Skatey...The life of Les Skate

Skatey
The Life of Les Skate
The Wine Industry
Eventually I had the opportunity to build a winery. The Yarra Yering Winery on Briarty
Road. The owner, Dr Bailey Carrodus, wanted something to start off with, a big steel shed.
So, I built it. Then he got me to enclose it all with bricks and he used that as his temporary
winery. He had big ideas for the future. I had subcontractors to help me with the building. I
had every tradie needed to build the construction, and most of them were my mates.
(They weren’t when we started, but they were afterwards.)
He had big ideas for the
future.
That Yarra Yering winery started off with the very
basic things, four walls and a concrete floor. His
grapes were starting to come through, so he used that
shed until such time that we built a big cellar out from
it at ground level. We dug down three to four metres
and put a big retaining wall against the footings of the building. We put big concrete walls
around this great big hole in the ground and poured a big thick slab on top of it which we
had to form up to hold the concrete. That was my first experience with forming concrete. I
knew the concreter, and he said to me,
‘I’ll supply all the stuff, you can put it together Les.’
‘Ok.’ I said
‘I’ll shout you to dinner.’ … he promised.
He never did!
If you can imagine an area as big as a house, with beams and pillars holding everything up.
Then we had to put in all these metal sections, each about a metre square. They all
interlocked and sat on top of the beams. Dr Carrodus had an engineer/architect design it
all. When I stripped it, he said to the Doc, ‘That’s the best strip I’ve ever seen.’ I think I put
so much work into it and perhaps worried about it more so, than someone who could get it
done quickly.
I think I put so much work into it, and
perhaps worried about it more so, than
someone who could get it done quickly.
That worked out so well. He had a beautiful cellar. He went on and filled it up, and I said to
him,
‘You must have a million bottles of wine here, why don’t you sell some?’
‘Nope! Not ready yet.’ was his reply.
I knew they were having a bit of a battle with money, but he said he would not sell. He had
his mind set on something and he stuck to it.
On top of the slab, which was the floor of the original steel building that I’d put up, we
built about a fifteen square home. All built out of Besser blocks. All the boys called it
Pentridge!
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