Turning to a new craft

Working with wood and things made of wood has a special appeal to many people especially those with creative minds.
Berwick and District Woodworkers Club president Jack Croucher has extended a lifetime of working with electrics and circuits to timber craft.
Most of his career entailed 28 years working in the railways as a fitter and engineer.
He still tinkers with steel things but is now fully involved in the chipping, sawing, turning, and hammering that goes on in his club’s workshop on the Old Cheese Factory grounds at Homestead Road Berwick.
Jack turns 80 in February this year and believes this active involvement helps to keep he and his workmates alive and well.
Two things stand out as woodwork club icons, the beautiful rocking horse, one of which is raffled each year to boost club funds, and the annual toy festival.
Who knows what value can be placed on either.
The rocking horses are said to be worth $2000 and 500 toys made each year, even valued at $25 each, make worthy contributions.
Added is the untold value of the toys when they are given to children whose families are on hard times and may not otherwise have received a Christmas gift.
Each year the club president presides over a toy festival.
This is the official handing over of toys to groups for allocation to needy homes.
Jack Croucher, for the last six years, has held that privilege.
He was born at Myrtleford in 1929 and grew up on a tobacco farm on the Buffalo River just near the junction with the Ovens.
Jack said he was a smoker for 30 years.
“The smokes were not doing me any good so I went cold turkey in 1980 and that was the end of it.
“Now I can’t stand it and I still suffer a little from the habit.
“One thing is for sure you can’t smoke tobacco straight off the raw plant,” he said.
So Jack grew up working on a farm and accustomed to hands on activity. He was educated at Myrtleford State School and went on to the Wangaratta Technical School.
“We caught the school bus every day and it was a 45-mile round trip morning and night.
“We rode our bikes three miles to catch the bus.”
Jack became a top level racing bike rider and rode the Essendon board track for several years with plenty of success.
“I had a few topples and lost some skin but was never badly hurt on the boards.
“My injuries came from bush riding around the football grounds.
“Mostly the road work was to keep us fit.
“I had my eyes firmly set on winning the ‘Melbourne Cup on Wheels’ one year.
“I was good enough to win but got dudded by a group of riders who worked as a team to get their mate over the line.
“They locked me in to get their mate home,” he said.
These days the big race is held at the Vodafone Arena.
Jack went through tech school to get his intermediate certificate and was apprenticed as an electrical fitter at the Spotswood railway workshops.
He joined the signalling branch and worked two years in the workshop before they would let him loose on the system. They placed considerable importance on work quality in those days because much of the system he worked on and installed is still in operation most days of the week.
“We placed a lot of importance on maintenance and we kept the contact points thoroughly clean to be sure they worked,” he said.
Jack moved from the railways to a private company, ‘Westinghouse Brake and Signal Company’ and was contracted to do similar rail system work.
“We installed signalling systems for coal and iron ore lines.
“I was by then married to Joyce and with a family.
“For a start my family came with me on far away jobs but later the children, John, Joanne, and Stuart, had to be settled down into school.
“I would be away four weeks on the job and then home for a week.
“John is doing much the same type of work as I was.
“He works as a construction manager for a private company in the same depot that I worked.
“Joanne and Stuart are in Sydney and we only get to see them a couple of times a year.
“They live there because I was transferred to Sydney for a two-year contract and we stayed 20 years.
“They grew up as Sydneysiders,” he said.
Jack and Joyce looked all over Australia for a place to retire and settled on Berwick.
“We always liked Berwick but I confess it is becoming suburbanised.
“Nevertheless, we still love it.
“Joyce loves gardening and bus trips.
“She enjoys going off on trips with a group of friends.
“I was doing a little woodwork before I retired and I saw a story in the Pakenham Gazette about the woodwork club.
“I came along and before I knew it I was on the committee and now I’m the president.
“I took over from Ken Coleman who had been president for five years, and Ted Murray, who did it for one year.
“We work together to help each other and we have a few classes.
“We also get ideas from books and the internet about what we can make.
“I designed one of the toy trucks we make for the toy festival.”
Jack said he treasured one incident when a woman came up to group members who were selling raffle tickets in High Street, Berwick.
She told us that she still had a cricket set given to her child several years ago when the family was having a hard time.
“The good thing is that the family is now doing well,” he said.
The club has 100 members, male and female, and a fully equipped workshop which is open for the toy group Mondays and Tuesdays.
However, members come and go to suit their spare time.
The toy group expanded and was divided into two groups.
Jack makes wooden clocks and one is a chime clock.
“I believe it is the only fully wooden chime clock in the world,” he said.