Pop Medhurst Brian Morgan 1521

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 Pop Medhurst
Subject:
Pop Medhurst
From:
Brian Morgan <[email address removed]>
Date:
4/05/2024, 3:21 pm
To:
[email address removed]

Hi Justin and congratulations on a well researched and presented article on Pop.

I can add a little bit of peripheral information to what you said. First, Watsons Wireless were just a little up Collins Street from Medhursts (Fitzgeralds to be) until they moved to Brisbane Street  just up from Elizabeth Street with the advent of large tv's that were too difficult to take down to their workshop in the small shop in Collins Street. Barney of course was a Z call for many years, VK7ZAK who got his full call many years later. Ian VK7ZIF was one who did his apprenticeship with Barney and Dave Watson. When Barney was doing his service calls of a night and wanted a feed of Tim Tams, I would hear a plaintiff, Romeo, Romeo where art though? which was a warning to get the kettle on. He is someone who I think made a massive contribution to amateur radio in Tassie but never sought the limelight.  Many would be amateurs built radios and when they wouldn't work gave them to Barney to find the fault, which he always did with a smile and a lesson on what the person had done wrong. I do not say this from my own experience I hasten to say but I did acquire a WS122 set which I could not get to transmit and he took longer to get the case off than he did to realise that a wire had been removed from the VFO. When I was very young our school radio, on which we would listen to Lets Join In, decided not to work one day and I realised that the antenna wire had gone west so put my finger on the connector. During the program there was a loud bang and I came out from behind it, looking like a black minstrel. The nuns were convinced that I had been electrocuted but I said it was just an electrolytic that had given up and if they were in doubt, ring Barney and ask him. This they did. When they said it was a five or six year old, he asked if it was me and when they said yes, he said, "Well he would know".

Medhursts did have two premises in Collins Street as, I think, Rod told you from the floor. When I was first licensed I wanted to rewind a transformer secondary and someone told me to go and see Doug who would help me out. This was at the top end of Collins Street where there were lots of impressive machines, whereas the lower end was more the retail side. I took in the transformer that I wanted to rewind and he supplied me, at no cost, enough copper wire to do the job, on the basis that I was an amateur radio operator. He probably also took pity on me as I was still at school then.

My father did not show any skill in electronics but when I first joined the WIA Tas Division, (as had my older brother some time earlier) he mentioned that he had had quite a bit to do with Pop Medhurst. My father's office was in the T& G building which is still there today of course so he was only a couple of hundred metres up from Medhursts. He used to meet with a group of Collins Street business people at the Goodwills cafe which in those days was in the basement of what is now Fitzgeralds. From the mid 1930's my father also lived very close to Pop on Sandy Bay Road. He told us that he would sometimes go down to his place to be shown what Pop was experimenting on.

Earlier several amateurs would play records on air around Hobart (allowed in the early days) and my father was one who went down and loaned some of his records. I did not hear of Pop in this context though.

Also there would be a number of us who still fondly remember Len Crooks in Launceston. My recollection of him was, for a long time, that he was an ethereal person who we knew to be the Northern Patron but never saw. By the time I met him,  he was very frail and had white hair. In those days I lived in Hobart but was on the State Council and Acting Secretary of the Division in the late 1960's after the then Secretary got into trouble with the law and I was asked to complete his term. I would think that I would have met Len at one or more of the meetings that we attended.  I think I also met him several times in the period in which I worked in Launceston at Northern Branch meetings. Tom, VK7AL was State President through most of this time. He and Len clearly knew each other well and seemed fond of each other.

As I am sure you know,  the South had taken on the mantle of being the HQ of amateur radio in Tasmania such that there was a northern zone and a northwest zone. There was absolutely no legal basis for this and it was the cause of tension between the north and the south for years (sound familiar?). Thus having a northern Patron and a Southern Patron was a means of quieting those northerners! Ultimately a young lawyer pointed out the lack of legality in this arrangement and the rest is history.

I hope this is of some interest to you.

Regards,

Brian.