, brother or if they knew a friend who worked in the industry. I didn’t know anyone who I could talk to about what skills I would need, or what the linesman’s tasks would be.

Fancy applying for a job without having a clue about the product to work with, or what the demands the task required or the skills. Certainly exploring the tasking skills required were just not part of any research on my part, because somehow I landed myself an interview. I thought, well okay, I have an interview, which must be a good sign, a starting point. I also had no electrical background, whatsoever. The company who was about to interview me knew that, beforehand too. I had no knowledge of how risky the work was, or even where the work was to be performed or where the location of the work area would be. There was no fixed work place with electricity, as I was to find out except for the power stations, depot office buildings, then there was the infrastructure; the poles and wires, in all the streets and paddocks. I found out much later, that my workplace was in flux, which is everywhere, but no specific, location that I could write home about.

A factory is a purpose built building. At one end, there is usually all the raw materials and the final designed product rolls out the other end. Simple enough, isn’t it? Factories of the various products to build an aircraft are made in them, then when the parts are completed they are sent off to be warehoused close to the one spot, where the completed product is assembled. Much like a motor car assembly line. Not all parts are produced in the one place or the one factory. With aircraft as with most assembled products, bits and pieces are made elsewhere and one central place is assigned to bring everything together for the end production run to assemble all the parts to produce the car the aircraft, the ship or anything else for that matter.

An electrical power-generating station is also a factory with the same factory type of system set up. Raw materials one end, electricity the other end, with a bunch of lots of bits and pieces much like car assembly happening in between to produce the end product. However, the stuff is produced in the one place, the exception being that there can be many power production factories all over the place with massive distances between them and they can all be cleverly, connected together to move the end product place to place. The difference with electricity, gas, water and telecommunication and nearly all other utility consumables, is that there is no need for the use of a truck-transportation system to move the end product, within the local community or an even wider area, such as a state or country. Within a country or even groups of countries (such as all those close knit ones on the European continent) power sharing and moving electrical product around from country to country or state to state occurs all the time. None of these commodities need trucks to move the product made from the factory, the power generating station, to the consumer.

With fresh produce such as tomatoes, they need to be physically transported to the marketplace. Tomatoes are usually delivered close, or within a day or two for access to where the customer lives, or the tomatoes will not get sold. With electricity we simply build a cost-effective high-voltage transmission line then high voltage distribution network overhead and underground or a combination of both, to distribute the product with. That was the general idea before wind and solar renewable power generating systems come along, a discussion later in the book. The low voltage distribution system is from where customers take the electrical product to use in their homes. Commonly poles and wires is simply called the network, or grid. Once electricity is generated even for the many sole use customers (who do not share the transformer with other customers as it is dedicated to them only) we need a system of what is called poles, wires and cables to move it all around. It is a little bit more detailed that that however, that is the general mode used to transport the stuff around. In case you were thinking the network has no wheels!

Electricity is not packaged up like other products in boxes that we can buy off the shelf, or online. Electricity as a product is different and that is where the skills of line and cable jointers come in.

The other products which are distributed as we may well be aware in a similar fashion to electricity (without traditional transport) is gas, water, free to air television and radio signals, phone lines, sewage waste disposal and cable television, to name just a few. However, all the forms of recent wireless communication, seems to be all on its own, doesn’t it? The term wireless gives it all away. The radio, television and the mobile phone communication systems use a wireless distribution system, we are unable to replicate to pick up the signals. The delivery system of using a wireless system, at the present time, much like a ‘beam me up, Scotty’ approach and applying it to other forms or types of products that we move about is restricted to telecommunication; we are not able to apply the same systems to other essential utilities today. A telephone cell tower can replace a wire or fibre network, coupled with satellites orbiting the earth day and night to keep the telephone or television system interconnected and at a workable consistent and acceptable level. Wires in the ground are not needed so long as the other major sub structures for communication, are in full working order. The satellite, the towers, bouncing off the incoming and outgoing signals, or streaming the data, is all that is now needed.

Perhaps science buffs are working on wireless systems for all of these other products, who knows. One can only guess what would happen if a wireless sewerage transport system is put in place! Give a thought to what would happen if the wireless sewerage system failed. So pipes for that are a good idea given the complexities and the hurdles in expanding the wireless technology to other common consumer utility-based products. It does seem unlikely, a wireless system like the telephone system, will include the distribution of electricity, at the moment either. At this stage of scientific development, we are unable to expand wireless systems to transmit other products beyond what we have achieved today, in our world as we know it, apart from the stated communication systems, of radio, telephone and television and the knowledgeable World Wide Web, the internet.

The job descriptions or the title of linesman, was so aptly named. At that time in the early 1970’s, it was not considered sexist. Not one woman was ever employed to work in the male-dominated construction of power line crews, in the field, in Australia and probably one could stretch that idea, to almost every other country in the world. It was a period of time in society’s history, when women’s extended rights beyond having a vote, were not taken seriously. Especially in the area of heavy, high-risk-work in the distribution field within the whole of the electrical industry. The rough and tough discipline required when working outdoors, was not considered a woman’s place. It was therefore considered out of bounds for every one of them!

For the many outdoor work places there were no toilets, or lunch rooms, just two factors why many women did not consider employment in those industries. Out-door workplaces were not a welcoming place for women. It was perhaps a deliberate male lockout strategy. Not only that perhaps women groups and labour advocates, didn’t tackle the all-male- dominated industries in a serious manner, at that point, till much later. One can only guess, why it took so long. In the quest for equality and equal opportunity for employment at all workplaces, a ground swell for change was brewing in nearly every free society. Industrial law didn’t offer a voice nor challenge employers, to act indiscriminately with the labour selection process either. The male-dominated construction industry, the army, the navy, the air force, transport, or resources sectors, were male-dominated, at that time. Unless a war broke out! And unless they needed a tea lady, a cleaner or secretary or someone to do the dishes. In the two world wars discriminating against women in the workplace was thrown out the window so far away because of the war effort. The need for labour. It was okay then to employ women to build bombs, tanks and aircraft. High-risk-work was not considered a woman’s job, when the conflict was over. Everything went back to the status quo.

The world’s most venomous snakes in the Australian bush, as well as the deadliest spiders, shy and not so shy kangaroos, including other dangerous animals on farms for example, was sure to reinforce a male-only employment domain, for many more years in all those industries. The high risk work in the electrical-distribution and transmission work streams would remain dominated by male employees until anti-discrimination laws against race, colour, religion and sex became law. It would be a changing life journey in the workplace, for ‘men-at-work’ (not the music band) and all employers.

I was travelling as a linesman, to all sorts of obscure places where only a lonely solitary power line was built to go. Sometimes there was not even a road to get to the customer or end-user of the product, electricity. At times the tell-tale sign to my destination was a letter box on a wooden post, if I was lucky there was a name on it. I would follow a few wheel ruts alongside a fence, so obscure and hidden was the residences, of some of the utility’s customers. The employment opportunity as an electrical outdoor distribution worker with the state electricity utility was no different then, as it is today. I thought the work was great and I was being paid tourist rates I thought, travelling to places I had never seen before. That is how I saw it as I worked month in and month out. Going everywhere, being paid a wage while exploring and working at all the places I had no hope of ever seeing if I didn’t have that job. All geographically connected by the distribution network in my immediate area. Not just in the larger densely populated community where I lived, but beyond the company’s established service boundary at times. Some government buildings or places were out of bounds for the public, not so for linesman and cable jointers who had to do maintenance work in and around these out-of-bounds areas for the consumer or nearby customers. Much later there would open up for line and cable workers, opportunities in the industry to travel to other parts of the vast state or other Australian states and territories for organised network reinstatement e.g. emergencies, caused by the many natural disasters: especially with out of control bush fires and wild storms.

I was to undertake my training being supervised by my peers, as well as from the electrical utility’s in-house training centre at Angle Park. Angle Park was situated in the suburban outskirts north of the city of Adelaide’s central business district. I would be engaged to eventually work and to serve within my immediate home community, the surrounding towns and the farming and industrial districts, not only to extend, but to maintain and repair the high and low voltage distribution network. These networks, at the time, were government-owned electrical poles and wire systems of the bare wire overhead lines and also the underground electrical infrastructure of the power company’s distribution, or reticulation of power or energy to its state wide-customer base. Each separate state and territory in the country, was responsible for their own geographical boundaries. It was much later that an interconnected grid was built connecting all the eastern states of Australia except Western Australia and Northern Territory to a national extra high voltage transmission system. Western Australia and the Northern Territory were left out of that loop, due to there being no connectible network infrastructure in place, between the entire east coast and Perth and Darwin. The distances and the cost-to-profit ratio prohibited such a connection.

I had broad experience working on transmission towers, including the ‘Stobie’ 2 pole structures. 2 X steel H rail, bolted with unreinforced cement separating the rails, designed by the utility engineer James Cyril Stobie when he was 21 years of age in 1916. The single structures were used for voltages of power distribution that is 240 volt lines, and high voltage distribution lines up to 33,000 volts. They were also used for transmission lines of 66,000 volts and 132,000 volts as both single and two pole structures. Tower lattice structures, as time passed took their place as the main transmission structure, used for the higher voltages as the voltages were increased greatly, to meet growing demand. With the voltage increasing (to save on electrical transmitting losses) so did the distances they were built to transport electricity to. A transmission line’s sole function is to move electricity from generation to a local substation supply point near or close to the customers who use the power. There are many of these substation drop off supply points in a transmission distribution network. The voltages used in some of these pylon tower-lines ranges from 66,000 volts to 500,000 volts.

A transmission line entering a local suburban power substation has only one initial purpose, for the voltage to be transformed via the transmission sub-station transformer. Substations are used to step down the voltage to a usable distribution-voltage for pole top or ground mounted transformers in the street, which then supply customers with electricity. As an example a 66,000-volt transmission line is transformed to 11,000 volts by the sub-station transformer. The 11,000 volts becomes the standard high voltage distribution line. This voltage is carried on poles and wires or underground to where the many transformers are placed in the street, which is then transformed from 11,000 volts to 240volts for customers to use, by that street transformer. A high voltage distribution voltage can also be lower or higher than 11,000 volts. The voltage level used is up to what the utility decides to be fit for their purpose, or sometimes what they are stuck with: what’s already there in place.

Houses and businesses then draw all the low voltage electricity; from these street transformers they need. Some high-voltage transmission substations only deal purely with transmission voltages only. These are simply bulk supply power destinations to redirect power to different directions in a state, country, province or territory. Many high voltage transmission and combined distribution substations are situated where the local power substation is placed so the locality or suburb can be serviced with electricity. Power substations are therefore usually placed near where people live. Each transmission line supplied substation is usually circle fed, that is they can be supplied electricity from a transmission line from two different routes, or sources which can be many miles apart from each other. The usual ring-feed construction is, one separate feed in, one separate feed out: at the same substation. Each of these separate transmission lines can supply all the substation electricity needs, should one transmission line be switched off. A radial transmission line cannot back-up feed a substation, there is only one transmission line into that substation! When that one radial transmission line is off, the substation is off. It is not possible to source reasonable supplies from other lower distribution 11,000-volt feeder lines from neighbouring substations. They are too far away or there is no connection possible due to, in some cases the remoteness, it’s just not there.

Generally, a transmission line continues its journey from one substation, on to another substation, then on to another and so on. In the case of the interconnected-interstate grid, on the east coast of Australia a connection has been made with the sates of South Australia, Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland. The voltage used to transmit over these large distances is 275,000 volts 330,000 volts and up to 500,000 volts in parts. In some parts of the world, specialised developed super conductors, deliver voltages of over a million volts. The upper range of deliberate, high-voltage used in these lines, lessens the known electrical losses inherent in running any alternating current in a power line, over a substantially long distance. There is a submarine high voltage cable between Tasmania and Victoria, power is often sold to Victoria from Tasmania.

The United States of America has a similar transmission interconnected national grid system across many partner states. Electricity can be sourced from New York to supply Las Vegas, the other side of the country. This interconnected system becomes much like a stock market with the price of electricity moving up and down, reflecting a higher price for peak times of demand over each different hour of the day or night.

The reason that linesman’s work experience and exposure was limited in South Australia was that the Stobie pole structure was very reliable. Very low-level maintenance was required for its expected 50-year life. A key to extending the longevity of the locally manufactured Stobie pole was that the steel was galvanised whereas prior there was no protective coating applied to the structure. It was then more resistant to the effects of decay, rust, termite and wind damage to the structure. Termites can and do eat concrete, but not to any damaging degree, as a wood pole. White ants along with timber dry rot causes untold damage to wood power-poles, which is a risk to workers climbing them. There is also a structural risk which brings forward their replacement date for the utility. New Zealand is fortunate they do not have white ants in both islands, they are ‘missing’ in action as environment vandals all due to snow cover.

With the increased inevitable life span of the Stobie pole, it was part of the success in that state to keeping electricity prices down, compared to all other mainland states. Tasmania had an advantage though. Hydro-electric power, and lots of it. Tasmania, an Australian state and a separate island, had the cheapest electricity prices in the whole country. It was hard to beat them as they had no fuel costs to deal with. Eventual replacement requirements of the traditional use of a wood-pole structure used elsewhere by many other utilities, gave rise to many authorities looking to using steel or concrete structures. The Stobie structures due to their robustness, afforded less opportunities for exposure to normal working experience, as compared to wood poles in other power authorities, across Australia for linesman.

Only when power-line extensions, severe storm damage occurred or road building dictating the need for replacement or the moving of these Stobie structures, was one able to get some real meaningful hands-on experience. The variety of work therefore that the infrastructure changes demanded were the bulk of the ‘bread and butter’ work for line and cable crews. Bare wire power-lines and their structures, when in the path of development, had to be removed, they were physically in the way. Structures had to be moved clear of the intended development, or the network placed out of the way, so under-grounding it was the preferred option. Sometimes there was no available easement for building an overhead network as an optional cheaper cost for the developer. Placing the network underground, was then the only option where land-space was not available to build an overhead system. Land development for housing or commercial use, required many pole structures in the subdivisions. For many developed estates, utilities decided under-grounding the network was to become standard policy. This under-grounding approach became a national direction. Some states took longer to come to that policy decision than others. In the end they all got there.

To alleviate traffic congestion, a common demand for moving power lines and their structures, which were in the way of the road changes, under grounding the network was the most effective option. The cost would be passed on to the developer or the main-roads department. It was a win for the power company as the full cost is recovered, plus they could sell the scrapped overhead network and make a very small profit. Generally, this became the policy from the 1990’s onwards, in Australia at least.

The line depot in the Mount Barker town site where I worked was on Alexandria Road diagonally opposite Albert Road, the street where I lived. It would take me ten minutes to walk from my home to my workplace. Yet on some occasions I was late for work! So I bought myself a push bike, so I could forever after be on time. I was still late!

My training to become a qualified line and cable jointer was taken over a period of four years, at the training school along with the text book list of mandatory on-site tasks to complete. I was also given a set of learning projects to complete. These were to be in correspondence form, ‘homework’ sheets, I called them which had to be sent to the training centre and had to be completed on time, or otherwise no trade certificate would be issued; when the 4-year-training period was up. I was back at school! The hands on experiences or tasks involved work, on both the overhead bare and covered wire, high and low voltage distribution systems. Also included in the training was the underground jointing of cables used in the electrical distribution of both high and low voltage systems. I became an all-rounder, multi-skilled!

Both the high and low voltage distribution systems, formed part of the overall standard distribution network. In the distribution area, there was further training and further work in a number of substations and periodical tower transmission maintenance work, all designed for extra exposure and experiences, for all line and cable employees. Transmission work was somewhat limited as one can imagine that the maintenance requirements was largely spaced out to years in between planned pole top or tower inspections. There are minor maintenance requirements on steel lattice tower structures or steel and concrete Stobie poles used for transmission distribution purposes, until a replacement phase of that work, kicks in.

The low voltage work primarily entailed working on both the 240 low-voltage single phase system, the 415 low- voltage (three phase) systems. As linesmen we also worked on the 11,000 volts high-voltage distribution voltage including the 33,000 volts; high voltage systems. There was also some odd voltages used to distribute power to farmers in outlying areas. That voltage was 19.1 kV or 19,100 volts. (You can tell by counting up the type and number of insulators used.) There were a few other odd voltages used in distribution as well, but these were dispensed with over time. Most utilities had these smaller (high) voltages as they were inherited from the tramways or from council run, separate network systems that had limited scope for expansion when the growth and population expanded. Built many years ago their use by date was up and were no longer of any use as a sensible network voltage.

These odd power lines were 7,600 volts, 6,600 volts as well as 6,300 volts. These were all high-voltage lines, which at their time-of-use, was the nominated distribution system voltage of the day. These lesser voltage size distribution system feeder-voltages were used by many electrical authorities, mainly in early electrical distribution for use in dedicated tramways, electrical rail, trolley bus and electrically-driven trams. They were also used as ordinary street distribution voltage lines, the electrical distribution odd-voltage-systems which were in place, at that time were the common voltages distributed from local power substations. With trams and the like disappearing over time, motor driven buses taking over the mode of modern transport, electricity was no longer required as it had been, in the rail transport sector.

Melbourne has kept its electric run tram network. Adelaide has an electric tram line from the Port area, the casino area to Glenelg operating today. Electric run trams and trains appear to be making a comeback, in the transport arsenal, of most governments today. The voltages used have also been standardised and generally use DC (direct current) at 25,000 volts. So it is a little different today, more advanced to the older way of providing electricity for these transport systems.

These older odd voltage lines were used for household and business, until the population growth determined their usefulness fell short of being a reliable ‘carrier’ for the utility. For a viable, efficient, operating electrical network, the voltage for distribution needs, these older lines became too low for the demand as the surge in population growth continued. Consequently the demand for energy placed on the network as a result would cause network-failures if something was not done. These odd lower high-voltage lines did not have the capacity to be of any use to the utility. These older lines however, could all be ‘upgraded’ with extra voltage insulation, increasing the voltage from the substation, and other supporting electrical infrastructure, including changing all the transformers along its route, in a gradual process to make use of the poles and wires of the existing odd network. The poles and conductors did not need changing, just about everything else did.

High-voltage is defined as the measure of 1,000 volts pressure (electrical) and above. Voltage can be measured with an instrument. Anything below 1000 volts is low voltage. So 999 volts is considered low-voltage! A man must have thought of that rule. How different would a shock delivered from a 999 volt system be to one from a 1,000 volts? Not much different I would say.

As linesmen we were required to do tower work which involved working at heights over 120 feet, (40 meters) so although there were some smaller tower structures in use (40 feet) generally most sat in the higher range. In that regard everyone in the Mount Barker depot was trained as ‘all-rounders’ when it came to performing maintenance work. Being an all-rounder was a term used indicating that the skill base of the employees was very broad. This equated to prompt customer service whenever there was a network problem; in either the distribution or the transmission networks, of a linesmen’s work area for any depot, in the state of South Australia.

The employees were skilled for all maintenance areas to quickly discharge necessary repairs and thereby enable restoration of electrical supplies in either network as soon as possible to the customers. This plan of thinking by management led many times to maintaining the network’s transmission and distribution ring-feed systems to what is known as a healthy state, when customers were not affected by the risks to their electricity supplies. Periodical inspections of the transmission or distribution networks often revealed potential faults that needed attention by crews. Preventative maintenance that was performed, due to these inspections was able to keep the grid or network humming and securely intact, or healthy.

Much like any train rail network. All the railway track rail routes can be travelled on if needed, none are out of service or at risk of being out of service. Damaged parts are replaced, before they break down or become a safety issue. The whole of the rail network is then secure for use, as and if required, including all the sidings or diversions, to allow safe passing of trains especially where any critical transport single-rail track system is used.

The employee multi-skilling approach by the utility enabled most customers to be back on line in a short space of time whenever power outages occurred. The only exception to a customer being rushed to the front of an outage cue, in front of anyone else was a hospital. Hospitals took priority, when it came to restoring power supplies, and so they should. This was done even though all hospitals generally have their own emergency-generating-plant to supply all the emergency power systems within the hospital. Medical specialists would not want to be in the middle of an operation, in the operating theatre of a hospital and then be faced with a power failure.

Oops the lung machine just stopped buddy, sorry you’ll have to breathe yourself for the next ten minutes while we get it back on-line! I can just hear the surgeon saying that; with a few expletives no doubt!

Electrical distribution work for line crews involved working around all different types of pole top hardware. The electricity transported on these structures by the conductors, is sourced from the local power distribution substation. The substation supplies are connected usually by a feed-in feed-out dedicated ‘ringed-transmission-line.’ All the locally run woollen mills, dairy farms, mining leases, large agricultural areas and any electricity end user be it either a domestic home, including large and small business operators, their power originates from their local power distribution substation. Transmission power lines, are sometimes built as large lattice type towers or as a single pole structure or a combination of poles (2 or 3 poles secured together,) to move large amounts of electricity from the main power generating station (or factory) to main bulk substations and then on to other smaller substations which all form the ‘Transmission Network.’

This is its primary function. Transmission lines move power to a place, a large or bulk substation or to smaller substations to distribute electricity using the transmission transformers in the substation, to step the voltage down to a transportable level, known as the ‘distribution-high-voltage-feeder-line’ in any locality. Transmission lines are usually not built for any one single use customer, unless they are huge guzzlers of power. They are like bulk carriers of power to be transported many miles away for customer distribution via the local substations only. It is much like the human blood circulation system, the network is a distribution system of miles of wires, cables, transformers and all the other necessary bits and pieces, a sort of misunderstood electrical paraphernalia that somehow works, or we would all, be forever in the dark!

All utilities have sole-use customers. Examples are large and small airports, hospitals, farmers, shopping centres, casinos, high rise buildings, universities, schools, factories, and the mining sector. Sole-use customers do not share the transformer dedicated for their own use with any other customers. The installation can be very small transformers or large one bigger than your lounge room. In some cases the sole-use customer has their own switchyard or substation. The power utility point of connection might just be a high voltage cable and nothing else. The customer might install their own switch gear protection and transformers. The Water Board in some cases to pump water uses 11,000 volt electric motors to pump water from a river or reservoir to the city. The typical street transformer is shared by many domestic and light business customers.

I never knew any of that stuff when I applied for the job, so it was a bit of a learning curve for me.

Acknowledging the Team

The following five people were my senior line team-leaders and primary buddy support people in my training, when I commenced working a four-year traineeship, in the state of South Australia.

Barry Eve, who was at that time when I commenced my apprenticeship in 1974 a sprightly thirty-year-old man; who was told by the highly polished management of engineers (who thought they were the ones that ran the company) that he would never be a team-leader or be in charge, or ever qualify to be in charge of a line or a cable crew. They repeated themselves a lot. I remember. Barry might have had some minor learning difficulties according to them, however, he was a good teacher in the field when it came to the application of safe work and safety skills. The field is where the work gets done, at the coal face. In spite of his slight academic inabilities (on a piece of paper or in the class room) he knew his stuff on the job where it mattered most. School work is not something for everyone.

Even Richard Branson had similar ‘difficulties.’ Look what his teachers told him, after they caned him! Sir Richard Branson copped a hiding at school and was told he wouldn’t succeed at anything. That doesn’t mean the pupil who is so challenged cannot put their hand to anything they choose, if they are given or take an opportunity.

The record shows Barry was never involved in any incident where he had failed to apply, or to have not followed detailed technical procedures. He always safely restored the supply of electricity to customers and always built the infrastructure, to the technical drawing requirements be it the overhead stuff one can see or underground cable work which was always buried about a metre deep. He had good sound mature discipline and Barry without fail expected others to mirror that, or else! If you were part of his crew of workers, just watch it, or a visit to the supervisor’s office with his complaint about you would become the day’s topic of discussion. The discussion would revolve around how he thought the company could assist you to improve the exposed failings now so blatantly obvious, to Barry at least. Why else would you be in the office? In that regard Barry was a no-nonsense-man. He ran a tight ship as the saying goes.

Barry was able to explain clearly the mechanical and electrical concepts of all the aspects of building all the electrical projects safely, without causing injuries to any of his team members and damage to any property and to meeting the project deadline. Projects he was assigned were always finished on time, weather permitting. In other words, if it rained all week in the Adelaide Hills, everyone knew, no one was going to drive a truck into a farm paddock to dig holes, let alone erect poles or string any conductors. Sometimes depending on the area one could not even take a leisurely walk on the soggy wet ground. So wet and boggy did the clay become, the surface was a hidden layered quick-sand-like-surface. This type of risky landscape was formed when pockets of clay topsoil some 2 metres deep lodged naturally between boulders, which were below the surface and usually out of sight.

Some people thought that many of the paddocks could easily be walked on in those hills, even in a normal wet winter. There are certain pockets within the hills area, which form part of ‘local knowledge’ called ‘high bogging risk areas.’ These areas not only will bog vehicles but people too, even wearing Wellington boots. Rubber boots or gum boots as they are called depending which part of the planet one lives in. Toyota four-wheel drive vehicles were also useless in many of these known boggy trouble spots. We all knew over time from experience where these areas were, and they were avoided if it was not immediately necessary to go there.

At the planning stages of work in these winter bog areas it was a ‘given’ that only late spring, summer and early autumn months were considered viable safe productive working periods. So long as it was safe to leave the work or the maintenance for a while in those areas, the winter months were out of bounds till dryer days arrived. Work was rescheduled for later when the affected landscape dried out. It was not always possible just the same, as building power lines is customer driven. Customers demand power when it suits them. Barry’s idea was that it was okay to get the trucks bogged so long as a day’s work was achieved, in the process. Especially if the project was close to completion, and the new addition of the network could be powered up as a result.

Barry’s plan in all wet conditions was to always place the vehicles so the electrical work could be completed even if we bogged trucks and cranes in the process. That was why we were there, to connect a new customer to the network. A new house gets built, they need power, and we had to put in place all the network stuff to get it done for them, so they could move in to their newly built home. Poles, transformers, wire, then safely ‘earth’ all the Stobie steel poles and transformers: all the company structures had to be installed according to the company’s construction manual. The construction standards had to be completed before any part of the new network was able to be powered-up. Heaps of rules, let me say that much. That is why sometimes it appears to the public, workers are doing nothing when they are viewed from a well-placed distance periscope.

I remember Barry bogging the truck so much so that the 4X4 truck door, couldn’t be opened. The truck axles and all the differentials was all that stopped the vehicle disappearing in the quicksand type clay-pit layered between great big granite boulders. In the typical Adelaide hills areas with fancy shaped looking moss rocks some as big as houses, the rain falling between the massive granite boulders, would pool under the ground, become a trapped layer of water and turn the innocent looking surface, into a Venus-plant-like mud truck-trap for the unsuspecting vehicle or pedestrian passing by.

That would be us, the power workers. When a vehicle was driven over the unsuspecting hazard, it was where camping on the job seemed like a pandemic-lock-down-idea. We learnt that from the months between the middle of April to late September that we needed to walk ahead of the vehicle’s route taken, in those tell-tale areas. The winter months were out of the question. Walking the route vehicles were about to take across farm land, enabled us to gauge, by testing the surface travel suitability prior to any vehicle movements. It would also save some personal embarrassment, so in that regard it was always a worthwhile and necessary prudent exercise.

Barry had to climb out of his vehicle’s 4X4 door window, he couldn’t open the door! The next day the line truck that was bogged was recovered with a bulldozer hired from an earth-moving company, and none of us let Barry live it down although everyone knew it only gave him a badge of honour that no one else would be able to match or would want to ever wear.

In situations like the extreme cold and wet winters experienced in the Adelaide Hills and even in many other countries, where it might snow, linesman resort to carrying the best lightest wooden ladder to do their work from when at pole top. A leather line-belt in those days, (a full body harness with a safe-work-rating is used today in the industry, leather was banned) and all the gear for the repair has to be manually carried. All the while the field truck or vehicle remains parked on the roadside in full view. In some countries line workers use climbing-irons which are attached to their boots. Linesmen in countries who use climbing-irons prefer not to use ladders to work off. It is less equipment for those power workers to carry for any network repair work. Many times it is necessary to use helicopters in some countries as that is the only access when floods, landslides and extreme deep snow falls occur.

We were not permitted in South Australia by company policy to use climbing irons, or pole-top mounted wooden working platforms simply because they cannot be used to work on steel and concrete Stobie poles. Climbing-irons can only be used on soft wood poles, spruce and pine. I have seen them used on hard wood poles too. The working pole-top platform has pointed metal spikes that bite into the wood pole, giving secure anchored stability with a locking chain around the pole. Using these special tools of the trade that some electrical authorities permitted, placed line workers in a good comfortable working position. Although the Stobie pole does have attached bolted steel-climbing-step-bolts, these were later not permitted to be used as a climbing means to climb to the top of the pole.

Barry always asked me to carry the ladder when the driving in a soggy paddock was not the advisable thing to do. Barry said; I will never forget his words for as long as I live, because you have to learn how to do, and I am here to make sure you do it right.

And learn to walk carrying a ladder with all the gear I did, thanks a million Barry!

Don Fidock was a grey haired man, tall and statesman looking. A quick and deep witted thinker on his feet. He was one of the most efficient planners when it came to project-work, where multiple crews from many different working depots were required in some of the massive complex re-jigging or re-routing of high-voltage feeder-lines was required. I likened Don’s stature similar to the late Prime Minister of Australia, the Honourable Gough Whitlam. The only difference I could see between these two great men was that Gough never taught me anything directly about electricity. Sorry Gough bless your soul; no ill intended.

Gough Whitlam was one of Australia’s most important and most treasured labour party political leaders in an era of stubborn resistance to good social change and reform from the ‘other side’ of the parliament. Certainly for a country like Australia, much was needed to cause the catalyst of change; to the stubborn entrenched regressive approach that existed prior to ‘Gough’ in all areas socially, culturally and politically that lay within the backward ‘liberal-straight-laced-wowser-party’ at that time. Gough was most instrumental in freeing the young who were suppressed, and breaking the narrow minded thinkers, the-tea-drinking-wowsers, the straight-jacketed-moralistic upstarts and all the values Australia was saddled with since The War. Australian society before Gough was likened, to wearing a straight-jacket, with everyone drugged up to keep them docile and well behaved.

The skills that Don was gifted with were employed by the company on large projects that required a management level of foresight and intelligence, well before such positions were required in the electrical distribution industry. Well before computers became part of the office tool kit. Usually electrical engineers were charged with those intricate responsibilities and to manage the same said projects from inception, to completion.

However, Don had the persona to always extend himself. He was able to pool multiple depot resources and secure all the required specialised contractors that were needed. Don could skill search and negotiate agreements between groups and government agencies effortlessly. Don was able to oversee like no other supervisor to cut and shut, extend and rewire the existing network configurations or give clear unambiguous directions for any planned feeder lines that were needed for growth, in the never ending demand for more electricity by customers. To reroute and maximise the efficiencies required for the dissemination and the supply of electricity to any area, there was a special sequence required which had to be co-ordinated. Not just in our local home district but anywhere where growth was happening. It was all done perfectly by Don without an email or a computer folks! Just a dial up telephone sitting on the desk. There were no mobile telephones back then just in case you were wondering, only citizen band radios.

Don was the man to call on. It was largely this man’s work that the engineers within the utility, realised that eventually they would not be needed on the job any more. They soon realised that the writing was on the wall for all of them. The utility’s observant upper-middle managers took notice of Don’s abilities so that an idea for change in the labour-project-management field was born.

Eventually positions which aligned job descriptions, would see project managers and project designers emerge. Engineers were moved on to do what they really needed to do, and that was to engineer the network. What was emerging was smarter linesmen. Higher education saw to that and lifting the low educational entry requirements and moving the age entry in a downward direction, all contributed to a selection process from a larger smarter base of suitable young eager highly educated applicants.

Usually a trainee combination-linesman-cable-jointer had to be twenty-six years of age or older for entry to work in the power distribution industry. This restriction was changed to sixteen years of age entry level later. So long as the applicant had the some form of human manual physical and hand-tools ability, levels of education was placed on back burner till the late 1970’s. Electrical workers in both Distribution or Transmission lines the description of ‘linesman’ disappeared later; a clear deliberate outcome of the Gough Whitlam’s anti-discrimination laws in regard to race, age, colour, religion and gender. This law touched and moulded many future social changes in Australian society and in all workplaces.

The title of the linesman as a job description eventually died, political correctness took the high road, as did community expectations, with social demands ending discrimination in the areas of sex, culture, diversity, age and religion in all future job vacancies, which were advertised. The job descriptions, including applicant interviewing techniques or questions that could or could not be asked were all up for review, becoming part of on-going compliance and improvement yard stick.

The growing population and the subsequent growing economy, the requirements for the use of energy simply required the installation of many more new bulk substation termination points or distribution points from which to make the connection of new high-voltage feeder-lines or cables to supply new suburbs or commercial subdivisions. The emerging larger number of lots for housing, which had not been seen before that time, required that good-skilled-thinkers be given the task to manage and mitigate all the safety issues at all stages of the installation. They had to meet the strict deadlines and co-ordinate competing demands from all sources and resources, be they customers, government agencies, or other interested parties who tendered for the work parcels or contracts, whether part of the project or the whole project.

What lay around the corner for most electrical utilities at that time (1980’s onwards) was bigger and bigger projects and more complex design requirements as the population doubled then, tripled. In many cities and country towns, as industry and populations grew or people moved to new employment opportunities, competing demands from a challenging, emerging globalism of the labour market, was thrust upon the economies across the modern world for cooperative labour needs to use their skills including resources. Electrical utilities would find themselves in the middle of a skilled-labour-shortage, not that far away into the future. When high risk skilled labour movements across the world became a common form for an internet interview, interesting times emerged with an opportunity for many people who had those sought-after skills to be able to move globally not only in search of employment, but a change of country to live and work in.

Brian Gertige was a man who knew what to do and how to do it, whatever task he was assigned. He was patiently happy, and willing to watch you do-it-the-hard-way and watch you take longer than needed. If you thought, he didn’t know anything at all, you were in for a shock, and he was a well-oiled and designed smoke-screen! His personalised clever teaching tool was to silently challenge you to a level of leadership without sometimes saying a word. He had an uncanny absolute skill doing that right under your nose and you didn’t even notice. That was the best part of my apprenticeship with Brian as I often take a fond look back in time, of those very early days of my apprenticeship working alongside him in the field.

I liken the experience that I had with Brian in my early days just like the following example: Brian would give me the baton in a 400 metre relay race and, of course, one would automatically grab it. Carrying the baton I would then move on. No questions would be asked for all involved at all in the automatic race in a 400 metre baton race. The design and purpose of any relay race, is that there are usually four, runners involved in the start of the race, and only one goes to the finish line. In Brian’s relay races there was just one! Brian gives me the baton and off I had to go all alone to the finish line. Very clever. It was brilliant to watch once I had cottoned on to what was really happening; in my dreams, how else would you see it? I would only find out much later as it dawned on me, as I observed the next new 4 year trainee who joined Brian’s crew run his own race!

Brian’s comments to trainees would just make me crack up with laughter, as Brian would say it so genuinely and as sober as a judge: Gee that didn’t work too well, Sonny, I’ll have to remember not to do it that way myself, young man. Thanks for the lesson. We can cross that off the list of what not to do then, what do you reckon?

Brian was a quietly spoken man, even when he was in charge of the power line crew. There was never a hint of boss and worker hierarchy structure in his crew, he expected everyone to fit in as a team member or just simply buzz off.

One of his famous sayings was to ask the question: How do you spell team?

One would think while spelling the word ‘team’ one would be conned into thinking, that maybe Brian couldn’t read or write or spell.

So there’s no ‘I’ in team then?

Brian’s quick, witty, quizzing statement appeared to be a revelation laced with total hidden sarcasm. He would then say no more and let the trainee think about it all day, I’m sure to instil a hunger and a desire not to be impatient with the slow, and many mundane parts of the job at hand. There were many necessary parts of work that are associated with all the tiresome preliminaries required for all types of work, in any field. Too often people wanted to do the best bits of the job and did not pay attention to the small detail. For Brian it was the back-to-basics understanding that he reinforced to everyone that nine tenths of any task was all in the preparation being done properly from the outset. Preparation was such that there was no glory or pride that could be attached until a project was completed and only then, was it considered a sense of achievement to be admired by all who had a hand in it. We all knew what was required to get the power on and to keep-it-up to the customer. The boring bits were not much fun; they just had to be done. Completing tasks was where the glory was.

George Golder and Peter Lawrence, these two men were also stationed at the Mount Barker depot (not to be confused with the town of Mount Barker in Western Australia) as line cable jointers who had just come out of their time when I started with the power company. I worked alongside Peter and George with a mix of other people as we were constantly rotated through the workforce of 20 men in number, so as to expose us all to the different personalities and attitudes and the grumpiness of a few of them as well. With Peter and George, the ‘buddy’ system gave any trainee some understanding of what was expected of work ethic, school assignments and safe working, which was always measured by the continual asking of many questions.

Of course, without the need to mention it, there was the applying of all work procedures, including understanding why all the procedures were there in the first place. So Peter and George gave influence and encouragement and good discipline. Don’t worry when anyone got it wrong both of them would give out a bellowing of sorts. Not holding back in that department either, I can say. Procedures had to be strictly followed as the exposed steel parts around the live power lines, the steel pole itself and all the steel cross arms gave little room for error of contact by the body or whatever it was a linesman had in his hand. Strict adherence to safety procedures was required or else…, just get out of the industry! Sincerely that was the only other safe option for anyone with any sort of ingrained cowboy attitude. You had to respect electricity: not the other way round!

These few good men taught me in the field, training me on all the apprenticeship tasks required for being assessed, prior to my graduation as a distribution-cable-jointer linesman. Being away from the theory of a classroom, and placed in the ‘real-world’ where all the high-risk-work-and-hand-skills were needed to be able to work safely around electricity, was the environment which was not totally taught in the classroom given the limited time spent there. The field was like a jungle-out-there it was not a controlled environment. So the field had a medium-to-high-risk category about it. They taught me so much and so well, that I completed a traineeship of four years duration and came out the other side of that achievement after a lengthy career of around forty years unscathed by this deadly stuff! I dodged a number of bullets as a result of the advice of these good men and so for the gratitude one has in regard to their patience, one then passes on those learnings freely to others around them, their families and all those in the community benefit as a result. It is a sort of pay-it-forward space, from graduation onwards in the chosen career of working with this lethal product.

The other group of people that I need to acknowledge were the trainers at Angle Park Training centre. The Electrical Utility’s Training Centre, complete with a set number of instructors and support staff who taught the nuts and bolts, the ins and outs of electricity from the text book with many physical examples and exercises within the strict safety boundaries of that training