Driving Road Trains in Australia

When I left New Zealand in July 1977 I flew to Brisbane. After a couple of days looking for a truck driving job without sucess I called a friend at Dalby and he told me to come out there.

I went as far as Toowomba on the bus and stopped off there and got myself a car and caravan and continued on to Dalby. At first i stayed in the Dalby camping ground but later Marvin and Julie had me move my caravan to the back of their place and looked after me a lot then.

I first got a job at an engineering place and after a few weeks I got a job driving trucks. The job was a combination of livestock around Queensland and a lot to and from Dalby sale yards to Brisbane abbatoirs and Gladstone abbatoirs. After a few weeks I was to take a trailer into Brisbane and load it for Darwin, the following day the same thing, then hooked the two trailers together and off to Darwin I went. 2500 miles.

During my time there I did three trips to Darwin and only broke down once, but a few flat tyres on each trip which was common back then. I broke a driveshaft on one hill coming back from Darwin and had to wait in a layby for about a week in the middle of nowhere on one of our other company trucks to bring me a new driveshaft.

Driving my last trip back from Darwin we were at the early stages of the wet season and coming from Cloncurry to Winton the Kynuna to Winton section was gravel or dirt road at the time and myself and two other road trains had to negotiate a lot of very big sections of water over that 100 miles (160km). We had the three trucks attached together with straight bars so if one had traction issues the other two would be pulling or pushing. I was in front and there were a couple of areas where we just made it, but it was quite an adventure. Normally this section was dry and badly corrugated which made for a slow trip indeed.