Namoi Valley Bricks (NVB) will have its first taste of fame when Better Homes and Garden’s AgQuip special airs on Friday night.
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The feature will air on Channel 7 at 7pm, with plenty of familiar faces to fill the frame, including owner Michael Broekman, his daughter Courtney, and his father Gerard.
Mr Broekman said the brickworks put their name down for consideration when Gunnedah Shire Council’s Charlotte Hoddle approached the Gunnedah and District Chamber of Commerce about the opportunity.
“With the initial conversation, they thought it was an interesting story to put out to the general public on how bricks are made, and that it would be a good mix with the stories they were doing for AgQuip,” Mr Broekman said.
“The whole concept of being involved was to promote bricks and the way we make bricks because we are proud of what we do and our history.”
The Better Homes team visited NVB on the third day of AgQuip in August, capturing the daily activity in the brickworks.
“Jason [Hodges] and the film crew came in and had a look at production and had a talk to some of the guys and had a look at generally the way bricks are made,” Mr Broekman said.
“Jason, being a landscaper bricklayer, he was very interested in the furnace and the way they’re built and the type of brick laying that’s involved in building a furnace.
The business owner said it actually wasn’t the first time Mr Hodges had been to the brickworks.
“He actually visited the factory here as a young fulla,” he said.
“His father is a well-known brick layer in Sydney [and] when [Jason] was a young fulla, if they went on holidays, if they went past a brickworks, his father would try and drag him in and try and convince them to give him a tour.
“So he’s got fond memories of visiting brick yards and Gunnedah on the Chevy Chase family holiday.”
Even though it wasn’t a run-of-the-mill day for Mr Broekman, he said it wasn’t difficult to talk about your work when you’re passionate about it.
“Bricks are in our blood, so it’s like a farmer talking about his crop,” he said.
Mr Broekman said he wasn’t sure how the filming and interviews would translate into a feature.
“We’re really not sure on how the story will run. It will be as much of a surprise to us as the general public,” he said.
“We hope that we’ve done the right thing by putting a story out there that shows Gunnedah as a place of interest … highlighting what it’s like to work in one of the businesses in a rural town.
“It’s not just for a recognition of the business, it’s recognition of the team. It’s the team that makes the production, keeps the business afloat.
Without the people that work within it, and the strengths they bring to the company, we wouldn’t be here, so doing this thing on Better Homes and Gardens was to show that recognition for the guys that worked for us in the past, the ones that work for us now and the ones that work for us in the future.”
