Business
5 August, 2025
Mature-aged apprentice in mix for statewide award
Stephen Cunningham was named the North Queensland Apprentice of the Year last week.
Stephen Cunningham says the decision to become a mature-age apprentice will go down as one of the better calls he’s made.
Having just completed his time with Energy Queensland to finish a Certificate III through Ergon Energy, the Mount Isa local was recently named the North Queensland regional winner of the statewide Apprentice of the Year Award.
He’ll now head to Brisbane next month to vie for overall honours.
A former hospitality worker who was once the operations manager of the Mount Isa Irish Club, Stephen said “it took me 40 years to work out what I wanted to do”.
“That’s my excuse,” he said with a smile.
“I put a bit of effort into hospitality and then I needed to make a change. I’d peaked, I’d say.
“I did start a refrigeration apprenticeship but with the constraints of home life and wage restrictions, I suppose it wasn’t the best and it made sense for me to stay home with the kids.”
After around five years as a stay-at-home dad, which he loved, he eventually put in an application with Ergon Energy.
“It was always on the cards when I left hospitality, but it just never happened,” Stephen said.
“I had an application ready to go, but my son was prematurely born and we were in a bit of a mad dash to the hospital and flew out.
“Once all the dust settled from that and everyone was safe and healthy, I was like, ‘oh, I’ve got that application to put in’, but the date had expired. I was too late.
“I didn’t think much of it and did a few other things for a while and then came back to it again after a few years.
“I put in and I was successful and I was able to get my trade done in three-and-a-half years, doing a lot of extra work and working weekends.”
Supported by his wife Selina, the father of four boys said he was never worried about not finding the perfect career.
“My wife works for James Cook University as a pharmacy academic. She was the opposite of me. She’s got four degrees, a doctorate ... qualifications going everywhere,” Stephen said.
“It took me until I was 40 to get a trade as such.
“But it’s just the way life worked for me. And I would say that I’ve been very successful until now with everything I’ve done.
“I worked for James Cook University myself as a project manager for a couple of years and that was good. It gave me some insights into working for a large organisation that I hadn’t really been exposed to before.”
Born and bred in Mount Isa, Stephen said one of the highlights while working for Ergon had been the deployment to Cairns and parts of the Far North following Cyclone Jasper in December 2022.
“We were in Myola, which is opposite Kuranda. And I think the second, maybe the first day we were there, they’d had a metre of rain in 24 hours,” he recalled.
“It’s hard to explain that much rain. I’d never seen that much rain before.
“It was incredible, although not very pleasant and not very comfortable, but we managed to do some pretty impressive work up there. It was quite an experience.
“We were also the first crew just to get to a little community just north of Palm Cove called Ellis Beach.
“We were the first to get over the rock slides and into Ellis Beach. We were asked to go and inspect the network up there.
“I think the thing that stuck with me the most would have been meeting a couple of people that had spent the night up there and they explained what they’d heard ... it was basically the mountains coming down beside them and how it missed them, I don’t know.”
Officially known as a distribution linesman, or a “liney” for those on the job, Stephen said he loved the diversity of the role.
“If you’re an electrician and you’re at Ergon, a lot of them want to be lineys because we get to work on the big trucks; work at heights,” he said.
“We spend hours at a time in a bucket. I spent eight hours the other week flying in a chopper, doing a line patrol.
“It’s not an action job, but it’s a physical job and it’s a very outdoors job. It’s not for someone who wants to sit in an office.”
Stephen said he hoped his story would inspire others in their late 20s or 30s to think about a change and follow their dreams.
“We have a Safety Heroes program and I’ve been into multiple schools, just basically instilling some electrical safety tips to young kids around the home and in the community,” Stephen said.
“And I’ve had people even outside of work who see me and say, ‘hey, my son says you went to his school and now he wants to work for Ergon’.”
He said the award was more about his dedication to his training rather than him being exceptional.
“It’s good, but I definitely think the award’s probably just a bit of an honour and a recognition of my commitment to all the work that I’ve put in,” Stephen said.