Stradbroke Island in the 50's & 60's

Hi all. I am new to the forum & have just read all 55 pages in the General truck chat section (home crook as a dog).
I have worked with heavy vehicles for the last 40 years as a mechanic including time driving them.
My early years were with Luya Julius an an apprentice, Atkins Transport then 20 years in the RAAF. I am now taking it a bit easier as the sole mechanic with a school bus company in Cairns.
I was born on Stradbroke Island where my father was the head mechanic with the sand mining company TAZI. He worked on many various types of equipment including the first Unimogs in Australia, WW2 half tracks & Cat dozers mainly D6's i think.
Here are a few photos of what he worked on & some that I worked on later.
Couldn't do much about the clarity of the photos but most of them are 50 years old

Darryl

Unimogs




Half track & Blitz



Moving one of the dredges in the early 60's. The first time it had ever been done in the world






Dredge


Luya Julius
On my grandfather's Kingaroy farm about 1939


Sugar trucks in the early 70's

Great pictures Darryl. You where lucky to grow up on Straddie, it is a beautifull spot. They have a pretty good historical society on the Island too, who have collected quite a few photo's and stories.
50 page's in the general section eh? you must have been bored. LOL.

Enjoyed those photos Raafy, out resident bulldozer experts will do also. Is that an AEC with the little Unimog on the back.

Great photos of a bygone era Raafy.
Great to have another Cairnsite on board.

Ever since I read about these Stradbroke Island Unimogs, I've been curios to learn of their fate.

Last week I was over a Dunwich to inspect some items at the Sibelco clearance auctions.

Happened to have a chat with one of the old-timers over there and got talking about the Unimogs.

He said that a few years ago (was the sort of story where you couldn't tell if he meant 4-5 or 20-30 years ago) they were dredging and as the dune fell in behind the dredge the bonnet of one of the Unimogs popped out of the sand face. So they set off to recover the truck from the dune - apparently it was in reasonable condition at the time of recovery. It was then parked outside their management office on the island for a while whilst they decided what to do with it... To the point where rust had taken over and they consigned it to the scrap yard.

Tough story to hear as I'd had hopes of tracking it down and restoring it....

Unless someone knows a scrappy around Brisbane who might have one still sitting in the corner of their yard?

Also, how goes the restoration effpeetee?

Chris

Some of the Unimogs my father worked on on Stradbroke during the 50's & early 60's. He was the mechanic at TAZI sand mining. His name was Jim Howlett & was well respected by the people we lived amongst on the Island





Insert puts them in here?...?..Sarge.

Hi Raafy,
I was over on the island again this week, collecting this old MAN KAT 8x8 for a customer.

I mentioned your father's name to the blokes I was talking too, they smiled and said "ah yes, good old Jim".

I think they quite appreciated seeing these old photos.

Here's some pics of the truck we collected, and our G Wagen service vehicle.

The MAN has a Merc OM443 18.3L Naturally Aspirated V10 into a Torque Converter ZF Gearbox and Diff Locks on all four axles.

Instagram Post 1

Instagram Post 2

gr8 pix
keep m cummin

R U able to register the Big beast cos it looks wider then 2.50m?
cya

Swishy,

She's bang on 2.5m wide, 10.75m long and 3.4m high.

I'm guessing the service body will be removed, she'll be converted to RHD, rust repaired and all mechanicals given a good going over before it'll be registered again. She'll need 8 new tyres $3k+ each. It is not going to be a cheap exercise.

It's going to the same fellas who bought this 4x4 one off us in June.


Globe Roamer