Edward Malcolm Gray

Edward Malcolm Gray

Job Description
Blacksmith

Period
1952 - 1956

Edward (fondly known as Ted), was born at Beira near Kalgoorlie on November 1st 1919 into a family of one brother and five sisters. His father was a plumber. Ted did his schooling in Perth and was apprenticed at Midland Workshops as an Engineering Blacksmith. When he finished his apprenticeship there were no jobs with Midland Workshops so he went to Norseman and worked in the mines during the day and in his spare time did outside work. (there was no blacksmith shop at the mines) 

He came to Albany in 1949-50 and worked at the Cheynes Beach Whaling Station as a Blacksmith. The workers would all catch a bus in town which was specifically for them and which brought them to the station in the morning and picked them up at night.

Ted was married for the second time in June 1958 to Sadie Jury and they had one daughter together (Donna). Sadie already had one son (Vic) from a previous marriage. Vic also worked for a while at the whaling station in 1963-64 as a general hand.

Ted’s job at the whaling station included straightening harpoons and annealing the chains. Harpoons were put into a forge – heated up and then put into an anvil and straightened. They may also have been put into an oil bath. There were always two people to straighten the harpoons – one would hold while the other person struck the harpoon. Ted would start the fire in the forge every day and used a big bellows to blow air into the fire. He worked at the whaling station for five years and then left to start his own business making springs for cars and trucks, and wrought iron work – any steel work. Ted went into engineering and blacksmithing because of an interest in that type of work.

While at the whaling station he didn’t have any contact with whales but would come home smelling of them. The smell was in his clothes and it would exude from his pores (an oily, fishy smell). He always wore a bandana around his head and a flannel shirt – as perspiration would soak in and wouldn’t go cold against the skin as cotton would.

Blacksmithing was very hard, physical work and when he started at Midland Workshops Ted was very thin and was put under pressure by the two men he had to strike for – he was told he would never make a blacksmith as he wasn’t physically strong enough, which only made him more determined to succeed – which he did- eventually starting his own successful business.