Latest / Salt of the Earth / Ep 121: Rick Chambers _ Part A

Transcript

Ep 121: Rick Chambers _ Part A · Salt of the Earth

• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: So we've pulled off on the old 3020 BACE 2045 and we brought to 1099 built by Care and David, but that was the way you live.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: Alice Springs, right in the heart of Australia.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: It's a place built on resilience, hard work, and people who know how to make things happen when conditions are anything but easy.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: Today's guest is Rick Chambers.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: And what a story he's got.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: It started generations ago with his grandfather and great-grandmother making the incredible trek from Australia's east coast to the Northern Territory border by hot and cars, thousands of kilometres across some of the toughest country you'll ever see.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: Can you imagine not knowing where your next water stop would be?
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: Traveling through dust, drought, rain, or blazing heat.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_01: That pioneering spirit was passed down.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: Rick grew up in the Northern Territory where life revolved around hard work, road camps, caravans, and one topic that always dominates conversation in the AFAC water.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: He started out as a chain man surveying roads, but it was one mentor who really changed the course of his life.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: And within a couple of weeks, he seen something in me and uh he just threw absolutely everything ever.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: He encouraged Rick to learn everything he could, grab hold of every opportunity, and never be afraid of hard work.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: This is part one of my conversation with Rick Javers.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: Let's get into it.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: Mate, where have I caught you this morning?
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: Uh yeah.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: Uh normal chaos, mate.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: We're in to Alice Springs, Think Water.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we're flat out.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: We've got a new computer program going in, so it's a major, mate, as per usual.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: Well, looking forward to hearing a bit more about your business shortly.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: But first up, mate, I want to learn a bit more about the interesting story of how your grandparents came to the APAC.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: So my young fella would be fifth generation.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: Grandfather Jack and his his mother, so that's a great grandmother.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, they uh tracked out from Queensland uh by horse and cart and they come out to Ever Downs.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: That's where it all started, mate, and they took that over and the and the Chambers boys in those days they were out in the Barclay Tabllands and they had to sort of you know conquer the elements and uh and make a life of it.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_01: So we're talking the Barclay Tabllands is on the border of Queensland and the territory, is that right?
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, certainly, mate.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's big flats there, it's a black soil country, and uh you get the old lazy wind, mate, that it goes straight through you, it doesn't go around you, you know.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's uh yeah, no, she's uh it's a different environment, mate.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: You get out there and it's sort of yeah, you know you're alive, alive, that's for sure.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: But when they tracked across, this is horse and cart, and this is possibly 2,000 kilometres.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, well, uh, and even one of the brothers I do um believe got run over, fell off and run over by the cart and had his leg broken.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a bit of a story there.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: So um, you know, Pop didn't talk about it much, eh?
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: Like he sort of he was always he was always a bit quiet on that.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: He'd sort of, yeah, so it's interesting story.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: I think one of the brothers wrote a book and uh yeah, it's all in there, I think.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: But can you imagine though, like that would have taken months and not knowing where the next water point was or how much food to carry?
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, certainly, certainly, you know, and that uh look it's people don't understand the eras, like uh that's what made them so tough, you know.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: Like it was just such a different era.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: And that's we grew up with that, mate.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: Like um, you know, you gotta you had the chooks and the turkeys and the eggs and the and the garden bed, and we had to do the meat and all that.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: And uh honestly, mate, uh I'll pay a hundred dollars for a chuck before I go and pluck one.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: You know, every time I buy a chuck, I think, you know, it's under$20, mate.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: That is worth it, you know, because like uh you you stick the old chuck in that hot water and you you pull the feathers out and you think, oh my god, you know, it's a lot of work, you know.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, we did that as kids too, and ducks as well.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, certainly, yeah.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: So your grandparents arrived at the uh Tablands, the Barclay Tablelands, and what did they start doing for work?
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: Uh well they'd taken over the station, so they obviously had to get water, you know, so that was a big thing.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: Water's uh the common thread through every conversation, you know.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: Look, they had a reputation of being hard-working, strong men, you know.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I was talking to Johnny Hagen, uh Johnny Hagen, all the Hagen family up through there, like um yeah, he told me that he was a young ringer and he he worked for Pop.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: He said um it's one thing he said about the chambers was that they rolled their sleeves up, they worked from daylight to dark, uh they paid well, but and they worked hard, you know.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, oh, that's a nice compliment, you know.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: That's what they were and that's who they were.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um like like every probably family relationship, there was a you know, probably a bit of in-house fighting at the end, and and Pop and Nan moved on to uh uh Renner Springs.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, like that's that happens, and but yeah, that's where it all started, mate, in that territory.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: What did they do after they left that property?
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: Well, uh that this is where I sort of come in, and that's I I know from here onwards, you know, like yeah, obviously I was born at uh Tanner Creek, um mum and dad were at Renner, and uh Renner Springs was a a thriving roadhouse in those days.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: It was it was just had a roaring trade, it was homemade bread, the best corned beef sandwiches ever, and um and it was actually the midpoint between Mount Isa and um Darwin for the buses.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: And so Pop, you know, he had um he just had a roaring, you know, like it was just it was just kicking the butt, you know.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so the buses actually got there for the people, they'd camp for the night and then they'd move on.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: All the truckies would pull up.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: But mum and dad always talked about how how much we know they're doing 12, 14, 16 hour days, and uh that was the life of a roadhouse.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: And were they surveyors for a while too?
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: No, well, this is all just station stuff.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: So, what what happened eventually was um in the old days the national highway was built by government road camps, and the only subcontractors were the truckies, and so they'd come along building the highway, and they were actually at rent.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: So mum and dad made the decision to actually go into the road camps, uh, and we moved out with caravan and uh car, and uh man, we were broke.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like and we actually uh went towards the Barclay and we went out to uh there's two places there, uh Farina and Barry Caves.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: Uh they were two sort of road houses along there, and um both demolished, and uh one of the joints actually ended up with the pub sort of pushed up sideways, and that was the bar for the camp for the months that we were there, you know.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: And so we'd actually moved off the station and we started getting into the road camps.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: And dad bought with and with uh mate David Jones actually bought uh old diamond tea, and we were subcontract truckies, you know, putting the dirt on the road, and that's how we got into road works, mate.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: You took on that too?
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, so what happened was I grew up with that.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um obviously that's how we moved.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: We moved all the way along uh so from the bark, we went back to Tenet at the jump jump up there, we were working there.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: Then we ended up ended up at Tea Tree in the massive floods, but it was a community, you know, like uh the those road camps were big communities, and you got the likes of um Wally Klein and Danny Ord.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: They were all working there, you know.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: As a kid, I just watched all that happen, you know, and they all went off and became contractors themselves, you know.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: But it all eventuated from this this camp, you know, this government camp.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so we then moved our way down to Alice Springs, and then Dad uh he started his uh company Chambers Earth Moving, and then he took a partner uh and that was Brian Carriage, and that became Carriage and Chambers.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: So that was actually their company.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: Probably in hindsight, it burnt my father out a bit.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: If he if he'd stayed as Chambers Earth Moving, he would have been a lot more probably content, I would say.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: It was it'd become very stressful in the end for him.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: Right, so you spent a lot of your early years in the caravan, perhaps.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: Oh mate, we we our first house in uh was Cunot Street in Ellis Springs, and uh, you know, we must have been eight, maybe, I don't know.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: But we actually got our first bedroom, like it was just like amazing, you know, like it was a and yeah, the government house of 70 squares, you know, like uh and we thought, oh wow, like we've we got a mansion now, you know.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um but yeah, before that mate, it was caravans and in those road camps, you know, like yeah, even when we come to Alice, we didn't have a caravan there for the first couple of years, you know.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_01: So with bush camping and you know, living out of caravan, there was bush etiquette to learn too, wasn't there?
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: There is, mate, there is, you know, like um first of all you only get your you get your food orders once a week, or if not two weeks.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there was rations, you did definitely didn't waste any food.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: I always tell a story that um my sister and I were lined up because one of us had taken a bite out of an apple, you know, and put it back on the fridge, you know, so we're about to go flogging, and my my beautiful little sister blamed me and I said no no it's her, but um, but I'd actually lost my front teeth.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: They'd fed me honey when I was a kid and I had my front teeth pulled out, and uh the bite mark was was uh complete teeth.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: So so uh my sister got two floggings, which she deserved, one for life.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_01: Any other memories from those days?
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah, look, mate, um we we were on the Barclay and um we'd done our school of the year and then we'd have we'd pack our bikes up and we'd go out and live on the ant hills, like you there, got the massive ant hills out in the Barclay, and yeah, we had um Ant Hills there, and then Pop actually, because every holiday we had to go somewhere, so if we went back to Randall we had our horses, Pop uh would make us break our horses in.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'd have to go baling hay on the Barclay um with him.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: I was his main operator on the tractor and all that.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: We had an amazing childhood, mate.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: Like um, and and then mum came from Kangaro Island, so if we weren't there, we were down to Kangaroo Island.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: So, and then Dad thought he was a fisherman too, so then we went up to um Boralula and ended up with a lease on Paradise Bay.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so there was never one holiday that we were sitting in the house, you know, we were gone somewhere or sent somewhere, or you know, no, plenty of memories, mate.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: School of the year, how many hours would you do a day?
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: Uh look, you only do two or three hours with them.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_00: So we got our sort of afternoons free, you know.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: So we'd be in the road camp, you know, like I say, pack the bikes up, or we'd we always had a cubby house, you know, like you you get all the rubbish out of rubbish dump and we'd get told off, we'd go make a uh you know, cubby house out of it.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: Pop had actually brought my horse across to I think it was Mortamin Fuena, so I had Suki there.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: The first night she uh got out of the paddock and she got back up on the ramp.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: She wanted to go back to Randall Springs.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: But um, but after a few weeks she was actually drinking all the beer with uh blokes in the bar, so we had to send her home, she'd become an alcoholic.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_01: Did she get the wobbles up?
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah, yeah.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: Look, look, Suki was a um Pop had come home and I'll be Michael Mac and he'd actually hit and killed Suki's mother, so it was just a little foal in the middle of the road.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: So he got out and saved um the foal and bought her home and you know he set me up.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: He said, Right, okay, you know, this is our yeah, that's all right, this isn't he, you'd yeah, be you know like that.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: He said, Yeah, so um so Suki was our um uh uh shared horse, uh we owner.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_00: And then he said, No, no, no, it's yeah, yeah, you know, it can't be I owner, it's we owner.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, but then I spoiled her with all the sugar, so she just became Suki.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that's all she was.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_01: Rick, did that upbringing shape you how you are today?
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I got a bad sense of humour.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_00: No, it was um look, I I tried to give it to the kids, like uh garden beds, um, you know, there's meat on the farm block, they come and pick it up.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you know, it's it's a grounding, you know.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: And look, the old grandparents, when they talked to you, they only said it once, you know, they said there's a brown snake under the corrugated iron.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: If you went near there, they said, Well, we told you that, you know, like it was natural selection, you got told once, and if you didn't land, well then you had to live with it, you know.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: Is this something you remember that your father and grandfather taught you?
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: Look, they teach you two things, uh, good things and bad things, you know.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: Like um, it was and like I say, it goes back to a different era.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, my dad was a really hard work, both of them are really hard workers, and and as a little kid, you look up to them and you they're so strong, you know.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: Like my my grandfather would just like and I'd never seen him sort of give in, you know, like but um probably what they in in that era if you had you had a one machine and you'd you'd fix it up and you'd make it do the job and you'd rebuild it, and you know, and you'd wire it up, and it's like the old wire and pliers.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_00: And look when when I finally got to to doing my civil, it um I vowed never again to to smell burnt oil, you know.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so so you you make that choice, like we need uh new gear, we need to turn it over, make it spot on, and we have to get as productive as as we possibly can.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I had this conversation with my father at a young age, I said, you know, I think we've got to make a decision whether we're mechanics because we're fixing our gear up to go to work, um, or we become road builders and and it's good gear and somebody else fixes it up, you know.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_00: So so that was the discussions that you know obviously you know, increments in your life that you um small steps and you say, right, okay, well, I'll make this choice when when I have a go.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_00: You know.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_01: So, what age did you leave school and start working for your father?
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh look, um, like all a lot of Alice Springs kids, uh, I was sent to boarding school at all Soil's and St.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_00: Gabriel's in Charters Towers, and that was really good.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: It um, you know, there's probably 25-30 of us going at that stage.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, so I went up to grade 12.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: I I promised mum and dad to do that.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I was sort of itching to get back and you know, like I was out digging trenches and pouring concrete.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: We were doing doing the roadside stops at King's Creek.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we poured all those when uh Australia won America's Cup, so that was 83, 84, I think.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and it's funny, I won the contracts later to actually service all the roadside stops.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_00: We had to put firewood there and fill all the water tanks up, and you know, you think, well, as a kid we built these.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: As an adult, it's you know, it's my job, one of our jobs.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_01: Do you remember what you got paid when you first started working?
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: Oh Jesus.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_00: In the road camp.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: So I had a beautiful relationship with my father in the road camp.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: So I got five dollars a fortnight to fill his old B model Maca, uh, sorry, his old diamond tea up, you know.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so a little kid up out there pumping away, you know.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: And um, so with that five dollars a fortnight, I saved up a massive, you know, 45 bucks or something.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: And we went to town and man Isa, and uh, you know, and I you know, she sit there sniffing the money in those days, you know, like all$5 notes.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so anyway, so we roared off on the old 302 V8, bloody um Falcon Ute, and we had Johnny Horton playing, and we roared to town, you know, and uh I used to sit in the middle console, no seat belts, so hit a cow and you're dead, but that was the way you lived, you know.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so we get to Mount Isa and uh yeah, here's all the fishing rods and everything else, and um yeah, I'm looking at them and Dad goes, over here, mate, look at this socket set.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I said, Oh yeah, okay.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: And uh he said, Yeah, do you want to buy one of those?
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Oh well, and I don't want any.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so he said, No, no, come on, you need a socket set.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: So I ended up buying a socket set and uh yeah, disappeared, mate, ended up in his toolbox.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, there you go.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_01: So you had to make the decision at some point to leave the family business?
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: Uh yes, look, um I I left school.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I was an operator, I was a um shot firer, um, I was also a bit of a surveyor.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: I had to do triangulations and try and set up these curves without the proper gear.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the dumpy levels were out.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I covered a lot of fields there, and um I sort of thought, you know, I had the dream as a son to sort of take over, but it wasn't happening, you know.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so I thought, well, there was the hardest part of my life.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: I have to leave this company, and I have to first of all, I thought I have to start again.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: I have to go and learn the plans, cut and field uh everything.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: And so um Ron Meady was in PMT and he'd actually done a bit of time with that, and so I got a job at PM uh PMT's job at Whitecliffe, 30 Ks of Road, and uh it was a hard decision, mate.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: We just packed up and uh I went there as a chainman, mate, bottom of the your your bottom of the barrel, and uh but it was a turning point of my life and I was very lucky to run into a uh bloke named uh John Rhodes, mate.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: He uh he took me under his wing and uh yeah, changed my direction, mate.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: Uh explain a chainman?
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: Chainman, well in the old days it was a chain and it was a certain length, and you actually pulled that out to measure.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: So that's how it stuck, you know.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: So you're a chain man.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: So our role was to um uh big stash, it was a big kiwi, an absolute gentleman.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: Him and I were the two chainmen.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: So we would peg and level two kilometres a day.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you probably got to do about seven runs for each peg, you know.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: By the time you run them out, you bang them in, you you uh get the peg straight, you then have to mark them up, you then have to go through with your dumpy level.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: You only got four or five mil over a kilometre, and you've got temporary benchmarks every 200 metres, and uh then you've got to level them, then you've you've put the numbers on them, then you actually got to go and mark the numbers up, you know, and uh and flag them.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: So that's what we done as chairman.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_01: Right, and that's where they're saying, like I remember my grandfather saying a lot of the times it'd be three-chain long or ten chain long.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_01: Never really knew where that came from.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's what I was, yeah, yeah.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: And um, you know, like John, like I met John, and John's this little bloke and he'd talk in riddles, you know, he'd start talking away, he'd stop, and he'd say, Where was that story going?
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: And two weeks later, the the story would start again, you know.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: And and and and the first day he gave me the same lecture, you know.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: He said, Um, you're here to whack, and if you're not here to whack, pack your bag and go now, you know.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: So, and I'd say, Oh, I'm here to work, John.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: If you're here for the big money, he said, pack your bag, and I'm not here for the big money, John, you know.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: And within a couple of weeks, he seen something in me, and um, oh mate, he just you know, he just threw absolutely everything at me.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was good.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_01: So he he was a mentor?
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: Uh he'd be one.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_01: What's it like building roads out in the middle of nowhere?
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: Again, it comes back to water, you know, you dictated to you by water.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's a percentage of water that actually goes with the product.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: You can't get 100% without the right amount of water, so it it's the biggest thing.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_01: Tell me meeting a lady at some stage.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_01: I've got notes on that.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yes.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh yes, well, um uh my wife Gano, she was a jockey, and uh so her mum was a trainer, and her and uh Pop used to get together and you know have coffee and cookies and all sort of stuff.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: And uh yeah, so uh Gano actually headed up to do some writing for old Pop, and of course they're both a little bit, they're both, I think, both tourists.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, they had a bit of a fallen out and she came back to Alice, and uh but we'd caught up and yeah, so uh yeah, so that that's how that started, mate.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: What age were you when you two met?
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's very interesting.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: It was very hard in in uh carriage and chambers like you go away for weeks on end, you know.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so Ganna was pregnant, so when we made the big plunge to go to PMT, like oh, you know, I was on a massive$700 a fortnight, and uh and I I went to PMT.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lady in the office, Mrs.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: Crow, and uh she's a strict old lady, beautiful beautiful lady, you know.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: So I actually went in with my first pay and I said, Oh, excuse me, Mrs.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: Crow, I said, I'd just like to hand my payback.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: And she goes, What?
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: Is there a problem?
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Well, I think I think there is a problem, and and you know, so she's so used to getting you know attacked by the workers, what's wrong with it?
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Oh, there's way too much money there, you know, like like there's twelve or thirteen hundred dollars.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: I said, uh, that's a month's wages there.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: I think you've overpaid me, you know.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: And uh she looked at me funny and she goes, Dear, that's what you get every week.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I couldn't believe needless to say, I was a favourite young worker after that, the the bloke that returned his wage because he was paid too much, you know.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: Uh as I worked my way up, I was getting more pay rises and cars, and I'm thinking, I don't want it, I'm just happy to be acknowledged, if you got a mean, you know, like it was great, you know.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: So you didn't need a lot, you weren't spending a lot.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: Oh no, we were broke.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we were absolutely broke.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: But we couldn't, I couldn't actually um at the time, like I couldn't even afford bearings in the air conditioner, mate.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: They were spiring.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the neighbor next door was an air conditioner bloke, and he said, The bearings are shot.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, mate, I I actually haven't got enough money for them, you know.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, if you can fix them, mate, I can pay you next week when I come in, you know.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, like it's a bit of pride thing, mate.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: We didn't, yeah, I had 17 bucks a week for meat and we'd take big packs and we'd cut them down, and yeah, it was just um we just I just had to work through it, you know.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: Just you can't give in.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_01: And at a young age, 21, I think, you started your own business.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: So look, there's a little bit more there to um John Rhodes, like it's a process of stepping, you know.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: Like, yeah, I I used to study after work, I do 12 hours a day, and I I I'd say there's one to two hours at night time that I have to improve myself.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I was starting to be a surveyor, and I so one day John pulls out a Theod light, and I said, Oh John, that's a theod light.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: And he goes, Yeah, yeah, have you used one?
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Look, I'm just reading up on it.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's an old TD one upside down, and I've actually still got it.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: And uh it's it's my little mentor.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: So John said, Um, oh I can always the next day, a few days later, he pulls the toy outer up, gets out the third light, he says, 'Hey, this there set it up there.' Again, talking riddles, you know, backside, file sight, have that up there, you know, turning the five rig bearing, you know.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: And uh degrees manoseconds, jack it out there, merit, right, write that down, you know.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, and so we didn't have a chain, but we you can actually count the squares on your staff for distance, and you can put the staff in the top and bottom line to get a get a basic distance.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, we were doing 500 metre shots, you know, with uh with the staff.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so yeah, come up here, backside this way, foresight, five backside, foresight.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: So we travers all the way out and to our quarry, uh to our gravel pit at um at Whitecliffe and then so we spend two days, we peg it out, and um I do the east things and northings on each pile of dirt, I do the height, the length, etc.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: And then so two days later, I've got, you know, we're out in the middle of the bush, I've got sort of six A4s sticky tape together, and I've pegged this whole gravel pit, you know.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so John's here, he's got his secret means like that.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, uh, so what have we done, John?
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: And he goes, Well, you pegged your first lease.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: He said, and you measured every bit of dirt out there, and if any bit of that dirt goes on, uh road base goes on to the job and it it fails, you can tell which pile I come from.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: I said, Oh, okay.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, and you can do something that nobody else in this company can do.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Oh, what's that?
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_00: And he goes, Tell them to stop because I got enough gravel.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what he was, mate.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: His his numbers were just that I just loved him, mate.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_00: Like we had our little Hewlett packards and 11 C's and 32 S's after that, like, and we him and I would just throw numbers at each other.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: Like, it the the first day when I would when he was giving me the big lecture, you know, we're in the car, and I got my little book I'd learned two or three different ways of surveying, and um we're driving along and he goes, Rise or fall or collimation, you know.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, oh, I haven't heard of collimation.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: And the engineers used to survey years and rise and fall, and you have to take all your levels, and you actually then go away, work your numbers out, and come in and put it on the pegs.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: And collimation is you get a uh a um benchmark level and then you build it as you go through, and you can actually see the pro you can see the project as you're calculating it.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I said, I'll rise and fall, John.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so he grabbed my book and threw it out the window, and he goes, We start again, collimation.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so it was it was just it was back to dot one, and he just you know, he just got me back to the basics.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_00: You start your road from the outside and you build in, you know.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so what happened then, um, it's a very long story.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Malcolm Stein, there's three engineers in PMT, and Malcolm Stein came down at the end of the job.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: We all, you know, we all line up, we all we're now about to get sacked, you know.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the way the world wisest end of the job, you know, you yes, you have to go find another job.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: And Malcolm rocks up and I think, oh here he goes, you know.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_00: That was good while it lasted, you know.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_00: And back to John too.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: I'll I'll just say about John.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: He not only had he taught me, but he knocked on my caravan door one night and he sacked himself to give me his job.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: Serious?
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, thank you.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_01: And then he went off and got other work somewhere else.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but he always he always kept sending me tests.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like he watched me.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, right.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_01: And he's passed on a a while a while ago.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, he's passed on.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_01: You were close to him, weren't you?
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_01: I was, yeah.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_01: Uh very moving, mate.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_01: No, is uh someone's very close to your mate.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: So what happened then was uh Steine came down to sort of remove us.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: He came up to me and he said, uh, I'm I'm taking you into the office.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Oh, okay, no worries.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, uh, we're gonna teach you how to tender.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I went, Oh, okay, no worries.
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: So so because of Rosie, I was then transferred into the office, and my first job was to quote a water main to St.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_00: Philip's.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I had to learn flange, socket, spigot, you know, all the all the ductile piping, you know, uh all this sort of stuff.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_00: So the the engineers were just strip mate, eh?
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_00: Like you had to sit down and it was plant labour fuel, mill um material subcontract, you know, like you had to actually present the whole tender to them.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: They went through and marked it, you know.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: And that'd that say to you, right, okay, you need to cut this out, you need to have more for this, etc.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_00: And we won the job, and then I had to go and build it, you know.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_00: So suddenly I was the surveyor, slash, go build these projects, you know.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: That that was the next step, you know.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: And we were in those days we were quoting massive jobs, uh to man Isa and all that sort of stuff, and I had to sit down and start calculating as a surveyor to sit down and start calculating all the the bulking factors of the of the dirt, you know, and uh solids and loose, and then you know, it's right down to measuring how much your trucks cut, how many tonnage, um, and uh so from that you work your cut and fills, and then you actually have to calculate how much dirt and how far it will actually go.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: Um, then you work out your borrow pits in between, um, what you can do with maximum reduction with a scraper before you have to go.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, in those days it was excavators hadn't quite come in yet, but sort of like a dozer slash, you know, loader, and the trucks would have to cart it, and that was more.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: You'd work out your fuel, you'd work out your camp, you'd work out your water, you know, like you'd do three months' worth of calculations and you'd lose the job, you know.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_01: How do you hell?
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of numbers there.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_00: Oh and that that was my job, you know.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_00: And I'd sit there and uh I'd come to him and say, right, there's 3,000 hours of this, there's 2,000 hours of that, then we need a water point here, we've hauled this down, we need two extra water trucks for that.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_00: And Stein turned around and he said to me, He goes, Drop your batteries 2%, see how much extra fill you get.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: And he goes, Oh, you know, so you'd have to go back and calculate your batteries and it'd shorten this up and shorten that up, so then he could then modify his final quote, you know.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_00: And uh yeah, it was very in-depth, and uh there's so much going into actually building a road that um you know today they spit a computer program out, but but when you manually manually had to do it, it it was a big job, you know.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_01: Mate, what sort of trick?
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry, sorry, mate, the on the year step of um chambers engineering, PMT then went had a hiccup.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_00: They went into uh receivership, and so then I moved out on my own, and the engineer said to me, Would I like to go into partners with them?
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so I started off totally broke, 70% me and 30% them, chambers engineering services.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_00: And that's how we began.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_01: How does the 7030 work?
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I was 70 because I supply I was set, and they were 30% silent partners.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: They had their own little companies, and uh I had um negotiated to finish work for PMT for them to get paid, and I actually got the old survey gear, including my TD1 upside down the odd light.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and that's how we started, mate.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_00: Uh old um old Toyota with a with a um uh bucket crown and pinion wheel which blew up on me on day second week or something.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: And uh yeah, that was it.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: Survey gear and off into the wilderness.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_01: And just camping on the side of the road.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: Oh mate, yeah, I well, you know, it's sort of I was today, here I am, chambers engineering, with not, you know, I I didn't have a I I just said I'm I'm available, I'm I'm on the market.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: And uh look, I was fortunate, uh contractors actually wanted me because I understood machines and I understand I understood exactly you know what they could and can't do.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: Rosie wouldn't let me get on the machines.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_00: And the engineers were very surprised that when we were when we started, they said, Oh, we need this concrete porter, so well, I'll pour that.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, do you know how to pour concrete?
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I grew up doing that, you know.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, we need this data, well, I'll dig that.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_00: Well, where'd you learn that learned that?
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_00: I said, Well, I'd I'd done all that as a kid, you know.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: So, so all the attributes that I'd had as a kid I'd I'd sort of hadn't used, you know.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_00: I'd I'd been focusing on surveying and project managing.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_00: When I built chambers engineering, and this goes back to a bit of a discussion I had with my father, I I said, I think we need to specialise in niche market um areas, you know, we need to do Kerb and Gutter, we need to do the hot mix car parks, you know, the water pipes and the water mains and the subdivisions, and uh because unfortunately the grey water rolled and resheets were getting less because the roads were getting bitumised.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_00: So that market to me was getting less, you know.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: So that's what I had done with Chambers Engineering was it didn't matter who won the contract, they wanted a small versatile company underneath them to do the survey and do all the concrete works and do all the all the, as I'd say, crappy stuff.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that was us.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_00: We specialized in it, you know.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_01: But those were some big jobs.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_01: I think you're up at Litchfield Park.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um, yes, I mean, yeah, yeah, Lichfield Park was PMT.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_00: Look, look, with uh with Chains Engineering, we we ended up with the most cow accreditation in Northern Territory.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_00: Like we were Santos Origin, you know, I had the biggest rust for a 508mm diameter.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_00: Graham Burney told me to go and buy every curb and gutter machine in Alice Springs, and I did.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_00: So we were the curb and gutters for about 10 to 14 years, you know.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_00: I I got about two hours lesson from one bloke, and then that was it.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_00: I had to, you know, I had to make it happen.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_00: We had the trenches, we'd do the margins.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_00: Then I won the period contracts that I had when I was with uh Carrion Chambers.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_00: So we were doing all the roadside stops, so we had to cover the complete southern region, whether it was a dead animal, dead person, there was a uh grid or a sign.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_00: I done the batching plant down at uh Yulara, we used to batch all the concrete.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we'd done all the road sweeping, all that sort of stuff.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_00: Just locked all these contracts together.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_01: Right, so it's quite a few years doing that, but then you bought a company?
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, think water.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_01: Think water.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it was uh watershed in those days, yeah.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_01: Next time on Top of the Earth, we heads into some of the territory's biggest stations working with fores and irrigation.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_01: But his biggest challenge is still to kind of find a traveling business.