MON DAY MOU RN I NG

“RIGHT now, it feels like I’m on holiday,” says Andrew ‘Gumpy’ Willoughby, a former assembly line worker at Holden’s Elizabeth vehicle assembly plant. I’m talking to him on Monday, 23 October – the first day of the rest of Andrew’s life. “To be honest, I’ve got a hangover!” he admits. “It hasn’t sunk in yet that I won’t be going back to build cars with the rest of the boys.”

Andrew left school in 1993 and did his first shift at Holden on 23 May, 1995. He was hands-on with three generations of Holdens: the VS, then VT-VZ – including all the cool stuff like Monaros and Us-export GTOS – and VE-VF, mainly hanging completed doors on the cars. “I got the nickname ‘Gumpy’ from Forrest

Gump,” he explains, referring to the movie where Tom Hanks’s character runs across America. “I had to run to keep up!”

Andrew treasures his memories. “I was 18 when I began,” he says. “We got a lot of training in what was known as the Pilot Room. There, they would have pre-production models more than a year before production so we could learn how to, and practice how to, put them together.

“In the VY and VZ days (from 2002) we had Peter Hanenberger as the boss. He was unbelievable. He was the bloke who set us up for all the export stuff – a great leader. Looking back now, it was unbelievable working on the line back then. We were smashin’ out all these awesome models – coupes, Caprices, the utes and the tonners, all-wheel-drive stuff.

“Apparently other car factories around the world couldn’t get over the fact that we could produce sedans, wagons, long-wheelbase and the tonner all on the same production line.

“Looking back now, I’ve worked on some awesome things. I saw the Monaro come back! To see a Holden as a GTO, the VS GTS-R, that was awesome at the time!”

Andrew admits that having an axe dangling over the operation has made things difficult in recent years, but when that knock-off bell rang in Elizabeth for the final time, he walked out with his head held high.

“For the past four or five years, and even for a couple of years before that, when no decision had been made, it was really hard to make any significant life plans,” he explains. “Now it’s like being 18 again and just starting out looking for a job.

“But I thoroughly enjoyed working here. I loved it. In 20 years’ time we’ll be talking to our kids and grandkids about what we used to do.”