building a prime mover

What great story and photo's Ron, I bet that back then you never thought you'd be discussing the truck on a historic truck forum!

Ron

Great story fantastic reading and love the old pictures.

? Do you know if any of the old trucks are still around.

Trevor

g'day ronhorse .. fantastic stuff and i love all the ''can-do'' and ''make do'' that pervaded all of our early australian life....even up till my time...but it's all buggered now.

but i'm a little disappointed....what happened to those great looking air horns ?

cheers

Thanks fellers for the kind words on my post, I was tickled that you enjoyed them. After the war the Government (fortunately) dismissed the territory as a wasteland not worth doing anything with or developing, even when len Tuit and I took an expedition out to Ayers rock in Sept 1950 and he tried to get permission to build a tourist camp the blew him off telling him no one would be interested in that arid country. So for us it WAS a free for all!! There were no rules, weight or speed limits, no safety regulations or wide load permits, safety chains etc. Whatever you could pull with whatever you had was OK. Half the vehicles were not registered and side and tail lights were non-existant, just 2 headlights as traffic was sparse. I can remember waiting at the bottom of the Barrow Creek jumpup with 3 other semi's waiting for dark and a bit cooler, sitting around drinking tea, then one would take of up the hill and we would listen as the engine got slower then start to pick up and we knew it was over the crest, then the next one would go as it was clear. No worries for us in the big Gardner, though sometimes we dragged a spare tyre on a short rope behind the drive wheels to act as a chock just in case! The picture is a mate of mine George Richards taking cars to Darwin, gives an idea what guys got up to. Ted Fitzgerald, (everready Ted) put a Cadillac engine in his Ford semi, some put a second gearbox in line,for the jumpup's, Aussie ingenuity at it's finest!!

RonOrse
Gudday M8

We might not comment on every thread
but B asured we R all look n
LOL
th@ last pic with cars carted across the deck

Looks dangerous

No red Flags!!

could hit a roo with th@ bit of over hang n give m a nasty headache

LOL

Cya
[ch9786]

G'day Ron, Your stories are absolutly brilliant,and photos to go with them makes them so much better.The enginuity and can do attitude is great.I'm sure Australia and the Australian transport industry is a better place with pioneers like you and your mates. Cheers Ian.

Trucks weren't the only ones modified, passenger "coaches" were also, when Len Tuit got the mail contract after the military stopped carrying it, he bought a army disposal Inter KS5 with "tropical" cab, bolted some wooden seats across the deck and combined a mail and passenger service from Alice to Darwin. Cyril Tyler of Pt Lincoln drove this after he was demobbed in Darwin, I offsided with Cyril, many times as a kid and he sent me this picture, a real gentleman.

Len had Bonds tours build him this semi rig, to carry passengers and mail, the "butterbox", padded seats and all!! Big upgrade from the K5, As the freight started to increase we ended up, if there were few passengers, leave 2 rows of seats and fill the rest of the space with mail and freight, poor buggers would spend 3 days looking at a wall of mailbags , spuds or freight! >

Posting a few pictures of the Darwin road a few oldtimers may recognise, this one I took from Anzac hill looking North at the start of the road, can't beleive I still have all these ols photo's after all these years

The first tricky bit was the big dipper, caused a few inexperienced drivers a bit of grief.