Former colleagues shout out greetings as they spot George Judkins.
The former operations manager of Melbourne Water’s western treatment plant has been dragged back to his workplace of almost four decades to chat to Star Weekly about the highs and lows of climbing the ranks of sewage treatment, before he retired late last year.
Mr Judkins was “a local”, born and raised at Werribee and an alumnus of Werribee High, as he calls it (now Werribee Secondary College).
After school he studied draughtsmanship at Collingwood Technical College, which enabled him to secure a job – his first and only – with Melbourne Water in 1974.
He was transferred two years later to the Werribee Sewage Farm, where he remained until September last year.
“I drew sewage channels, pumping stations, all sorts of things,” Mr Judkins says.
His work ethic quickly paid off; he was appointed a technical officer of sewage treatment not long after starting and, ultimately, operations manager of the entire facility.
“I worked hard,” he says modestly.
Since he hung up the boots on his birthday late last year, Mr Judkins, 60, says it’s the people he worked with that he misses most.
“I guess I also feel attached to the site because I’ve spent 35 years of my working life here. I think of the history of the site.
“There were generations of people born here and, at one stage, there was about 350 employees – the biodiversity, the bird life, that integration of farming, birds, harmony with nature; it really describes how the plant operates,” he says.
Back when he started, the facility’s very own town, Cocoroc, was still home to one resident – the rest moved out after it became too expensive for the company to maintain – and five or six others lived elsewhere on-site.
He says it gave the place a strong sense of community.
Of the low-lights, Mr Judkins lists the smell.
“One of the great features of the site was it required very little energy, there was very little pumping required [in open channels].
“One of the drawbacks of that was the odour. It wasn’t until the ’80s that serious odour control started to be implemented. It became the ‘butt’ of all jokes,” he laughs.
Nowadays Mr Judkins spends most of his time either tending to his “huge” vegetable patch on his and his wife’s property at Teesdale, or on his road bike.
