MEMBER PROFILE

IAN S. DOUGLAS

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This page last updated on 26th February 2005.

I was born in Melbourne in 1936, and am an only child.

I lived in Elsternwick for the first five years of my life. We moved to Bayswater in September 1941, in the early stages of World War 2. I attended Croydon State Primary School, and then went to the Box Hill Boys Technical School, where I concluded four years study as Dux of the School.

In my first year (1951) at the Melbourne Technical College I took a trip to the United Kingdom I had won in the Sun Youth Travel scheme. The trip lasted nearly four months from May to August, and I did not complete my first year of study successfully. I went back in 1952 to repeat, and did very well from then on, graduating with a Fellowship Diploma of Communication Engineering in 1956.

I first worked for two years at General Television Corporation as a film recording engineer. I went there when the Olympic Games were on in Melbourne, and helped to build the studios before the station went to air on 19th January 1957. At the end of 1957 I went to 20 National Service Training Battalion at Puckapunyal, for training as a Signalman, followed by a posting to 3 Lines of Communication Signal Regiment in Ivanhoe. While I was there, a change of government occurred and the National Servicemen were all discharged. As I had gained promotion to Captain as a volunteer, I stayed on for 7 years.

After leaving GTV9 I spent four years as a Lecturer in Communication Engineering at the Royal Melbourne Technical College, after which I joined the Postmaster-General's Department in the Research Laboratories. Whilst working at RMTC I did studies in teaching, and gained the Trained Technical Teacher's Certificate. Around the time I left RMTC staff I won a trip to Switzerland as the prize in a world wide competition for a technical paper on an aspect of television. The paper was all about the television film recording process that I had worked on at GTV9. That technique has now been well superseded by the video tape recorder in all its many versions. As part of the trip the PMG sent me on to Germany, Holland and England. I spent the rest of my career in the Commonwealth Public Service, Telecom Australia and latterly Telstra - 35 years in all. I worked in a variety of areas, including training, broadcast station inspection (with the Australian Broadcasting Control Board), and telephone outside plant, while I continued lecturing and tutoring at RMIT part time. I also gained an Associateship Diploma in Management from RMIT in 1972. I was made redundant by Telstra in May 1998.

Having learned the piano for a short while, I had some knowledge of music. I taught myself to play the trumpet in 1970, and then joined the Croydon Citizens' Bands. I have now been there for 32 years, and have been the President and the Drum-Major for quite a few years. In addition I have been involved with the Victorian Bands' League for many years, including three years as President from 1996 to 1998. I have returned as President 2003 and 2004. Further to this aspect of my life, I run a programme about bands on community radio each week, which I have done for 11 years. The programme is called "Easterly Winds" and is broadcast on Friday evening at 7.30 pm in summer and 6.30 pm in winter. The station is on 98.1 Mhz stereo and the transmitter is at Ringwood East, an outer eastern suburb of Melbourne. As appropriate I also help with technical aspects of the community radio station studios and equipment and some training of new presenters.

For quite a few years from about 1974 I also joined the Whitehorse Musical Theatre, where I took part on stage in several musical productions, starting with "Pajama Game", then playing Capt Surtees Cook in "Robert & Elizabeth". Other shows included "Mame" (Claude Upson), "My Fair Lady", "Irene" and "Pickwick" (Sjt Buzfuz). I then moved to the Mountain District Choral Society, singing tenor in the choir, and performing in quite a few Gilbert & Sullivan shows, in roles including "Yeomen of the Guard" (Lord Lieutenant), "Iolanthe" (Private Willis, and next time Lord Tolloller), "Ruddigore" (Sir Roderick Murgatroyd), "Mikado" (Pish-Tush), "Patience" (Lieutenant the Duke of Dunstable) along with chorus in "HMS Pinafore" and "Pirates of Penzance". This type of activity is very time consuming, and more recently I have joined the RMIT Occasional Choral Society (ROCS) to sing tenor in a variety of choral performances.

My musical interests have also led to my being involved in the design of some music stand lights, which for historical reasons are called "Croylites". You can read about them here.

My involvement with bands also led to my playing the bugle for various ceremonies. A few years ago I came to the Shrine on a Sunday afternoon, and happened on the Trustees' service for the unit in which my paternal uncle had served. He was a member of 6th Field Ambulance Mediterranean Expeditionary Force, and died in Malta from wounds received at Gallipoli. He is buried in Malta. The next year I asked the Trustees if I could play the bugle calls for this service, and permission was granted. I have continued to perform this duty ever since. Just after I left work I came to the Shrine yet again to play, and it was then suggested to me that I could become a Voluntary Guide. I thought about it for a short while, and then applied, did the training course, and have been a Guide ever since. I enjoy the social interaction, and the privilege of instructing visitors, particularly young people, about the Shrine. I actually have another web site dealing with aspects of the volunteers, although so far it has proven difficult to persuade many of them to appear on the site. That site can be found at http://www.vicnet.net.au/~shrine I also have the texts of a number of talks on that site relating to military events. The Shrine opened its new Visitor Centre on 17th August 2003, and this has made some changes:-

Another activity I have undertaken in the last few years, which also started from my playing the bugle, is an interest in a military historical society, where I am the Regimental Bugler. The Victorian Colonial Infantry Association Inc (Mt Alexander Rifles), studies the early (1865 - 1895) Victorian volunteers, who took up the defence of the Colony when the British Army left. At Federation the Victorian Army made up some 60% of the new Australian Army. Dressed in our old style green uniforms with black trim, we add colour to various ceremonies, and we go to camp on occasions. All these activities are made more realistic by the various bugle calls played. In February 2000 we were in Canberra for the Open Day of the Australian National War Memorial, and as we ceremonially lowered our Victorian flag to the sounds of the bugle calls "Retreat" and "Last Post", it was gratifying to see the Regular Army personnel sharing the experience with us by standing fast. Military tradition carries on unchanged to the present day. Some details of the Association can be found at http://www.vicnet.net.au/~vciainc

 

My wife and I have six children and six grandchildren. We also foster babies in our spare! time.

COMPUTER EXPERIENCE

In regard to computers, just as I left the Royal Melbourne Technical College in 1963 they were receiving delivery of their first computer, an Elliot 803. I thought I would miss out, but I need not have worried, because I then joined the PMG Research Laboratories which had also just purchased their first new computer, a Control Data 160A. It was relatively small for the time, being the size of an office desk, and used 7 level punched paper tape for input and output. It had 12 bit words, and these were manipulated as 4 octal numbers. The memory had two banks, bank 0 and bank 1, and these each had 7777 octal words ( 4095 decimal). Thus the total memory was 8190 (decimal) words. You could buy extra memory banks, each 4095 words came in a box about the size of 2 four drawer filing cabinets, and you could have 6 extra banks. Altogether they would be banks 0 to 7. The display was in octal numbers, using small projection lamp units, and there were some key switches you could set for conditional programme jumps.

The machine could be programmed in assembler and in Fortran. Most people used Fortran, but some of us also learned and used assembler. I have always found a knowledge of assembler useful in understanding the very basic functions which are carried out in reading the keyboard, or printing to the printer port. I became quite proficient at Fortran, and also studied Cobol for a wider perspective. I have also programmed in Basic and C. On the way I built up a Dick Smith Super 80, and we bought the kids an Oric computer, which used the 6502 chip, which was also used in the early Commodore computers. The Oric had a rubber keyboard, and I actually wired up a more realistic keyboard in parallel so that typing was easier. These computers were both cassette tape based, but they kept my interest alive. The Super 80 had a Users' Group, and that was my first experience of such associations.

By this stage Telecom was moving into the IBM PC world, having used networked Wang word processing for some time. Once I had experienced the IBM XT and 80386 computers at work, I had to have one. It seems to have gone on from there. Eventually email arrived at work (but not the Internet - you had to get the right approvals for that!) and virtually all my work was being done by email and the telephone. I had joined Melbourne PC Users Group some years earlier, so the next step was to sign up with the Group for my own email and internet access.

Now I don't go to work in the daytime I use the opportunity to attend the RIPGIG meetings, where I am able to meet quite a few of my former work colleagues. Because I am still very heavily involved with playing in, and administration of community bands, I can't help much with administration elsewhere.