
Issue No 33		01 October 1999

Review

Tailing Out

As the BHP steelworks close in Newcastle a special book chronicles the stories of working live that have just become history.

ERNIE KEMBREY, ON THE OPEN HEARTH

I started in the mould yard in late 1960 as a general labourer. From the mould yard you went to where you actually worked on the Open Hearth in the various positions: there was demolishing, a bricklayer's labourer, a helper on the floor. You were more or less a spare team of blokes that was just waiting to be placed into a permanent position. There was a vacancy came available on what they call the crane cleaners on the old Open Hearth and I took that on for a while, only about three or four months, that was enough. I had a bit of a scare up on the cranes where I nearly fell off the crane track one day and I said, "Well, this isn't for me."

And I came down off there and I run into a metallurgist by the name of Jack Risby - he eventually became the Manager of Newcastle plant - and I ran into Jack and I asked him was there any chance of transferring to the floor as a helper? and he said, "Yes, my word. Start straight away." So I went and I started off as a third helper on the Open Hearth itself, on the furnace floor.

It was a place that you enjoyed coming into work. It just had that feeling about it, that you were part of that industry. It just always reminded me that you had a big pot there and you were going to make a cake type of thing, you know; and you're mixing it, you're putting the ore in, you're putting the scrap in, you're putting all the chemicals that have to go into that particular mix. And then you tap it out, and you see it, you see that coming out, you've worked and you've put that in there, and it's coming out and then you see it being loaded into ingots.

The metallurgist would come down and tell the first helper what charge he had to put in: x amount of pans of limestone, x amount of pans of iron ore, x amount of pans of coal scrap. Your first helper would tell you what he wanted, and you and the second helper then went and got that stock around the back of your furnace. Once we put all the stock in, the first helper would then adjust his heat on his furnace till he got to the stage where he was ready to take hot metal.

Once they were ready to tap the furnace, it was then the second helper and the third helper's responsibility to tap it out. I was really keen to tap my first furnace, and I'll never forget the excitement when the second helper said, "Okay, you can dig this out." You'd go down and you'd dig the serpentine out of the tap hole and you'd break the plug - the serpentine used to build like a plug type of thing, see. You had to use an oxy hose, and burn it out. You'd use this long 3/8 oxy pipe, just ordinary water pipe it was, connected up to the raw oxy, light it up and you would then push that up into the hole and it would gradually burn through the crust into the bottom of your hearth, the bottom of your furnace where your tap hole was. Your experience told you, by watching the glow, that you were just about ready to break through the crust on the inside of your furnace. Once that happened it'd just go, Whoosh! And it would blow out, come out through the runner, down into two ladles.

There were fourteen furnaces on the open hearth and they were split into groups, and you would probably have the crews of three furnaces come and help you on yours, and you would help them when they tapped theirs. Now, the blokes handled all that themselves, because if you didn't come down, you know, the second helper or the first helper would really give you something, unless you had real trouble on your own furnace, like sometimes they might have had a breakout in the slag and they couldn't leave their furnace; that was understandable. But they would come down and let you know, and then some blokes would go one side, some would go the other side, because all the stuff that went into the ladles was put in manually. You had no mechanical devices, it was shovelled in, into a great big hot ladle of metal.

It was very hot around there, very hot. We used to have to wear those heavy army pants and heavy flannelette shirts. That's why it was important that you had blokes off the other furnaces around to help you, because you only had a short time to get that stock shovelled into your ladle before it was filled right up, because you might have had to put chrome or coke or aluminium or stuff like that into the heat to give the metallurgist what he wanted in a particular heat to make a particular sort of steel. There was no really high technology in it, it was just a straight out gut busting shovelling.

Then the pit cranes in the open hearth pit, they'd pick the ladle up, take it to the teeming platform and pour it into these ingots. Then it was the responsibility for you to remove the runner that was on the back of the furnace. You would remove that runner and commence to block your tap hole up again to get ready for the next charge.

You had to keep you furnace clean, They were very particular about that. You could clean your furnace up and next thing you'd get a lot of red hot slag would come out over your doors, through your doors, and you'd have to then quench that down and shovel it up again. There were no mechanical devices, you would shovel it up into barrows and take it around the back and tip it down into the slag shoot, and that used to nearly break your bloody heart. I mean, you'd clean it all up, your furnace would look great, you would hose the floor off and you'd sit back and say, "Well, good shift now, we haven't got any furnaces to tap, might have one to do." So you'd go down to help them, and next thing your furnace would spew it all out the front again. I've seen it 12 inches high, right across the floor, burning hoses.....

There was always an element of danger in the open hearth, always. But as you gained experience you became aware of the danger and you treated it with a lot of respect, you didn't go doing stupid things like going looking into a furnace door without your glasses on and wandering around without a hat on and those type of things. You knew what the risks were, and you treated everything as hot, because nine times out of ten you never had gloves on. Gloves were available to you, but nine times out of ten you shovelled without gloves, because your glove could get caught on your shovel and pull your arm. You always tried to eliminate the risk, so you didn't do anything stupid. When you were coming out around behind the furnace, there was always equipment moving up and down, the mechanical chargers that were there. You'd get your wheelbarrow wiped out of your hands, but it's best to see the wheelbarrow crunched up and not you. Sometimes you would be shovelling stuff into the furnace after you'd tapped, and the shovel would slip out of your hand, and you'd just watch it melt in the bottom of the furnace. But it's better to see that than to see you in there. That's why it was always an advantage to not use gloves, because if it was going to grab, it'd grab your glove and pull you too. So you didn't use them while you were shovelling.

When you raked the furnace out, when you tapped the furnace, you had to have gloves on then, of course, and your glasses, because the heat was tremendous. We never ever had a full on mask, you just had your little furnace glasses.

When you were tapping the furnace, you were very close to it. Actually you were right at it, you were so close to hell you'd know where it was.

I still get feelings about it, you know, that it was a hard job, it was a hot job, it was a dangerous job, but you knew the danger. So you kept that danger at arms length, and you looked out for one another. You had to alert your mate to everything: you were there helping him and he was there helping you, and that was the thing that you liked about it. You couldn't have met a grater bunch of blokes than what you worked with there. I had utmost respect for every man that was on that floor, even though I didn't know all of them. They were a terrific lot of blokes.

The thing that you liked about it, too, was that you could go home and say, "Well, I was satisfied with what I did."

Extracted from "Tailing Out", produced by the Workers Cultural Action Committee

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Issue 33 contents

Interview: The Boys
Labor Party heavyweights Eric Roozendaal and Damian O'Connor will lock horns this weekend. They fire their first shots.

Economics: Reasons to Be Cheerful
Can we change the way we look at the economy to better reflect community happiness and well-being?

Unions: Breaking the Wave
ACTU President's submission to the Senate Inquiry into the Workplace Relations Act.

International: The Wisdom of Solomon
A disturbing case from the Pacific where corporate lawyers are playing a deadly game.

History: Groundhog Day
Ghosts of Conferences past: some strangely familiar debates and decisions from previous state ALP conferences

Legal: Bad, Bad Things
Some of Australia's leading industrial lawyers argue that the Workplace Relations Act breaches basic international obligations.

Review: Tailing Out
As the BHP steelworks close in Newcastle a special book chronicles the stories of working live that have just become history.

Satire: Police Cut-Backs Lead To Drop In Organised Crime
An audit of the NSW Police has revealed that they have been seriously cutting back their operating budgets to ensure that they will be able to afford the increased security costs of the Olympics.

Work/Time/Life: It's Official: Aussies Work Harder
Australians continue to work long hours in contrast to a world-wide trend in industrialised countries that has seen hours at work remaining steady or declining in recent years.

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» Big Lunch Break for Stress-Free Day

» Arch Apologises for Youth Wage Debacle

» Clean Air Policy Up In Smoke

» Child Carers Stretched to the Limit

» Building Workers Won�t Settle for Half Pay

» Life, Art and Politics