A local community watches on as the plug is about to be pulled on Hazelwood power station

Latrobe Valley businessman Ross Bertoli took a path well-trodden by local teens after he finished Year 11 at Yallourn Tech.

Ross Bertoli is a part-owner and general
manager of Hydro Australia which like
many Latrobe Valley businesses relies to a
  significant degree on the power industry
 for work.

In 1970, aged 16, he became an apprentice fitter and turner with the State Electricity Commission, one cog in an intake of a couple of hundred apprentices.

By joining "the biggest employer" in the Latrobe Valley he became a colleague of his father Arthur (an overseer), and brothers David (electrician), Bryan (fitter), and Peter (draftsman).

"Everyone in the family worked for the SEC," he says, while sitting in an office of his Morwell business, Hydro Australia, just a few kilometres from the Hazelwood coal mine and power station's main entrance.

Read Darren Gray’s story in today’s Melbourne Age - “A local community watches on as the plug is about to be pulled on Hazelwood power station.”