The Boulders Darwin job

Around 1973, the Boulders crushing complex at Bundoora had been operating successfully for close to eight years with only routine maintenance and no major breakdowns. I had designed and built a screenings washing plant adjacent to the main facility which was fed from surplus production. This involved the construction of a water storage dam, and a fines sludge pit, which had to be pumped out every weekend, the slurry being pumped away to a settling area. Shortly after the start of operation, a set of fines removal cyclones were purchased and installed on a tower, and this produced yet another valuable washed product, but large quantities of useless slurry were still produced.

I found myself with plenty of spare time on the job with everything always running smoothly, and virtually no major maintenance, and a second concrete mixing plant was duly built in fabricated sections to be installed at the other Boulders complex at Narre Warren. As it happened, this was never assembled, as Readymix bought Boulders out the following year.
Another ongoing project was a completely portable crushing plant which I designed, and it slowly took shape as Frank Seymour translated the plans into fabricated units. Part of this plant consisted of components that had lain about in storage from many years before in South Australia. The caterpillar tracks that it rolled on were from US Army War surplus Cedar Rapids machinery that had been salvaged from the Pacific Islands following WW2. Unfortunately this too became a victim of the Readymix takeover, and as far as I know, most of it was sold as scrap!

Things changed one day when Des Toohey received a desperate phone call from Vin Keane junior in Darwin (old Vin's nephew). Vin had lived in Darwin for some time and had somehow become involved in a local stone crushing operation. I hadn't seen Vin Junior since he was an eight year old terror at his parents home in South Australia back in 1950! It appeared that he was involved in building a new crushing plant straight off the drawing board, that had been designed and drawn up by a local expert, but with construction well under way, it had suddenly become apparent that there were some grave errors already set in concrete and steel! So he appealed for help from the only people that he could think of – the successful one time employees of his deceased Father and Uncle!

As it happened, I was just out after two weeks in hospital recovering from a major knee reconstruction, and still on crutches. But within a week I was winging to Darwin with Frank Seymour as my site assistant, with little knowledge of the disaster that we were about to face! After a few minutes on the site a few miles South of Darwin, with some of the more glaring errors being pointed out by Vin, it was obvious that major problems had to be tackled, and so a meeting with the designer was arranged, and I met this quite young person in his office where he was toiling slowly at his drawing board. I tried to ascertain how he intended to correct the problems, only to find that he considered that no problems existed, whereupon I was urged by Vin to point out the glaring errors that he himself had tried to make clear. Within minutes I realised that their expert was just a con-artist – he had been a surveyor's assistant on a stone crushing construction site in Malaysia! Faced with this, and the fact that major construction was well past the point of no return, I had to ask that Frank and I be allowed to return to Melbourne, as we could do nothing to help the situation, But within hours, the designer had been relieved of his position, and it became my job to somehow salvage something from the mess.

There was a gang of welders on the job who had virtually run out of work because of the indecision, and most of the work that they were doing was wrong anyway! So I spent most of the night on the drawing board with Vin, and somehow we came up with a plan that, while not perfect and conclusive, could at least give Frank something to do next day with the work gang, now that we were in charge. I won't bore the reader with details, but work to be done involved chipping large quantities of month old concrete away plus the whole of the upper steel work over the storage bins had to be reversed, this to hopefully overcome a main conveyor that was far too steep. Large quantities of steel sheet that had been cut, had to be somehow used in the new construction. So it was that Frank started on the revised bin structure, while I worked at the drawing board trying to work out the new steelwork, using as much of the existing structure as possible.

I was lucky in that most of the construction gang were experienced tradesmen and all knew that what they were being asked to do previously was structurally and practically very wrong, and so I found that I had an enthusiastic crew who needed little in the way of detailed drawings, and very soon, the whole job started to take on a professional look. When our projected stay of one week was almost over, Frank and I were keen to get away from the blistering heat of Darwin in mid Summer.

The two owners of the operation seeing things finally going well, were quick to offer us a more lucrative contract, but I just wanted to be out of it! Eventually it was sorted out by Barbara boarding the next plane to Darwin for a free all inclusive holiday in a new almost completed Motel complex, built and owned by our employers. This arrangement continued until the job was going well. Frank decided that he liked Darwin, and his wages were increased and we all lived in the motel free for a couple more weeks, until everything was sorted out.

A few days later, I had the new drawings completed, Frank had the gang fully employed again, and I found myself working on improvements to the existing crushing units, which were crude to say the least. The owners were involved in a lot of construction work, and production was far short of their requirements, hence the venture into a new plant. So I found myself trying to help Vin wring a few more tons per hour out of the antiquated machinery, and somehow avoid the silly breakdowns that were occurring – a lot of them electrical from overloading of the wiring and damaged switchgear. With no resident electrician, and Vin not skilled in such matters, this was a major problem, as if a major electrical breakdown occurred, the plant remained silent until an electrician could be called in from distant Darwin – this was seldom accomplished during the normal working hours.

I ran extra temporary power cables to the trouble spots, and worked on a pile of broken switchgear, finally getting the whole plant reliable to the point where production almost met the demand, and we were then able to extend working hours without the problem of constant shutdowns. The day came when we were all back on the plane bound for home, leaving Vin with an old plant that was producing, and a new one that, once completed, would, despite the unfortunate built in errors, work well in the future.

Some weeks later we finally heard from Vin that the new plant was successfully operating and all was well, but then silence and I have never heard from him since. So ended our few weeks holiday in Darwin – my knee had healed properly over the weeks away, we had all sweated away a lot of weight, and Barb had had a luxury holiday free! She visited all the tourist spots in the area, including a day trip to see the buffaloes, crocodiles and birds at Kakadu National Park and we also managed trips down to Katherine and other places on our Sundays off. Altogether, quite a pleasant few weeks away from Des Toohey and Boulders!

It wasn't very long after our return that the Readymix takeover occurred, and the 14 year 'Boulders era in our lives closed forever.