A few odd pictures

Great read there Ron, betcha 'dine out' on those stories at the pub.

Pulling up for a tyre check, 1938 Inter D50 with 5lw Gardner, I noticed something shining in the middle of the road, it proved to be a heap of coins, 2bob bits, shillings, zacs and treys, enough for a couple of beers. Concluded it must have been from a truckie having a snooze on the bitumen. As we didn't know any better at the time if we got sleepy we would stop and just lay down on the ground like a mongrel dog, thought nothing of it, in the winter the bitumen held the heat so was a good place to sleep, though usually on the side.
One night in Tennant, I had too many beers and at closing time, eyed my truck across this very wide street, towns had to have streets wide enough for a bullock team to turn around, Finaly got up into the Foden cab, people woke me up sometime later asleep on the side of the road with the engine running and lights on. Another way to have a short rest was to light a good fire and lay down to sleep, when the fire died down you got cold and woke up.
One night I was asleep on top of the Barrow Creek jumpup, old mate Bob Foster came crawling up the hill with Fleetowners Foden road train, saw my old mail truck and me asleep on the edge of the bitumen, pulled right over the top of me, nothing more exciting than to wake up looking at the sump of an 8 cylinder Gardner thumping away, and a Gardner does thump! Being as my brain takes time to assess a situation, ( bit like dialup) so no panic, Bob thought it was hillarious though.

During the depression, in order to keep ahead of the law, we carried live stock, people and goods in one unit.

, lioght toift
My brother and I did a stint at the Woomera rocket Range, run by the LRWE, (Long range weapons establishment) There were only about a dozen of us civilians employed there as drivers,. everyone else was Military. On a long weekend we would head for Adelaide as the town wasn't too exiting for young single guy's to whoop it up like the big smoke, as one wag put it, "had a great time, didn't see daylight for 3 days" The Government always had us bring back new Holden utes, we put them through their trials having races and roaring through the bush, it always amused us to see the officials driving them at a steady 30 mph to RUN them in!!My brother and I were given off-road vehicles as we had bush driving experience, they were Commer superpoise and Austin 3 ton 4x4 trucks. I would go out to bring back a rocket guided by a small plane to it's location taking a scientist with me, what a bundle of laughs they were!!! The rockets were small,our 8 feet by 8 inches, light to lift having used their fuel.
When they set off the A bomb an English crew flew a Canbera Jet with cannisters attatched to the wings through the cloud to collect samples of the air, my brother and I met them on their return at the airfield with semi trailer water tankers and detergent to wash the plane off, it was bristling with heat, they had all the openings on the plane covered with masking tape!! some protection! We rigged up a shower for them and burned their uniforms in an open 44 gallon drum, cold as charity in the breeze, the crew immediately flew back to England, I was ironing a shirt in my room when they flew about 4 feet above the town , scared the h :'(ell out of me, I dropped to the floor, don't blame them, they retired them but they only lived about a year, so much for Government taking care of it's own!!

G'day Ron, love your stories, keep em coming. Pity we can't download peoples brains before they die, think of the info we'd have. I have just finished reading a book by Judy Nunn called Maralinga. It had quite a few stories about the troops, the airforce guys, & the civvies & what was done to them by the scientists in the name of progress. Doubt it'd be allowed these days. Cheers mate, Tim

Thanks Tim, yeah, Govmints all over the same, Yanks did that a lot with their soldiers with atom bomb testing, I visited my sister and her husband at Radium Hill in SA, As I had diamond drilling experience was offered a job working 700 feet underground operating a v4 air drill, no ear protectors, couldn't hear for an hour after I got back up, had a Ford Customline, had to watch the oil gauge come up to know it was running, got a letter from a mate in Darwin asking me would I pick up his Foden semi in Alice and work it, I was outa there, all the miners died from cancer, poor buggers, wonder how these Government people sleep at night, agree with you on putting stories down, wish more people would do it, hoped for more on this forum but guy's seem hesitant to do to do so, I never thought any of mine were interesting but being from another era you realize how old you are!!! bummer. Have a couple of mates still going have some really interesting stories (and you know who you are) but won't submit them :-X

..keep it all coming ronhorse .. unless you're gonna start flogging some ridiculous agenda...and i can't see that happening, i can't see any reason why your earthy stories would not be appreciated and accepted on this forum...even if only remotely related to trucks and transport...and that goes for your lifelong buddies and their stories as well

..on the contrary, having you blokes on the forum makes a wetback like me think twice about posting a few of lifes stories ...cheers

Hi Detective, that's exactly what I thought, who TF would want to know, surprise, surprise, so get the old memory working because these stories are REAL, not like so much garbage written in books in order to sell by so called experts, glad you like the site, Ron.