John Richard (Rick) Gumley

John Richard (Rick) Gumley (1933 -2020)

John Richard (Rick) Gumley was born in Hobart on 17 January 1933. His father was a fitter and turner and motor mechanic and served for 3 years overseas during the War. Rick was educated in State schools. In 1945 he was lucky to get a place in a State High School. At this time, in Tasmania, entry to High Schools was competitive, and he was in the first year where High School Education was extended from 3 to 4 years!

At High School he gained an interest in radio and electronics. He completed High School in 1948 and the following year gained a technical traineeship with the Post Master General’s Department (PMG), which was responsible for the telephone network. This course provided training over 3 years in many areas including cable jointing and the operation of telephone exchanges, including the Hobart Exchange which had been installed in 1929. This training was completed in 1953.

His son Stephen was born on 26 October 1956 and daughter Cheryl (now Lauk)

After working for a couple of years with the PMG he discovered they were offering trainee engineering positions and successfully applied. It’s a measure of the changes in life that the PMG continued his salary as a technician and supported his training, unusually for the era, without an employment bond. In 1961 he completed this course and remained with the PMG.

He was appointed as District Engineer in Burnie after graduation. In this era, many telephone exchanges were still manual, the road system in Tasmania was pretty basic, there was no sealed road linking the east and west coasts of Tasmania, so maintaining a reliable phone network was a challenge! Radio telephone links were provided in many locations on the island proper and surrounding islands. As an example, the phone line from Strahan to Queenstown was a pole line beside the Abt railway. This ran through thick forests and falling trees played havoc with this telephone link. A telephone technician was allocated to ride the train daily looking for broken wires. When a breakage was found, he’d leave the train, repair the phone line and return to Strahan on the afternoon train! The railway was due to close in 1963 and the decision was made to install a radio link. This proved to be a major challenge as the area had not been adequately mapped to determine where to locate transmitters and set up the bearings for their line of sight operation, resulting in quite a bit of trial and error, including the use of a transistor radio with a directional antenna to find the correct orientation of one radio receiver!

In 1966 he returned to Hobart as District Engineer. Soon after there was a massive bushfire with 50 people killed and much of the telephone network, which relied on pole lines, was destroyed. The only very limited connection to the rest of Australia was via a single link from Hobart to the West Coast. He’d tried to arrange to get a fire truck to put out pole fires at one location, but the truck was commandeered by the Police to save a house. The result was a massive effort to reinstate services which, within weeks, included the provision of some 130 kms of underground cables as well as a number of extra radio links. The work undertaken in 6 weeks was the equivalent of that normally undertaken in three years.

The increasing use of automatic exchanges meant a reduction in technicians, there was no longer one based on the West Coast. When a problem was reported it was necessary to send a technician across from Hobart. A common cause was a phone left off the hook. He developed a test box which would send out a series of signals which tested leakage, shorts and if the phone was off the hook. This was activated by dialling a special number, hanging up, and, after testing, the phone would call back. It cost $5 million to develop. This was widely used by the PMG at a final cost of $15 to 20 million.

In 1969, he left the PMG to join the Tasmanian Hydroelectric Commission, the Hydro, as Senior Communications Engineer, to set up communication systems, at a time of construction of new dams at Lake Pedder, Gordon and on the West Coast. One of his tasks was to set up equipment to protect explosive charges in tunnels to protect them from above ground lightning strikes. This lead to research in the field of lightning protection and part time consultancy.

In 1979 he left the Hydro to establish the Global Lightning Technologies Group, located in Hobart. This employed around 150 staff and relied on expertise and graduates of the University of Tasmania. The company provided opportunities for work experience for students at the University. The organisation grossed sales of $100 million from 1984 to 1998, of which some 40% was for export. In 1997 the company was sold to Erico Lightning Technologies and he remained as Chief Research Engineer until he retired in 2001.

He then moved to Strahan on the west coast of Tasmania, purchased a salmon farm, developed tourist infrastructure and engaged in harvesting Huon pine. While this timber is protected, a significant number of trees are washed into the rivers feeding Macquarie Harbour each year and these are harvested for boat construction, furniture and artworks.

He died on 20 September 2020.

He was active in national and internation lightning protection bodies, including a member of Standards Australia Committee EL24 and the National Fire Protection Association Standards Committee 781 on lightning protection. He served on several IEC Technical Committees where he was appointed in his own right rather than as a national representative.

He has received several notable awards:

• IE Aust National Prize for best paper in the Electrical Transactions 1973

• IE Aust Tas Divn. Award of Merit i n 1989 • M.A Sargent Medal IE Aust in 1998 • Jack Finlay Medal of the Institution of Electrical Engineers in 1998

He was a Fellow of IE Aust and CP Eng

His son Stephen has had a remarkable career as an engineer and business leader.

To access an oral history interview with John Richard (Rick) Gumley please use this link:

https://heritage.engineersaustralia.org.au/wiki/Oral_Histories_Sydney