putty road

Hi Hi Beam

That was a great read, good ole days??? I'm not too sure about that but I suppose it was all in a days work back then

Thanks for sharing your memories with us

The silly side of the story is that the DMR put a pad in at the bottom of "The Rock", and expected blokes to stop, : you wouldn't even be back in gear there.

Hi Beam,

Mayne Nickless bought East Coast Transport.

Thanks
I still remember their address at 44 Buffalo Rd. Gladesville NSW

Great read Hi beam, fantastic. makes me think of dark nights, slippery wet roads, that churning in the guts when you wonder "why the bloody hell am I doing this...and how am I going to get out of this...?"
Keep up the stories you blokes.
Cheers
Richard

I think the best time for the "ten miles of bad bends" northbound, and south of Bulga was just over 13 minutes by Larry Windshuttle in one of Comets "Grey ghosts". I did hear that two of Searles paper trucks on different occasions, driven by Ian Douglas and Bluey Gaynor had bettered that, but I doubt it, even though the centre of gravity would have been much lower. I'm afraid my time was a fair bit slower than that, but I dont know whether I was not as game, or maybe smarter. Searles Dodge overnighters had two amber clearance lights on the RHS of the cab and one on the left to identify them for the changeover. All well and good until one globe blows on the right and you had to go all the way to Brissy because you missed each other.

The 10 mile hasn't changed, it's the only section of road I've come across that the advisory speed signs are correct, you can normally crib 10 - 15 K's, don't try it in the putty.

Truer words have never been said. I have still to meet anyone that can tell me all the bends/hills etc. on that road.

Went for a trip up the putty in search of a few things
The Halfway road house burned down on the 1 aug 2009
The fellow who bought it a few years ago is an interesting bloke. He built a yacht and sailed around the world for about 7 years or so, and ended up on the putty road He builds realy good sculptures out of steel.He sells sausage sandwiches and coffee. May be one day he will get around to rebuild the place. Anyway he is an interesting character to have a chat with...

Dose anyone remember the old bus at Darkey Creek. An old lady lived there for around 30 years or so, with her own little paradice with a creek just a few yards away no electricity, she had her gardens there. She was in her 80's when she died there I used to pass there for years and you could see smoke fron the chimney and a dull light on in the nite. I stopped there one day to have a piddle and she came out so i thought i would have a chat but she was waving a stick telling me the error of my ways. Never got to have a chat. It's interesting why a lady would live there for so many years in relative isolation. She was probaly quite happy...

Doesn't sound it, really...

My first trip up the putty was in an EH Holden with a single-axle car trailer behind it. I was, along with a good friend of mine, getting a lift to the races at Lakeside in Brisbane, our 'chauffer' was Kevin Bartlett and the Peter Owen TVR Grantura was on the trailer.

KB was flinging that load around considerably as we'd lost a wheel off the trailer at Thomson's corner and had to wait for his father to bring us some bits to bolt it back on.

In the past twenty or so years I've done a lot of trips up and down there, many late at night. When you drive out of Windsor at close to midnight and don't see another pair of headlights until you get to Bulga you know there's not much traffic around.

Yes, you have to treat that twisty ten miles with respect along Darkey's Creek, the speed advisory signs aren't far out there at all.

I've also spoken to the sculptor at the old burned-out halfway house, but just back down the road towards Windsor (actually literally half way between Windsor and Singleton) there's a new place. I think it opened about two years ago, I was very thankful it did anyway.

Just six weeks after they opened I pulled up there with the timing belt gone on my Skyline. They helped out by dragging the car into their carpark, I had a nice meal there just before they closed and then lamented the rest of the night that I didn't have a 27mm socket with me!

I had the timing belt on board, but without getting the front pulley off I was knackered. I spent several hours waving down every passing car or truck to see if I could borrow such a tool (that means I pulled up about half a dozen vehicles in as many hours!), and though one bloke had a ring/open ender that got onto the nut, we couldn't get the bolt to move with it.

I gave up and slept the rest of the night, waited for the helpful people who run the place to come in, none of them had one either.

I hitched in to Singleton, bought a socket and hitched back (that was when I met the sculptor), got the pulley off, cleaned up the awful mess, set the timing and bolted it together. I hit the road exactly 24 hours after the thing had broken.

Usually I don't have time for delays like that...

Another time, when I was living at Silverdale, we chose to go the Putty instead of the highway on an early morning trip to Tamworth. We were cruising along nicely when we came to the top of a hill and there was cars pulled up everywhere. A truck had tipped over at the bottom of the ensuing decline (a long one, but I can't recall if it has a name or exactly where it is... even whether it's south or north of Colo!) and the cops had us banked up.

Fortunately we were only there for an hour or so, but I did toy with the idea of going back to Windsor and around the expressway instead.

That was in the 604 my wife had, another time we were going back to Moonbi (we had the Post Office there for a while) in that car and came across a motorcyclist in trouble.

His mate had dropped behind him as he'd got a bee in his helmet and decided to stop and get it out. This bloke had hit a bump coming into a corner and come off. We got word through to the police at Bulga and they turned up, then they called in the helicopter and it landed on a little flat down around the bend.

The bloke was okay, badly winded and in some pain, but he didn't really need the helicopter ride that day.

But it just shows you how long you might wait for help if you're in trouble out there. Over half an hour to get the word to the police, half an hour or more for them to get back there, an ambulance would take an hour... and that's not even all that far down the road... is it Garland Valley?