WHEN the contractors working on the $500,000 fire management system upgrade at Millicent and District Hospital needed an experienced earth moving company, the choice was obvious.
Millicent firm Teagle Excavations had literally turned the first sod on the site when the hospital was built in 1964.
The family-owned company was founded in the mid-1950s and it has worked on many other extensions at the hospital over the past five decades.
With founder Len Teagle and his son Geoff at the helm, Teagle Excavations has “moved the dirt” for such projects as one of the nursing home extensions in the 1990s and the Banksia House day care centre in the 1980s.
When the hospital underwent a $2.35m redevelopment in the 1990s, Teagle Excavations was among the contractors.
Len is aged well in his 80s and has stepped away from the management of the business.
However, he still takes an interest in its activities and recently called at the Mount Gambier Road business to check on the progress of the essential safety project.
He said the “new” Millicent Hospital was built on the site of the showgrounds.
“A.W. Baulderstone had the building contract and we prepared the ground for them,” Len said.
“There was a lot more manual labour in those days.”
Among his employees in the 1960s were Trevor Jennings, Bruce Grant and Gerry Grapendaal.
As he has advanced in years, Len has also been required to see the inside of the hospital as a patient.
“I have always been looked after very well,” he said.
In 1964, Geoff had recently left Millicent High School and much of the hospital work was done with a shovel.
The hospital and the rest of the Millicent central business district occupies a limestone ridge and the sophisticated digging equipment of nowadays was not available in the post-war years.
Geoff”s journey in life began at Millicent’s first hospital in nearby Emily Street and it was named in memory of pioneering Scottish doctor Andrew Thyne.
Geoff and Len’s company now has 20 employees and a number of other projects on its books.
Teagle Excavations is working at St Anthony’s School and rehabilitating a former “hot rocks” drilling site near Penola.
It is also involved in drain clearing and upgrading access roads to the wind turbines along the Woakwine Range.
