By Chris Underwood
A new school for the Post & Telegraph Department was established in 1949 at Trentham in what is now Upper Hutt City within Wellington Region.
From the Report of the NZ Post & Telegraph Department for the year 1949-1950:
Recruits to the Post Office receive their main training on the job, but this is supplemented by a fairly complete scheme of training at established schools. For many years, school training was restricted to instruction in Morse operating, but during recent years the schools have been extended and now provide complete courses in:
- Morse operating and sub-office work
- Machine-printing operating
- Radio operating
- Radio mechanicians’ work
- Electrical and general mechanical work
- Telephone-exchange mechanicians’ work
- Telegraph mechanics’ work
- Line construction and cable-jointing work
- Typing
The schools are fitted with up-to-date apparatus conforming to that in actual use. The courses vary from eight to twenty weeks of full-time intensive training under competent instructors. Refresher courses are also provided as required.1
The same report also noted that the department was operating seven staff hostels, the largest of which was at Trentham, accommodating 350 staff.2
The instructor in the photos below is Keith Surridge. I knew him quite well but never worked with him. A very clever guy, he helped install the first microwave systems around the country and later was responsible for setting up the TV standards converter at Warkworth Earth Station so that we could watch American-sourced TV. He was a keen player of indoor and lawn bowls.
In the photo above, Keith Surridge is talking with Allan Edginton, who taught me solid state theory years later when I was at the school in Rugby Street. The guy in the bottom right hand corner is Allan Fletcher (I worked with him in the late 1960s and he taught me a lot about Land Mobile Radio). I don’t recognise anyone else, although the guy on the left, second row back, might be Denis Moore.
In the photo above, Keith Surridge is showing the application of vectors to alternating current circuits. I worked with Keith Blackett, a clever guy who, sadly, drowned in a yachting accident, on Lake Taupo I believe.
I worked with Dennis Moore (pictured above) while still a trainee at the Wellington Radio Depot.
I knew Peter Munro and worked in the same section as him for a while. He went on to became the Chief Tech at Invercargill Radio Depot about the time that the technicians working at Awarua Radio came under the control of the Chief Tech at the Radio Depot.
“The photo above was taken outside the radio school in an area where trainee linesmen worked on poles and lines. The instructor was John Carr standing in for Keith Surridge (I am pretty sure it was just for part of that course).”– Glenn Kingston[/caption]
In the early 1960s, the radio technicians school moved again, to Rugby Street in Wellington.
- If you can identify any of the people in these photos, or have other information about New Zealand Post Office radio training schools, please contact the editor.
Next: Radio technician training at Rugby St
Notes
1. Post & Telegraph Department (1950). Report for the year 1949-1950, p. 4
2. ibid, p. 5
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8. Source: Dave Brown, Nov 2018
9. Source: Brian Gallagher, Nov 2018
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11. Source: Dave Brown, Nov 2018
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14. Source: Brian Rickerby, 2020. “He resigned from Himatangi in 1956-57 to run a service station in Jackson St Petone.”
15. Source: Chris Underwood, 2019
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17. Source: Brian Rickerby, 2020. “He resigned from Himatangi about 1956-57 to work for his family’s electrical business, then later as a tutor at Heretaunga CIT.”
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21. Source: Brian Rickerby, 2020. “Barry was an instructor for many years at Trentham. He later became an instructor at a Lower Hutt correspondence school near Lower Hutt Railway station.”
22. Source: Brian Gallagher
23. Source: Brian Gallagher
24. Tentative identification based on comparison with another photo on this page
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27. Tentative identification based on comparison with another photo on this page
28. Source: Chris Underwood, 2018
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30. Source: Chris Underwood, 2018
31. Tentative identification based on comparison with another photo on this page
32. Source: Glenn Kingston et al, 2018
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34. Source: Errol Lilley, Nov 2018