Ross Craig has advised that Charlie Rudd passed away Saturday 8 May 2021 after a long fight with cancer.
Jane, Charlie’s wife, has advised that a funeral service will be held at the Uralla Cemetery at 3.00pm this Friday, 14 May.
The service will be streamed on line. More details in a day or so.
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Charlie has been a great supporter of the OTVA and its members over many years.
He has donated two plaques that have been installed on the Oxford St wall of the Paddington Terminal in Paddington NSW to commemorate:
1. The Anniversary of the Inaugural Telephone call over the Compac Cable on 3 December 1963
2. The 50th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 Lunar Landing
He will be sadly missed by his friends and family
May he Rest In Peace
I first met Charlie and Jane in early 1967 at OTC’s SeaCom Cable Station at Madang in Papua New Guinea and ever since we have maintained a very good friendship.
There are many stories I could tell about Charlie, here are just a few.
When I first met Charlie he was a single 25 year old, until he met Jane who was a nurse at the local hospital in Madang.
1. When Charlie and Jane decided to tie the knot about 18 months after they met, Charlie and Jane decided on a civil ceremony. In PNG at the time, civil wedding ceremonies were performed by the District Commissioner.
I was pleased to be a witness to the wedding ceremony, and on the day there was a hiccup. The District Commissioner injured his back and was bed ridden. Not to be deterred, the ceremony went ahead in the Commissioner’s bedroom with the Commissioner flat on his back throughout the proceedings. Not too many people can top this for a wedding ceremony.
2. As a young man Charlie and I shared some interesting times in PNG and we both liked a beer. On many occasions and this was before he married Jane he was in a motel waiting for his house to be built, and on numerous occasions we would have a beer or two on the balcony of the motel and as this was overlooking the ocean, the empty bottles were tossed into the water and after a while there would be a line of empty bottles going way out to sea.
You could say we were environment vandals at the time and now you wouldn’t get away with it.
3. The tropics were a disaster for anything electronic and as there were no repairers in town all repairs were sent to Port Moresby. So Charlie being an enterprising person started doing electronic repairs for the 3 major trading companies in Madang. After a short time the work load got to such a level that I joined Charlie in this repair business and after Charlie left Madang I recruited other OTC staff into the business and when I left others carried on until OTC ceased operating the station. Charlie and I paid pay taxes, thank you, but did those that followed?
4. Charlie left OTC after 2 tours of Madang and he and Jane purchased a property in Uralla. The property contained a disused cast iron foundry. This seemed to interest Charlie as several years later he and Jane’s brother decided to open a bronze foundry in Uralla. This foundry is now a major employer in Uralla.
Charlie and Jane spent part of a USA holiday with us when I was working for Intelsat and Charlie being in the foundry business could not resist the opportunity to see what others in the game were doing. This meant when touring around we had to drive through any cemeteries that were in the area so that he could checkout the style of the bronze plaques on the tombstones. I think this must have been the highlight of his USA trip.
Rest In Peace Old Friend
Ross Craig