Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
I’m Steve. I work at Peel Valley Machinery in Tamworth.
Growing up on a farm was good,
working on machinery and things all the time.
School wasn’t so bad.
I can’t handle sitting down for too long,
especially growing up on a farm.
This is where I come to work every day, at Peel Valley Machinery.
We service trucks, tractors, farm machinery, any sort of engine,
suspension repairs, rego checks, things like that.
When you first start and you come underneath,
you look around and you’ve got the general idea, but it’s a maze.
The apprenticeship started through school, through the careers advisor.
He came up and said, “Oh, there’s a school-based apprenticeship,
“which means you get to go through Year 11 and 12
“and then move on into a proper apprenticeship when you’re finished.”
The main components are your chassis rails –
everything comes off them.
Your suspension mounts to the chassis rails,
and then your axle with your wheels
bolt onto the bottom of your suspension.
I just finished a week of on call, which is seven days of on call.
Had five breakdowns during the night.
The furthest one was at Moree, which is about four hours away.
Most of the drivers realise that they’re broken down
and there’s no point being upset
about how long it’s going to take or whatever.
We do our best and, you know, at the end of the day,
they can’t change the fact that it’s going to take that long.
That was the best part of getting close
to the end of your apprenticeship,
is, you know, they trust you,
that you can go out on the side of the road and repair trucks,
even in the middle of the night.
Once you go qualified, you’re not really a kid anymore.
They sort of realise that, you know, you’re the top sort of mechanics
and this is what they train you for.
You’re a specialist now with mechanicking,
and, yeah...and they reward you for it.
Put in a lot of hours of work, saved up
and bought myself a Falcon, which was good.
Save up to buy a house
and hopefully, you know, do a whole tour of Australia over, say, 10 years.
Who knows where it could take me from here?