OTVA NEWSLETTER - ISSN 1322-1906 September 2010. Volume 12 Page 1.
CONTENTSPresident’s Message 2
WA Vets AGM 2 Norfolk Island IDD Service 3 VALE Jim Rodda, Charlie Shaw, Kevin Huby, Fred James, Ellis Watts 5 COMING EVENTS2010 NSW Spring Reunion This will be held on the podium at the Level 1 Bistro of the Bowlers’ Club, 99 York Street, Sydney from 11.45am on Friday September 17, 2010. RSVP to president@otva.com or by phone to David Richardson on 2010 NSW Christmas Reunion
Friday 12 November 2010 at the NSW Bowlers Club. THE OTVA NEWSLETTER REWARDS PROGRAM Have you got something to tell us about yourself or events in your life or the life of others? OTVA will pay a reward of $50 to members whose contribution to the Newsletter is judged by the Committee to be the best contribution. Last month's winner was Keith McCredden. Congratulations Keith! FROM OUR PRESIDENT [Top]Fellow Members of the OTVA,
I thank the members who attended our AGM in June for showing their confidence in the 2009 Committee of the OTVA by voting the majority of the 2009 Committee back in with one exception. We say a big “Thank You” to Bob Murray who is leaving the Committee after several years for personal reasons. Bob has served the members of the OTVA well during his tenure on the Committee and we, the Committee of the OTVA, thank him for his efforts. Your Newsletter Editor, Bob Emanuel, continues battle to get some new stories of interest to OTVA members from a variety of sources that he has met through the years due to the diversity of his employers and roles in communications. Your committee is seeking your support in obtaining greater access to people and stories that relate to the many years that you enjoyed working for and with the fraternity associated with Australian & overseas telecommunications. Please keep the stories coming so that the OTVA Newsletter will continue to be of huge interest to members rekindling our memories with the realisation as to why OTC was such a great place to live and work. Your web manager, Chris Bull, continues to strive to keep the web up to date with information about events of interest and more recently to our collective sorrow the numbers of members who have departed this life. Chris continues to provide a vital service in circulating information through the availability and importance of the OTVA web page. A working group of the OTVA Committee comprised of Allan Hennessy, Bernie White, Ray Hookway and others are still grappling with the mammoth task of collating and recording the contents of OTC Memorabilia made available to the Telstra Museum at Bankstown. I fear that this will be a never ending battle. I extend my sincere condolences to the many friends and family of those of our fraternity who have passed away over the past 3 months since I last communicated to you through the OTVA Newsletter. We are all saddened by their passing but are gladdened by the fullness of their rich and long lives. May They Rest In Peace. Warmest regards, West Australian Veterans - 35th AGM 17 November 2009 [Top]President Des Kinnersley opened the meeting at 1242pm
The meeting closed at1258pm Norfolk Island International Telephone Service [Top]By JJ Mc Dermott Prior to the commissioning of the ANZCAN cable in 1983, which linked Australia to Norfolk Island, New Zealand and Canada, international phone calls with Norfolk Island were connected via HF radio links. An automatic local exchange was installed on Norfolk Island, prior to ANZCAN but it was not designed to handle International Direct Dialling. While Norfolk Islanders were able to dial local numbers, a local operator was required to manually connect originating and terminating international calls.. The operator switchboard associated with Norfolk’s automatic exchange was designed to connect only two simultaneous international calls although there were three HF radio links available. As a result the third channel could not be utilised. To call Norfolk, Australian subscribers dialled 0101 and the call was routed to an international operator in Sydney. Usually it was necessary to book a delayed call because of the poor quality on the HF radio links and the limited hours of operation. A similar arrangement applied for calls from Norfolk. The Norfolk Island operator and the Sydney operator exchanged details of who would be connected and at what time . Both operators had the calling and called parties ready to speak when a circuit became free. Despite this, there were substantial delays. We investigated methods of reducing delays by using the spare HF radio circuit. We approached Telecom Australia to see if they had any old exchange switchboards which could meet our requirements. They suggested that we could have their manual switchboard from Quirindi, near Tamworth, N.S.W. I was going to inspect it on site, but on examination of the switchboard trunking diagram layout, it was found to be unsatisfactory and would not meet the requirements for Norfolk Island. I checked the usage of our working HF links to Norfolk Island and found that there were some spare telegraph channels which could be used for signalling on a call to Norfolk. Our international AKE exchange had loop signalling circuits which were used mainly for direct connection to Telecom’s Sydney trunk exchange, These circuits were also used by to the Sydney operators for operator assisted calls to the world. The Norfolk Island exchange used a similar type of decadic signally similar to that used with rotary dials. We now had all the ingredients to make the OTC exchange and its HF radio circuit act like a local subscriber’s line on Norfolk. We were given a local number on Norfolk and connected a modem and telegraph channel. The modem changed a 4 wire voice circuit to a 2 wire local subscriber’s line and the telegraph channel was wired in series with the 2 wire connection to replicate similar local connections on Norfolk. When the Sydney operator dialled the number, the telegraph channel picked up the OTC line on Norfolk and pulsed out the wanted subscriber digits thus making the OTC exchange look like a Norfolk Island subscriber. Unfortunately the Norfolk Island local exchange could not give a positive signal that the called party had answered, as was the case with normal local calls. This signal was critical for International Direct Dialling as it was used to measure the chargeable time of the call. A similar problem existed for calls originating from Norfolk because Norfolk Island exchange was not set up as an international exchange with variable charging facilities. While this was a problem for IDD callers, it would be possible to operate as a semi- automatic service with the operator dialling the call and manually recording the chargeable duration after hearing that the Norfolk subscriber had answered the call. We were therefore able to utilise the spare HF radio circuit as follows. A special Norfolk Island route, with one HF radio circuit was established at the AKE international exchange. When a call was received on 0101 by the Sydney operator, the operator dialled the full international number + 672 being the country code for Australia’s external territories and 3 being the area code allocated for Norfolk Island followed by the local number. The OTC exchange was programmed to switch a call from the Sydney operator and select the HF radio circuit. As Norfolk exchange only received the local Norfolk subscriber number, only the local Norfolk Island number was sent over the Norfolk telegraph circuit. The voice path to and from Norfolk was connected into a Modem on Norfolk which converted the 6 wire circuit from OTC into a 2 wire connection on a local Norfolk Island exchange. When the Telecom operator dialled the wanted number the ring tone and later the called party’s voice was heard back in Sydney. The Australian operator then connected the call and charging commenced on the call. When this special circuit was selected, an “All circuits busy (ACB )” signal was sent back to the Telecom operators. This was displayed to the operator switchboard who instantly knew if the spare channel were free or in use with another call. If the third circuit was occupied as indicated by the ACB light, the operators reverted to manual operation. The operators would regularly check the voice quality on all the HF circuits and then note when the call was completed. OTC’s Telephone Call Data Processing system recorded the number of calls made over this extra circuit. But because the answer signal was not received from Norfolk, it was not possible to record service performance statistics such as Answer Seizure ratio. But the total calls to Norfolk could be measured as well as the holding time on the calls. Such a measure, while not accurate , gave us an indication of the traffic going to Norfolk, This circuit provided an improved service for Norfolk Island subscribers until ANZCAN cable was commissioned and a proper automatic international exchange was activated some time later. VALE [Top]Jim Rodda A Fond Memoir from Trevor Thatcher...
My association with Jim dates back to April of 1946 when he, and 23 other ex-service personnel from WW2 began a Post-war Commonwealth Reconstruction Training Scheme course at the Marconi School of Wireless in Clarence St., Sydney. The course was conducted by AWA to bring ex-service telegraphists “up to speed” to augment the overworked staff of the Beam Wireless Service in 47 York Street. When Jim completed the course, he began duties in “the Beam Room” in the AWA building, becoming a member of a growing cohesive group that has held pretty much together, as either colleagues or friends, and kept in touch for the last 6 decades. Des Woods, (now retired and living at Kingscliff, NSW) has submitted the following memories of Jim: "During the last war, Jimmy was in the Air Force and on his release from this service, he joined the staff in the old Beam Wireless section of the Overseas Telegraph Service. It didn’t take long for Jim to become a very popular work mate, as he was a very fine sportsman. His sport was related to golf cricket & tennis, all first class. Back in those days the boys from the Sydney office and the Melbourne office met at Wagga Wagga on the Australia Day holiday in January for a cricket match and Jim was the big wheel on that weekend. A while later, Jim was posted to Suva and later to Fanning Island. Jim had to be satisfied on Fanning with only tennis, no cricket or golf fortunately for us as we couldn’t stand him beating us any further. On completion of his term at Fanning, the Roddas and Des Woods and his family were shipped back to Sydney where the Roddas were located at Revesby before moving over to the Tweed area at Chinderah and later Kingscliff. It so happened much later that my family and I also relocated to Kingscliff and our association and friendships continued. Jim was a hell of a nice bloke, sadly missed. – Des Woods (Kingscliff)". Thanks Des. Now a little anecdote regarding Jim’s participation in a local cable fault investigation that became necessary at Fanning Island, in 1959. During early 1959, a severe electrical disturbance became evident on one of the four cables that landed at Fanning Island. It was suspected that it originated from the action of 44-gallon steel drums that had been used to float the recently replaced shore-end from the repair ship to the shore. Some of these drums had remained attached to the cable when it was lowered to the sea floor and tidal action on these drums was thought to be causing them to rub and chafe the sheathing, or, perhaps, the sheathing wires themselves had suffered damage from other causes. It was fairly conclusive that some sort of movement, coincident with tidal action, was aggravating the cable’s sense of well-being. Approval was obtained from H.O. in C & W in London to undertake a fairly tricky investigation into the cause of the problem, to be carried out by our own local resources. The investigation involved lots of man-power, and ingenuity, aimed at “under-running” the shore-end of the cable. “Under-running”, meant setting up one of our large lighters (normally used for unloading ships) with bow and stern sheaves, onto which was lifted - by man-handling - the cable, to allow the lighter to be pulled along beneath the cable by a team of willing workers – cable-staff and Gilbertese support staff - located in the lighter. This arrangement allowed careful inspection along a few hundred metres of the cable to check for the presence of attached drums, and enable us to physically “shake” the cable itself while simultaneously observing (on a galvanometer in the office test-room) for “disturbing” electrical effects that might arise from the “shaking” movement. This exercise, to be successful, required some complex co-ordination between the activities of the lighter-crew, and the test-room crew. The distance between the test-room and the lighter was quite some hundreds of metres, and there was no direct “vision path” between the two because of the location of other buildings and palm-trees. We did not enjoy the benefits of today’s technology (no mobile telephones, no hand-held transceivers, or the like!). So we made do with improvised relayed visual signals… i.e. waving towels or tee-shirts from the lighter, to an observer on the beach (Jim in this case) who relayed by waving his improvised “flag” to indicate to the galvanometer observer in the test-room as to what action was taking place on the lighter. This activity continued for a couple of hours or so as the lighter inched its way from the shore towards the depths of the Central Pacific. Naturally, there was a limit to the distance that the lighter and crew could venture. There existed an extreme danger of the swell, and the proximity of Fanning’s very sudden “continental shelf”, combining in the most unfavourable manner and pulling the lighter and its crew into Davy Jones’ Locker… Work-Cover had not been invented at that time! Jim remained as “Beach Relay” throughout the entire exercise, waving his “flag” at the appropriate time to keep the “Galvo-Observer” fully acquainted with the off-shore activities, in a valiant endeavour to locate the source of the pesky disturbance. Unfortunately, we did not pinpoint the source, but at least did establish that there seemed to be no abnormalities up to the point on the cable where it neared the danger point of the “continental shelf”. There was a lot of “flag-waving”!
In the years that followed, on those occasions when I met up with Jim, his presence always reminded me of that day we “Shook the Cable”, and his dedication to the vital role that he played. No doubt, his strong “Tennis/Golf/Cricket Arm” made his boring task on that day, “a breeze”. Charlie Shaw A Tribute from Neil Yakalis... Charlie Shaw started worked at Bringelly around 1967 when he completed his DCA (Dept of Civil Aviation) course. He later transferred to Doonside & told me how he got into radio. On completing their Technician in Training course H.O. sent each trainee a letter asking them to list their 3 posting preferences. Satellite, cable or radio were the choices but Charlie didn’t bother to send the form back. He chuckled over this & said as a result H.O. decided to put him into radio which suited him just fine. He was quite a character, a likeable bloke who always got the job done with a minimum of fuss. A real born tech & a ham operator who loved fixing things. I was working with Charlie at Doonside one quite weekend in 1969 when he fired up a Shore to Ship RT 10Kw transmitter which was on a log periodic steerable antenna. He patched the audio output from the monitor receiver, tuned to 2UE, into the transmitters ISB drive. Charlie turned the LP antenna in the direction of the Suez Channel & broadcast 2UE on the ship frequency for almost an hour until the transmitter was required for a ship call. He used either 14 or 17Mhz & he laughed & said quite a few people would be left scratching their heads over this one. Charlie was called up for National Service in 1972. He left us at Doonside but made a surprise return 6 months later. The manager Austin Houseman (Aussie) nearly fell out of his chair when Charlie strolled in during the middle of the day. He explained that he didn't pass the medical due to his need for glasses & so decided to take a break from OTC. He went up to Queensland & worked casual jobs just to get by. One day he was working changing a truck tyre in a service station & he thought "this is hard work, I think I'll ask for my old OTC job back”. Government rules were an employer had to give National Service people their job back on returning. Aussie made a few calls to HO & Charlie started back at Doonside the next day. Charlie left his apple orchard at Kurrajong Sydney & went up to Port Moresby in 1971 & when he finished his term there moved over on Norfolk Island. He took over from Martin Griffin running the OTC radio station until the cable arrived. Martin incidentally married Stan Silver's daughter Stephanie. Stan was the Port Moresby radio manager. Charlie built up a profitable spare time business running a video hire & duty free shop on Norfolk & stayed doing this when the radio station closed. Although not a Pitcairn Islander he was able to stay as he was now self employed. Local say Charlie built the popular tourist attraction "Mutiny on the Bounty". By 1995 Charlie was getting tired of Norfolk Island & contacted me to see if I could get him a job in Sydney. I told of one going at BAE (British Aeronautical Engineering) for $40K PA. He said he was making more than double that on Norfolk & decided to stay there. MR NOBBS Just a supplementary. The Chief Minister seems fairly expert on that. The night before last we had South Australia feed, last night we had Western Australia, is tonight South Africa. MR SMITH Mr Deputy Speaker I am not too sure why it was on the West Australia beam last night. I would presume that there has been some tests on other signals as well because there is a possibility that the dish may be taken off its pedestal and put on the ground for some adjustments in the next week which will mean we’ll have, well there is a possibility of no television, no radio signals at all and I know that Charlie Shaw was going to look at what other things are available what we can use our little dish to at least provide some television services during that time. If he does do it, it will be off the air for about a week, so I assume that’s what happened last night but I am not too sure.” www.info.gov.nf/hansard/8thAssembly/1999_06_23.doc Neil Yakalis further adds... I worked side by side with Charlie in the early days at Doonside. He was the TO1 & I was the tech who acted in his position when he was away. He came up to Port Moresby in 1971 to do leave relief for Martin Griffin who first took the Norfolk radio job. Charlie helped me at the Boroko transmitting station & would come home with me for lunch with my wife Jeanette as he didn't have a car at first. Then Charlie bought a clapped out VW for $50 & we were amazed it kept going. Only the muffler fell off which he easily fixed himself. When it was time for him to go back to Australia he advertised it for $50 but had to use the supervisors phone as the contact. TO2 Derek Hallam was the guy in charge & he got swamped with buyers wanting the trusty beetle. Charlie reckoned it was the best car investment he had ever made. His car when he worked at Doonside was an MGA sports car. Paul Cope had more to offer in his eulogy at the funeral... Most of us here today remember Charlie through various times of his life and today. I am going to give you a picture of his early life through to current times and a few stories of the time we spent together on Norfolk Island and in Australia. Born in 1946 at Kurri Kurri, NSW, Charlie and his family moved to Penrith when Charlie was a 6yo. Around this time his parents separated and Charlie lived with his mother Dot and brother Peter. Although times were tough for Dot she worked tirelessly to raise Charlie and Peter instilling in them a great sense of humour, self-confidence and a strong sense of social justice. Charlie attended Penrith Primary and Penrith High Schools and upon matriculation was successful in gaining a traineeship with the Overseas Telecommunications Commission and trained as a Technical Officer for a number of years. His first posting was to Doonside High Frequency Radio Station and after meeting Stephanie they married and moved to Port Moresby in PNG. In 1973 Charlie and Steph moved back to Sydney and after doing a 3month relieving stint on Norfolk Island, after which they decided to apply for a permanent transfer to Norfolk which started in 1976 for 2 years and ended 24 years later in 2000. By the mid 1980’s Charlie’s job with OTC was made redundant and they decided to remain on Norfolk Island and start their own business doing electronic repairs and video hire. Charlie was also employed by the Norfolk Island Administration as a technician and was responsible for maintaining the local radio station and mobile radio and satellite services. He also had a part time role with the Australian Government, running the Ionospheric Prediction Station on Norfolk that played a vital part in determining correct radio frequencies. When Pay Television became available via the Australian satellite, he and Warren Brinkman worked together to install satellite dishes around the Island to enable the local population to keep up with current worldwide events. Charlies last major role for the Norfolk Administration was to install a 10M satellite dish in Burnt Pine to upgrade the Island’s satellite capabilities. After leaving Norfolk Island, Charlie and Steph moved back to Australia and settled in Currumbin Valley in 2001, moving to their current home in Palm Beach in 2005. In 2004, Charlie and Steph took off on a round the world holiday, meeting former Norfolk resident, Ken Cochran in Buenos Aires, Argentina, when Ken convinced them to invest in an small apartment where they lived on and off for 3 years. After Charlie was diagnosed with cancer in 2007, for which the treatment was successful at first, they moved back to Australia.
Charlies health started to deteriorate again in 2009. from which time the disease slowly took it toll. Where do you start remembering Charles, as Steph called him when she was pissed off, or Chas when she realised she still loved him, or Stuart as Dot sometimes called him. I first met Charlie when I went to Norfolk in 1974 and like most people who lived on the island at that time, Charlie was the local electronic ‘Mr Fix It’. In a time when electronics was a booming industry, he and Steph ran a thriving cottage industry, using his boundless technical skills of which he was unnaturally gifted. One of Charlies hobbies was Amateur Radio communications, more commonly called Ham Radio, and we spent many hours shivering in his ham shack behind the house, whilst he ‘worked’ contacts all over the world both on voice and via morse code. Steph’s job was to collate the contacts and send out the ‘QSL’ contact cards. Norfolk Island was a very rare contact in the Ham world and Charlie’s callsign, VK9NI, was in great demand from all corners of the globe. Another of Charlies hobbies was flying radio controlled model aircraft and considering that I was a keen rock fisherman, we did a deal, I taught him to fish and he taught me to fly! So began many years of wasted hours alternating between flying gliders from every accessible clifftop, power planes from Joe Jenkins and Taveners paddocks and fishing The Chord, Black Bank, Puppys Point and Headstone. It was on one these fishing expeditions to Black Bank, which required a steep climb down the cliff, that we had one of our best days fishing. Making the most of the day we were rapidly running out of daylight and had to race to the top of the cliff before night fell. As Charlie would tell the story, I couldn’t keep up because I was a smoker and he ended up having to talk me to the top in the dark. A hair raising experience that convinced me to give up the fags the next day and I’ve never touched one since. Thanks Chas! When the weather was good for night fishing we would buy some beer, go down to Kingston or Cascade Pier, set a shark line and float, and tie it to the bullbar of Charlies Land Rover which we would leave in neutral. We’d then work some contacts overseas on the Ham radio and when the Landie lurched forward we knew we had a shark on the line. We’d haul it up the ramp, Charlie would give it an anaesthetic with his sawn-off shotgun and we would give the liver to the local cattle farmer (it contained concentrated Vitamin A for the sick calves) and we’d cut up the rest for bait. One night we landed 12 sharks at Cascade Pier. Every time I go back to Norfolk and see old friends, we reminisce about the 70’s and how wonderful life was during that time. Luckily, Charlie and Steph were living in a place that I still regard as paradise in the South Pacific. I fondly remember the friendly banter between Steph and Charlie regarding starting a family. Charlie was reluctant, I think he thought it would cramp his style and take him away from his many hobbies. As life would have it, one day Steph arrived from Brisbane with a little bundle called Ellie and Charlie was transformed. Suddenly he couldn’t go night fishing because he had to feed or bath Eleanor. Sometimes when I dropped around to see him Steph would tell me that he’d had a stressful day at work and was taking a nap with Ellie. He could be such a wimp sometimes! Working for a living was somewhat of a chore for Charlie, forever reluctant to go and quick to leave and never one to handle a confrontation with ease. Notwithstanding, Charlie was one of nature's gentleman always reaching out to help a mate or neighbour, and always popular with his workmates. His community work on Norfolk Island will always be remembered, helping to keep the local broadcast station (VL2NI) on the air, sourcing and building the first large satellite dish on the island and we worked together to get the trunked mobile radio network established on the island which was a giant leap forward for the government and local emergency services. I have loads of fond memories of our time together, pulling diffs out of Mini Mokes to put in his very powerful Mini Cooper, which just made it go faster. Burning old car batteries in a 44 gallon drum to extract the lead to make fishing sinkers and making our own hole in the Ozone Layer as a consequence. Importing a couple of fancy metal detectors from the USA and going to the NSW goldfields to make our fortune. That didn’t work, but I had an idea that we could make a few bucks if we bought a couple of old pinball machines and shipped them to Norfolk for the kids to waste their money on. OTC Marrickville works depot, kindly packed and shipped them to Norfolk as radio equipment for a carton of beer, and after I had paid the import duty and got them running in the local fish and chip shop and supermarket, we made the front page of the local paper with the headline “Kings Cross comes to Norfolk Island”. Underbelly had nothing on us! As I was preparing to leave Norfolk and return to the mainland, Charlie insisted that I try for a job with OTC and with his help I was successful in landing a traineeship as a Radio Officer, which took me through 20 years of working with OTC and a career that saw me travel the world and do things that we never thought possible. During the years that I lived back in Sydney and Charlie stayed on Norfolk, I spent many weekends up at his house near Bilpin at Mountain Lagoon, helping his mum Dot maintain the acreage, fixing machinery and generally coming to grips with being back in the big smoke. Charlie loved that property and it really was a credit to him that each time he came home to ML, he worked like a man possessed renovating and improving its value. His skills weren’t just confined to the world of electronics, he could fix or build anything. Charlie, my old mate, I know I can speak for Steph, Ellie and Grandma Dot and all your friends on Norfolk and in Australia, we are going to miss you terribly but the memories live on. In radio parlance, 73’s Old Man and in morse code, CL - station now closed, AR - this is the end of transmission. Kevin HubyA Fond Memoir by John Natoli... Kevin Huby was born on the 19th April 1960. He joined OTC as a trainee on the 7th Feb 1978. The only reason I can recall this date is he reminded me only a few days before his death. This indicated just how strong in mind he was up to his last days on this earth. For a short while he worked as a technical trainer in the OTC Training School at Paddington. Today someone said to me they remember Kevin 30yrs ago as a habitually happy 20 year old. He was exactly like that all through his life until his last days. Kevin was part of a very tight-knit cohort of OTC trainees that still think of themselves as the ‘Class of ‘78’. He will be loved & sadly missed by all of us, his family and friends. Death of a Centurion - Fred James From Derek Walker... West Australian Veteran and long-time former President of the WA Veterans Association, Fred James, died on 12th June, aged 101. Fred was born in Victoria and worked on the family’s property in the country after leaving school, but enrolled in the Marconi School of Wireless in Melbourne in 1939. and gained a 1st Class Certificate of Proficiency in 1940. In 1941 he joined AWA and was sent to Rabaul Radio, working first as an operator, then as a technician at the Malaguna transmitting station. It was from there in January 1942 that he watched as the Japanese made the first bombing raids on Rabaul. Eventually he and the rest of the AWA staff at Rabaul made a long and perilous sea voyage in a small craft to Port Moresby. In February 1942 he was in a group of some 400 evacuees who sailed from Moresby to Cairns, thence travelling to Sydney by train. Fred was soon appointed to Perthradio as an operator, but on the establishment of the Beam transmitters at Applecross he became a Technician and stayed in Perth until 1946. In June of that year he was transferred to Madangradio as Officer in Charge, and five years later got another transfer to Port Moresby. In July 1952 he was sent back to Perth, working as a Senior Tech at Applecross and Gnangara until 1973, when he was appointed Acting Manager of the latter station. Fred retired on his 65th birthday in 1974 after 35 years with AWA and OTC. In retirement he and his wife Beth led an active life, for several years making an annual trip to Hong Kong, one of their favourite holiday destinations. He will be remembered as a true gentlemen, always willing to help and advise if needed. His many friends will miss him. Ellis Watts From Trevor Thatcher... Just had a telephone call from Graham Watts in WA, advising that his dad, Ellis Watts passed away on Saturday 12th June. Ellis was well known to OTC Stores personnel in the managerial eras of Geoff Miller, Des Woods, and Ray Baty. E. Watts & Sons were suppliers of furniture to OTC(A)'s CRS operating sites for quite some years. Ellis was 92 years old at the time of passing. He was also a radio amateur, with call sign VK2DDW and was known to quite a few OTC Hams. I thought you may wish to have mention made in our newsletter of Ellis' passing, which was the result of a chronic respiratory condition. I asked Graham if he had passed this information along to the Vets and I offered to do so if this had not already been done. He had not done so, and accepted, with thanks, my offer to do so and is happy with the above information to be published. Last Word [Top]It has been a big issue with so many Obituaries and many articles have been held over - sorry John Hodgson, John Toland, Keith McCredden and RGW (via Robert Hall) for Arthur Green's Obituary. The NSW AGM report has been held-over as well. The Dismissal, as promised, is yet to come! It was too expensive to publish as a written document, so I am negotiating with the publishers and the author to host the comprehensive story on our website. It was with some regret that I heard that Tom Barker and George Maltby, at our last reunion agree that the best stories cannot be published. I disagree and hope that they will do an oral history of those "best stories." Those may not make it into print, but we do need to know them. I have published several stories "that should not have made it into print" and there have been no repercussions. It is with more than a passing interest that I have seen some Telcos advertising for people with extensive experience in our game. Cheers, Bob E |
I am looking forward to our next social event to be held at the Bowlers Club in September 2010. The OTVA Committee has booked the upstairs area within the Bistro to give us more separation from the other patrons while keeping the costs down for the event. This action has been taken in response to the feedback received from several OTVA members after our last social.
Those members of OTVA who knew Jim Rodda were saddened to learn that Jim passed away in John Flynn Hospital, Gold Coast, on 21st April 2010. His funeral was conducted at a private family service.| FEEDBACK | LINKS | BLOG |