I’ve been pretty hands on and practical my whole life. Like I’d take apart things and put them back together. I used to go into the bush and build little houses out of sticks. I went to an all academic school in South Africa and they don’t do any engineering subjects just maths and all the academic subjects. I was pretty much set up to become a farmer. Then my parents told me we were going to move to New Zealand, and I had to choose my subjects at school. A friend was going to Hillcrest too and he was doing this engineering course that sounded pretty cool to me because they built a push cart the year before. Then they told me they were building a motorbike and I LOVE motorbikes. So I was like, “that sounds awesome.” Once I got started on building this motorbike I just sort of fell in love with it. I used to stay after school to 6pm building my school project and just having fun with it, learning. Ever since then I knew I wanted to go into the engineering sector.

I had a previous apprenticeship at a different company and I wasn’t very happy there because I didn’t feel like it was going to set me up for after my apprenticeship. So I decided to start looking for another job and there were a couple other places but one of my family friends told me about Longveld. I did a little bit of research on them and found out they did stainless steel. At the time all I wanted to do was tech welding and obviously we do predominantly tech. They weren’t advertising for a new apprentice or anything but I was just like “I’ll just give it a shot,” and sent in my CV. Then within the day they sent me an email wanting to meet and, yeah, that was pretty much how I got it!

Everything I know I’ve learnt here. Obviously I learnt a little bit from my previous job but nothing compared to here. I never touched a tech welder before I got here, and they just threw me in there and was like, “you’re doing your welding ticket in two weeks.” I’m quite hard on myself because I take a lot of pride in my work. Obviously you have to balance perfection with practicality and you’re working to deadlines so you can’t spend an insane amount of time on everything. The saying is: “it takes the same amount of time to do a bad weld as a good weld. You just have to be realistic.

That it’s going to take a while. It’s not something that can happen in five days or it’s not something that’s going to happen overnight. It takes time so you should just enjoy the process, worrying about money, worrying about how long it’s taking you, worrying about the person next to you that might be doing the apprenticeship that little bit faster doesn’t matter because at the end of the day it’s you – it’s all about you building on your skill. It’s all about you becoming the best tradesman that you can be. Money and stuff might not always come directly afterwards or at the same time but just be patient, it will come and you will become better the more you do it, the more you learn and better you’ll be.

I’ve been here for going on to three years. With all workplaces you form relationships and you come in as a shy person not knowing what you’re really doing. Then you get stuck with someone and you get to know them. Eventually, you’re just mates with everyone, you can work with anyone, talk to anyone. Yeah, just the camaraderie at Longveld is really good, we also have a four day work week which is awesome because I can sleep in on a Friday! Everyone here is knowlegeable, everyone is professional and they know what they’re talking about.

I would like to work my way up the company. I quite enjoy 3D modelling, CAD and all that stuff – so maybe to a role like that. I was thinking maybe in a few years time – underwater welding! Something challenging, something not a lot of people do because there’s a lot of fabricators out there and I don’t want to do the same old, I want to do something that really challenges and pushes the boundary and even if that puts my body on the line. There’s a whole bunch of training that goes into it.