building a prime mover

After whe war the top end of the Northern Terrtory began to develope and due to the increase of freight we needed a larger vehicle in order to handle it, all of the trucks at that time were 3 ton Ford and chevies fitted with round nose 24 foot semi's, ex-army. Ted Stiles of Outback transport just had a Commer traytop, hard to believe money could be made with such small trucks, Dave Baldock had Diamond T roadtrains but only went as far as Tennant Ck.
Next door to our yard there was an abandoned military dump with lots of partially striped trucks. We selected an International D50 chassiss and towed it around to the workshop, pictures above are of the BRAND NEW Gardner 6LW oil engine, the Pom's would not call them diesels as they were still miffed at the Germans >

Once we got a cab on it and enough to drive we took it out for a trial run pulling a small mail trailer out through the hills, only to find it had a high speed diff, do about 60 mph!! So back to the dump for a single speed double reduction diff centre to do 40 mph.

Painted up, loaded up, we were off! No windscreen for the left side so made do with plywood and a peice of perspex, when we stopped at roadside places people stood around and stared at it, big iron for that time

Then we got to feeling she was good for more so made a quad out of her, only problem was we had to break it up to get over some of the jump-ups, time was no problem in those days

Sometimes we were called uponto take a load of supplies out to a cattle station, I always enjoyed that as it was a break from the bitumen and the people there always mude a fuss of you, pleased to see someone form civilization, the ringers would be fascinated by the truck and I would lie to them how fast it would go.

Parked outside John and Dorothy's renner Springs store after they moved up from Banka Banka

Carrying the first load of Holdens to Darwin, Light load!

Bit of maitenance, we always gave the ringers a lift when they shifted camp as they had too much gear for the passenger coaches, sometimes made them drive the truck on the long boring stretches. :

Note that we used the same registration number on all trucks, no paper work involved!!!!