Brambles Long Distance

One of the many Mr Plods we used to have up front, was a fella by the name of Noel Bombgardener - aka - Bushy for short, a nice bloke and a real character as well.

He just loved going for long rides on the bike, so he was always on the look-out to do any 'specials' as these wide/long loads were known in the 'force'.

The Permit section back then, was attached/added to the Motor Bike desk sergeants duties, as any of the Bike fellas returned each day, they could sort though the pile of permits and choose who they wanted to escort. Most of these fellas knew the rego numbers of who was driving what, so a quick look at these permits told them who was in the saddle. After this first selection had occurred, then it was Rafferty's Rules, with all the other permits now being handed out and the 'recipient' told to do it.

He used to pick on me as often as he could, he reckoned that the Road Boss could get up and boogie and it was like being chased by a rampaging bull, I didn't take it easy, when I knew what was around and where I was, this to Bushy, was bliss, flat out on the bike whipping down the highway, with a mad man trying to run him over from the rear.

The only thing that was required of ANY Brumbles truck driver, that had Bushy up front, was you HAD to do a tyre check outside the pub at Torbanlea, under NO circumstances, were you to EVER just drive straight on past this establishment.

When you did get there and done your tyre check, Bushy would be coming out the door with a slab of barbed wire, over to the bike, lift both pannier bag lids, grab whatever is in the right pannier and dump it into the left pannier and force the down hard to shut it.
This now allowed plenty of stowage space for the slab, not quite, he would rip of a 6 pack and toss it onto the floor of the truck, this half dozen were the 'aperitif' before tea, the others were evenly packed into the pannier.

Now if I had a drink AT ALL during the day, then as the day wore on, I'd need to look for a shady tree to have a snooze, not so with Bushy, this elixir he desired, was a tonic to him.

As the day wore on, he would start practicing his stunt riding skills, as he was a member of that elite group, he sure practiced his ability to stand on a seat, while doing over 90 to 100 on a rough road, it was exceptional.
At the same time, he would be holding up a tinny to me, I would have to lean out the window to get this object, failure to retrieve it, would mean it became a missile aimed at me through an open window, all this while he's got the throttle locked open and standing on the seat doing a 'no hands balancing act'.

He was G---O---O---D.

This fella used do a lot of boxing, he still kept up punishing the speed ball and big bag, he was also one of the very few remaining Mr Plods, that dealt out immediate on the spot justice.

Bushy was up front of Errol Guetz with a platform loaded with a bit-o-lard, when along comes a car full of young bucks and Bushy tries to get their attention, his right hand hit the bit of steel on the righthand corner of the windscreen, these clowns did not stop or slow down at all.

Bushy just hooked a 180 and off after these idiots, he eventually caught up with them and according to Bushy, the driver had a ---- "very fast and very severe attitude adjustment ", he even busted a couple of bones in his R/H, from this idiots head smacking into his stationary fist.

All in all, he was one good dude, to have up front.

regards greenie [smiley=vrolijk_1.gif]

Every now and then, you just had to retrain some "mentally deficient cretin", who ignores what they have been told to do by a mobile Mr Plod

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Heading north from Mt Larcom to a small village called Ambrose, had on board a bit of a wash plant for one of the mines, this thing was a big round top at about 18 ft wide, came down like a funnel and sat nicely on the deck of the L/L. It had four legs on it as well, to mount this thing to the framework on site, I had loaded this object so the legs were not at 90 degrees to the side of the L/L, but at a 45 degree angle, this narrowed down the load by a couple of feet.

Just before you get to the village of Ambrose, there is a servo on the west side of the highway along with a very large open area pull off on the east side of the highway, just before the servo is another of these infamous skinny one lane wooden bridges.

Mr Plod is well over it and a Ford F100 with one of those camper set-ups tied down in the back of it, comes around the corner heading south, Mr Plod does his thing, flags this Ford down and tells him to park up in the dirt, he then proceeds to get the Ford into the dirt, but he's still mobile, pilot has now gone over the bridge and does a head on with this turkey in the Ford, he chickens out and stops, pilot heads back onto the highway, meanwhile Plod is over the crest and can't see what's about to happen.

Me, I see all is clear, so keep going, I'm about to get onto this narrow bridge and bugger me, that idiot in the Ford is mobile again and heading for the bridge as well, me I hit the horn and hang on, can not stop if I wanted too anyway, by me hitting the horn this just makes this other bloke cranky, he's really got his foot down hard now.
I'm up onto this bit of bridge, rubbing the tyres up against that big bit of timber that's placed down on the left, so you can't run off this apology of a bridge and into the creek, this other wild turkey, is absolutely determined, that it's his road and he just keeps coming even harder.

So we hit, at about a combined speed of around 70-80, as I've lost a lot with the heavy braking, now the leading right hand leg of the load then does it's thing, it had a sharp corner protruding forward, it hooks onto the front of this camper set-up about a foot down from the top and then peels about a quarter of the roof back, folding it upwards, like your peeling of a lid from a sardine tin, as well as tearing this great big gap into the side of the camper.

Never saw anything like what happened next, heard about it but never seen it until now, the combined speed created a vacuum and when he got opened up, that vacuum just sucked out ALL the clothes, cooking gear, cushions and whatever else was loose in that camper, it looked like an explosion had occurred, inside the camper.

All proceedings stop, this bloke gets out and he wants to fight me, for damaging his gear, turned out he was a grey nomad from Adelaide doing the ritualistic trip all around the countryside, now I had just totally ruined it all for him.

Mr Plod comes back, scratches his head and butt, then gives a stern lecture to this idiot, told him to clean the mess up from the road and we departed the scenery, me, I'm still wondering why MR Plod didn't give him a ticket for his bad behaviour, of ignoring what he was told to do. Was later informed that he felt sorry for this old bloke loosing everything the way he did, so no ticket issued.

You wouldn't believe it, but for the next two years, about every three months, a letter of demand would show up in the office at Hendra. Turned out he was uninsured altogether, after the paper work I had to fill out, even had the pilot back me up with what/how it all happened, the company knew it was his fault, because he did not do as he told by the Mr Plod.
So every time one of these letters fronted, it would be kept until I returned from wherever and handed to me, it would then be duly filed where it belonged, in the rubbish bin.


regards greenie [smiley=vrolijk_1.gif]

Neville Freshney ( Nifty ) told me about this lot that he just happened to do ----

Nifty had taken a load to Darwin, it was a bit ugly and oversized, it wouldn't fit onto a trailer easily, so he had to use a bolster on the turntable, with a tri axle jinker down the rear.

Gets to Darwin OK, unloads, then the Brambles Long Distance bloke in charge up there, tells him he has to take a grader back south.

Nifty gives him a strange look and asks just how in the #ell am I going to balance it on the junker, this bloke had a real quick answer to that.

Told Nifty he had to go put a 40ft Flexy flat on the bolster and jinker, chain that lot down, then go get the grader and stick it up top.

A Flexy flat is just the base of a container without any sides, has the four corner bits for the container pins, end rails, side rails with all the strengthening bits underneath and then a wooden floor has been added to this lot, it should make an easy flat deck for the CAT grader he has to put on.
He gets the Flexy flat on, this now makes the floor height about another foot higher than a normal trailer, then he goes around to load this CAT grader.

It turns out it's a CAT 10 grader, this is a fairly big grader for it's time, when loaded it's going to a tad overheight, so he loads it, chains it down onto the Flexy flat, gets all the paperwork and departs that northern most city.

All's good until he gets to QLD, there's been a lot of flooding down the road toward Charleville to Roma, so no can go that way home, alternative, head for the coast use that road.

This grader is a tad top heavy, but nothing Nifty hasn't seen before and he heads due east from Mt Isa.

When he gets to Julia Creek, this is where the fun started, the Flinders Highway is the main st at Julia Creek, but ALL trucks are banned from using that bit of road. The trucks had to use the road that ran parallel with the main st, Goldring Street, now as you get to the town heading east, you had to swing of the highway to the right and go down this other road.

Nifty arrives at this place about 8.30 PM and does the right thing, swings into Goldring St, he spots the pub is still open and quite a few are out on the footpath as it's a hot night, drives past the pub and is heading out of town, when there is this "god awful bang noise", a big splash of light like lightening, he looks in the mirrors and the town is BLACK, not a light shining anywhere at all.

Oh-oh, he realised what had just happened and took off, no way was he stopping here, this would cost real big bucks, so he just headed east as fast as that truck could go. He was way out toward Richmond before he stopped, out with the torch and up top to see just how much damage had been done, he inspects the load and it's the air conditioning unit that had been torn of the top of the CAT 10 grader.

What had got this air conditioner unit, was the power lines that came out of the diesel generator plant, that was on the south side of Golding St, out near the eastern end of town, these wires started low on the south side and went up at an angle as they came across the road, a road train could get under them easy enough, but Nifty was quite a bit taller than they ever could be.

That's what all the bright flashing was about, when he ripped apart the main power line, blacking out all of Julia Creek.

He looks around and finds the flat round plate, that is used to cover the hole that's been cut out to fit the air conditioner unit into the roof , it's in behind the grader drivers seat, s-o-o-o-o, it's not long and that bit of the buggered A/C unit that's left, is soon tossed out into the grass, now to get this plate screwed back up to the roof.

While this is happening, another truck heading east pulls in behind him, the bloke that's driving this trailer is a bit peeved off to say the least, he jumps out and starts abusing Nifty big time.

The full story comes out when he's calmed down a bit.

He was heading east towards Julia Creek, about a click out of town when the whole town just went black W.T.F

---

is going on here?

He drives into town and all the bodies at the pub are now out in the street, he doesn't stop, just keeps going, when he's a couple of clicks out of town, along comes the local Mr Plod with all lights flashing, he pulls up and the Plod has a look at his load and just starts writing the tickets, accusing him of tearing down the power lines.

This poor sod had a CAT grader on as well, it was a lot smaller than the one Nifty had onboard, this bloke even had permits issued to him, to cart this thing around, he was fully legal.

The Plod had worked out real fast what went wrong, when he got to the pub and asked everybody if they saw what truck did this dirty deed, they all to man said a trailer with a grader on the back of it, so Plod heads out of town and who does he run across first, that poor innocent driver.

Don't know how that other bloke ever got on, Nifty made it home OK and NO questions were ever asked, about where that air conditioner unit was.


regards greenie [smiley=vrolijk_1.gif]

Greenie, mate I think I found the Lima crane from your memory in Dragline Cam Wheel story..........

Yep, that's on old Lima, where was that photo taken ?

That 2 way radio aerial has a vaguely familiar look to it.


regards greenie [smiley=vrolijk_1.gif]

Think that was in the new brisbane yard, from memory.

Greenie, was Case Scholtes working in the Brisbane during your time?

Think that was in the new brisbane yard, from memory.

Greenie, was Case Scholtes working in the Brisbane during your time?

The name Case Scholtes seems to ring a bell, but can't put a face to the name.

By NEW yard, do you mean the one on Beaudesert Rd ?


regards greenie [smiley=vrolijk_1.gif]

Keep em coming Greenie, great stories mate and you have a knack of telling them that makes you feel as if you were there.

Greenie, I thought around eagle farmn area and Case was a supervisor with the crane division probably mid to late 80's.

Yeah mate great stories, keep'em coming!

Eagle Farm sounds wrong, Hendra?? and "Sully" would be the head honcho in the crane div. Tankers were at Eagle farm