Field supervisor, Speck Gilbert was interviewed at Cobar, his father helped Speck get a start in the industry, a year after he left school. He’s worked as a linesman and leading hand based at Cobar, Warren and Nyngan. A real character, with a certain contempt for the ‘shiny arses’, he spoke with real affection of the country people who he encountered.

“They really looked after us, the country people really wanted to get the power on, and they’d ask you to come out for meals and particularly when I was a Nyngan – if I could just jump a bit. I went to Nyngan that’s when the rural electrification first started out there in 1964. And you’d ring up and say, ‘I’m coming out to hook up your….’, ‘Oh, you’ll come for lunch and you’ll be here for afternoon tea’ and all the rest of it. And even back in the late, in the early [19]60s … that used to be this, when we were building the power lines, they’d put on bar-b-ques and things like that for you. So, yes, it was really, we really did get to know the customers.”