The coolest dude in Alice - Henry Macey (non fiction books to read txt) 📗

The coolest dude in Alice

From 1968 to 1976, I lived in Western Australia where my wife, I and our three boys had emigrated. At the beginning of 1969, I found employment with a large transport, and construction firm. This company was called Bell Brothers and they had hundreds of trucks, and earth moving equipment. It seemed for the first few months I was to be a delivery boy, I spent my time taking new vehicles of all types to all the mining camps in WA. As a result, I got to know my way around Western Australia very well. Bell’s work was not just confined to Western Australia; they had just built a road in Papua New Guinea. Two deliveries took me to Alice Springs; we that is Bells; we're about to build a new road from Alice to Darwin. The first of these trips had me taking a water tanker with a full load of fresh clean water, and then fly home. They wanted the water to use in the camp’s kitchen; when they had emptied the tanker, they would be using bore water for the compacting of the earth road.

In the early hours, I headed out of Perth on the Great Eastern Highway, then on ever eastwards through the towns of Northam, Southern Cross, and on to Norseman where I stopped for the night. From here on you are travelling on the Glass highway, the correct name is Eyre highway. It had been nicknamed the Glass highway because of all the many windscreens that had been smashed along its length. The Eyre Highway is or was a dirt road, which runs for many miles in straight lines across the Nullarbor Plain. It is just inland of the Great Australian Bight, and it only bends when it needed to change direction. The Nullarbor is a vast expanse of land, which has no change of scenery to keep you from getting bored. But there were always plenty of potholes to hold your attention on the road and try to avoid at all costs.

I was once told, if you see a smooth stretch of road, avoid it, it’s more than likely a pothole filled with dust. I have seen trucks on the side of the road, with broken springs because of driving into one. The only pit stop I can remember was at Eucla, just before the eastern border with South Australia. Here there is a large roadhouse, which has everything for the weary traveller, and I do mean everything. I never really meant to stay the night there, but as I was eating I got talking to some truck drivers. We talked well after we had stopped eating as we sat around sucking on our beer cans well into the night, they told me of a shortcut to Alice. This shortcut to the Stuart highway which ran overland was only passable through the lakes at that time of year. It would save me having to go around via Port Augusta, but most of all it would save me almost six hundred miles of travel.

In the morning I got going after breakfast at sunup, turning off the highway after about three hundred miles where I was told to at Wirrulla. Now I was heading north into the bush following the track I was told about, there were no signposts out here to tell me that I was on the right road, and they had told me there would be none. The thick carpet of tyre grounded earth on the road was of a very fine red powder, and seemed to roll away from the tyres like water; it was picked up by the vortex of my passing at the back of the truck.

Tossed into the air, it would form a huge cloud of dust. That would hang in the air for an eternity and could be seen for many miles. As it slowly drifted across the bush on the hot gossamer breezes, that ghosted across the hot endless plains.

The road split into many sidetracks, that wandered hundreds of yards into the bush, but they always led back to the main track. These were most likely detours around boggy patches that appeared in the wet. When I finally climbed out of the low country, the road returned to its normal red gravel appearance. It ran for miles as straight as an arrow, to disappear into the distance like a long red ribbon. I had just driven one hundred miles through the area they call ‘The Lakes,’ and I had not seen a drop of water. This was now wide open flat plain; the only thing to spoil the view was a cloud of dust coming towards me. It turned out to be a dust trail, from one of Bells low loaders returning home from Alice. We stopped nose to nose and had a chat for half an hour. He told me where to find the campsite, but I would most likely find the men in Alice. He also told me not to say that I had come this way, as the company forbade taking shortcuts on unmade roads.

The most important thing he told me was where to get a good meal in Coober-Pedy, now if you haven’t heard of Coober-Pedy you won’t know the town is mostly underground. The ground is a white clay substance which they dig opals from; as they dig the opal they move into the mine making it their home. It was dark when I pulled into the pubs large parking area. Walking into the café, I asked if it was okay to park for the night. I was told ‘yes’ but if that thing is full of fuel, park it in the corner as far away as possible. His eye’s lit up as I said not fuel, but fresh soft sweet water from Perth. He then made me an offer that was very hard to refuse, (so I didn’t,) an evening meal a jug of beer and breakfast, for a four hundred gallon refill of his water tank. In the pub's bar that night I was offered several pieces of opal, by some of the miners. Some ground and polished, others rough and straight from the diggings. I had to decline them all, as I didn't have a lot of money to carry.

Realising I was not in the market to buy, one old miner after several glasses of my beer showed me how to tell a good opal. He had rings of varying value that looked the same to me until he explained how they were made. The most important thing to do is to turn the ring, so you are looking at the back of the opal. If you cannot see the stone, but just a black backing it is not one piece of opal but a thin layer of good opal topped with clear or milky opal. The black substance has a layer of mercury on it. It has the same effect as if you put it onto glass, and turns it into a mirror. The light and the colours of the good opal are reflected in the clear opal, making it look expensive.

In the morning I was up with the sun and joined the early risers for a breakfast of steak and eggs. Most of the work is done early in the morning, as by midday it gets a bit too hot, so they stop until evening then would start again. It is about four hundred and fifty miles, or if you prefer seven hundred km’s from Coober-Pedy to Alice Springs. I had about eight hours or more driving before I reached Alice, I should be there around mid-afternoon. As I drove into Alice, it was not the town I had imagined. I had seen the film, read the book, but it did not fit the picture I had in my mind.

It looked like any other outback town, with its tin-roofed buildings lining the wide main road into town. Then there was the buildings of a past era, the magnificent two-storey colonial-style houses, with their overhanging roofs and balconies, stood in the centre of the town. With the imposing building that was the bank, at the very heart of this historic and iconic settlement. That is in fact at the very heart of this country.

The wide main street had many cars and open-backed ute’s, {‘utility vehicle’, in England it’s called a pickup’} parked with there noses to the curb; ‘mostly outside the hotel’. Parked amidst them, were a Bells station wagon and a Ute. I found somewhere to park, then walked back and entered the hotel. I did not know who I was looking for, but one word loudly shouted had someone waving at me, {BELLS!}. He asked me where I had parked and then told me to go and fetch my overnight things. I could leave it where it was as they would book me into the hotel for the night. In the morning we would all go out to the campsite, together.

I had left Perth Monday morning; it was now Thursday evening, four long hot days later. I was ready for a night in a proper bed and a cool air-conditioned room, instead of a sleeping bag on top of the truck roof. Now don’t get me wrong, I liked to sleep out in the open. The sky at night in the outback is so clear, you feel as if you can touch the stars. Normally there are so many stars, you don’t see because of light pollution. But out there in the bush they are so bright and plentiful it is never really dark. All Bells solo drivers were issued with swag rolls, a seven-foot square of waxed canvas. A six-foot-long by two and a half foot wide foam mattress, it was two-inches thick. With a sleeping bag and pillow and two leather belts, that made up your sleeping roll. You had all you needed for a comfy nights sleep, and there was a rack on the back of the cab, to store it.

After an early breakfast, I was on my way, on the last leg of this trip into the centre of Australia. We were heading to a spot just South of Ti-Tree, a mere dot on the map one hundred and forty miles away. Here halfway between Alice and Tennant Creek, was to be the campsite. I said, was to be, because at the moment there was nothing there, just a large front-end loader. A small hut, a tent and some pegs in the ground. They had marked out the camp, showing where to put the units. The camps boss told me that the company’s jet would be in on Tuesday with eight men. I could fly back in it, or there would be other trucks arriving from now on. I could go back with one of the driver’s and share the driving. I said the plane if you don’t mind. He then asked, “Can you drive that thing?” pointing to the cat 966 loader. I replied, “I have never driven one that big, I had driven a JCB when I worked on SWEB but I was no expert”. “Near enough,” he said, “play with it for an hour then we will see if we can get some work done,” then walked away.

The first job he wanted was an unloading ramp, a gentle slope to four feet deep the dirt piled on top at the deep end then graded back. With no crane, we had to drag the units off the trailers and into place with the loader. The units had large skids, attached for this purpose.

Next was a deep pit some distance away from the camp with ramps either end the dirt