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Robert H Scherf

Bob lost his battle with cancer.

Friends of Bob are invited to attend his funeral services to be held in its entirety in the Guardian Funeral Chapel, First Avenue, Blacktown on Friday 20^th December, 2013 at 10.00am

Please address any messages of condolence to his sister:

Mrs M Turner

144 Northcott Road
Lalor Park NSW 2147

 Tribute from Les Ayers:

Bob originally started work at age 14 with the Australian Post Office’s telegram services in Mosman.  In 1946 he transferred as a Telegraphist over to the recently established Overseas Telecommunications Commission of Australia [OTC(A)], both the main Telegraph Office and Commission’s Head offices were then at that time located in Spring Street, Sydney.

Whilst employed there on seven-day, 24 hour shift work, he was engaged in a very wide variety of duties ranging from Counter acceptance work of International telegrams from the public; the processing of internal services material as a Service Officer; and International Press, Facsimile, Telegraph and Data transmissions.  Apart from this, also the normal telephone reception, preparation and transmission of international telegrams along with the reception of telegrams from anywhere in the world where there were telegraph services; either via cables or wireless on the variety of Morse and 5 Unit systems which were then in international use.

With the arrival of the new system, the Message Relay System [MRS], a computer-based International Telegram system then installed at Paddington, all the staff in the Operating Room were re-classified as International Telecommunications Officers.  Bob was then promoted to a Senior International Telecommunications Officer’s position.  Further promotions followed from Area Controller to Traffic Controller to Acting Shift Supervisor.  However, as International Telex, Facsimile and Data transmissions, plus the ever expanding International Telephone usage gradually replaced the International Telegram traffic, all of the OTC[A] systems were eventually taken over by Telstra and ultimately abolished almost completely.  

When this occurred in the late 80’s, Bob then took the redundancy package that was offered by OTC[A] and retired.  He didn’t last long doing nothing at all though; and soon applied for and obtained a position as a Court Officer in the Attorney General’s & Justice Department and continued working there until the middle of 2012, when he finally gave up work mainly due sadly to his then failing health.