When I was a girl growing up in Melbourne, periodic blackouts were part of life. At fairly regularly intervals, the highly unionised workers at the Latrobe Valley’s electricity generators would get grumpy about something and push the stop button, thereby cutting off electricity to the state.

The disputes were not about wages – these were set by compulsory arbitration and laid down in awards – but about the plethora of conditions and allowances that were attached to the workers’ employment. The Four’n Twenty pies in the canteen were not hot enough. The uniforms provided were not up to scratch. A boss spoke unkindly to one of the workers.

(You might think I’m making this up but, at the time, strikes were frequent and short.  They were generally about trivial grievances. There was a long-running dispute in the Pilbara about ice cream flavours. Some nong had decided to cut out the neopolitan – strawberry, vanilla and chocolate. Those were the days, or not.)

My mother was always prepared for these periodic blackouts, with a box of cheap candles and torches on hand. In any case, the gas heater and gas stove still worked. My sister and I quite looked forward to the lights going out, particularly given that we had television watching highly rationed. Reading our books by candle light was something of a treat, having run down the batteries in the torches.

We didn’t get a TV set until I was ten – an enormous Astor one with timber veneer and valves that would regularly fail. Television watching was not seen as beneficial for young’uns. The fact that we couldn’t watch the telly was generally neither here nor there.

If a blackout occurred during the daytime, we could always trot down to the local milk bar and spend our threepence on assorted lollies, including potentially a box of Fags (imitation cigarettes with a red tip). The owner of the milk bar, Mr Dunlop, didn’t seem too concerned about blackouts and dutifully kept his shop open to cater for the large number of local kids roaming the ‘hood.

The reasons I am telling you this is not because I’ve become a sentimental and doddering old woman. (The editor’s word is final: no comments accepted on this point.)  My aim is to contrast what a blackout meant then and how this compares with now.

Several of my friends experienced the complete blackout of South Australia in 2016 and it was not pretty. There is still no consensus on why the blackout occurred. Green apologists blame an unprecedented weather event, hinting that this could have been caused by CLIMATE CHANGE. But it turns out that it was just a storm, the interconnectors to Victoria tripped, the windmills had been shut down and there was insufficient voltage in the system to keep it going.

It was actually something of a miracle that the system was partly restored within several hours because a high dominance of renewable energy makes it difficult to restart a local grid. Mind you, parts of the state in the north were without power for several days. Of course, hospitals, big buildings and large operations had auxiliary power that swung into action. But there were plenty of businesses and individuals left wondering what to do. Garage doors couldn’t be opened; electric gates were shut; traffic lights ceased to operate; people were stuck in lifts in smaller buildings. Gas heating couldn’t be used because there was no electricity to power the fans, which are now an integral part of these appliances.

Unless phones were charged, people were unable to communicate. Even by this stage, most people had given up their landlines, which operate after a blackout. Some kiddies didn’t have access to the internet, leading to almost immediate withdrawal symptoms as they were unable to check their social media.

Going down to the local shops was not an option because people don’t have cash and there was no way of paying for any purchase through Eftpos. There were concerns that food would have to be dumped without working refrigeration.

In other words, it was bedlam, but a precursor of what a future widespread blackout will mean. It was also very politically damaging to the South Australian government at the time. Labor’s Jay Weatherill was the premier – he has now joined Twiggy’s congregation calling for ‘free’ (and compulsory) childcare – and he moved almost immediately to shore up the state’s grid.

A large number of diesel generators were brought in, spewing noxious CO2 into the crow eaters’ (OK, the world’s) atmosphere – but what the heck. There would not be another blackout on his watch. These generators have been there all this time, although there is now talk of decommissioning them next year.

The fact that the unimpressive and hapless Liberal Steven Marshall was elected premier in 2018 was no doubt partly because of the blackout, even though the local Liberal’s climate policies were ever bit as senseless as Labor’s.

The point here is that B1, also sometimes referred to as Blackout Bowen, probably does understand that widespread blackouts are political poison for him and the Labor government. Even the panjamdrums down at the Australian Energy Market Operator, that activist agency that controls the grid, understand that blackouts would be disastrous for their reputation.

It’s one of the reasons that Dan the Man – not that Dan the Man, Daniel Westerman, head of AEMO – is now pushing gas to back up renewables, as well as calling for an acceleration of the rollout of windmills, solar panels and batteries. His warning that we are now running short of gas – no kidding, that’s what happens if you make gas exploration and extraction nigh on impossible – is a classic arse-covering exercise.

In this context, it has been interesting to learn that coal is making a comeback in the electricity grid, after years of gradual decline. In the June quarter just gone, coal made up nearly 80 per cent of electricity generated along the east coast, the result of an extended windless period, many cloudy days and a bit of a drought in Tasmania. But, hey, isn’t that what you would expect from thinking weather-dependent generation of electrons would do the job? It won’t and it can’t.

The trouble for B1 is that no one believes he can now make his 82 per cent renewables target by 2030, even with some creative accounting – using nameplate capacity rather than actual output, for instance. Rational people are actually hoping he will fail and that common sense will prevail. In the meantime, hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars are flying out the door to prop up three large coal-fired power stations, an arrangement that may have to be extended to other plants.

Blackout: then and now. It’s a contrast between a bit of fun, some larking around versus no fun and economic and political disaster. We need to bring back serious engineers to ensure the system is really up to scratch rather than being held together by Band-Aids that depend on the weather to stick.