ATA- Albury - the 'ADI' days:
As the Special Range was being installed DART ran into liquidity problems. Kemtron had changed it's name to LOMAH for some reason.
It was alleged that in order to pay the $24 million sale price of DART to Kennelly the cash had been extracted from DART making it insolvent. John Corbett invited all members of the Super fund to authorise the 'paid-out' left balance of this fund be used to 'help' this liquidity. It helped for about 12 months and in walked the 'Mortgagee'. The 'Gang of three' were rampant!
All sorts of 'possible people' subsequently arrived to buy DART. Eventually ADI bought it, the management changed again, and it became the 'Albury Facility'.
A bloke named Neville Rogers was put in charge. We never really got on.
ADI allegedly poured millions into the Facility for the first year.
Karl, Jeff and myself jumped 15 grand in salary as we were below middle management but above 'paid-rates'?
The Special Range was finished but ADI failed to get the other ranges.
I commenced redeveloping the UHF Handheld Controller while a 'new' target mechanism was developed first by Invetech then by the Albury staff. This puzzled me since the basis for this target mechanism had been rejected by Lindsay and us 'old' ATA-ites many years ago.
We, however, did what we were told, since 'Technical Excellence cannot reside in a country town', we were often told by Neville.
Bob Meredith arrived as a Manager.
Jeff Phillipson became my 'boss'.
And so it went on. Eventually downsizing was the solution to overspending with a zero order-book and 27 staff went.
We were stopped being '1821' Quality and hired a consultant at some cost to get us 'ISO 9000 Accredited'. I appeared to be relegated to the 'Quotes' and produced a lot of 'paper' range designs within these documents. Remembering some; a $52 million tank range for Saudi Arabia that never eventuated; a $6.8 million, 100m long video range for Abu Dhabi that eventually was completed after I accepted redundancy in a subsequent downsizing - HERE.
I tried scriptwriting to no avail. One script was dedicated to my time at this 'Facility.' HERE.
We bumped into Lindsay several times over this period. He had developed a method of locating oil and other stuff but ran into credibility problems when asked how it worked. With Warren Whittaker, an awfully competent range designer, Lindsay flew over the area where the HMAS Sydney was supposed to have sunk in the battle with the German ship, Kormoran. Using Lindsay's detection system they discovered where the Sydney wreck really is. This has recently been shown to be incorrect but cost the Taxpayer millions.
One time we met Lindsay was at the Albury Air Show. He had seen Dick Smith's 'Caravan' land and wanted to talk with him. He invited us to go with him and we walked into the 'forbidden' area to be instantly stopped. "Who are you?" Was the challenge. "I'm Lindsay Knight," LCK replied. "Who?" The challenger said. Nevertheless, we gained entry.
That was LCK's 'power!' It always had been!
At ADI all sorts of management changes occurred.
Jeff lost his job to Silviu Greenhill who lasted about a year before being 'isolated' and evicted.
The laboratory moved around within the same areas of the establishment. 'Roundabout-sizing' as opposed to downsizing?
Eventually I accepted redundancy in the latest 'downsizing' as my health was suffering from the absurdity of the incompetence of sycophancy.
The frustration of many staff encountering Receivership through the ATA & DART days generated many mental concepts translated to pictorial descriptions of the way people felt, possibly losing their jobs for the third time.
I did some contract work for ADI finishing off some of my designs for an indoor range in the Middle East and Mark Wright who started his own Company, RytMar Technologies.
I then took up teaching electronics for the Army via RMIT University.
We closed down the kennel at Ettamogah and bought a small house.
The hardest thing was placing the GSD's and saying 'goodbye' to some of the older ones.
I then heard that ADI had sold the Albury Facility.
| 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 |