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

you know anyone you would like to run with. I jumped straight in and said, “I know someone, my mate Don. We came to Australia together, he is a good driver and I would be happy to drive with him.

 

He has just returned from Cocoas Island where he had worked as a cook, and I don't think he wants to go back. If you have not got a trip for me today I will see him tonight and tell him to come in.” Don started the following Monday. We both worked in the yard until we were told to pick up our truck.

 

The conversion that had been carried out was not too pretty; in fact, it was an eyesore. They had removed the steering wheel from the column and placed a ninety-degree gear on it. Another ninety-degree box was bolted on the right-hand side of the cab, the steering wheel attached to it. A shaft ran between the two boxes coupled with universal joints to take up any miss alignment.

 

Removing the instrument panel they had made a box to put them in and had screwed it to the top of the dash. Foot pedals had been placed on the driver's side with rods running across the cab floor attached to the original mechanism. It was a walk through cab, the two gear sticks coming through the floor, as in the ‘R’ series, but now in front of the engine cover. I would not be far wrong if I said they had used the same chassis. The cab was set so far forward you were sitting in front of the steering axle instead of on top of it. As you went around a corner you seemed to travel sideways.

 

As I said these trucks were on trial, we had them for nine months when they were replaced with right-hand drive vehicles that had been built in the states for the Australian market. We had some trouble with the conversions, but that was Don playing about. He would sit there looking all innocent. I would find the truck wandering about as if the steering had a mind of its own. Only to find that Don had a screwdriver in one of the universal joints, but all in all, they were good trucks.

 

One of the first trips Don and I did was to take a part of a large ‘Eucla’ dumper truck to Tom Price. Yes, I said part of; it took seven trucks to haul it there. We had five of the ten wheels and tyres; they were ten feet high. Two others had three electric drive motors each. One carried the bowl that was about thirty feet by fifteen and could hold one hundred tons. You could park seven cars with ease in it!

The chassis came in two parts; the cab mounted over the ‘V’ twelve-cylinder engine that drove an electric generator and the twelve-foot wide, by the thirty-foot long mainframe. Later we saw it assembled and working on-site, it was one hell of a beast.

 

Keeping in touch with Jane while I was away was impossible. There were no telephones in the flats. The only way I could get messages to Jane was to ring the receptionist of the hostel, during office hours. But then she would only take short notes and put them in the pigeonhole we used for mail. A typical message would be, “held up by bad weather” or “be away another week.”

 

I could not even arrange a time to call Jane on the telephones in the booths outside the office, as there was always a queue. Also, the fact that Jane might not get the message until the day after I had sent it.

Being on the road you could never be certain you would be where you wanted to be at a given time. So it was, see you when I see you for the first nine months I worked at Bell’s. The only time we could arrange a time, was when I was at woody-woody.

 

One Sunday, Jane and I had a terrific row. We seemed to be having more and more lately. As I don’t like to argue, I walked out, got in the car and went for a drive. I ended up at Margaret and Frank Barras’s home, in Mosmon Park. I confided in Margaret that Jane had threatened to leave and go back home to England.

 

Margaret told me it’s Graylands Hostel; living in the camp has that effect on the wives of husbands who work away. It had happened to her, but when Frank had bought their home it had turned things around. Getting into the car I headed out to Kelmscott. There I had seen a General Agency building site at Clifton Hills. They were the builders who built the house Jane had picked as the one she wanted.

 

Seeing the agent I told him what I had in mind. He showed me where that house was to be built. It was halfway up the hill, although the front looked uphill the view from the rear was good. Saying I would take it with the approval of my wife. I gave him a cheque for the down payment, went back to Graylands, got Jane and the boys in the car and drove back to Kelmscott. Taking Jane out to see the plot where our home would be seemed to do the trick. We went out every weekend I had off to see our home grow.

 

Don and I had a flatbed trailer loaded with a five-roomed accommodation unit. We were taking it from Perth to our camp at Dampier. We had left Camarvon six hundred miles north of Perth, and it was the rainy season (the Australians call it the wet.) We knew there was the possibility of floods ahead of us but we were told to proceed and take things as they came. Two hundred miles north, we ran into wet weather. We met some traffic going south they told us that Barradall roadhouse, on the northern bank of the Yanutarra creek was cut off as the Yanutarra was flooded. They had turned around to try the inland route from Carnarvon. This route was no good to us as it ran to the east along an unkempt dirt road. It passed through Gascoyne junction, Dairy Creek, Mount Clare, Milgun, and Peak Hill then onto the Great Northern Highway at Karulundi.

Most of this road was just cattle tracks. It skirted the Gascoyne and Ashburton rivers joining the coastal highway, maybe fifty miles above Port Headland. That route would be an extra eight hundred miles for us. We were now some three hundred miles from Port Headland.

 

Wishing them good luck we carried on our way. We came to a small creek that was flooded but only by a few feet. On the northern side, there was a large parking area where we decided to stay for the night. At daybreak we set off two hours later we were in a traffic jam and had stopped twenty wagons and a few cars from the flooded Yanutarra creek, which was a quarter-mile wide, and fifteen to twenty feet deep. Barradall cafe was on the other side. Don and I always carried plenty of tinned tucker packed into metal boxes and bolted to the chassis of our truck. We had grub, we had smoke's, and we even had three cartons of grog.

 

This we were taking to sell to a friend. A forty-four-gallon drum of water was slung under the trailer. We could sit and wait for the water to go down and then we could cross. Well the days dragged by, the food went down, so I decided to try and get some fresh meat. Early one morning I set out with the rifle to bag some rabbits. Walking inland into the bush, making my way towards some dunes and looking for signs of life of the edible kind, I saw tracks of small feet and followed them. Then, in front of me I saw several rabbits; taking careful aim I missed all of them. I searched in vain to find more, so I turned to return to the truck.

 

I could see nothing of it or any sign of life at all. I had made the classic mistake of going into the bush without making proper plans. In truth, I was lost, but I told myself I could not be far away from the road. Which way, was the problem. The sun was high above, so there were no clues from shadows to tell me north or south.

 

I climbed onto the highest point I could see, but still saw nothing. If I was not to wander further into the bush, I had to stay where I was and wait until nightfall hoping to see the glow of the fires the drivers would light for cooking. So I sat and waited, but not for long. Fortunately, someone started his truck; I turned full circle and saw a plume of smoke rising into the air. I headed for it feeling much better. Having only gone a hundred yards, I topped a rise. There laid out before me was the road with the line of trucks on it.

 

I have never before, and never since been so glad to see those metal monsters. When I got back to the truck, Don asked me where I’d been. He was getting worried and was just about to send out a search party to look for me. I could not tell him how glad I was to see him. If he had not been so ugly, I would have kissed him.

 

People think Australia is flat, it’s not true. From a distance, it may look like it but the bush up close is like the sea bottom. [In fact, you can find seashells in places far from the sea]. It is ridged like the desert sand dunes. You soon lose sight of something, unless it’s on top of a rise.

 

At the creek, a rope was somehow passed across the fast torrent of water. Some stores were transferred to our side of the river, in a similar way to how we did it in the navy. By using a sort of breeches buoy. It came dangerously close to the water but did not get wet. someone suggested that he could cross by it, we told him if he went in it would be goodnight forever.

The next day, the level of the water had dropped a lot. The torrent was now just a fast flow. The rope was dropped to just above the water. Holding onto it, we waded across. Seeing us cross, one car driver decided he could drive over. He would not listen to those who tried to stop him. The water was up to the waist; we had to struggle to cross. As the car went into the river it started to float.

 

We shouted for him to open his door to let the water in, but he panicked and took his foot off the accelerator. His engine stalled and the car floated down onto the rope. It was filling with water and started to roll over and slipped under the rope. The driver got out of the window and managed to save himself. We never saw the car again, I don’t know if the driver ever did?

 

On the next day, the river was down to about three feet. The first to try to cross was a Gascoyne trader’s truck. It entered the river slowly, the water coming up to the chassis. It carried on swaying this way and that as the wheels went into the ruts the water had washed from the bottom. At one stage we thought it was going to tip over, but it made it safely.

 

After that, we didn’t want to risk a repeat of the previous day’s car disaster, so we tied a rope to the back of a truck to pull the cars over. Don and I crossed safely and carried on