Back in 2010, when Gary Barker was concluding his column, Steaming Along the Road, which ran in this magazine for ten years, he wrote two articles on the final days of steam plant in the Tasmanian Public Works Department. This was based on interviews he undertook with two retired professional staff members, who spent many years with the PWD. Realising that the memories of this department, which was raised in 1838, and re-organised from 1977 until being outsourced in 2003, had never been recorded, Gary started to carry out oral history interviews with former PWD employees and relatives.

Over three years of solid work, he interviewed 101 people and transcribed t