VP Keane years 1948-51 and onwards

After my discharge from the RAAF, I worked for myself for about three weeks at my old trade of motor mechanic, using the workshop and facilities of my Uncle’s old business on Morphett Road in Warradale. It was my Uncle’s fond wish that I would revive the old business where I had spent the first year of my working life apprenticed to him, up until the time he decided to move into the more lucrative business of quarrying where he was still employed. It wasn’t long before I tired of working on cars that had seen much better days, and also barely survived the war years running on kerosine and wood gas producers.

So it was that with my interest in motorcycles and the fact that they were much more easily serviced, I was happy to accept a position with my life time mate Les Diener as a machinist and general hand in the motorcycle business that he had started with a friend, Frank Tuck, on Unley Road (SA). This saw me in the thick of the motorcycling world, and while the wages of a mechanic/machinist wasn’t going to make me rich, they were on a par with almost any other employment that I was trained for. So I happily accepted the life about me as in my private world I was building a new home and paying the bills. It was unfortunate that Frank Tuck lost his life in a traffic accident shortly afterwards, and while we kept the business operating for almost a year, there came a time when Les decided to move the business to his own home. Then for me a job offer from my Uncle once again, but now in the business of maintaining heavy duty stone crushing machinery – the biggest incentive being the fact that my weekly pay cheque would be almost doubled!

I wasn’t very impressed with the dust and generally filthy conditions of my new job, but as my Uncle always said, ’The money is clean!’. It wasn’t very long till I was completely absorbed with the possibilities of improving the machinery and more importantly production figures, by improving mechanical reliability. There was only one problem – the owner of the operation, one Joe Leverington! I had little real contact with him until my position was due for a rise in pay, and a refusal by him to oblige, saw me casting about for a new job. So it was once again the promise of even better wages that saw me join the firm of V.P. Keane Ltd in Christmas 1948. I didn’t actually start work until the first week in 1949. Vin (Vincent Patrick) had a depot in the Adelaide city square in Ackland Street which was a large dingy brick building with a dirt floor. It had a tiny two roomed office and a ’cubby hole’ store and I was the only employee at this depot. Vin and his brother Kevin had several very crude and partly portable crushing plants scattered about South Australia, and at that point in time they were building their very first plant that used conveyor belts rather than the antiquated system of bucket elevators. My first job was fabricating conveyor framework that was being transported to the erection site at Canawigera a few miles West of Bordertown. This was an interim job for me, as I had joined the company for one specific reason – the assembly of a 19 ton English Ruston Bucyrus RB19 mechanical shovel. I had rebuilt one of these ex-army machines at my previous job, but was looking forward to building a new machine out of the packing cases. So while I waited for the arrival of the ship and eventually the packing cases from the Port Adelaide wharf, I arc welded and oxy cut various plates and did odd construction work for the new crushing plant.

I found Vin to be a wonderful guy – he had had his share of troubles, starting work on the construction of the Nullarbor railway as a 'billy boy' at 13. This involved not only keeping numerous billy cans full of fresh tea and running back and forth along the working site with them, but being out of bed in the small hours and helping the teamsters get their horses fed and harnessed up for the day's work ahead, and finally getting the teams fed and bedded down at night. Through this he became involved in the arduous task of moving and placing stone ballast and general fettling work, and eventual involvement with the contractors crushing the ballast. Then from this to setting up his own crushing machinery and filling ballast stone contracts on sections of the South Australian Railways country rail lines.

Not long before I met him, he was struck down by rheumatic fever which almost killed him. He was reduced from a mountain of a man who used to wrestle professionally to a mere shadow who I particularly remember as having a struggle to operate the hand brake on his new car. But his constitution was such that he soon improved to the point where he could run the business again, and this was about the time that I started work with him.

The packing cases arrived, from then on my days were filled with back breaking work with no assistance apart from the odd times when some jobs were beyond me, and I would call on men from the engineering shop next door. Our factories opened into one another, and we shared an unofficial agreement to help each other if it became necessary. They benefiedt from the fact that any heavy machining that needed to be done was just rolled through into their workshop. I had an overhead gantry crane, but it was antiquated and hand operated as was normal in those days, so any heavy lifts meant placing wooden ’toms’ under the crane’s supporting ’I’ beam to take the weight. As the assembly of the excavator progressed it was accompanied by the constant movement of supporting timbers as first the lower track frame was assembled with it’s tracks, and then the rotating platform with the diesel engine (a very heavy lift in itself) and the gears and clutches of the wire rope hauling gear. Hydraulics were unknown in this application in those days!

Came the day that I was able to start up the engine, an electric start Ruston four cylinder VRON diesel, and trundle the completed machine out of the workshop with only a couple of inches clearance each side to the main brick doorway. Then after a lot of back and forth in narrow Ackland Street it was loaded on to a float, and my time at the workshop came to an end, as I was to be the shovel’s operator at the new Canawigara plant, that had just commenced operating using a private contractor to load the raw stone.

In the few weeks that I had known Vin, we became good friends. We shared a few meals that he was fond of preparing on the small gas stove in the office, and sometimes he would take me to one of his mate’s restaurants near the East End Market for a midday meal. His physical strength had greatly improved, so much so that one day he lit up the smithy’s forge in one corner of the shop, and proceeded to spend most of the day stripped to the waist and sweating profusely, sharpening drill bits by forging them on the anvil. Once again, no fancy hard wearing cutting inserts in those days! The hardening process was carried out after the sharpening was complete by heating and quenching – the success of this operation depending completely on the worker’s skill and knowledge. The firm had a female secretary, also Vin’s long time girlfriend, who worked in the inner office on all the Company’s accounting.

Vin had a lovely home in the Adelaide hills at Urbrae and his wife lived there mostly alone. Although it was officially Vin’s residence, unfortunately they had no children, and this was a great misfortune for Vin, as he loved children, and doted on his brother’s family. Somehow Vin and his wife had fallen into this strange non-relationship over the years, and as a staunch Irish Catholic, there was no way that he could consider divorce. His girlfriend was comfortable in the relationship which eventually saw them both become millionaires. Unfortunately, Vin’s brother was killed in a bulldozer accident some time after the company’s move to Melbourne. He decided to remain in Adelaide and run his own country crushing plant as he wasn't bound by the agreement that had ended Vin’s local operations. Vin took up the financial obligations of his wife and family. Several years later Vin got in touch with me and I joined his now grown up nephew in Darwin for a few weeks. He was Vin’s godson, also named Vincent, and somehow inherited his Uncle’s love of quarrying operations. He was also a great guy, but we somehow lost touch over the years after Vin’s passing.
Vin, together with a couple of his mates, was part of the upper circle of Adelaide’s male society, but not in the normal sense, they were do-gooders especially in the West End of Adelaide where poverty was a fact of life. They were always helping someone in need and Adelaide’s petty criminals knew that when they were released from a stint in the prison system, they could always approach Vin or one of his mates, and get a job to get them back on their feet. In this way our labour force was always sprinkled with transient workers, who in most cases never returned to the job after their first and only pay packet. I was later to learn that a request for a new man out on a country job, would see Vin turn up a few days later with a rough looking customer in his car, who in one instance only stayed a couple of days and categorically refused to work, or even get out of bed in the morning at start time, then demanded to be paid! I finished up giving him a couple of quid and sent him off with his swag, knowing full well that he would pick up a ride out on the highway – probably in the direction of Melbourne where he would hope to melt into the crime scene. More likely he'd only get as far as the pub in the next town where he would drink himself into a stupor, and as like as not be picked up by the local police at 6.00pm closing time and spend the night in the cells. This happened on a regular basis around the country jobs.

So I found myself with a sweet job, loading limestone rock into trucks all day in the comfort of a warm cabin, even though it was by now mid winter. We lived in ex-army tents, and food was cooked by one of the truck driver’s wives. We paid a regular fee for this service, but as we were on a piecework basis, the pay was good as long as the machinery was kept working, and it was this fact that led to my next job change. It was apparent to me that the chap in charge of the crushing operation was fond of knocking off work early, and heading off the 14 miles to the nearest pub at Bordertown with a couple of his trucky mates. The workers on the job were unhappy that the promised high production figures were not being attained, in fact far from it – this affected my pay packet too! So it came as no real surprise when Vin turned up on the job one morning and signalled me down from my warm cab during one of the long waits which had now become normal because of plant breakdowns, some of which I had assisted in getting fixed. In the warmth of his car he came straight to the point and offered me the job of running the plant, taking over in a few days time. As part of the deal he would send up his number one mechanic for a couple of weeks so that together we could rebuild and repair the damage that had been caused by a several weeks of no maintenance and little use of the grease gun.

After two weeks we improved output and doubled the previous best figures on the second week, so my helper left me to myself. From there on things went smoothly, the contract was finished well under schedule, and I looked forward to the next job which was at Moorlands, back towards Adelaide. Once more I replaced an unsatisfactory boss on a job well behind schedule. All country jobs suffered from the proximity to a town with a drinking hole! Most employees were heavy drinkers and it was pretty much the norm to knock off as soon as possible for an hour of heavy drinking at the closest town, then continue drinking back at the camp, followed by a struggle to get the workers out of bed next morning! Strangely I never had any problem with this, as I found that they soon realised that a good day’s work, with the plant running without a breakdown, meant a hefty pay packet at week’s end, and most of my workers curtailed their drinking sprees, and came down hard on any of their mates who managed to get off into town and get drunk. So it was that after completing two contracts and making quite a lot of money, I was looking forward to more of it. Vin then offered me a job in Adelaide running a new plant building and repair shop, the money being paid on the average rates of production over the whole of the company’s operations, this being an incentive to keep maintenance moving. There was also a move afoot to relocate the whole operation interstate to Melbourne, as Vin had entered into a legal agreement some years previously that prevented his company from continuing in direct competition after a certain date with Quarry Industries, the quarrying business in South Australia, which was run by his eldest brother who he had worked with until the agreement that gave Vin a virtual monopoly of South Australian country operations.

One of our long time employees was a mountain of a man whose name I no longer recall, but I remember him as a gentle man, unmarried, and seemingly with no real responsibility towards anyone, but a tireless worker at all times. His job was drilling and blowing rock out of the ground, and he sometimes worked at several locations at the same time, working one week about – he was naturally paid well, but never had any money, as his total weakness was drinking! He never allowed the drink to keep him from working, although there must have been times when he had a monstrous hangover. The big problem was that when he had a drop too much, and that was most times, he only needed slight provocation for his enormous strength to get him into big trouble, and in small country towns where there was only one constable on a push bike in those days, there was little hope of restraining him. So it was that he was constantly being dragged into the courts on counts of willful damage and drunken behaviour, and spent a lot of his life in the Adelaide Magistrates Court, where he was on extremely friendly terms with the presiding magistrates because of his very regular appearances before them, and the fact that when sober he was a very knowledgeable man of the world with the manners of a gentleman. It was said that when he appeared in court, it was an occasion for a friendly chat, and then an apologetic sentencing that was never more than 30 days! The reason for this was that he had the hidden talent of being an excellent ’saw doctor’ and as the Metropolitan Goal was the site of the maintenance shop that serviced all the tools used throughout the penitentiary system, including many hand and circular saws, the connection was obvious! Any sentence above 30 days meant incarceration at Yattala Goal several miles North of Adelaide, where conditions were much more rigid, and of course precluded the use of his saw sharpening skills!

Vin was on such good terms with people in high places, that if our worker came up for sentencing and was badly needed on a job in progress, Vin would be on the job beforehand. The sentence (usually two weeks behind bars) would then be deferred and Vin would taxi him back to the job next day. The system had it’s opposite face though! I remember on one occasion Vin sending us a message to make sure we brought him home to Adelaide on Friday night, and let him know that the word had been passed that there was a heap of blunt saws to be sharpened, and as he well knew he had a few weeks of deferred sentences still hanging over his head, this was all taken in good humour, and he would spend a week at the Goal, sharpen all the saws, and turn up back on the job again, happy and all smiles as was his normal sober character. On one occasion he became only mildly inebriated at a country pub and left quite peaceably on closing time at 6.00pm. But on the walk through town on the way back to the job, he suddenly decided that he would have a good meal when he arrived home, and with this in mind, punched his way through the plate glass window of a butcher’s shop, and was arrested minutes later as he was trying to hitch hike back to camp with a string of sausages around his shoulder!

The new depot was in an old quarry in the Adelaide foothills, and we soon had the area filled with surplus crushing machinery. Vin was still buying American ex-army units that had been recovered from the Pacific Islands. They were shipped to Sydney and we transported them to South Australia on American tank transporters bought from the same source. Some had 24 wheels and others 16. We built most of a portable plant on to one of the 24-wheelers and I modified one of the 16-wheelers, which were actually three metre wide semi trailers, into a general haulage unit with a NR Mack tractor. I used to drive this mostly on weekend trips, moving bulldozers and front end loaders around the country jobs – Vin was always very generous over these long trips, which almost always saw me back at the depot on Monday morning ready for the week's work.

Another job was converting one of the portable crushing units from 750mm wide steel wheels (3 heavy duty axles) to pneumatics – for this I used spare rear rims from the Macks of which we had plenty. The heavy round steel spokes were trimmed to the required diameter, the steel rims with the remainder of the spokes were discarded, and the Mack rims were fitted and trued and then welded into place. Worn out but serviceable old tires were fitted, and the entire unit could then be towed on the highway. This particular unit travelled straight to Duke Street in Sunshine where the new Victorian operation was being set up – it was one of the first things that I saw in 1961 when I actively rejoined Vin’s company.

I was still building the plant at Beaumont when the company finally decided on the move to Melbourne, but South Australian country operations were still going on, and equipment was still being moved down from Sydney. By mid 1950 the company was ready to start moving the entire crushing operation to Melbourne and as I had no intention of moving house interstate I faced unemployment as soon as the Beaumont operation was cleaned up. But there was still plenty to be done and the months went by till early 1951, when South Australian contracts were confined to two operations, one in the Port Wakefield area. The Melbourne plant was now operational and it was at this time that I met Barb, and one of our first dates was a Sunday spent transporting equipment to our other operation at Keith using my Mack semi-trailer unit. At this time my life was uncertain – divorce proceedings were going on, and I was living at the Beaumont depot, but by October I was boarding at Barb’s cottage and by Christmas 1951 I had left the company and was about to take up the contract crushing stone on Kangaroo Island.

My house had been sold and I’d bought a caravan, and the rest of the proceeds of the house sale went to my previous wife, but really to our two children, who, while I had been given their custody by the Court, I was reluctant to part from their mother who was a good parent. So some 5000 pounds, a lot of money in those days, went to providing them with a new home and financial maintenance.

I kept in touch with Vin, visiting him any time I came to the mainland, and at one point we prepared a proposal to crush stone on the Island for the construction of the Middle River Dam, but our bid was unsuccessful for some reason. Vin kept me in touch with what was going on in Melbourne and there were always hints that I should pack up on KI and move there. This was always politely refused until the day it became obvious that our youngest, Wendy and Dean, needed specialised education because of their hearing difficulties, and so I took two weeks holiday investigating the deaf school situation in Melbourne, and in January 1961 I rejoined Vin’s company and we reluctantly made the move to Watsonia. Here I was immediately involved in the commissioning of a new plant at Bundoora, after which my time was spent in maintenance and also a new venture, the conversion of luxury American cars from left to right hand drive that were imported by Vin for the use of the company. I became involved in this work because the first import, a Chrysler Imperial Le Baron was converted in the US, but proved to be far short of satisfactory so I was recruited to fix it!

By now it was 1964 and I was building a new super crushing plant at McKimmies Lane in Bundoora. This took a year to become fully operational, and once again I had free time on my hands, as the new plant was virtually maintenance free, and I had a worthy maintenance man in the form of Frank Seymour, who went on to spend his life in the stone crushing industry. So it was that I converted a Pontiac Bonneville, then two Chrysler Imperials, while at home I privately converted an American Ford F100 four wheel drive and a Chrysler New Yorker, then worked on a Plymouth Fury that had been partly restored and abandoned by some other person. My rewards for converting Vin’s cars came in the form of a Dodge Custom Royal, then a 1959 Cadillac which had originally been satisfactorily converted in the US. Not so a later 1962 Cadillac also converted in the US – I had to rebuild this in 1963 when the chassis alterations around the steering box collapsed.

So it was that time passed until the firm’s entire Victorian operation, which by now included two new plants operating in the Narre Warren area, was bought by Readymix Australia Ltd. My association with Vin continued but I only got to see him on our Christmas visits to Adelaide. He was still with his long time girlfriend, although she had built a new home of her own at West Beach. Vin had bought an old cottage at Hutt Street in Adelaide and refurbished it. He was now driving a new Rolls Royce, but not for long, as he had serious hip problems which led to one of the first Australian hip joint replacements, but alas, it was never successful, and he never really walked again unaided. He employed a driver for the Rolls, who was also his odd job man. A small swimming pool had been built at the rear of the Hutt Street premises, so that he could exercise, but eventually he was hospitalised, and that was the last time I spoke to him and shook his hand – some months later he was gone.

So passed from my life a thorough gentleman, a real ’white man’ who I will always remember with great affection.