Keeping the cheese machines going

“I started out when I was 16. Every day I rode the bike from Koyuga South on sand roads to Tongala Milk Products,” he said.

“I was paid two pounds, 18 shillings a week, and tax was two bob.”

His next job was with a Kyabram engineering shop where he made hay elevators and agricultural equipment before moving to Tasmania to work with the Comalco Aluminium company on the north coast.

His next stint was in an underground power station and after several other jobs in Tasmania moved back to Kyabram to work at the town's fruit cannery.

He was lured to Melbourne to work with the dairy technology company, Bell Bryant, and went to work installing equipment at Koroit and then at Camperdown, where he and his wife had to live in a caravan.

The factory owners were so impressed with is work they invited him to stay for six months to oversee its operation, before returning to Kyabram to install equipment at the Tongala Nestle factory.

Mr Curnow was still working for Bell Bryant when they invited him to install a huge, 40 tonne cheddaring plant for the Stanhope Co-operative Dairy Company.

The massive piece of equipment was vital to the operations of the factory and, after it was installed, his employer was asked if Mr Curnow could stay on to oversee its operation.

“So they sold me to Stanhope as well as the plant,” Mr Curnow quips.

He became chief engineer and lived in one of the company houses on the Stanhope site.

“It was a 24-7, on-call job and I was paid $80 a week,” he recalled.

He stayed for many years, before establishing his own business in Kyabram — Valken Engineering.

Mr Curnow returned to the factory only recently to inspect the new automated cheesemaking machines; the first time he had been back in 30 years.

He went through a protracted hygiene and security process to gain access to the factory floor — in his days wives of the staff would wander into the building with their lunches.

“There's been some big changes,” he mused.