For many years anyone on the Casuarina campus with a broken toilet, water pipe or air-conditioning that did not work or some kind of maintenance request would probably have phoned Maurie Yee.
For more than a decade Maurie was the Front Desk Administrator, now known as the Customer Service Officer.
Despite the name change and other administrative changes, Maurie Yee’s friendly face has been around Finance and Asset Services for 12 years in what became his second career after retirement from the public service in 1991.
On Wednesday he will retire for the last time at the age of 70, taking with him many memories of the people and places that make up the busy Casuarina campus of Charles Darwin University.
Maurie was born and bred in Darwin, where his parents ran a soft drink company. He has lived here all his life with the exception of being evacuated during the Second World War as a four-year-old and spending two years in the 1960s with Qantas in Sydney.
Maurie recalls his schooling at the forerunner of Darwin high school in the old buildings at Froghollow in the centre of the town. After leaving school in 1955 he had a succession of jobs with small firms before joining the public service.
He spent the most part of his working life in the NT’s Transport and Works’ division and joined what was then the Northern Territory University in 1994 after his public service retirement.
‘I was bored stiff with retirement,’ says Maurie of his three-year break from the workforce.
He worked on the front desk of Facilities Management Division (FMD) which later merged with Finance Services Division (FSD) to form Business & Asset Services Division (BASD). BASD subsequently became what it is now known as – FAS – Finance & Asset Services.
Maurie was also a key player in the changeover from the former MP2 System to the new FAS Service Desk.
‘Now I’m ready for retirement, and I guess I’ll take it day by day,’ he says.
His colleagues wish him a happy retirement, and will miss his friendly assistance.
They will celebrate his long career in the workforce with morning tea on Wednesday, February 7 at 10.15am.