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Bachelor of Arts History & Politics

Diploma of Professional Writing & Editing

Ken Purdham

ETU Vic historian

Now my working life has come to an end and I look back in many ways it was my working life that defined me. It influenced the way I think, the way I am. My experiences and memories of my working life are many and  it began when I walked out of one school and into another in September 1965.

The Apprentice School


I left school in September 1965, one month before my sixteenth birthday, and went to work as an apprentice at a heavy engineering firm called Head Wrightson’s. How exciting for me; no longer a school kid, I was working!


On my first day at the HW apprentice school, I sat, wide eyed, with fifty other new apprentices, face to face with ancient looking, silver-haired tutors in grey dust coats. During the next six months, they said, we’d learn how to use basic tools such as files, hacksaws, screwdrivers, scribers, centre-pops and set-squares. We’d also be shown how to use pedestal drills, lathes, milling machines and how to weld. Such a new world being promised.


We’d be going out to different sites for work-experience with the different trades: electricians, fitters, boilermakers, toolmakers, foundry workers, shipwrights, and pattern makers, to name some. And we’d notice everything was painted green and orange because those were the colours that looked cleanest when dirty. And be warned, they said, when in the workplace, if an office girl walked past or through, we had to keep our eyes on the job and not on her. Fat chance, I thought! But it was all about safety, even if lost on us.


There was a safety officer who’s message wasn’t lost on me, though. He was a bloke who had one hand missing and he wore a brown shiny leather glove on a false fist. He knew frst hand, they told us, the price to pay for poor safety practices . Throughout my apprenticeship he’d turn up unannounced and cast his critical eye over the workshop. And he was feared by all because he had power. His word was law! When he waved that false fist at something he didn’t like, well, the memory of it still makes the point of what safety was all about.  


Finally, they said, at the end of our six months in the apprentice school we’d be assessed and offered an apprenticeship in that trade at which we’d shown the best aptitude.


So, with that, I began my working life going out to the various sites; a new kid in crisp, never worn before overalls that were stiff and too big for me; while on my feet I wore shiny steel-capped work boots with not mark on them. All the same, I felt pretty good in my new gear even if I could be seen from miles away trying look tough up against the experienced apprentices who’d already gone through system and were now well into their apprenticeships. Their overalls were well washed and faded, lived in almost, and their work boots were properly dull and scuffed. How could I possibly compete with these cool dudes when those young hotties walked by? The fully fledged tradesmen, by the way, were adults and felt pretty old to me, married even. Their’s was a world I had yet to enter.


I wanted to be an electrician and spent a week with a couple of cable jointers. It was winter and they were working in a muddy hole, down by the river, joining a big cable together. I had no idea what was going on but remember them carefully binding each core of this big cable with a kind of cloth tape before using a blow torch to melt lead and form it with a thick lump of leather, into a knuckle around the joint they’d made. It was clear, squatting in a muddy hole for a week, with freezing feet, and melting lead with a blow-torch was not for me, even if there was an obvious skill to the work they were doing.
















It was then on to the toolmakers shop. The toolmakers were the elite of the trades. Anyone who wanted machine cutting tools and drills sharpened brought them to the toolmakers. From there to the fitters and turners, watching them fitting and setting up whatever they were putting together, with micrometers, steel rules and set-squares. Or turning small lumps of steel and giant objects on lathes, swarf and white water flying everywhere.


From there it was into the fabrication workshops where I watched boilermakers use a chalk line to mark giant plates of steel, then with an impressive rhythmical action put a series of pop marks along the chalk line with their centre-pop and hammer, so to guide their cutting tools.


My Uncle John was the forman in the pattern makers’ shop and there I saw the pattern makers make wooden patterns destined for the founderies. They were like wooden sculptures to me. Sitting with my Uncle as he filled in my report book at the end of my week, is the warmest memory I have. He made me feel good about the start of my working life.  


So, what do you know, when I went back in the apprentice school workshop and the ancient grey coats, they told us we were going to make a centre-pop and a baby set-square.


Right then, to make my centre-pop I turned down the ends of a piece of hexagonal steel on a lathe and then ground one end to a point before learning to harden and temper it.


For my set-square I had to cut a block of steel for the butt and a piece of flat steel for the blade and what seemed like endless filing and blueing until all the surfaces were perfectly flat. I was shown how to cut the block to fit in the blade and rivet it into position exactly at 90 degrees.


After fifty-five years of work, I still have my centre-pop and baby set-square and when I put the square up against my bought ones of today it still stands up. I find it hard to believe I got it so accurate.


With my center-pop and set square in my pocket and my work experience all done, my six months in the apprentice school came to an end. I got my preferred apprenticeship, that of an electrician, and was sent to the Thornaby steel-works where they made things like big boilers and dock gates then launched them into the river to be towed away to wherever was their destination.


And so I entered my new world as a factory worker in heavy engineering, where for the next five years I progressed through my apprenticeship forging memories that have lasted me a lifetime.