My life story, Henry J Macey [books for 20 year olds .TXT] 📗

seen.  They turned up as the sun was setting, saying they had just been doing a job.  It was then I realised the car park had been graded too.

 

When I got to the camp, I renewed my friendship with John. He asked did I intend to stay and take up his offer of working with him. “Sorry, mate no can do” I replied, “kid’s schooling and all that, Jane has her friends you know how it is.” He nodded and said, “Change your mind and you can give me a call.”

 

The other low-loaders drivers had unloaded and had uncoupled their dollies, loading them onto one trailer. One unit had been loaded onto its own trailer; it, in turn, had been loaded onto the other empty trailer. When I was empty, my dollies were loaded with the others, then the whole rig was driven onto my trailer. We would double man back to Perth in half the time.

 

Woody, Woody was a manganese mine on the edge of the Great Sandy Desert four hundred & fifty miles inland from Port Headland. I was sent there with an eight-wheeled International harvester tipper, towing a super-lift, tipping trailer from Perth. At Meeka I would pick up another two tipping trailers, and tow the lot to woody woody.

The trailers were partly loaded with stores for the mine, just to stop them bouncing too much. I was going there for a month to work this truck, then fly home and return to normal long-distance driving. All Bell’s drivers were supposed to do a stint in the bush. You could go almost anywhere depending on the time of year. Apart from the four different types of ore mines, there were salt flats, they would flood a large man-made lake with saltwater then let the sun evaporate it when there was a thick layer it would be harvested.

 

Then there was black sand for the glass industry, the talcum powder mine for baby’s bums, and let’s not forget the cattle & sheep stations. Hauling cattle to the railhead at Geraldton or to new pasture was a long, smelly job. Normally four trailers to a road train; twenty-five cattle to a trailer. Your speed over dirt roads would be fifteen to twenty miles an hour. Alright if you were driving into the wind. If you had a flat tyre, I bet there would be one of the cows holding something back just waiting for you to stand under them. At the shearing time, you had road trains of sheep wool.

 

Having left Meeka I had familiar roads to drive on until I reached Royhill. There I would turn north into the unfamiliar country. Marble Bar would be the largest town I would pass. It was said to be the hottest place in Australia, I did not stop to find out. Woody was a desolate place. Bell’s ran the camp and bar-come clubroom. With nowhere else to go, it was full every night.

 

Most of the workers were immigrants, here for the job only. They had come to Australia on a six-month work permit. Most of them from Italy and Greece, but there were other Eastern European countries represented. The films that were shown in the clubroom reflected this.

 

We (the drivers) worked seven days a week, thirteen hours a day for the duration of our stay. For me it would be one month, others were there for three months. A day’s work at woody woody started for us, the drivers, by getting up at four am and having breakfast by five. At that time it was for drivers only.

 

Overnight the trucks and trailers would have been loaded, and now waited in neat rows for their drivers. Twenty, eight-wheeled tippers with three super-lift trailers each loaded with twenty-five tonnes of ore hooked up to form a road train with a payload of one hundred tones a piece. On the way out from breakfast, we would pick up a box filled with a day’s rations that consisted of two pints of water, sandwiches, fruit, biscuits, and a flask of tea or coffee. Then it was finding your truck and pull out in turn.

 

There was a company rule that you had to check your tyres every fifty miles. We got around that by forming pairs, then every thirty minutes the back one would overtake the front one. In this way you could check each other’s tyres, it also made up time for us. After three hours we would stop for a thirty-minute break, which always ended up as sixty minutes. At the halfway point we would meet the twenty road trains returning to Woody and stop for lunch.

 

The road was all dirt to Headland and was rarely used by traffic other than Bell’s. Bell’s maintained the road by having two teams of two graders, one pair working from Headland the other from Woody Woody. They would meet in the middle, then grade their way back again.

Both teams would be supplied from Headland, ferried to them by the returning convoy of road trains to Woody Woody also carrying a large quantity of water for the mine and camp. The water was carried in large heavy rubber inflatable tanks, placed in several of the empty tipping trailers. On our arrival at Port Headland, we would park the trucks at the sea terminal to be unloaded overnight. Then we were bussed to the Bell’s camp at Headland where we would stay until morning when we would start our return journey to Woody Woody.

 

After woody woody

 

I had finished at woody woody I flew home from Port Headland, not by company plane but by M. M. A., known to all as Mickey Mouse Airway, its real name was Macmillan, McDouglas Airways. I was on my way home for a two-week holiday before reporting back to work in Perth. Nothing had been planned, just being with my family enjoying trips to the beach or Zoo.

 

We took in the sites of Perth. Kings Park was a place we loved to go to. It is high above the river swan and gives you a panoramic view of the city and river. We went out into the suburbs too. Some of the families we had met on the camp had moved out and settled in the outlying parts of Perth. Tom and Else Plate the couple we had gone to Cottesloe with the first day we arrived in Australia had been given a state home in Maidana.

 

Eddy Edwards, one of the Bell’s drivers, who was also a pome together with his wife lived in Forrestfleld. Frank and Margaret Barras had settled in Mosman Park. I mention these couples because we became great friends, and along with others we met later, have kept in contact with since we left Australia all those years ago.

 

On our days out and about, we looked at many houses new and old, what the area they were in was like, and if we would like to live there. You could stay at the hostel for two years. We had been there for nine months. With Jane working in the kitchens at the hostel and with the money, I was earning the bank balance was growing. Being nearly ready to bye our own home, we wanted to make sure it was in a place we liked. Jane had picked the style of the house. It was the same as Ann and Eddy’s, all we had to do now was pick the right place.

 

Wittenoom freezer

 

After my two weeks off when I returned to work. I was told to partner Tony Leaper on the Wittenoom freezer. His offsider was on long service leave and would be gone for a month. This was my first trip on a two-man truck. The truck was an R600 Mack with a dog box fitted to the back of the cab for sleeping. We would drive or were meant to drive for a twenty-four-hour duration, four on, and four off.

 

 

The Wittenoom freezer was a milk run, it had its own trailer and ‘Wittenoom freezer’ was painted on its side, but there were many stops before Wittenoom. We would load the trailer Monday afternoon with most of the goods, all labelled and in place for unloading.

 

The ice cream would arrive early Tuesday before we left. Our first stop was the pub at Panes Find. We got there at midnight, then on to Meeka for the meagerness mine and our depot. Tuckanara is halfway between Mount Magnet and Meeka, it is not a town, just a few old railway buildings. The railway had become unprofitable so the track was torn up and the men moved to other sites. ‘Mar’s’ husband retired and the railway authorities gave them the house to live in. We stopped there for breakfast although it was not actually a cafe.

 

After Mar’s husband died she turned her front room into an eating-place for drivers, not for profit but for the company. She only charged to cover the cost, so the drivers of the Wittenoom freezer kept her supplied at Perth prices. Before leaving Meeka we stopped at the flying doctor service to see if they had anything to take to any of the Stations. There was a copper mine called Therduna, that we drove into.

 

But most of the stations were miles of the road, and had forty four-gallon drums at the start of their drives; we placed the goods in them and drove on. Munderwindy was a post office relay station, as there was nothing for hundreds of miles on this road it had opened an unofficial shop, we delivered boxes of frozen pies and chocolate milk for them to sell.

 

Mount Newman camp was also on our list. It had grown since I had last been there. As it would be an open cast mine, they had started to move the top of the hill that bore the iron ore. But the railway track was far from completion. Returning to the main highway our next stop would be Ethel Creek station. It was set off the road some fifteen miles but had its own loop road that rejoined the main road just south of Roy Hill. We pulled up at Ethel Creek just before midnight and got our heads down for a good sleep.

 

An aboriginal awoke us with a mug of tea and told us breakfast was in ten minutes. Steak and eggs is a good way to start the day, but at five in the morning and still half asleep, it takes a bit of willpower. From