ATA- Albury - the 'Belvis' days:
The bloke in charge of Belvis was a respected brain surgeon, one John Corbett. He was a precise man, visually overpowering, soft-spoken and an invader of personal space in conversation. I liked him. He was straight. "We want the place to 'look' like a professional organisation. You are a good engineer but you aren't a 'manager'. (Suit and tie? I wondered. How did I design most of the product range since arriving, AND supervise the Lab staff without some management 'skill'?)
Prior to commencement the laboratory staff were instructed to come in on a Saturday for an 'Interview with a Consultant.' We were instructed to wear a suit so I put on a brand-new blue tracksuit.
The remanents of the laboratory all sat in LCK's office while some 'suit' from Sydney interrogated our technical ability. It was fun in retrospect since we knew more about the stuff we designed than this bloke!
He obviously put in a good invoice and 'report' since no-one got fired!
Working for Belvis was shithouse! All the 'crawlers' had emanated from the mess and were in charge. I tolerated it. Watched everything I had built up over the years get stuffed!
Graham Summers became laboratory manager possibly because he owned a tie. The first thing he did was destroy the laboratory store of components that I had struggled to set up over the years.
The shelf-company, Belvis' eventually name-changed to 'DART Defence Industries.'
I struggled with turning up to work for some time. It hurt so much to see the culture that we had generated get stuffed!
Being the type of person LCK was he put together some two million investment money and invited the engineering staff to join his new venture. The meeting we had gave me a new lease on life as I was in a most depressed state.
Some suggested this move of LCK's was to 'get back' at his schooldays 'friend'. Perhaps, but it had more challenge for me than staying in a place of sycophancy ('crawlers').
We had Roy Casey, Chris Jordan who returned from ADFA, at my suggestion to LCK, Jeff Phillipson, Bob Nelson and Graham Hayward, as employees of Hub Technology Resources operating from Lindsay's home in Lyne street.
LCK promised us, individually, a monetary sum after 12 months should the venture fail to make up for such stuff like 'long-service' lost. (I had @ 6 months to go for 10 years 'long service' when I became, 'Foolish' leaving DART.)
We were going to help inventors generate companies based on their inventions. During the year or so this venture lasted it was strange, to me, what happened to LCK's ATA.
Perhaps this was 'Big Business.' Or, the 'Borg?' Being only 'technical', I can only wonder?
All I know was when I gave notice that January I couldn't wait to get back to creativity!
| The Start | UK Office | Albury Factory |
| Post Iran days | Receiver Cometh | Belvis days |
| HUB days | DART days | ADI days |
| NEW days | The PEOPLE | EXIT |
| The History of ATA |