1960's travels

All lost when Tracy went through Darwin Jack.

Good story lang ,I like the part when they gave u the start as a 17year old .....try get a 17year old out doing the hard yakka these days....!

Forgot to mention my mate John (he later won a Military Cross in Vietnam) was stuck driving the Chamberlain with a roller or sweeper. During lunch break the loader driver let him play with the Moore LD-5 Scoopmobile seen in the Albion photo above. He became very good at building sand castles so was the obvious choice for replacement when the operator broke his arm.

We thought we were the ant's pants holding the two best paid and prestigious jobs in the camp.

There was so much work in WA at the time the pay was like miners get paid today. As a spray tanker driver (top level truck driver pay scale along with semi-trailer drivers) I was getting 63 pounds a week (with half tax for remote area) when a tradesman in Melbourne was only earning 30 pounds a week.

I also got an extra 5 pounds a week to get the hot water fire going in the afternoon and turn the generator off at 9.00pm each night. As we started work at 0600 I always wanted to go to bed and did not drink. The older blokes liked to sit up and have a few beers or play cards so they always turned it off for me.

After returning from work - the spray truck finished its last run well before knock-off while the others had to complete the sanding, rolling etc of the new tar - I would have to get the fire going under the 44 gallon drum hot water tank which was piped to about a 200 gallon tank on a stand to give pressure for showers. We had a general contractor with his own TK Bedford tipper who fetched water for the camp and brought in firewood for the shower fire.

I soon figured out there was no shortage of diesel so I would come in from work, pour about 10 gallons of diesel (two full jerrycans) over the logs that had been placed by the contractor, set it on fire and stand back while flames roared 30 feet in the air. Within two minutes the water in the 44 was boiling and the boys never had a cold shower and I only lost about 5 minutes. They said they knew it was time to knock off and head for home when they saw the black mushroom cloud go up 2,000 feet above the camp from 5 miles away. The foreman did not mind as he was always back in camp by 3.00pm to do his paperwork and got to be first in the shower.

Lang

....great pics and story Lang .. this sort of stuff brings such a big smile to my face...the old can do, make do, WILL DO is just about stuffed....jeeez, if only we could bring back the old school

Thanks for the great pics, story and old memories (your skinny picture reminded me of myself working in the Isa early 60's), at least you have photos Lang, I didn't own a camera then.

Life was so much simpler then How things change

Just had another thought about spraying tar. It was not all a bed of roses.

We had big "kettles". Square steel 4 wheel trailers with a diesel burner running through the centre. The drum team, all aboriginal blokes at this time, would attack the 44 gallon drums of hard tar with axes to put holes in them then struggle to roll them up planks to fall into the kettles. The heat would eventually melt the tar and they would fish the drums out of the hot brew with steel rods.

Meanwhile I would bring the spray truck alongside in a deep hole dug by the grader. First I and my offsider had to roll drums of Creosote to the edge of the ditch and pump them into the tanker with a quart stroke pump according to the mixture prescribed by the engineers for the type of surface being worked that day. Creosote burns when splashed on you. Next came a couple of drums of diesel to help thin the brew.

Finally the drum boys would hand me a big hose which I attached to the tank and the hot tar would gravity feed to the calculated level. The amount for each run was closely calculated in a huge maths problem that the foreman usually did for the driver. I think the fact I could actually work out the solution and take the maths job over was a factor in my driver selection.

We then sprinted to the start line. I had few disasters but if you look closely alongside many roads you will see a huge pile of tar created when the truck got bogged in the sand turning around or the team were not ready for him. The Albion had diff locks but the country we were working in was all soft sand so there were a few close run escapes as I struggled to get the truck unstuck from a soft patch - I imagined I could hear the tar setting as the minutes ticked by! The truck had already been taken back to Perth once when somebody before me let 3 tons of tar set in the tank - the truck had no heating system. The only option is to turn on the tap and dump the full load where the truck lay which was grounds for dismissal unless you had a good excuse.

If it had been a windy day (spiders webs of setting tar spray settled all over you) or there had been some slips in procedure "Walky Talky" my offsider and I would take it in turns to stand naked in a bucket while the other bloke washed him down with kerosine. We were sure glad to get back to camp and the foreman didn't get first shower on those days.

We washed the whole truck cab down with kerosine once a week.

Lang

Lang,

Thanks for this. Reminds me my misspent youth - different type of work but it was the same approach in Israel back then. Today's pampered youth would probably pass out if they had to do any of this...

Cheers

T

PS: ALDI? Like this? www.hofer.at/de/ (Hofer is the Austrian arm). I always thought of them as an Austro-German business. Yes we have those special offers too.

Correction just saw the International Aldi page, yes they've branched out a bit since they started here, good grief. Concept is good (low price but some good quality stuff also). You live and learn.

I guess that even the youngest group truck restorer is 17, so we were all 17 yo adventurers once.
Cliff Richards 'Young ones' in 1961 <;
One from my 1964 dancing classes, also the Cliff Richards film version: 'We say yeah': <;
Now where are we? 'Born to be mild': <;

Roderick B Smith
Rail News Victoria Editor