Personal Stories

Published in the RSAA Lunations
Vol1 Issue6 1–31 July 2020

Rob Brookfield:

I grew up in Dubbo, regional NSW.  As a teenager, living in Dubbo was great.  There was loads of things to do, like swimming, blowing things up with fireworks, riding both push bikes and motorbikes.  There was always an interest in electronics, and luckily, I had pocket money which allowed some tinkering with audio equipment, including making my own floor standing set of speakers to annoy my parents with loud rock music.  I applied to the Air Force as a ground radio technician, and after completing recruit training at Adelaide, graduated from radio school at Laverton (Melbourne) in 1984.  My first posting was Williamtown at Newcastle where I worked on some boring radio gear but soon moved onto complex airfield systems, such as navaids, high power transmitters and the air traffic control tower voice switch.  One interesting work place was the Salt Ash bombing range, which had a system to measure the position of the projectiles on a vertical mesh target.  It had a series of sensors to measure the shock waves as the projectile passed through the target, and from the timing of the received shock waves, the accuracy of the pilot’s shooting is determined.  It’s pretty scary on the range when Mirage or F18 fighters are diving and shooting at the target, as not all the pilots hit the target, and you begin to wonder how strong the buildings are.  After moving down to Melbourne to work at the Telecommunications Engineering Division, my last posting was to Wagga Wagga to provide technical training. 

After leaving the Airforce, I moved to Leeton to work with Ricegrowers co-operative (SunRice), to maintain rice colour sorters and other industrial equipment.  Ricegrowers was an Australian success story, processing over one million tonnes of rice each year, and exporting 85%.  To process this amount of rice, the co-op had seven rice mills operating 24x7 spread across the Riverina (unfortunately, due to changes in water policy, only two remain today).  To improve quality of the rice to meet customer expectations, rice colour sorters were installed at all the processing facilities.  These machines process between six and twelve tonnes of rice per hour, with the ability to eject substandard grains or foreign materials.  It is a bit of a shock when you see the materials that are rejected from the colour sorter, which would normally be consumed. 

Whilst at Ricegrowers, I learned all about automation, undertaking some interesting projects, which has assisted with some of the work here at the AAT.                                                                                                        

In 2008, I joined RSAA at SSO and worked on the 2.3m, SkyMapper and the last run of the 40” telescope before moving on to work back with defence at the over the horizon radar transmitter at Harts Range, Alice Springs.

In 2013, I joined the AAO and have managed some of the larger projects at the AAT, like the dome bogie refurbishment, shutter chain replacement and the introduction of supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA), a computer system for gathering and analysing real time data.  SCADA is used to monitor various sub systems in the AAT, such as the telescope hydraulic plant, primary mirror support system, and the generator and power system.  I was appointed to the SSO Observatory Manager position in May, after a period of temporary transfer from the Telescopes and Instruments Manager position.

I like to do home projects and travel and can’t wait until travel restrictions are lifted in order to see more of Australia.