Taz, who also uses the pen name Bugger, has an opinion on most everything. A champion of the anecdotal he can hold his own in discussion on forestry, energy – but I’m not so sure about salinity.
I’d been wondering how Taz spent his time between growing up in Tasmania and retiring in Canberra, so I sent him an email and this was his reply:
“Technical history – Fitter, Machinist, Mechanic, Scientific Instrument Maker, Engineer, Technician, Technical Officer
Before retirement 1996, The Spectrum Management Agency – frequency assigning, licensing policy, major network rollout, implementation of device interference and immunity standards.
Previous; AFP technical support only, mostly in radio communications for routine & covert operations, VIP protection, also supported with our gear some UN and offshore operations.
ANU John Curtin School Medical Research, electronic instrument circuits for the late Professor Peter Gage
Last industrial site as contractor; Cleveland Tin, cassiterite and associated mineral recovery and concentration plant at Luina closed down in 1986. Other Mines were King Island Scheelite, Savage River ion ores, Renison (Bell) Goldfields tin separation and metal concentration.
Other freelance technical support in Tasmania, Education Dept. scientific instruments in high schools and colleges, UMT (Bonlac) reverse osmosis whey protein filtration, cheese making, milk drying, Bakeries, Glaxo opium poppy storage, Tasmanian (Adelaide, Seini) mushroom crops Spreyton, Blue Ribbon smoked small goods Camdale, various vegetable processors.
Simultaneously I sold fire protection door to door in these industries for importers like Firemaster & CIG. In this manner I visited most timber and logging operations.
Melbourne industrial scene; worked all over, natural gas & fuel, oil refineries & petro-chemical plants, ICI research, paper mills, hospitals, breweries, food processors, appliance makers, MMBW water supply & sewage treatment plants, Pilkington’s float glass plant.
Some special fields in industry, Pressure and Temperature measurements, Ph control in acid treatment, flow of slurries, effluents, furnaces and boilers, natural gas & super heated steam, evaporation, freezers, vacuum, chlorination, fluoridation, floatation, continuous cellulose web production, hazardous environments, radio propagation and reception, induction furnaces, nuclear devices, x-rays.
Other long term interests; Australian military aircraft production and aeronautical research at Fishermen’s Bend, Bushfires, Civil Construction, Electricity generation and distribution, Industrial noise & hearing defects, Materials recycling, Hand tools, Soils, Timber, Streams.
Major industrial achievement – my retirement, mostly intact with ten toes and fingers.”
Thanks Taz.
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Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Bugger has had lots of jobs. Makes me narrow and boring. Bugger that.
Guess there aren’t many employment opportunities for trolls these days, so yr excused joe.
We’ll know bugger’s a fake if his hearing is still intact.
Bugger – “AFP technical support only, mostly in radio communications for routine & covert operations”
Where? I was in LAN support for the AFP for a while in Canberra and Perth. You can email me if you like.
For an experienced bugger, Bugger is far from buggered. Indeed if marooned on some remote isle, on a modern day Survivor episode, I’m sure Bugger would definitely outlast all those hairdressers, accountants, and public relations consultants.
he’s a silly bugger – he keeps swimming against the tide!
Perhaps “bugger” could explain the term “sod off”
Why do we bother?
This chance on Jennifer’s blog allows me to say again there is no substitute for experience; therefore I will pay tribute to those who went before me in our old master apprenticeship scheme. I owe, a bunch of guys at Papermakers Ltd the safety aspects of heavy engineering, then a string of technical experts in a wide range of technology for a glimpse of our developing future. Most of all I learned I could trust these people across the board in many organisations such as we had in say Telstra and its predecessors.
Where ever we go today we stand on their shoulders.
rog; why people move on.
Tasmanians retain part of their Celtic heritage where ever they are. There is always something fresh on the next island. Lots of boys from there joined the Navy others like Boon and Ponting joined a travelling team and became the anchor.
No missed though are cockroaches climbing my toaster or the public phones in the rain outside my digs in Kings Cross. Neither are the peak hour traffic snarls at intersections with two sets of tram tracks or the tyre marks down both sides of the family car. Missing door handles and chrome strips were embarrassing enough in the car park at Altona. The eye of the needle was the race track on Footscay Road where 3 lanes merge and empty semis sometimes out gunned me in the HR.
Nor can I say, I miss the black ice in Hellyer Gorge before dawn because it was still there even on a sunny afternoon on my way home, but worse with bits of tourists’ vehicles hanging over the edge of the rain forest below.
Much missed are 4 kids who spent their evenings before exam time wondering why their old TV had no picture? I usually found later the video line had a valve missing. They all grew up and got much wiser.
Best kept secrets on the job, others not mine.
Joe the Greaser had me fooled for years and he certainly was the greatest practical joker this side of the black stump. But one day as he flashed past me in his FJ all thumbs up I spotted the trap set for us, two cords laid in the shadows. He arrived at the factory gate with the amphometer wrapped around his rear axle and the two cops in hot pursuit, their coat tails and note books flying.
That day we chatted all day for sure, about how to tell his loving wife and kids. I knew his problem so well I thought and it was that bird in a Monaro who battled the pair of us and my apprentice for the last car park every day down at the factory door.
We all left that place one by one and years later a contractor friend told me – Joe, his wife and lovely kids had become millionaires. Joe had also written his first book about them overcoming living with his illiteracy.
Mrs B—- formally of the UK wore all her diamonds as I recall while mundanely packing 2 x 4 toilet rolls on the supermarket carton line. Mr B—- appeared in our car park on the occasions their Monaro went in for service. He drove a contractors ute and wore bibbed carpenters overalls on his way to a job we found out later was on the far side of town. Mr B—- I recall was a very big man then.
There are books, a play and possibly an album too about this character, his flights, the yard and their slips.
Ender, it really is a small world.
Taz (call me old fashioned but I prefer Taz to bugger and if you thought about it you would too), as Donne said “No man is an island, entire of itself..” and so be it with Tasmania, they owe their existence to the world.
My ancient relatives in Scotland nurtured this dranged celtic dream of closing the borders to the sassenachs and growing rich on oats beef and oil and restoring the nation to its former resplendent glory. There was some idiotic dalliance with the similarly deluded SNP which fortunately imploded. Northern Ireland was held hostage to similar phobias. My not so ancient relatives still cling to this islander seige mentality, it’s them against us, one that defies reason. Roll on new world.
rog I reckon he’s given ample thought to the name bugger and uses it knowingly ie he’s a culture-buster. I reckon it fits his mood.
rog; when I googled recently Taz was too common. Although I had it to myself in the early days of chat rooms IRC etc. when I stopped it was ratted.
ID’s evolved faster than the net too, I also used tazzied and dropped the devil on the roam through. That’s now pw locked here n there
Z got me into trouble with Israelis too
bugger came from bugging a blogger
howzat?