The lockdown effect: Cooking on welding gas
WHEN Jason Green gets some spare time from his day job of welding and fabricating, the Alcatraz Cages & Animal Systems owner welds and fabricates.
In the past year he’s collected components to build a bush kitchen that’s made all his mates envious and he’s done it in between his ‘real’ work.
“I had a friend who was pulling down an old shearing shed. It had been standing for about 80odd years so I went out and pulled it down and brought it into town and built myself a nice kitchen out of it,” he told Dubbo Photo News, pleased he could create such a masterpiece from material you can no longer buy – it has to be found.
“I do appreciate being able to build things like the kitchen, I can turn my hand to pretty well anything and I’m always happy for a challenge and like being able to come up with the right solution.”
That’s obvious when you look at the vintage pub icebox he fixed up and installed, repairing the Slush Puppy machine that was turfed because it couldn’t be fixed, a machine that’s notoriously unreliable at the best of times.
“I’m loving it, mate. If something breaks down it’s not a problem, I just put my head to it and fix it. It doesn’t take much to just have a have a bit of a go, you just trust yourself to have a go at things,” he said.
Centrepiece of the camp kitchen is a four-door Aga stove – they’re hard to come by, they’re expensive, but Jason says they’re without a doubt the best stove in the world.
“There’s less and less of them
around these days, a lot went to scrap or were left out in the open when people bought newer, more modern stoves thinking that was going to be an improvement.”
As this project shows, the talented fabricator is always on the
lookout for interesting old things, and he doesn’t let any of it go.
“If you see something, you might not need it tomorrow but you might have a project some day down the line; so if you see good things for scrap, or for the right price, get it, don’t leave it until the day you want to do it and then have to pay top dollar,” Mr Green suggested, remarking that his mates and their families are fans of the set-up.
Ironically, Mr Green can thank the Covid lockdowns for giving him the time to build his bush kitchen.
“At some stages during lockdown I couldn’t get steel for my work jobs, I couldn’t get products, I couldn’t get floorboards or insulation for the kennels, so there was a lot of forced, unplanned downtime.”
Australia’s still suffering from mass shortages because of supply chain issues and Mr Green says he was still struggling to find floorboards for the premium dog kennels he builds.
“I can’t compromise by using cheaper products like pine boards because they flex, and when they flex the dogs’ toes get caught in the gaps, and if you’ve got a good working dog, he’s worth $50,000 a year to the operation,” he said.
“My father taught me, ‘If you’re going to do it, do it well, do it once and build a better Australia,’ because (in the long run) it’s easier and cheaper to do it that way.
“(That attitude) takes a bit longer sometimes, but the end result is there – and if everyone had that attitude, we’d have a much better Australia.
“These ongoing shortages are affecting so many different people in so many different ways.”