Centre Industries
187 Allambie Heights Road, Allambie Heights, NSW.

Centre Industries electronics factory was established in 1961 at Allambie Heights, NSW to provide employment for cerebral palsied (CP) adults working alongside able-bodied people. 

As people with cerebral palsy completed their schooling, Neil McLeod, OBE (1909-1993) had a vision of establishing a large factory where people with physical disabilities, after training, would work side by side with able-bodied people. This vision became a reality and, in 1961, Stage 1 of Centre Industries was completed. The facility was largely built with volunteer labour and donated materials, totally organised, and coordinated by Neil.

They initially manufactured 2000 Type Relay equipment for telephone exchanges. This was followed by the manufacture of LM Ericsson RAF type crossbar switching set, high-speed relays, teleprinter subscriber units, and traffic route testers.

Centre Industries was established as a cerebral palsied (CP) adult training unit for The Spastic Centre of New South Wales in 1961 and was built by volunteers and charities totally organised and coordinated by Neil McLeod, OBE (1909-1993).

Mr. Bruce Hume was the first manager, and he was able to combine his engineering competence with the rehabilitation of CP trainees, to a worthwhile degree. The factory management team included the medical and therapeutic aspects and engineering services. It was a mix that had never been tried before.

The philosophy of Centre Industries had not been tested in Australia or overseas, because rehabilitation worldwide was wedded to the sheltered workshop approach, and people were horrified at the idea of mixing a labour force of able-bodied among a heavily handicapped CP workforce. Added to this, the operation was to be on a strictly commercial basis, aiming for profitability in telecommunications manufacture. It had for its objective, the same measure of efficiency generated by our manufacturing and rehabilitation departments, as in an engineering work situation.

The company required plant & equipment for manufacturing and Hume’s previous employer Pope Electronic Industries was closing. However, they did not have funds to tender and were forced to make an appeal to the public under the title ‘Operation Desperation’.

In September 1961 they put a tender to NSW Manager of Pope Industries and Sir Bertram Pope, his principal, and needed to have a decision before the end of that month. The successful tender was, however, Sir Arthur Warner of Electronic Industries.

The labour force of Pope Electronics amounted to fifty people. They had been placed under notice of dismissal. As Centre Industries required skilled staff, they were offered a job by Neil McLeod and forty-five accepted the offer.

Prior to its closure, Pope Industries had taken over the Telephone Exchange 2000 Type Relay Set from the previous manufacturer Thom and Smith, when they had gone out of business, and because they had taken over the experienced engineering staff, there was no need for effective engineering documentation. All the documentation and the skills were in the engineers' heads. This was an interesting situation because Sir Bertram had the machines and stock and badly needed the money, but the machines were useless to Sir Arthur Warner unless he could get the experienced labour to man them, and Centre Industries had the labour under contract.

Sir Arthur Warner rang Neil McLeod and said he had been informed that we had ‘locked up’ the Pope Electronics labour force and that Centre Industries were not in the position to use them for some time, so he offered to take them off our hands until we were ready. Neil brazened his way out of this by saying that we already had work for them, and they were required for his own projects. That made Warner hot under the collar and he said, among other things, that he had never personally wanted the Pope Electronic deal at all, but that was part of the rationalisation scheme which he had worked out with Sir Bertram Pope.

Neil then said, ‘Would you like Centre Industries to take the Telecommunications Division over from you?” He blustered a bit, saying he could not take that sort of money from a charity. Neil countered that by describing the rehabilitation aspects that we expected to flow from our entry into the field of telecommunications. Neil referred to his statement that he was not really interested in Pope Electronics and then Neil said, ‘I have the authority to take your place in this deal for Pope Electronics, under the same conditions, and the same terms of payment, as your contract with Sir Bertram Pope. If you, on your part, have the authority to accept it, we can go ahead immediately.
By querying his authority to accept anything that he did in the company of Electronic Industries, Neil clinched the deal. You can imagine that he wasted no time in going to the Pope Industries General Manager and saying that Sir Arthur Warner had agreed to Centre Industries taking the place of Electronic Industries in their deal with him, under the same conditions and terms of payment.

I said, ‘We will have a cheque for $40,000 this day week, and the balance on delivery of the plant, tooling, stores, and raw material on valuation, but no goodwill is to be involved’.[1]

Over the next 11 years, the Centre Industries factory was extended on three occasions, following the winning of major contracts from Telecom (Telstra), Sagem, and GTE Australia Ltd.

In 1974, Neil resigned as a Director of The Spastic Centre to take up the full-time position of Managing Director, Centre Industries. At this stage, Centre Industries was employing some 300 people with physical disabilities and 200 able-bodied people.

So successful was the Centre Industries model of providing training and employment opportunities for people with physical disabilities, that a similar factory was established in Kansas USA in 1975.

Fire destroyed the Head Office and factory of The Spastic Centre at Allambie Heights on Sunday 16 December 2007.

[1] Nothing Is Impossible. Neil McLeod, July 1986