When Bernie Keast sat his NSW Railways exam in 1975, he didn't expect to start his lifelong career a few days later. Nearly five decades later, he's decided to call it a day.
abc.net.au/news/kempsey-railway-bernie-keast-retirement/101847852While most 16-year-olds today are working part-time jobs at their local takeaway or supermarket, in 1975 Bernie Keast found himself in his first full-time job at an organisation he went on to serve for nearly five decades.
"They asked me when I would like to start work. I said, 'Maybe in the New Year', and they said, 'how about Wednesday', so I commenced duty on December 17, 1975."Mr Keast recently completed his last shift as a NSW TrainLink customer service attendant at Kempsey railway station, 47 years after he started there.In the early years Mr Keast worked at several other stations before returning to Kempsey in 1983, where he stayed for the rest of his career, becoming a local icon.
"When I first started there were no computers ... everything was done manually; bookwork and paperwork, all the signalling was done manually, all the trade and parcel movements were done manually.Mr Keast said he started out as a junior station assistant, or "glorified roustabout". "I thought, 'This is pretty good money'. But the downside was I was working around-the-clock shift work, seven days a week."Mr Keast said the rail industry started to change "quite dramatically" in the mid-1980s."Centralised signalling, with the coloured light signalling system, came in and wiped out lots of jobs in little outer-signal boxes," he said.was introduced in the early 1980s.
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