Short Circuits #13

Scabs, songs, substations, San Francisco 49ers, solar panels and Sir Tom Playford

Welcome to 2026! Everything is on fire, both literally and figuratively, but at least the batteries are working.

We’ve a been a bit quiet here on the article front, but we’ve got some big plans for 2026! So to kick things off please enjoy a series of short energy-related stories which literally define apropos of nothing… or anything!

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SEQEB Scabs

In early 1985 a long running dispute between the Electrical Trades Union and the South East Queensland Electricity Board (SEQEB, effectively the predecessor of Energex) over the use of contractor labour boiled when over 1,000 workers were sacked after striking and defying return-to-work orders. Actions from sympathetic coal miners and power station operators triggered electricity supply issues, escalating the issue and turning it into one of the bitterest labour disputes this country has seen.

Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen, Queensland’s longest serving and definitely not corrupt premier, took the opportunity to declare a state of emergency and enacted legislation forbidding strikes and picketing by electricity workers as well as including provisions for dismissal, fines and confiscation of worker’s property (i.e. their homes) for striking workers.

Joh also dispatched the police chief Terry Lewis, who was more crooked than a Twisty, to maintain police presence outside SEQEB depots against picketing workers. To say things were heated is something of understatement.

Ultimately the 1,000 sacked workers never returned. It was a significant win for the archconservative Sir Joh and a brutal repudiation of the strike which largely neutered the union movement in Queensland.

One of the sacked sparkies was a guitarist in a punk band from Goodna called La Fetts.¹ They refashioned an existing song into a new song called SEQEB Scabs, and it became an anthem of the dispute, featuring heavily on Brisbane’s alternative community radio station 4ZZZ.

According to 4ZZZ, the politicised arm of the Queensland Police – Special Branch – was even deployed to raid the 4ZZZ offices to confiscate copies of the tape.

Here’s their catchy 1 minute 30 seconds of 1980s underground punk rage.

Tom Zubrycki’s 1987 film Friends and Enemies, which includes an energetic live performance of SEQEB Scabs, is an excellent contemporary account of the story and features extensive interviews from both the sacked workers, the ETU and the government.

Basslink, the Song

Keeping the musical theme going, I stumbled across this absolutely doozy of a song. Please don’t ask me how.

I have no information about who wrote it or how it came about (it appears officially commissioned). If you know the back story, please do tell!

However do not confuse it for Jean de la Baptiste’s 2021 Basslink, which is an absolute banger.

Substation for sale

As spotted by Ryan M. on linkedIn, another year, another wildly overpriced former substation is up for sale in Australia’s landlord mecca.

If you thought unsustainable debt, shoddily built shoebox apartments or the destruction of social housing during a housing crisis were clear evidence of a rotten housing system, it’s actually this. Spending over a million dollars for 50 square metres of unsuitable and probably-not-contaminated space. It is brick though, so think of the energy savings.

And on the plus side, it’s zoned R2, which will allow the successful purchaser to subdivide that 50 square metres into a duplex. Hooray!

But what if your housing tastes run more to active substations? Well you’re in luck! Ausgrid is flogging the land around a bunch of their currently operating substations. I’m sure your architect will appreciate the challenge.

Sir Thomas Playford Museum

I was in Adelaide for Australia Day long weekend, participating in bicycle tourism and following the Tour Down Under (aka drinking Coopers and FUIC in 40 degree weather).

Monday 26th was brutally hot, and not particularly conducive to bicycle riding, so we went looking for activities which did not involve getting heat stroke on a bicycle.

Jelmer A., friend of the blog and fellow Coopers enthusiast, discovered the Sir Thomas Playford, ETSA Museum (and immediately knew I would be frothing to go).

The museum is run by volunteers and was founded in 1996, just before the Electricity Trust of South Australia was privatised, and celebrates objects from ETSA’s tenure and the private Adelaide Electric Supply Company which preceded ETSA. The museum is also named for Tom Playford, the conservative premier of South Australia who formed ETSA in 1946, and later had a power station named in his honour.²

A shed full of historical electrical ephemera is extremely my shit, but sadly the museum is only open on Tuesdays. So it will have to wait until another visit!³

If you’ve been to the museum, or this story has inspired you to jump on the next Monday evening flight to Adelaide, please provide a review for us!

@CallideCAgainAgainAgainAgainAgain

(Currently Speaking has a new marketing strategy aggressively courting zillenials with weirdly niche references)

ICYMI, Callide C had yet another little drama – on 15th January a “control system fault” led to both units tripping offline and a “precautionary evacuation of all personnel”. Yikes.

Everyone was safe and the units returned to service on a few days later. CS Energy attributed the fault to an IT network error, to which I can only assume someone decided that maybe Callide’s woes could be fixed by turning it off and on again.

Suspicious Substations

Thanks to Matt G. for what might the most Currently Speaking-coded story ever.

Fans of the San Francisco 49ers NFL team have latched on to a conspiracy theory that a substation next to their training ground is causing health issues.

His circle not mine. Personally I would have orientated the oval callout over the entire substation, but what would I know, I’m not a quantum biology practitioner.

Despite making it to the division playoffs (where they were thumped by the Seattle Seahawks 41-6, missing out on a spot at the Super Bowl), their 2025 season has been dogged by injuries to key players – multiple torn MCLs and ACLs and a plantar-fascia injury.

A logical explanation would be that NFL is a notoriously rough sport; as one journalist notes:

“There’s three kinds of football players. Guys who have been injured, guys who are already injured, and guys who will be injured.”

But “football = rough” is apparently not an interesting story. Scary invisible electromagnetic waves propagating through thin air causing bodily harm is way more compelling.

Amateur epidemiologists on Twitter have been speculating about the relationship between an allegedly higher-than-normal injury rate and the presence of the substation for a while, but the theory really got legs when one wannabe MAHA influencer and “EMF consultant”⁴ posited a rambling theory about soft tissue damage due to electromagnetic waves.

There is of course a fair body of work which has examined (and legislated and standardised) electromagnetic safety – studies usually conducted by trained epidemiologists – but for upset fans looking to latch on to a compelling explanation they’re willing to listen to a guy who’s day job is promoting an app that helps users “safely harness the sun's healing power for optimal health”, which I take to mean promoting perineum sunning.⁵

Also, other than a bunch of chuds in the Twitter thread writing Elon-coded things like “compelling” and “this is really interesting!” someone rather inconveniently pointed out that there are a tonne of houses directly across the street, the residents of whom would receive many times the dosage of extremely low frequency radio waves than the 49ers.

In any case, like most good conspiracy theories it now sits somewhere in the liminal space between earnestly held view and winking in-joke.

PS No one tell Ausgrid that living next to a substation could cause soft tissue injuries.

Sideways Solar Panels

Over the summer holidays you might have found yourself travelling along the Tullamarine Freeway to or from the airport.

Where the Tulla branches off from the Calder Freeway, there’s a section of yellow noise barrier topped with glass panels.

But if you look closely, those aren’t just any glass panels – they’re solar panels.

Installed in 2007 there are 210 solar panels producing enough energy to “power three small homes or up to 10 per cent of the electricity required to illuminate the [freeway] lights” (lol).

If anyone knows more about the project, including if the panels are still operational, I’d love to know more.

Something to keep an eye out for next time you’re travelling along that stretch of road.

1. Previously called the Bondage Cowboys and Immortal Corpses, which are properly great punk band names.

2. At 27 years, Playford also holds the record for longest serving premier or prime minister.

3. Instead I spent Monday in the air-conditioning of the South Australian Museum, which is well worth a visit.

4. He’s also a Board Certified Quantum Biology Practitioner, which is apparently a real piece of paper the American Naturopathic Medical Certification Board will issue you for USD 800.

5. Vitamin D production from UVB is also an extremely well understood thing. I’m not sure which MAHA suckers are paying for an app which tells them to get out and get some sun.