Yesterday the son of Ukrainian migrants who first came to the Bonegilla camp in 1948 hung up his hard hat on more than four decades with Bradken in Wodonga.

From a foundry cadet in 1965 when as part of a team of four he raced to load the scrap metal on a trolley for the furnace, Mr Katchmarsky left the Queen Street foundry yesterday as the outgoing manufacturing manager.

He says he undertook external training opportunities but learnt the trade on the foundry floor.

“I’m leaving with mixed emotions, this has been such a big part of my life,” he said.

“As kids we would play here on the flood plain and I was always fascinated by the glow from the heat treatment oven.

“I couldn’t work out why when the metal was glowing red hot it didn’t just melt.”

Yesterday Mr Katchmarsky showed The Border Mail around the foundry, where scrap is converted into molten metal and remoulded for among others the mining industry, trains and Kenworth trucks.

An electric arc furnace zaps the scrap into a liquid as men turn a huge wheel to spill the metal into the moulds.

Mr Katchmarsky, 61, was greeted by one and all, handshakes from men shaped by the repetition of hard work.

He said it was a far cry from the days when most processes were manual, not automated and over-ridden by the demands of occupational health and safety.