Arthur John Treble
Arthur John Treble
(1922 - 2012)
Arthur John Treble was born on 27 June 1922 at Croydon Park, Sydney. His father was a high ranking NSW public servant being at some stages the Commissioner for Child Endowment and Jack Lang’s personal secretary.
He was educated at Croydon Park, Manly, and Waitara Public Schools, and later north Sydney High School. His first foray into tertiary education was in medicine at Sydney University in 1940 but he did not continue with this, enlisting in the RAAF as an aircraft electrician and trainee pilot. This war service took him to areas north of Australia such as Papua-New Guinea, Goodenough Island, New Britain and Bougainville.
After the war he enrolled in engineering at Sydney University, studying there between 1946 and 1951 under the Commonwealth Reconstruction Training Scheme and graduating as Bachelor or Engineering in Mechanical and Electrical Engineering. Upon graduation he found employment with AGL (Australian Gas Light – the major company supplying reticulated gas to Sydney.) AGL manufactured Town Gas from coal so there was a diverse range of engineering work required as well as the storage and reticulation systems. Treble’s work was very much hands on and he developed a reputation as the “Mr Fix-it” of AGL.
Later Town Gas was replaced by Natural Gas, and the company’s large fleet of vehicles were converted to Compressed Natural Gas, and this required much engineering work by Treble.
Late in his career he was appointed by AGL as a consultant to a subsidiary, NT Gas, supplying gas from South Australia to Darwin and the Northern Territory. After retirement from AGL he was consultant to a Malaysian company proposing to convert motor cars to natural gas. In retirement his interest in languages led him into teaching English to migrants for the Adult Migrant Education Service.
Arthur Treble never married. He died, aged 90, on 12 July 2012.
To access an oral history interview with Arthur John Treble please use this link:'
