Information on Cat Motor Grader No. 12

Ian

I seem to remember graders being trucked with the removeable cab tops strapped to the front end to get the height down. Suppose it varied between their destinations in the days before the 6 metre powerline standard was introduced.

 

Also mention that the Australian Army built a ship to collect US construction equipment from the islands after WW2 ,and Thiess Bros did similar collecting abandoned US earthmoving machines after WW2..........and probably lots of others who had access to suitable boats...........Ive forgotten the name of the army ship,but it was later used as a coral barge by QCL.

It was Army heavy lift ship "Crusader". It did several trips to Morotai and Borneo in 1945/46 recovering Australian equipment (not US stuff) including the Cat12 graders of the RAAF Airfield Construction Squadrons.

It had a flat bottom so it could sit on the sand at places that had no dock facility.

It later becam the coral carrier "Cementco" operating with dredges in Moreton Bay.

I stripped it of all its non-ferrous metal the week before it was towed out to become a diving site at Moreton Island,

Still have one of the 6 props and the Ruwalt engine side plates.

Photo of it in service and now at the end of the row at the Moreton Wrecks.

   

I would have played on that in my early teens, not too long after they got there. One of those had a row of several levers that still moved.

Thanks guys, Jarrod.

How easy to drift off topic. Anyhow I recall working on the "Cementco", the dredge and the barges during my apprenticeship at Evans Deakin starting in 1960. I think all that fleet undertook yearly maintenance in Cairncross dry dock. Not sure how many times I worked on the "Cementco" or when coral dredging stopped in Moreton Bay.

A dumb question, what was the coral used for ?

Paul

An ingredient of the cement made at Darra, Paul. A partial substitute for lime, I believe.

Back on track

 

Why did they stop, there us a whole reef full of coral up that way

Do you think in this day and age they would be happy about a cement company gnawing into a bay island?

 

On the way back up the river with a load.