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GEOFFREY ARCHER: I'm Geoff Archer.
I joined the board in 1950.
A friend of mine, Peter Kay, worked in the
planning division of town planning.
And he said to me when I finished my diplomas, why
don't you go and see a Mr. McKinsey in the Board of Works
and ask him?
And I came down, I rang up McKinsey, and then McKinsey
said, right, they want to put you on.
Your qualifications would be put in the ad
so it'll fit you.
Will you apply?
And I said yes.
Jobbo
for some reason or other, seemed to take a fancy to me.
I don't know why, because I used to give
him a bit of cheek.
He was an extra chief.
He did a extra chief for engineering,
so he was well qualified.
And he said, you know Geoff, you've got the qualifications
and experience to take over my job when I retire.
But he said, you couldn't do it unless you went on shift.
And I said, yeah, I'd do that.
So I went on shift, and all the shift engineers, who are
all marine engineers, were a little bit wary of me, but
they found that I seemed to be able to run the place.
This is where, typical of marine engineers, you've seen
them on the ships, they hold their hand above on one of the
rails up there, one there.
And they go sliding down, their feet hardly
touching the ladder.
This used to be a thing hanging on a chain, ***,
***, ***.
And you'd speak through this, and they'd answer.
And then you'd hear, OK, and then over and out, ***, ***.
These are very good flow metres.
We used to have to turn them on.
But they were a very, very good flow metre.
Very accurate, beautifully made.
I can remember, when the flow went up, the pumps
couldn't handle it.
We'd shut the north Yarra main completely, and dump the
entire north Yarra main into the river.
Now, some disgruntled Board of Works employee must have told
The Truth newspaper.
And this Truth man came down and he's told Jobbo he's
coming down to take photos of the river doors that put the
sewage into the river.
And Jobbo
said to me, here, Geoff, I don't know about any river
doors in this pumping station, do you, Geoff?
I got the message and said, no.
I said, we can take him over the river and
show him if you like.
And this bloke got the sulk and pissed off.
So Jobbo
said to me, that's right, Geoff.
Tell him nothing.
Tell him nothing.
And that's what I did.
It was quite a rough job cleaning
these, you can imagine.
But I came on shift one day, and I noticed there was a lot
of rags coming through into the pumping station.
And I looked at these things, and they weren't right down.
The screen well attendants would leave them about six
inches off the bottom, or eight inches, because that
means they didn't have to clean the screens so much
because all the rags were coming in.
Yeah.
Bloody hell.
Well, as it was such much part of your life, I
really enjoyed it.
And I'm quite pleased to come back, but it was a relief for
me to be here rather than head office.
Head office is sort of - it wasn't as interesting
as this place was.
[MUSIC - EMORY B. RANDOLPH, "A FAREWELL"]