Australian History 🎲

MERV HUGHES, SLIM DUSTY, PENTRIDGE PRISON & AN AUSTRALIAN DREAM

Long before Brunswick, in Melbourne’s north, became a trendy suburb filled with latte drinking hipsters, it was a working class area largely famous for textiles manufacturing and the local footy team.

It was here in 1914 that a young migrant from Cheshire in England, Fred Townley, dreamt of a new beginning and set about designing his own history by starting Townley Drop Forge.

Fred was a first class blacksmith who had worked on the English railways for more than 30 years before emigrating to Australia with his wife Eleanor and daughter Freda in tow.

With the production of brass belt buckles and horse harnesses for the military, the forge became a huge success. Surviving two World Wars and the great depression of the 1930’s, it developed into a thriving family business as Fred introduced his son in law, Vernon Claringbould, as manager.

Prge was largely servicing the burgeoning auto industry with forged, welded and machined parts. The introduction of lifting products was expanded to include shackle links, lifting rings, eye bolts, eye nuts and more recently rigging screws and turnbuckles.

Roger Claringbould joined the family business in 1953 as a first year apprentice fitter and turner and with the death of his father Vernon in 1958 and grand father Fred in 1960, took on a larger than expected role as manager of the family business at the tender age of 22.

Roger remembers clearly the feeling of trepidation at taking on such a large responsibility. “The office lady was Mrs Hill and her husband Alex was the foreman. There were seven workers and the first thing I had to do was make sure they knew they were in a safe set of hands.”

“There was a back log of work and I remember thinking, I had the tiger by the tail but what do I bloody do now? I didn’t have a clue,” said Roger.

Rogers tenacity to continue his forbearers success in forging meant he thought long and hard about what he could do to keep the business alive.

“My philosophy was I must upgrade this equipment, I must see the opposition so I can get better equipment than they’ve got”

This belief in innovation led Roger to install new machinery and a larger oil fired furnace.

In 1970 Townley purchased two Massey drop hammers from Cyclone Forging Company and in 1971 installed the first Banning hammer in Australia using fuel oil furnaces for heating of raw material. Business was booming, however in 1975 a break-in and subsequent fire lit by vandals delivered a setback to Roger and his team.

“It was horrific,” Roger said, “There was probably only $5 in petty cash.”

The workers rallied around Roger, producing forgings as a new building was erected around them.

“There was no roof on the factory for three long months, everyone just kept working in the rain,” he said.

In 1976, Roger ticked off on the installation of the first induction heater to operate with the banning hammer.

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