Ovens, Trains, and Camellias: The Diverse Career of a Female Engineer - Life Bursts Episode 56

In this captivating episode of Life Bursts with Matt and Sarah, we continue the fascinating story of Wendy Azadegan, a trailblazing mechanical engineer turned camellia enthusiast. Wendy's journey takes us through her experiences as one of the few women in engineering during her time, her adventures in designing household appliances, and her current passion for gardening and community service.

Wendy's story is a testament to resilience, adaptability, and the joy of embracing life's diverse experiences. From designing locomotives to fixing ovens in Fiji, her narrative is peppered with humour, wisdom, and practical insights.

Key Moments:

1. Breaking Barriers in Engineering:
"I was still a fairly strange, forceful, loud person. And as an engineer, mechanical engineer, it's quite rare, apparently. It's very difficult to find an engineering salesperson to go to expos and promote things because engineers tend to be extremely quiet and reserved and shy, rather like my father."

2. Designing Washing Machines:
"Apparently it had experimental new valves in it which they were, which were being promoted as anti-knock. So you wouldn't get a water hammer. Noises in the house every time the washing machine turned off and on all the time?"

3. Baking Tips from an Oven Designer:
"The whole purpose is to get heat into the food. You want the heat to get into the food. So glass, is a glass a good conductor of heat? No. No. So why would you put in a Pyrex dish?"

4. Unexpected Holiday Job:
"So we went around fixing people's gas ovens. On our holiday, I became the Electrolux technician of the week. If I had known that was going to happen, I would have taken spare parts with me because I knew how to fix them."

5. Life Advice:
"What I've found is that if life presents you with a certain situation, instead of begrudging it, work on that situation and enjoy it. Because after a while, things change and then you have different life experiences, different tasks to solve."

FAQ:

Question: How did Wendy manage being one of the few women in mechanical engineering?
Answer: Wendy embraced her uniqueness, noting that her outgoing personality was rare among engineers. She adapted her clothing choices to blend in and focused on her work, often being promoted as a "token woman".

Question: What was one of Wendy's most significant contributions to household appliance design?
Answer: Wendy played a major role in redesigning upright cookers and built-in ovens. She worked on the many parts of ovens, ensuring functionality across various sizes and types (gas and electric).

Question: How did Wendy's engineering career transition into her current passion?
Answer: After retiring from engineering at 69, Wendy became heavily involved with the Camellia Society. Her love for gardening, which was identified as a potential career path in her youth, became her main hobby. She now volunteers at Stangate House, helping maintain the gardens and organizing open days.

Wendy's story is a reminder that life's journey often takes unexpected turns. Her ability to adapt, learn, and find joy in various fields – from engineering to baking to gardening – is truly inspiring. Whether she's designing train simulators or whipping up scones for a garden event, Wendy approaches each task with enthusiasm and expertise.

Her experiences highlight the importance of embracing change, continuous learning, and finding passion in one's work. As Wendy aptly puts it, "enjoy the process" – a piece of wisdom applicable to all aspects of life.

This episode of Life Bursts not only provides a glimpse into the life of a remarkable woman but also offers valuable insights into the evolution of household technology, the challenges faced by women in STEM fields, and the joy of pursuing diverse interests throughout one's life.

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Episode Transcript:

**Sarah Freeman:**

Welcome to Life Bursts. I'm Sarah.
**Matthew Carratt:**

And I'm Matt. Well, trains, white goods and camellias. We've got all that to come as we continue to hear Wendy's story.
**Sarah Freeman:**

Yes, welcome to Life Bursts with Matt and Sarah. And today we are continuing our conversation with Wendy. But if you didn't hear part one, don't worry, it's okay. You can catch up at another time. We're going to give a little bit of a recap though, for people who may not have. Yeah, got that first part. So the part of the story that we're really up to right now is that you are madly in love with a guy.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

Yep.
**Sarah Freeman:**

And you want. You just want to marry him. And you've been to university before, but you kind of just kept stopping. Your father was one that invented the dishwasher and you've shared some life adventures with that. But yes, we are at the part where a man has said, who you want to marry, has said, you gotta go back to Uni if you wanna marry me. And because you're madly in love with him. And now you have been married for how long?
**Wendy Azadegan:**

Six months.
**Sarah Freeman:**

Okay. Yeah.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

So I rocked up an enrolment day at the Uni. This is before electronic forms and everything was in paper and I filled out my application form and it did take rather a long time.
**Matthew Carratt:**

But by the way, you're in your 30s at this point.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

Yeah, I'm 32 now. And I reapplied to do fourth year and they accepted it. And I found out six months later that apparently there is a time limit on the duration of your degree when you start and when you finish. I had exceeded that time limit, but I didn't know anything about that. So I just merrily rocked up thinking I could automatically finish. And they had consulted together and decided to let me come through and do my fourth year again, even though I exceeded the limit. But they weren't expecting me. So they had no fourth year project for me to do. And they got me to repeat a project that had been done in the previous year. But they got peculiar results and they needed to do it again. And this year, this time around, there was one other woman in the class.
**Sarah Freeman:**

That's exciting.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

Wasn't the only one. And I was accustomed to the system also. I was accustomed to working. I was accustomed to starting at 7:30, having 30 minutes for lunch and not 31 minutes and finishing at 4:30 exactly. And I had just got married. I had three kids to look after. I had a loud, opinionated, noisy husband, loud children who all Thought I should be able to listen to four people at the same time and answer them appropriately. And I had to take control. Instead of being a quiet little person who lived on my own, to looking after a family. And now I was going back to unique. So I treated it in the same manner as work. I got to uni. I spent the entire duration of the day studying, whereas before I'd go for a walk in the park or go to the art gallery or go to the library and do fun things. No, no, no. I spent every minute of the day working because when I got home, studying was really hard and having free time and things went quite well. During the year. There was an incident. One of the students decided to start putting up pornography on a pin board in the common room where we studied. And then this expanded to a series of six partitions covered in it. And I was working back there one late afternoon. They'd all gone home and I decided that I didn't like this. So I got a big texture colour and started colouring in clothes on all the ladies. But texture colours give me a headache. I think it's the chemicals in them, right? And also, I didn't have an unlimited supply and it was rather time consuming giving them clothes. I thought, this, this can't go on. I. I'll just rip them all up and put them in the bin. So I did. I destroyed the whole lot, put them in the bin, finished my assignment and went home. The next day I came in and the mood was really weird in the common room and people were in hushed little corner groups discussing things. And I said to one of the guys I chatted with, he said, what's going on? It's really strange. He said, oh, someone came in and destroyed so and so's art collection and they don't know who it was. I said, well, I know who it was. Who? Me. I destroyed it. And of course, you realise at this stage I'm very religious. I become a Baháʼí good, proper person, I say my prayers every day, I do the fast and I believe in living a good life. And I didn't approve of this. So later I was asked in to see one of the senior lecturers. He said that the person whose artwork I had destroyed wants compensation because of all these expensive magazines he had to buy to get all these pictures. And I launched into a tirade and I accused the lecturer of failing in his duties to look after us because he provided him with the extra petitions. He knows that there are two women in the class, members of the Public and the secretarial staff may occasionally come into our common room and this is totally inappropriate. And I absolutely refused to pay compensation. Also, I was broke. This is the other half of my motivation. There's no way stuck to your gun. And he was.
**Matthew Carratt:**

Yeah.
**Sarah Freeman:**

Taken back.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

You have to also understand that I was a mature age student at this stage. I was 32 and all the other students were like 18. No, no, they'd be about 20, 21. There were a couple of mature eight students in the class, but the rest were quite young, so nothing more was ever said about it.
**Matthew Carratt:**

Right. You made your mark.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

Yes. And of course in industry now. Oh, you get sacked for that.
**Matthew Carratt:**

Yeah, yeah.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

It. That sort of thing's totally inappropriate. But they didn't realise what sort of world they were moving into.
**Matthew Carratt:**

So did you find there were other. Other things like that where it was difficult being a woman? In that there were two of you now, but in that environment, no, that.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

Was the only thing that ever happened.
**Matthew Carratt:**

Yeah. Good.
**Sarah Freeman:**

That's excellent.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

I was still a fairly strange, forceful, loud person. And as an engineer, mechanical engineer, it's quite rare, apparently. It's very difficult to find a engineering salesperson to go to expos and promote things because engineers tend to be extremely quiet and reserved and shy, rather like my father. But I had to change personalities after I got married and I could stand up for myself quite well and I never. I'm also quite thick and I don't notice things. So if there was any discrimination, I never noticed it.
**Matthew Carratt:**

Right. So got on with it.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

Yes. I was more promoted as a sort of token woman than discriminated against because there was so rare being a mechanical woman and a mechanical engineer. There's a few more in civil and electrical, but not mechanical. And it was a very good career for a woman, actually, because it's mostly desk work on a computer these days and I never get dirty. Except when I graduated, my husband said, we can go anywhere, you can get a job. And I thought this was going to be very difficult. Before the previous time I did engineering, you have to have work experience. And I'd written out job applications to get work experience, but I want to disguise the fact that I was a girl, so I just put W. Bales and subsequent to that, a curious thing happened. One day when my mother was collecting the mail, the man who lived diagonally opposite us came over and spoke to my mother and said, I didn't know you had a son. I don't have a son. Yes, you do. No, I don't. Yes, you do. No, I don't. He was the personnel manager at Mitsubishi.
**Matthew Carratt:**

Okay.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

And I'd written an application there under W. Bales, a mechanical engineering student. He had just assumed I was a bloke. And I did get work there, but it was a really stupid job. I was in repack. I had to take things out of boxes and put them into new boxes and in the packaging department. Nothing to do with my career at all. It was production like work but. And I was very good at it actually. It's quite good with my hands. So I thought getting a job would be really hard. And also there's this expression, it's not what you know, but who you know. And I thought this is a very bad expression. It's very prejudiced. It discriminates against people. So anyway, I have some references from members of the family members of the family or my father's friends who were also engineers and I rock up at a job interview with railways. It turns out the man who's interviewing me was at this guy who gave me a reference his house the day before for a barbecue.
**Sarah Freeman:**

Okay, well we're gonna leave it there and we'll come back straight after this of Life Bursts with Matt and Sarah.
**Matthew Carratt:**

Welcome back to Life Bursts with Sarah and Matt. And we continuing Wendy's story this week. Wendy, you, we've left you hanging. You've seen a fellow engineer across the room at a party. You've been looking for work. What happened next?
**Wendy Azadegan:**

Well, I sent an application to the railways and I got a job with the railways in Port Augusta.
**Matthew Carratt:**

Okay.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

So we sold all our heaters because we thought it's hot in Port Augusta. And we packed up our house and moved to Port Augusta. Now the whole of the engineering office had been shifted down to Adelaide. And then they realised they still needed someone in Port Augusta. So I became the only mechanical engineer in the drawing office in Port Augusta. And one of my jobs was to make print off drawings. Now these were full size drawings of locomotives. And when I say full size, they were the length of a locomotive and you print them in a great big printer and they come out wet. And then I would roll them out on the engineering office floor to dry and then take them out to the workshop and they would tape them up to the side of a locomotive and the electrical tradesmen would go through so they had all the diagrams there, what's meant to be behind it and go through and service the locomotives and also any other parts that needed to be done as well. And also when people went on leave, you would relieve their position. So from time to time I was in charge of the paint shop and the wheel shop and the motor shop and different things. So I got lots of varied experience working up there. But I had my own great big office and I was the only person there, okay. Which seemed to be fine. I had little design projects and one of the most curious jobs I had, that they were complaining that when they used the jib that used to. It's like a crane that's supported on the post and they used to pick up the wheel axles with it, which are several tonnes, and ship them from the different turning machines and presses. They said when it moves, the building vibrates. So I got the diagrams of the building construction and I spent a couple of days trying to work out all the forces on it. And then I was trying to work out how much force goes in it when it moves. I thought, hang on a minute, it's on a bearing. No force is meant to go through a bearing torsionally (sic). That's the whole point of a bearing, that it will spin. So that shouldn't happen. There should be no force. The bearing's gone. So I rocked out to the workshop and told the foreman, the bearing is gone. Now, this is very bad news because this is a crane and in order to service the crane, they have to bring the other crane, which is used for lifting locomotives, all the way up the workshop to the other end and they have to take. Take away all the brackets and equipment that are in the way so they can shift it all the way up the other end. They have to work over the weekend and get overtime. Several people have to do it. Lift this jib crane up. And he said that if it was not broken, my name would be mud. I didn't know this. Anyway, apparently when they lifted it up, it was in a hundred pieces. It was definitely broken.
**Sarah Freeman:**

Well done.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

So they replaced it. It all worked excellent. Yes. When I was up there, when you go out into the workshops, you have to wear steel cats, long sleeves for. In case you walk past someone who's welding. You don't want welding stuff to get on you, so it has to be cotton or something solid, not synthetics, and covered right down to your ankles and your steel cuts. Every time. I went out the workshop, about to step in there, and I realised I'm wearing sandals all the way back to the engineering building, changing my steel caps all the way back out again. Eventually I just gave up wearing sandals and shoes. I just wore my steel caps all day long. Now, as it happened at that Time. The fitting of ladies size steel caps was just perfect for me. I know other people who complained about the misery they had wearing uncomfortable shoes, but for me they were perfect. I wore them when I went home. I wore them all weekend, especially out on picnics because we were near Alligator Gorge and Wilpena and Wilmington. We used to go out and have great picnics when you're at Port Augusta. Very nice place for going on picnics. And they're good for climbing hills and gardening. Great. I wore them on holidays. I love to buy steel caps. But after wearing them for several years, I could no longer wear high heels. I haven't worn them since. My ankles just didn't have that skill anymore to hold me up after wearing flats for so long.
**Sarah Freeman:**

What shoes are you wearing right now?
**Wendy Azadegan:**

Sandals? Yes. I don't own heels.
**Sarah Freeman:**

No, I'm eating. If they were still cap.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

No, no, they changed the size.
**Sarah Freeman:**

Oh, okay.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

Yes. Maybe it suited everyone else, but they no longer were perfect and comfortable anymore.
**Sarah Freeman:**

Take note. Still cap.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

Yes, yes, yes. Bad luck. Anyway, so I was very little happy vegemite up there. Then I. The family wasn't that happy in Port Augusta because the only people my husband could speak to in Farsi were in Adelaide. And we used to come to Adelaide a lot, but they wanted to go back. So I applied for a transfer and unfortunately for someone in the office, he got diagnosed with a terminal illness. And suddenly they rang me up and said, can you come tomorrow? So I called a family meeting. I got the kids out of school, brought them home and we consulted together. We had a big whiteboard and talked about all the different aspects of it. And we decided, yes, I would accept this job in Adelaide, but not tomorrow, the day after. So I had to go down to Adelaide to work during the week and come back up by train at the weekend. And then we bought a house in Adelaide was actually Bradbury.
**Matthew Carratt:**

Right.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

We came down for one weekend and found a house in the hills. In the hills with a big workshop for my husband.
**Sarah Freeman:**

Did you find any heaters? Because you would have had.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

Oh, well, this. During this stage where I was working in Adelaide, one during winter, it got cold. Apparently they tried to light the wood fire that was in the lounge room, the heat. And it smoked, of course, because it hadn't been used for years. So they're all sitting there freezing and crying with all the smoke and being miserable and I wasn't there and they had to go and buy a radiator. So when I came home at the weekend, we owned a radiator Again, because it actually gets quite cold. Port Augusta, the time to go out in Port Augusta for, like, holidays and things. In Adelaide, we go out in summer, but in Port Augusta, you go out in autumn and winter. That's the time you go sightseeing. In summer, you stay indoors. And spring's very windy.
**Matthew Carratt:**

Right.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

And a lot of people up there, they put aluminium foil over their windows in summer to keep the sun out. It's a cheap way of air conditioning. And we had a evaporative, call it in the house, the portable one. But we were right next to the main line.
**Matthew Carratt:**

Okay.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

We were in the railway house right next to the main line, the place where they used to idle the locomotives when they were waiting for another train to pass. They don't turn them off when they have to wait because it drains the batteries and they can't start it again. So they tend not to turn locomotives off.
**Matthew Carratt:**

So serenity.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

And they make a lot of noise. And we wanted the window open. And one night my husband said if he had an RPG 7, he'd use it. He said, what's that? He said, it's a rocket.
**Matthew Carratt:**

Yep. So it was a little inconvenient, but.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

We had outside lighting from the civil engineering car park, so I could go outside at midnight and put the washing out. Our backyard was permanently lit and we lived only two houses away from the mechanical engineering building. So I could see my backyard and our crooked pergola that we'd built from the office window.
**Sarah Freeman:**

And your washing.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

And the washing. And I could go home at lunchtime and have some eggs and do a load of washing and come back to work again.
**Sarah Freeman:**

Yeah, it's very convenient.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

It was very convenient.
**Sarah Freeman:**

Convenient. Well, we will be back to hear more of Wendy's story straight after this. Here on Life Bursts with Matt and Sarah. Welcome back to Life Bursts, here with Matt and Sarah, today we're chatting with Wendy. It is part two. So you can go back, like on our YouTube and Facebook pages, and. And you can catch up with part one if you'd like. Wendy, we are at the point where you are kind of in between Port Augusta and moving back to Adelaide to Bradbury.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

Yes. So before I move back, I just mentioned being a woman engineer and what do you wear?
**Sarah Freeman:**

Yes, that's a good question.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

I had no role model being the second person to study mechanical engineering at Adelaide Uni and the previous one 20 years before me, there was no standard for what a female mechanical engineer would wear. And besides, up at Port Augusta, even if I looked at a locomotive, I got dirty nevertheless. Apart from having to climb under one or climb under a wagon and it's a dirty place up there. Railways is not a clean thing. So I also. You have to have covered sleeves as well. And one of the jobs of engineers, if you find people who are fishing or reading a book or doing not what they're supposed to be paid to be doing, you're meant to report them. So you don't want everyone to know that you're about to walk into the workshop. And if I turn up in bright pink floral, they'll see me coming. Mind you, they'd probably see me coming anyway. But I wanted to look, so I blended in. And there were only two clothing shops in Port Augusta, the ladies and the men's. So I used to buy my clothes in the menswear store because the ladies wear at that time was just totally unsuitable. And then I was chatting with the only other woman engineer who was there in civil and she also bought her clothes from the men's face shop.
**Matthew Carratt:**

Right? Yeah.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

Now, when I grew up as a child, I used to get hand me downs from my cousins and they were boys. And I got to a certain age in primary school and my mum announced that I had to start wearing girls clothes. And so I was wearing new shirts and I discovered that boys shirts and girls shirts buttoned up the other way around. The buttons are on the other side. And I couldn't button up the girls shirts because I'd grown up in boy shirts. My hands just didn't work that way. I had to relearn how to do it, but with the other hand.
**Matthew Carratt:**

So Port Augusta was. Was bringing you back.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

Yeah, no worries.
**Matthew Carratt:**

I can wicker bitch like riding a bike. Yeah.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

So I came back to Adelaide and the next several years I used to design heavy freight vehicles.
**Matthew Carratt:**

Right.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

Which was great fun. And that stage we'd moved to computers and you could 3D model them and do stress in analysis on them. And then we had to build prototypes and actually almost destroy them in testing to prove that they were strong enough. And then you mass produced, well, small amount produced wagons. And then the government decided to wind down the Australian National Railways and create something else and have different divisions. And so they closed down the entire office and I had to find myself a new job and I got a job instantly with Electrolux and I went to washes. So I'm back in white goods again.
**Sarah Freeman:**

You are? Yes.
**Matthew Carratt:**

Full circle.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

And it was very strange because I was accustomed to Designing things in 25 mil plate and 12 mil plate to me was thin and in washes, 1 mil plate was heavy and everything was really, really, really thin and everything was lightweight. It was quite a culture shock. Nevertheless, I ended up with an experimental washing machine.
**Matthew Carratt:**

Yes.
**Sarah Freeman:**

Yay. The poop story from Poop.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

But this time we're in Bradbury. We're not on mains water and we have a laundry which faces the back veranda. And sometimes the chickens used to go in there and lay eggs as well. And we had a cleaning lady. Now I'd already moved up in life as a cleaning lady, having three kids and working full time. You need a cleaning lady, you just can't do it all. And we had two acres. I liked gardening. I really loved gardening earlier, earlier in my life. When I finished high school, my parents took me to a consultant to see what sort of career would be good for me. And according to my testing, she said I should be a horticulturalist or a garden designer or something like that. That would be the ideal career for me. But seeing as I was white skinned and blonde and short, it wasn't a good career for me. I was a wrong sort of human being for that sort of career and I went for engineering instead. Nevertheless, I still loved gardening. Now, where am I? Cleaning lady.
**Matthew Carratt:**

Yes.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

One day I got rung up at work saying the washing machine won't turn off and water is pouring out of it. So we get the technician on the phone and ask them, what does this, the digital display say? Have you turned the power off? Yes, we've turned the power off. Is the water still coming out? Yes. So it filled right up the top and that was just overflowing out the side. Eventually they got it to stop doing this. Then the next week the cleaning lady is doing the washing again. The water keeps flowing out of the washing machine and won't turn off. So three technicians drove up to our house in Bradbury and this is the prototype. This is the prototype. Apparently it had experimental new valves in it which they were, which were being promoted as anti knock. So you wouldn't get a water hammer. Noises in the house every time the washing machine turned off and on all the time?
**Sarah Freeman:**

Yes.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

But we had no mains water. We had a pump and the pressure was lower than mains water. And these valves did not shut. They needed that high force of the mains water behind them to make them seal properly. So after they got opened, they'd just stay open. And as there are many people in the country, many of whom do not have laundries facing the back veranda where all the water can flow out Onto the lawn. Imagine if it's inside your house. You'd ruin your carpets and your flooring. Oh. People would be very, very, very unhappy when that happened. So they had to cancel that idea.
**Matthew Carratt:**

Okay. Wow. So you're a pioneer. You've.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

So we did keep that washing machine. We brought it to this house and eventually the control panel started to wear out and I rang up to get a spare part and they said, oh, no, that model doesn't exist.
**Matthew Carratt:**

Okay.
**Sarah Freeman:**

And I said, of course it doesn't. It's a prototype.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

Yes. So I had to look like a full washing machine anyway. And I had a little glass tube thing, like a perfume sample, and I had that in there and I pushed that to make. Press the start button. And that worked for years until eventually we had to actually get a real one from a shop.
**Matthew Carratt:**

Okay. Yeah.
**Sarah Freeman:**

How did that feel? How did that feel?
**Wendy Azadegan:**

Oh, I warned the salesman, Hutton, I'm a very difficult customer. I'm sorry about this.
**Sarah Freeman:**

I used to make these.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

And we got a normal washing machine, so. And that's under bench, one that spins instead of a top loader, Right?
**Matthew Carratt:**

Yes.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

And then now, as we're getting older, we discover we don't like bending down that far to get the washing in and out. So my husband welded up a frame so we can lift it up higher.
**Matthew Carratt:**

Yeah.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

And it's easier to reach the clothes because from time to time I have bad backs and he has bad backs. And anything that falls on the ground, we'll leave it there.
**Sarah Freeman:**

Some young person will come and pick it up.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

We'll use my dad's experience extension handle. It's very good for picking up kindling outside in the garden, too.
**Matthew Carratt:**

Perfect.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

Yeah.
**Matthew Carratt:**

Beautiful.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

So after working there, I moved to ovens.
**Matthew Carratt:**

Okay.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

Yes. I put in a job application prior to this. I'd had a dream one night where someone was trying to teach me about working in teams. And there's all these different points about working in teams and what. What you have to do as a team worker. And I had to memorise all this stuff and recite it and this dream went on and on and on. I even woke up in the middle of it and went back to sleep again and went on until I could memorise all this stuff about working with teams. Then the dream finished.
**Sarah Freeman:**

Okay, we'll be back with more Life.
**Matthew Carratt:**

Oh, yeah.
**Sarah Freeman:**

Straight after this.
**Matthew Carratt:**

Interpreting dreams.
**Sarah Freeman:**

This is so great. With Matt and Sarah. We'll be back.
**Matthew Carratt:**

This is Life Bursts with Sarah and Matt. We're chatting to Wendy, part two. And, Wendy, you had this dream and it was a very prolonged dream.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

I stuck with you about working with teams.
**Matthew Carratt:**

Yes.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

A few months later a job came up in the cookers division and I wrote an application. And if you're not hunting for jobs. No, one person is not hunting for jobs. They have no skills at writing job applications. It's not something you do normally. So I had no skills at all. So this time I decided to write my job application based on the things in the dream and nothing else. So I sent it off and it took a long time and they rang up one day and apologised. It taken so long that they had so many job applications. But I'm near the top and could I please come for an interview now? Just prior to then we had renovated our kitchen at home and because we had so many visitors. This is the woman who never entertained, she got married. I was accustomed to cooking very large quantities of food for all the people in my husband's workshop because he treated his crash repairs as a help yourself workshop for young migrants who come here and didn't have a car and needed to fix one up and so they could drive around and wouldn't cost them too much. And all these young guys who were hungry and I'd have to feed them. And to cook some traditional Persian meal called Osh, I needed a very large pot, a fry pan for the onion and the mint and a saucepan for the spinach and another thing. And I couldn't fit them on the stove. So I wanted to get a cooktop that was big enough. And I went to every cooking shop in Adelaide with my roller and outstayed my welcome there. Then had to move on to another one because I was there for too long. And I knew every cooking appliance that was available. And I rocked up the interview and told them I knew every cooking appliance that was on the market in Adelaide and I really meant it. And. And I got the job.
**Sarah Freeman:**

Of course you did.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

Yeah.
**Sarah Freeman:**

All that time annoying people in customer service paid off.
**Matthew Carratt:**

Market research. Yeah.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

So I designed ovens.
**Matthew Carratt:**

Right. For larger.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

About nine years.
**Matthew Carratt:**

Yeah. Yeah.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

And the upright cooker, I did the major redesign on that. So if you've got an upright cooker, I probably designed it.
**Matthew Carratt:**

Okay.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

And then I did a lot of work on the parts for the built in ovens. And so I did all of the non pretty bits.
**Matthew Carratt:**

Okay.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

As a mechanical engineer, the industrial design is designed what it's going to look like.
**Sarah Freeman:**

Yeah.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

And we have to do. Make it all work.
**Matthew Carratt:**

Yeah.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

And make the rest of it. So I Did the sides and the back and the channels, the bottom and the interior mid thing that the fan sits on that you don't even know is in there, and the top panel and a few other brackets and bits and pieces. And they have to make it so you can make this size oven and this size oven with a separate grill and this size for an under bench and this size for a double oven and gas and electric. And I managed all the 3D models of these. And you make send out the drawings and you cheque all the parts that are the first off of the press and you cheque manufacturing and construction. And I loved that job. So I go to people's houses and I look at their ovens.
**Sarah Freeman:**

Yeah, I was about to say kitchen.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

And I opened their oven.
**Sarah Freeman:**

I was about to say, is it like the car thing where you said in your first interview about that you can identify a car from the inside.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

Because you did all of the seat covers inside? Yeah.
**Sarah Freeman:**

So you can identify somebody's oven by looking inside there.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

Oh, well, they do have brands on.
**Sarah Freeman:**

The outside, but if you bypass that.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

Yes. I always interested in the inside of the oven and the racks and the chrome stuff. Not the baffle. Someone else did that. The baffle was in front of the inside fan. Okay. So. And we also sent us off to do a course on training in baking at Regency College. They decided to train all the engineers.
**Matthew Carratt:**

Okay.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

And we did baking and then we did another three day course on faults in baking.
**Matthew Carratt:**

Okay.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

And one of the things to remember when you're cooking is that the whole purpose is to get heat into the food. You want the heat to get into the food. So glass, is a glass a good conductor of heat?
**Matthew Carratt:**

No.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

No. So why would you put in a Pyrex dish? Why would you bake pastry and put it in a Pyrex dish? If you want the bottom not to cook, that's the way to do it. And then there's those silicon things. Is silicon a good conductor of heat?
**Matthew Carratt:**

No, I guess not.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

No, it's not. So you wouldn't put your baking in silicon either. What you want is something where the heat will transfer. Now, at that time, they didn't have bakeware with holes in it. These days you can go to a shop and buy pizza tray covered in holes.
**Sarah Freeman:**

Yeah.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

This is how the heat will go through the bottom and heat up the bottom of your pizza when you're baking it. So you want. And you want air to circulate around it, because it can. The heat comes out at the back if it's fan forced and you need it to circulate around the front. So you don't want your food jammed up against, against the door. You want to leave a gap. These are my handy hints for baking.
**Sarah Freeman:**

You are. And there's lots of hand movements, metal.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

Bakeware and leave room for the air to circulate.
**Matthew Carratt:**

Yeah, yeah.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

And I also found that. Or for me, if you have the oven fairly full, it becomes very moist. So they advertise now steam ovens. Or you can put a little cup of water in there to add your own steam. If you don't have a steam oven, it's quite easy. You can introduce moisture that way. Or if you're just doing a lot of baking, the fact you've got lots of food in there will create its own moisture. And another thing that our home economist taught me was that food when it's cooking gives out gases. It's an outward process. So you don't get a transfer of flavours from one to the other inside the oven.
**Matthew Carratt:**

Right.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

So you can cook a dessert and a roast and your dessert does not taste like roast.
**Matthew Carratt:**

Okay.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

Because the gases are going out. Once you turn the heat off and they start to cool down, they absorb gases.
**Matthew Carratt:**

Okay.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

So this is when your, your dessert will start to smell and taste like roast. If you've turned the heat off and they're cooling down. This is why you cover them.
**Matthew Carratt:**

Okay.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

Before you put them in the fridge.
**Matthew Carratt:**

Yeah. Right. Look, this is, this is good.
**Sarah Freeman:**

Anything else that you want to share with us? Any other tip, any other tips?
**Wendy Azadegan:**

Well, I did get an oven pre production line.
**Matthew Carratt:**

Okay.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

As you do. And they had got the wiring diagram wrong. So the little light that's meant to come on when it's hot enough was on permanently.
**Matthew Carratt:**

Okay.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

They did tell me how I could fix it, but I am afraid of electronics and I was not going to pull it out and change the white around. So I just left it like that. But it meant that I could never tell when it was hot enough unless the room was really quiet. And I put my ear next to the oven, not on it because you might burn your ear and you wind up the temperature until you hear it go click. And that's the heat coming on and you know, ah, it's at that temperature.
**Matthew Carratt:**

Right.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

So if your light's not working, that's the way to tell. You put the temperature down low and wind up slowly and you hear go click. That's the temperature is reached and now the heat is on to heat it.
**Sarah Freeman:**

Up, not hitting it or anything to make it work.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

No. Okay. We went on holiday once to Fiji in a thing called Fiji Homestay, where you stay with local family. And this was in a remotish (sic) island that didn't have a tourist resort. And everyone there had gas ovens which their relatives who were working in Australia or New Zealand had paid for because mostly they cooked on coconut shell fires and baked. And they had some very, very good chefs there, ladies. And the kitchen was outside the house in a sort of wooden structure, not inside the house, but when they have wet season or cyclone or hurricane or whatever they have over there, bad weather, you can't cook outside in these little huts. You had to do it inside. So the gas oven would be inside the house and they were nearly all rusted and worn out. And the chief's wife's cooker, she had to sit next to it and hold the button for it to work. So we went around fixing people's gas ovens. On our holiday, I became the Electrolux technician of the week. If I had known that was going to happen, I would have taken spare parts with me because I knew how to fix them. I knew how to pull them apart and put them back together again really, really well because I designed all of these. Oh, great.
**Sarah Freeman:**

We're gonna be back with more of Wendy's story here on Life Bursts with Matt and Sarah straight after this. Welcome back to Life Bursts with Matt and Sarah. We're chatting with Wendy today and we're just at the last part of her two part series which you can catch up with on our YouTube or Facebook channel. So, Wendy, we've got a lot to fit into 10 minutes, but we can do this. Take a story to the next place.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

So all my work in ovens and also helping out the test kitchen in Electrolux came in very handy years later. And when we moved to this house, I joined the Camellia Society. And I often have to do a lot of baking for the open days for the trading table and the kitchen making mass producing scones, slices, cakes, and I know how to use, use an oven even I wouldn't call myself a great chef, but I can, I can bake so I can whip up scones into flash when we run out, come home, don't worry, I'll be back with 24 scones in half an hour. Yeah, I can do that.
**Matthew Carratt:**

Yeah.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

So these days I do a lot of voluntary work at the Stangate House for the Camellia Society and we'll have a garden full of camellias.
**Sarah Freeman:**

Yes, the flowers on the table.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

But they're not camellias, but.
**Sarah Freeman:**

No. But they're from your garden?
**Wendy Azadegan:**

Yes. Years ago, when I finished school, I mentioned the career advisor said I should be a horticulturalist. Well, that is now my main hobby is gardening because I love flowers. And of course, up here we're very close to Stangate House and we have open days in September on every Sunday, right? Yes. Please come along on our September open days where the garden is just paradise. Also, we have a large team of volunteers. Very happy. Little, big volunteers. Little and big. And where we work on Tuesdays over there. And even this time of year where there's no camellias out, it's still a beautiful place. And it's much cooler than all the other hotter wreaths. So when it's really hot, everyone still goes there. And we had 12 people turn up for our working bee last Tuesday, even though the weather was quite warm, because it's a nice place to be out.
**Matthew Carratt:**

In the garden enjoying with other garden lovers.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

Yes, yes.
**Sarah Freeman:**

You've also. This isn't your first time of being on television and radio?
**Wendy Azadegan:**

Oh, yes, we started making television programmes, yes.
**Sarah Freeman:**

You and your husband?
**Wendy Azadegan:**

Me and my husband and I used to be the host. "Hello and welcome to Global Civilization. I'm Wendy Azadegan. Thank you for joining us." And I used to be in this room on the other side of the room, and I had my set over there and I had regular guests and that was rather fun. And I did that for 12 years, once a week, half an hour, not a one hour.
**Matthew Carratt:**

Community television.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

Yes, community television. And also I did some voluntary work there, as well as programme manager for a while when I was out of work. So after I left, after I was with Electrolux, I then went and joined a place called Sydac. And Sydac makes simulators for training train drivers.
**Matthew Carratt:**

Okay.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

And these simulators are nearly all full size, so they. If you get in it, it's like being in Locomotive Cab. They try to use all the real parts, all the real components, and if they can't get them, they have to get them manufactured to look like the real parts and feel like the real parts. And we have a large team of graphic artists who do the track. So it looks like the real track, kilometres after kilometre after kilometre of it. And I used to work on the behaviour of the train.
**Matthew Carratt:**

Okay.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

And modelled behaviour with a modelling programme. And I did that for many years. And then they. They have cycles in work because these projects might last 18 months. And then you've got to wait for another contract and sometimes There's a lull and I lost my job during a lull. And that's when I started doing more work at with the Camellia Society. But we still had our television programmes as well. And then they asked me back again and I went back. So six months, one year, six months, three months. And then they had no more work for me. And then I was unemployed again for another year and I got qualified for the age pension for one week. And then I get an email. Wendy, contact us at your earliest convenience.
**Matthew Carratt:**

Okay.
**Sarah Freeman:**

You had a job again.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

So I was back again for another three years.
**Matthew Carratt:**

Wow. In demand.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

I've just retired.
**Matthew Carratt:**

Yeah.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

I'm 69. So I may have started my engineering late, but I also finished it late. Yes, yes. And I really did love my job. It was very rewarding. It's sort of. You're creating a teaching tool for teaching drivers. And one of the reasons they need simulators is a lot of the things they want to train them on how to fix problems. Regular driving they can do in a real train, but they want to create faults and see if the drivers can deal with the faults and fix the faults and get back to the depot and get the passengers off the train, which is very important. If you've got 400 hot passengers in your train and you're broken down, you've got to get them back. So they have to learn how to manage all the controls on the train. And it's not just the things in the cab. They've got cupboards full of switchboards, cupboards down the train full of valves and switch and circuit breakers, all of which the driver can get to limp home. And I worked on lots of different types of trains. I've got some pictures here.
**Sarah Freeman:**

Pictures?
**Wendy Azadegan:**

Yes. Ah, the Eurostar.
**Matthew Carratt:**

The Eurostar, yeah.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

Yes.
**Matthew Carratt:**

Very streamlined.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

Yes. It travels a maximum speed of 340 kilometres an hour.
**Matthew Carratt:**

Okay.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

And at that speed, the driver can't see any signs or signals. They have to have all of it on a computer display. On the which lights? Not computer, little lights on the desk. So. And that will show him at what distance he has to be doing what speed. Because when you're doing 340 kilometres an hour, it takes a very long time to slow down.
**Matthew Carratt:**

Oh, imagine it works.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

Yeah. That's the three kilometres.
**Matthew Carratt:**

Yeah. Okay.
**Sarah Freeman:**

That's a long. Yeah.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

At maximum braking.
**Matthew Carratt:**

Yeah.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

So if you can see someone, you can't stop.
**Matthew Carratt:**

No, no, yeah.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

And they have all their lines fenced to high speed lines. People don't cross them.
**Matthew Carratt:**

That's good. And you got one more you got.
**Sarah Freeman:**

One more to show us in the last three minutes of the programme.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

Yep, that's this one. Oh, I think this is the Waratah. This is in Sydney.
**Matthew Carratt:**

Okay.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

So I did the simulator for the Waratah, which is very, very technical because they hadn't built it yet. So I had to do it all from engineering documents and specifications. And they've got a very, very complex onboard computer which displays everything on the train to the driver. And we have to simulate the onboard computer so that when we create faults and he navigates through his computer, it'll show up all these different values for the pressure or the voltage and tell him what's going on. And he say, oh, it's such and such an engine that's faulty and shut that one down, for example. Then I've done a lot more work on the Waratah as well. So I'm a sort of a Waratah expert.
**Matthew Carratt:**

Yeah. Well, Wendy, you've done so many different things in your life that you've shared the diversity of things that you've experienced. Experienced and pioneering lots of things as well. And I love your stories that you've shared along the way. Very entertaining. I think our guests would have really enjoyed hearing this episode and the last episode as you've unpacked. Just snippets of your life, and there's always more to tell. So thank you.
**Wendy Azadegan:**

It was a pleasure to come on the show. What I've found is that if life presents you with a certain situation, instead of begrudging it, work on that situation and enjoy it. Because after a while, things change and then you have different life experiences, different tasks to solve. So if, for example, you think, oh, I'm spending all of my time indoors, in the office, it won't last forever. Things will change and enjoy the process.
**Matthew Carratt:**

Beautiful. Great, great advice.
**Sarah Freeman:**

Thank you for answering the question. Before you get to answer. Yes, that's how you know you must watch our show.
**Matthew Carratt:**

Lots of tips.
**Sarah Freeman:**

So many tips, everybody. This has been Life Bursts with Matt and Sarah. You can catch up with us wherever you get your podcasts from community radio and television, and of course, online on YouTube and Facebook. I am Sarah.
**Matthew Carratt:**

And I'm Matt. Thanks for joining us today.
**Voice-Over:**

Life Bursts is hosted by Matthew Carratt and Sarah Freeman with production by Rhys Jarrett and Keykhosrow Azadegan. For more episodes of Life Bursts, go to https://rawcut.au, this is a RawCut Production.