Building Standards

Generally, the standard of accommodation provided by Telecom/Telstra for office staff was good.   But some of the properties they purchased for technician depots were not so good.

About 1975, Telecom purchased an old 2-story timber-framed asbestos clad building (99 Wellington Street Perth) that had been erected in a hurry for the US Navy in WW2 (and after WW2 owned by 2 or 3 other outfits). 

It was very dilapidated. The floors tilted this way and that. It was very noisy building to work in, because it had sash windows all along each side. Hundreds of badly fitted sash windows. Worn out package airconditioners were installed every 6th window or so, causing constant rattling and humming noises due to the moveable window frames being very loose. Some supervisors resorted to nailing the windows shut to kill the noise and make the place a bit more secure.

The building had a vast number of cockroaches in residence. We complained but nothing was ever done about it. But every once in a while (I was a tech back then) a clerk would ask me to come and see them about some admin matter. I would catch a large cockroach, use some PCB modification adhesive to attach some string to the cockroach (this adhesive came in 2 parts: glue and hardener. When you applied the hardener, it would set in under a second). I then took the roach with me, as though it was a dog on a leash, when I went to see the clerk. The clerks (all women) all hated it, but eventually the message got through, and one of them hired a pest company.  

We were told that the building would be sprayed on the Saturday morning of a long weekend, and would be safe for us by the following Tuesday. On the Tuesday, when we arrived for work, all the floors were covered in thousands and thousands of dead cockroaches, and the building didn't smell too good.