John Willett in Retirement
John was formerly the NSWTAB’s Maintenance Manager, appointed March 1976 and was responsible for the establishment of the Maintenance Section, which had been tasked with repair and maintenance of all terminals in head office and sales outlets. The section grew from small beginnings of only three teletype technicians in the Sydney metropolitan area during 1976 to be over 40 people strong, state wide, during the mid 80’s.
In 1988 he was appointed to the position of Research and Development from which he retired late in 2003 at the completion of the Eureka production project.
Throughout John’s 27 years with the TAB, he was also involved with the introduction of new terminals. Initially this was the replacement of the teletypes and BID units in the city and outer metro area and the NCR machines in country offices with IBM mark sense machines and a short time later the introduction of the AWA MRT2 terminal for other metro offices. Eventually the terminal types expanded from these two basic terminals to the PubTAB RT7a terminals and the more advanced FLIGHT terminal that replaced all terminals state wide during the nineties. At the end of his career he was directly involved with the design and production of the Eureka terminal.
In the Ultimo Head Office he managed maintenance of all telephone betting equipment from the TBIDS to the IE terminals and then the RT4 terminals and the multitrack voice recorders and also the multiplexing equipment used for the country data transmission network.
During the final year if his career with the TAB John met Pearly in the Philippines having been introduced by one of his former technicians to her in mid 2001 and they were married in Dumaguete, the provincial capital of Negros Oriental, December 2002.
John has since adopted Pearly’s two children, Kieth and Jhone, from her first marriage, her husband was unfortunately drowned in a spear fishing accident early 2000 and they have since brought into the world a daughter, Ky Pryncess who is now 6.
For a retiree with investments in Australia, the Philippines does present some unique problems. John had to survive the world economic downturn and fluctuations (the wrong way) in the exchange rate. Fortunately, at the time of writing, the exchange rate has reversed and he is seeing things more favorably again.
John enjoys a good standard of living at a lower cost. For example, a case of 24 X 320 mil bottles of beer costs about $10 Australian and diesel for his Pajero costs about 85 cents a litre.
In an attempt to overcome boredom with a life right on the ocean, playing regular nine holes of golf and putting up with temperatures that never seem to change from a low of 25 C to a high of a maximum of 32, taking his speed boat out and eating fish, pork and chicken nearly everyday of his life, he has started a small business called the Ajong Aquatic Center. This can be viewed by going to http://skubadiscovery.com (yes with a “k”) and http://scubadiscoveryphilippines.com, where the reader can find photographs showing John and his new family and their house that they built by the ocean.
From this small beginning he hopes to accommodate a few families, augment his income from his investments and live to a ripe old age with his new family with occasional visits from his older Australian family.
TAB Birdman
Ray Braley was a TAB Building Supervisor, responsible for the fitting out and maintenance of premises, until his retirement to the “good life” in July 1981. During his first year of TAB employment, 1966, he was driving between Lithgow and Mudgee when he spotted an injured male galah beside the road. Being the kind caring person he is Ray took the bird home and nursed it back to health.
41 years later the galah, given the original name ‘Cocky’ is still happily living in the Braley household at Berowra.
Ralph Walsh in Retirement
Ralph Walsh was an extremely long serving member of TAB’s staff commencing employment in December 1964 and working through to January 2001. He commenced in Stores Section then progressed through District Centres, Control Centre, PhoneTAB, Computer Operations, Branches, Inspection Team, Training, Conversion Team, Quality Assurance Team and, finally, Technology.
These days, Ralph and his wife Le live in the beautiful Murray River border town of Cobram – so they now regard themselves as Victorians. Ralph has not been idle in retirement as the following description of refining biodiesel shows.
These are Ralph’s words:
Refining Biodiesel
I collect used vegetable oil from some local take-away shops. I strain out the big lumps like fish heads, chips and crumbs. I then heat 100 litres of it to 60C.
I then add a mixture of 20 litres Methanol with about 1100 grams of Potassium Hydroxide dissolved in it. I mix all that for 2 hours then let settle overnight.
Next day I drain off about 20 litres of glycerine and the rest is biodiesel. That was the easy part.
I then reclaim the methanol from the biodiesel by distilling it off - when that's done and all of the glycerine and excess KOH (potassium hydroxide or caustic soda) has dropped out, I add about 30 litres water and bubble the mixture with a large air pump. This part is quite tricky because making biodiesel and soap are virtually identical processes but I don't want 100 litres of soap so I have to be careful to treat the biodiesel/glycerine/water mixture very carefully.
I then drain off the water and if I am satisfied with the result I then dry the biodiesel by spraying it through the air into a filter bag. So drying and filtering is the one operation. Whack it into the tank and go.
My collection rate works out to be about 50-60 litres per week but I usually only do a run when I've got about 200 litres. So I do 2 batches (back to back) monthly unless I am running low. I currently have about a 400-litre buffer.
Each time I make a batch it's like putting $100 in my pocket cause that's what I don't have to spend at the bowsers.
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