Vale Les Schultz 1925-2024Friday 6 Dec 2024
Previous company roles included 1968-69 convenor of the committee to review APM’s profitability and future prospects, late 1850’s-1960’s Mill manager Petrie paper Mill, Logging engineer in charge of wood handling in Gippsland and road construction and maintenance as key responsibilities. APM changed its name to AMCOR in 1986. Oliver Raymond (retired Chief Fire Control Officer and Harvesting Development Officer APMF) in a vale to Les Schultz describes working with Les Schultz. Anyone who has worked with Les over a period will well remember the way he looked at you with those eyes. Which one was actually looking at you? I really enjoyed him – because he didn’t put up with bulldust. He would grill you, but after he was convinced you knew what you were talking about his back up was great. I remember having spent a couple of years trying to get the Windsor Tree Harvesters to work, I finally said to him: “Les, they are not the answer to mechanisation of harvesting radiata”. “OK” he said. “What is the answer?” So I told him about a Swedish machine called a Logma that I had read about in an overseas magazine. I explained the reasons it would work in radiata where a Windsor wouldn’t. He thought about what I had said, asked a few more questions and then said: “Well, you’d better go and look at it”. To cut a long story short, I did, and the Logma was a success in radiata harvesting. Another story about Les. Two Forest Department workers lost their lives in a wildfire in the Western District. Les and I contacted the local District Forester and flew over to meet him in a helicopter, the day after the event. The two men had been fighting a wildfire on a dozer and unfortunately had decided to try to get away from the fire by going up a hill. The fire had travelled faster than they could and it overtook them. The engine on the dozer was still going when they were found after the fire had swept over them. The operator had stood up and fallen off the machine. His off sider was found in front of the dozer’s blade. Both had apparently died by breathing superheated air from the fire. They certainly were not badly burnt. The dozer was still in the position it had been found in the previous day. There was some low vegetation within five meters of the machine. The shrubbery had been scorched, but not burnt. As I said, the engine of the machine was still going when the two men were found, so lack of oxygen was obviously not a problem. It was a solemn trip back in the chopper, while we chewed over what we had seen. The lesson we had learnt was spread through the Company’s workforce. “Do not try to outrun a fire travelling up hill. Remember that fire doubles its rate of travel for every 10 degrees of uphill slope”. And all our fire tankers were equipped with full face masks that had been tested in dense smoke, and one could not even smell the smoke through them. Vale Les. A long life, but you left behind a lot of benefits to your workers! Source: Oliver Raymond | ||
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