A few odd pictures

This bore is on the Barkly Highway between Tennant and Mt Isa, we were taking a lot of gear over to the new Mary Kathleen uranium mine at the time, this was my favourite bore with the green green grass of home, I'd throw a weighted hose over into the tank, syphon the water and have a shower, shave etc, do my laundry which consisted of a T shirt and shorts, hang them over the bullbar and they would be dry in about 8 minutes. That's all that most of us wore with a clean set rolled up in our swag for formal occasions, some of the more affluent drivers had ports with shoes, shirts and other rubbish. These Fodens were actually old ABM quarry trucks refurbished and sold to small operators "as new" with liberal financing, when discovered there wasn't much to be done. >

Most of us pulled a small dog with a car on it for a bit of extra cash, I was sitting on a log having a cup of tea observing the truck with my laser like focus and something seemed amiss, the dog was gone!! I wheeled around and went back about 20 miles and there it was sitting in the bush upright, amazing, I pulled it back out, hooked it up, (properly) No one used safety chains that I recall. :

The Neptuna, I took this picture the first time I went to Darwin in 1949 as an offsider on the "Overlander" bus, still 15 yo, no license, Len Tuit believed in getting his 2 quid a week driver to earn his crust!! I counted about 7 sunken ship's in the harbor. The town was still a mess from the Jap, sorry, Japanese bombing, blow up stuff all over the place, later on, a Japanese mother ship came down with some freighters and salvaged all the metal, none of the crews were allowed ashore in case of an "incident" They took everything back to Japan where they made Toyota Land cruisers to sell to the Australian military :

This picture is of billy Graham and Mitsuo Fuchida, Fuchida led the squadron on the first attack on Pearl Harbor and again on Darwin, after the war he became a Christian evangelist and good friends with Billy Graham, ministering to Japanese in the U.S. He took out papers to become a I.S. citizen which was a bit ironic! but returned to Japan where he had two families, unknown to each other, interesting fellow. I tried to emmigrate to the U.S. after things got a little warm around Maraulin, ( 7 warrants and rising) They told me to bugger off, no Aussies allowed due to an agreement with the Pom's :'(

Great stuff mate, love the "7 warrents and rising" , I can relate to that. :

Great photo's and even better words describing each photo . Got any more mate .

Lads , there are just some great stories and fantastic contributors on this forum . Well done ronhorse , great work and so enjoyable , thank you , cheers Clarke .

G'Day again Ron, I agree with all the other members, I love going over your posts again and again. Its wonderful to see this era brought to light. Thoroughly enjoy it and best wishes to you Ron.

this is the Leyland railcar that pulled a boxcar which we loaded the Royal Mail into, ran from Laramah to Darwin, we always got to Darwin ahead of it as it was known as "leapin' Lena" often leaving the tracks or held up by water, This reminds me of one of the rare romantic moments in my life, the rivers were running high during the wet and closed south of Pine Creek so about 4 of us decided to wait it out at the Pine Creek Hotel, we were all drinking that evening when I spotted this white lady sitting on her own at the bar, with a bit of liquid courage I went over and sat next to her and started talking to her, she was a passenger on the railcar which was also held up. She was about 20 years older than I but not having much to attract females, no problem, she had just been released from Fanny Bay jail for shooting someone, at that stage of drinking I thought that was cute. When you were released from jail for a serious crime you are given a ticket out of the State, why she was on the railcar. So here I was buying her beer smuggly thinking the other guys would be envious, (I think to their amusement!) That night we all rolled our swags out in one of the unused railway cottages.
Next day I saw what she really looked like! beer really does improve a woman's looks! That night we heard that the river was low enough so we all decided to leave at first light, I had promised the lady a lift to Alice, as the starter was not working on my truck I got old mate Merv Farrell to push me with his bullbar, the engine fired and I took off out of there like a rectal thermometer, took a while to live that episode down, she was a thin lady and told me " the nearer the bone the sweeter the meat" never heard that one. : :

That's gold Ron, you put a massive smile on my dial..............