We first asked Carter about his early days in the pipeline industry: “Well, I was raised on a hillside farm in Kentucky and I couldn’t believe that there wasn’t a better way to make a living than on that farm, so I left home at 17 and went to the oil-fields.

“I found out what a hard day’s work was, but I had too much pride to admit that I had made a mistake so I stuck it out. My first work in the oil fields was driving a winch truck and then later on I became a welder’s helper. I saw that the welders were making more money than anyone else on the job so I was determined to become a welder.

“I was a pipeline welder for about ten years and then I figured out I could make it in contracting. I started out in a small way in 1954 and for 14 years I was contracting in the States. I kept growing and putting back every dollar I could into the company. In 1966 competition was getting really tight and the unions were getting pretty radical so I came over here to Australia.

“When I first got here in 1966 I formed a joint venture with Woodhall called Australian Pipeline Construction (APC). I think the first bid we put in was for the 18 in. ring main for the Gas & Fuel. Woodhall had already won three or four mile of that pipeline. When I first came out here I watched them working on it. I knew they had no idea about what they were doing and that’s when I decided to come out here and get involved. I figured if they could show a profit I could make a fortune. Before I went back to the States the next section of the ring main came up we put a tender in and we came in second. The next one we tendered on was the Roma – Brisbane and we came in third on that.

“I brought 35 workers from the States together with their families. I chartered a Pan American Constellation to bring them out. There were 65 in the first that one and I brought out another 20 on a regular scheduled flight.

“Most of them stayed for about four years and I started to replace them with Australians as soon as I could, except for the side boom operators. There were a couple of Aussie side boom operators up in Queensland – the Robothams and the Prentice brothers. They had worked for Bechtel on the first pipeline, and many were good. Aside from them, Australia had good dozer operators but side booms were a new thing and they just didn’t know how to run them. Another hand I had to bring out was a bending engineer, Dalton Henderson. Benny Bowen, who was a good engineer, worked with Dalton and later on I was able to replace Dalton with Benny as Benny was good.

“Art Gaddy came out with me when we did a line for Esso. Art Gaddy and John Brennan were on that line together. George Farrow, he was my office manager, he is now living in Launceston.

“I did the Brooklyn – Corio gas pipeline for the Gas & Fuel Corporation. And that was union trouble, I mean one agitator got killed on that job; he was caught damaging equipment and while running from security he fell in the outfall sewer and got caught in the gate.

“You could reach an agreement with unions back then and two weeks later it was all gone. I sure got an education dealing with the unions here. In the States we had a contract and you could take them to court if they broke it, same as they could take you to court if you broke it. We still had problems but nothing like it was over here.”

Carter was involved in the early 1970s building the WAG oil pipeline and the ethane pipeline for Esso. Carter recalls: “What I remember most was that damn ethane line. I laid the onshore section and across the bay too.”

The Australian Pipeliner published the story of the building of the ethane pipeline in the January 2007 edition. Carter remembers the ethane pipeline was in the news, both on TV and in the newspapers: “On Channel 7 news they always had a still shot of me behind the news reporter whether they had anything to say about me or not. I had a 24-hour body guard with me for about three months.

“I had to send my wife and my youngest son back to the States where it would be safe. They would call the wives of workers of mine to find out whether they had a preference for what undertaker they wanted their husbands sent to. And things like that, I mean it was dirty.

“I brought the men ashore every night from my lay barge and took them out in the morning. When they left their cars in the parking lot their tyres would be slashed. I would just give them a new set every time they would do that. We were able to stop a lot of that; it didn’t hurt me too bad, in fact Esso reimbursed me for most money I paid out that way. Esso were a good outfit.

“On the onshore section where the pipe came up out of the trench, waiting for a tie-in, it was laying across skids and they went under the pipe and drilled, I don’t know whether they had a powered drill with a generator or not, but they drilled holes in the bottom of the pipe and squashed the coating over the hole and so then when you run the holiday detector across it wouldn’t pick it up. When we go to test it hydrostatically it’s a small hole, it’s a leak and a hell of a job to find. When we found the hole it was cost plus and Esso had to foot the bill.

“After that I sold up to Woodhall. In the joint venture I had 40 per cent and they had 60 and I was the operator. I ran the work as they didn’t have the people that knew how. It was getting to where, to me, it was no longer a challenge. I had got to the stage where I had to just about force myself to go out on the job. I knew that if I didn’t get out of it I was going to go broke. I sold out Woodhall at about 30 cents in the dollar.”

Moving on to the Moomba – Sydney Pipeline, Carter said: “I bid on it for Woodhall because I was just working for them then and we won the middle section, some 420 miles. We sublet a little bit of it to Saipem as they were having trouble getting pipe in because of the floods. When we got to the Lachlan River we had a problem and they wouldn’t listen to me so I walked away from them I said you don’t need me here if you don’t listen to me. I had my cattle property up at Tabulam.

“My property was at Tabulam between Tenterfield and Casino. I had 27,000 acres up there. I bought three big properties and seven smaller properties, but you know with the weather here there’s just no future in it. So I sold up and went to Tonga, I bought a hotel there for a million dollars which was one of the biggest mistakes I ever made.

“I went to the States after that. My mother and father were getting real old so I thought I better go and spend some time with them so I sold the hotel in October 1999 and I agreed to stay on for two months to make sure they knew how to run the place. My father passed away the next September, he was 94, and my mother lived for another two years.”

We then asked Carter about the formation of the pipeline association. He recalled: “The one reason we formed the Association was to get cooperation with each other to try to build up a nucleus of qualified workers for pipeline construction because there was a severe shortage of welders, side boom operators and ditching machine operators. Dick Plake and I were really the foundation members then Lucio, he came to the party.

“I was Vice-President of APLCA for five years, Dick was the first President. I never would accept being President but they kind of forced it upon me when I did that ethane line.

“The Association really kicked on with the government taking more notice we had more support from Gas & Fuel, Esso and AGL begun to get involved with us. I am amazed with just how much it has progressed. I can see from The Australian Pipeliner magazines that it has really grown from the little organisation that we started.”

In conclusion we asked Carter how he remembered those early days in Australia. He said: “The infancy of everything of getting started in Australia it was quite a challenge. Everybody I dealt with was new to the business and it was a challenge to everyone.”