My Name is Dietmar Schwecke and I now reside on the Northern Beaches of Sydney I joined the PMG in 1972 as an Apprentice Telecommunications Tradesman straight out of High school and at the end of my first year I was assigned to Central Subs Installation Depot at 321 Kent Street doing Subs Install in the CBD from Day Street to Pitt Street and Margaret Street to Druitt Street up until I transferred to Sydney North in 1993 where I did subs install and maintenance from North Sydney to Palm Beach until I took a redundancy in August 2009. In my 37 years service I went from PMG to Telecom Australia to Telstra and from a 1st year ATT to STTO2. My collection only really started after being made redundant in 2009. I had a few various phones that you tend to pick up along the way, A 232 Pyramid, a 400, an Ericofon and the odd ACF here and there. I hadn’t even considered collecting telephones at that stage but one thing that I did want was a Candlestick phone and after that it was one phone after another. I initially concentrated on the phones that I had worked with over my 37 years so I targeted all the colours in the 801 series and the same in the 802 series. Then I wanted some of the specialised ACF’s Headset, volume control, 2 line tele and control lock. Somewhere along the way I bought some wooden phones, although apart from the type 1 PMBX’s, I had never worked with them but they had character, and on the collecting went to include payphones and PMBX’s, intercoms, NSU, Commanders and whatever interests me
— Dietmar Schwecke
The Collection…
