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Are any of the originals still in service?

What a lot of marketing rubbish. The SA network would fall over without the rotating generation from interstate. Just the way the one time renewable poster child Germany is now in trouble.

Love stobie artwork

th-cam.com/video/3DRSh9xOoWA/w-d-xo.htmlsi=FZHbvif2eMHStAcD

Go the stobies

Our network is the most efficient? You have backouts all the time....

South Australia didn't have Trees to make into power poles

Happy birthday Stobie Poles. I had a 1977 Toyota Corolla vs Stobie Pole incident. Stobie Pole won.

Western Australia is the superior version of South Australia. We have plans to take over the eastern states, as we contribute the largest proportion of money per capita, but your incredibly boring state and your cringey culture repels us.

Those things ruined many a front end on my cars in the 70s & 80s!

Interesting history, and have a couple of questions about the beloved Stobies: Why are some painted (usually grey) on the bottom section facing the direction of traffic? Also I've noticed some have the street names painted on them in a yellowy colour, but looks like they haven't been done for a long time, are they going to be redone again?

spent 15yrs in adelaide i noticed the stobie poles thought why aren't they used around OZ more often seem better than the old wooden rotten lampoles we see in vic etc

This is his wife, I come from Adelaide but now live in Sydney. Give me a stobie any day over those ugly wooden poles, I even call them stobie poles and no one knows what I am talking about. Love this video.

Is a Darwin Stobie much, much bigger than the standard stobie? 🤦‍♂🤭

Thank you SAPN for answering questions I have had for years.

There are many great things about South Australia - but Stobie poles ain't one of them. Ugly when new, they only look worse as they corrode and deteriorate.. And if you're going to drive a car into one, they're even more deadly than the wooden poles. Put the wires underground and celebrate that in 100 years!

Those mosaics on the poles are great

Well Done Stobie, they are Good Power Poles. Also Well done NSW. However SA Now has No Excuses and Must Grow some Irrigated Forestry.

Who actually WANTS a power pole in front of their house. I'm off grid with none, no limits on vehicles or tractors.

Stobie poles are common in Darwin and the Northern Territory - but without the concrete filling. I well remember the Stobie poles on the Stuart Highway next to Darwin Airport on New Year’s Day 1975 - after Cyclone Tracy, they were bent over at 45 degrees, pointing away from Darwin towards the south-west, where my city of Palmerston now stands (think Canberra in the tropics, with 40,000 people - 25 kms or 30 mins south-west of Darwin). I flew-up then on a C-130 Hercules, as an Army Reserve Air Dispatcher (we trained in loading Hercs and Caribou’s for cargo parachute drops and normal flights). We were called-out in Melbourne on Boxing Day evening 1974 and loaded 71 Hercs on Darwin relief flights, 24/7 over the next 9 days - grabbing short night naps in our cars alongside the RAAF Laverton air-strip for the first 4 days, as Hercs from RAAF Richmond (near Sydney) could land at any time, needing loading and refuelling before a 6 hour flight to Darwin. Our main cargo was 2,500 equipment pallets - each comprising a petrol-powered generator, a petrol water pump and a gas BBQ stove. Drawn from camping shores in Adelaide, Melbourne, Canberra and Sydney - arriving on semi-trailers around the clock.They were allocated as one pallet per street, in Darwin’s wrecked suburbs - to allow the 9,000 men left behind, guarding their wrecked homes, to get together and have a shower, a hot meal and some electricity each evening - after their wives and kids (35,000 people) had joined evacuation flights or driven south in the family car (usually with a cracked windscreen). (Kym (74) in Darwin - my unit was 37 Air Dispatch Platoon, Army Reserve - from 1971 to 75). (PS The RAAF had 18 of its’ 22 Hercs on Cyclone Tracy Darwin Relief flights over Xmas - New Year in 74/75 - plus a Herc from New Zealand (RNXAF) and a USAF C-141 Starlifter from Hawaii. My unit - 37 AD - had only 14 of us, but we were helped from 27 Dec after I rang the Salvation Army for help - they sent 20 younger Corps-men, to help us prepare pallets for loading,) PPS 73 adults and kids were killed by Cyclone Tracy.

I don't think they are ugly. I've always for some reason appreciated lattice electricity pylons and power poles and n general. Electric overhead on railways . My autistic traits 🤪. It be expensive but any chance they could consider powder coating the metal ? Say try it on those poles that Only have a top set of 3 wires. Say trial a few poles that have those green disc insulators and powder coat the metal a similar lightish green. Look spectacular. I went to south Oz and the rusty colour ruins the look. Take it from a 54 yr veteran of power pole porn

Up there with eiffle tower

Stobie poles were incorporated into the now extinct tram and electric bus systems in Hobart and Launceston, a few still remaining usefully holding up power lines.

Simple SA had few tall trees

Super interesting!

If you can’t have what you like then you better like what you have.

and nobody ever thought anyone would run into them - causing so much death and injury, only in south au!

Only in South Australia could people extol the virtues of two pieces of rusty steel with dirty concrete in between. The constant need to declare how much better things in SA are than anywhere else speaks to insecurity, not excellence.

There are also a lot of Stobie poles used to support lighting in country towns in SA, particularly bowling greens.

I worked on the privatisation of ETSA in the late 1990s. To some degree, SA Power Networks began its existence on my computer. I’d just come off the SECV privatisation in Victoria. That was a bitter contested process. The ETSA people were much more constructive. On my first visit to ETSA head office a bloke called James Bennett took me on a tour that I subsequently called ‘the Stobie poles of Keswick’. Thanks for this trip down memory lane.

if the stobie poles are so resillient why do we still get blackouts in "problem" areas, surely with enough statistics you would be able to fix these ongoing issues and with the rates being as high as they are you would be able to afford these remedies, please get back to me I would love to know what your side of the story is.

Nearly 40yrs ago we had a rope swing in the playground at my primary school in the Adl hills. The ground was sloped toward a fence and road that formed the boundary of one of the sides of the playground. The road was lined with stobies and power lines. At around grade 6 or 7 we found we were big enough to be able to swing out far enough and actually stand on the closest power line before swinging back. Luckily we were too short and unable to reach or bridge to the next row of cable. Good times.

My father ,Bruce Chapman , worked for ETSA and spent most of his working life boring holes for poles all over the lower SE. He loved his job because it took him somewhere different every day. He spent his retirement years walking up to 10 klm a day until dementia took him from us, an ETSA man for life.

Stobie pole art is the worst leave the gorgeous natural look and get that street graffiti of of it.

Mildura (Vic) still has quite a few stobies, but they are slowly disappearing.

Never knew that type of pole had a name, but there was one at the end of the street I grew up in. It was the last pole and had many houses being fed from it. All the other poles were treated timber, and although there's not a termite problem in Tasmania in the time that I lived in that street all the timber poles had been replaced except for the one at the end of the street! I'm sure that the timber section that supports the lines would have been replaced at some point. So I've learnt something today! 👍

The stoby should have been a world wide phenomenon but the time scales involved with power poles meant the "I'll be gone before these need to be replaced" mentality to prevail. A damm shame but at least SA got the benefit from them.

A modern well behaved Stobie pole doesn`t jump out in front of cars any more . I do remember watching a guy climbing to the top of a SWER line under construction at Venus Bay 50 years ago . He`d climb like somebody going up a coconut palm . At that time we were pushing the hwy through to Streaky Bay .We were opening up Australia bigtime . I lived in Venus and remember being connected , no more kero fridge or gas mantle light or 32v freelights .

The segue to rooftop solar surplus energy reticulation was a vacuous storyline having nothing at all to do with poles. It was a bit of a fairy tale towards the end. Stobie poles do jump into the path of vehicles. That's worth exploring.

National Electricity Grid is a million km long and costs $1million per km because of congested streets and permanently energised wires.

Stobie pole variants proliferate in French colonial Indochina, so they're probably poking out of the ground in France too. Was Mr Stobie a traveller?

Their only problem is they can rust at the base and topple over.

Plenty in NT and Tas. Stobie poles are dangerous if you are near them when a line faults to the crossarm and then the metal part of the pole to the ground.

In the Pilbara power poles were fabbed from surplus rails to resist cyclone forces,termites,fire and cars don't stand a chance.

Great stuff but now South Australia needs to come out from under the cosy blanket and actually be more progressive, create meaningful jobs, meaning full manufacturing and cut actual red tape not just talk about it and then add more.

I believe he was also paid a shilling per pole in royalies. I had to convert all the imperial drawings over to metric. They also had a mold they held over the hole and pour the concerte in as a footing. Which made it easy to replace the pole after they were bend by cars. They bend over but still keep the wires off the ground. Were as timber shear off at the ground and you would have wires on the ground.

The suburb I live in has stobie poles. I am in Hobart. Even though we have plenty of timber resources, I am surprised stobie poles aren't more common down here

Great vid. Thanks for posting. Im in Vic but like to visit SA . Have known about Stobie Poles since Early 70s.

Strong erection vs whistling willie. I know which side I'm on!

Watching from Philipines ☺️