Peter Lizard Williams The Power and the Glory

[Applause] [Music] [Music] yeah you sound like a frog um yeah i read you all the time in there i did i didn't recognize you now are you giving me a compliment there yeah like you're gonna bag a little bit of wonder yeah yeah you don't get carried away yeah i get enough knocks made to not be big headed about it all the time oh thank you i'm glad you like it right lizard no i gather everyone calls you a lizard except your mum yeah mum's dead but she never she she she knew it but she still killed me peter you know peter peter who peter williams okay yeah you're a northern territory uh born and bred man no no i was born in some kilda yeah i i moved uh i started driving on the hume in 65 who was that with it was a car carrier mob driving and uh uh it was in austin and now sorry it was a comma well the knocker yeah knocker yeah and uh it was a knock or a toe to dog but it didn't tow a dog with a drawbar it was just a ball coupling thing and it had a pipe frame on it so you loaded six cars and then when you got to sydney there wasn't a lot of cars going back so you could um take the frame take the pipe frame down with a cut two shifters it was just like um scaffolding yep exactly this over scaffolding and you went and looked for a load of freight and yeah we got freight out of brisbane you'd uh you get spuds uh they were funny they were funny-looking tarps because they were really only car carriers but um yeah it was a good job uh i worked i think it was peter peter arnold i think he and a bloke called greens and then they were actually called later on i think or greener mclandish um but yeah i did that and then um i i drove for a couple of blokes uh in due burners uh marsden's that's uh that's your term for mercedes-benz yeah marsden's uh harry powell they adam too harry powell barney kerr and another mob oh um i forget their names but what are they 14 18 all 14 18. all single drive good truck you talk to people that had kenworth or went over to other things they said the 1418 well i know for a fact that in 1418 set up a lot of operators that went on to atkinsons and stuff they didn't they were indestructible they just come in after the petrol 90. i never drove a 90 because there was only two left at marsdens and i had no wish to drive a petrol motor because i wasn't a mechanic you know yep yeah uh two blokes i think one was zeke another bloke was uh billy violin but um they soon went into benzes then anyway you know and they were just uh magic truck mate you didn't want to be seen in them it was like driving to louie but you they did the job yeah they were magic what were you hauling back then cars were no no this is at another job with marsden's we hauled um austral cable austral cable up and uh just general back anything you know load of snot but it got us back i can't remember the freight we used to carve back there was a lot of austral cable going up leggett's rubber uh yeah a lot and where were you traveling from and see back in those days the sydney um it was a haulage terminal with its own little roadhouse sydney back to um melbourne back to else yeah back to elf basin's depot and then we'd deliver it you know on a little i think it was an ab ab150 a little enter you know they're they're classics now but they were yeah just the trucks we drove i think they had six still in the room six-year-old morinda yeah oh fantastic steering wheel sitting on your chest yeah and you know armstrong steering and that but um they were fantastic but you know but he dumb if you've been there a while and you loaded just around the corner with austral cable which you know those big yeah the big wooden they were they were there was cable inside but they were actually surrounded they were tacked together by wood big round ones like this and you put a chain through the middle but they had they're only four foot so you get two on the back okay shine it then you can put other ones other ones and then taper down to literally so you had your weight okay look like that yep and if you if you'd been there a while that's all you went with it was just a load of cream it was just cream but if you were new he would um make you uh top up back of the yard with leggett's rubber and it was you had to put gates on around it he would just throw in this lightweight stuff it was from leggett's rubber i know they were rubber rings in bags about that big so we'd ruin that load you had to go to the depot first then to get them off and then go and do your cable but yeah he's a good bloke elf mars yeah and where'd you go after that um i went to taylor dalton uh i went to taylor doltman i went to harry powell hang on harry powell went to harry powell and then i went to barney kurz and they gave me a brand new 1418. it was just before the road command well road commanders were there then with the 250 cummings but i hadn't been there long enough i i think they got six and then they got about another four they were just the ducks guts but i didn't drive one uh yeah and then i went oh i went to east days and um they were an iconic company yes yeah that was as good as anything i think i think you thought you'd made it to the top they had 250 cumminses in kabobs and i do remember once when it broke down the kenworth was off the road which is very unusual for easter's but they let me drive or made me drive a 250 peterbilt with a with twin sticks i think it was a 14 spade spicer being a cab over all the cables were stretched and not they weren't as tight so you didn't know what you were in you think i hope i'm in and when you let the clutch out you're either in or out yeah and uh both sticks were like um stirring a bowl of porridge they you know they really were but um it was still wonderful it was a peterbilt you know it was a peterbilt i probably took four thousand photos but i don't know i probably only got about two left but and then um mate of mine billy valle and he drove for ancestors he said come over here this is not bad and i was i was a little bit tired from driving freestyles so i went to ancest on the changeovers we we did a change over at nil um i don't know whether we changed prime movers uh i think we just got in the other truck i don't think we ever wound the legs down okay and then we went to forbes and we had a ten hour break in a lady's house someone you know when you're in you rang them and she's a lovely lady and she was out all day so you you could make yourself a feed that was better than sleeping in the back of the truck yeah well they didn't have sleepers oh sure across the seats yeah yeah well no i might have yeah well that's right they had slim lines here that's what another bloke got in and went to brisbane and then you woke up nice and fresh you could make yourself a sandwich in the house and got into another answer slim line and the other one was yes they had to shuttle we went to yes and stayed at the australia hotel uh and then while we stayed at the australia hotel excuse me they had us about booked about four to a room um because the the the the rooms had heated carpet so i think two two i don't know one or two would sleep on the bed or just one another if the other bloke was cold he could just drag and cut the blanket to sleep on the carpet and it wasn't cold okay which was fantastic um we had a bloke that used to leave five dollars he was a gambler the same mate of mine he was he was such a gambler because i don't gamble he you know the one-armed bandits i do remember them yeah i'm old enough yeah well he he usually dropped five dollars in at tumblelong which used to be another changeover station uh just before south gundy he dropped five dollars off of tumblelong and then when he went up and went to the australian hotel and gambled it all he had five dollars at tumblr to get bacon and eggs which was enough to get you home you know he he remembers it too yeah he didn't mind losing it as well no he didn't care no he didn't care if he lost a lot but he knew he had five dollars with celia yeah forward thinking yeah that's magic um i used to go to bed i used to go to bed but these places come in about three or four hours later and wake yup you know so wonderful there were some wonderful old blokes back then but uh i got the sack i i i hit a a cow around about tabletop [Music] and i kept i thought i've got to report this it was on the hume i i i don't know what i'd done to it it was in this i think it was in the scrub i couldn't even find it so i went i went drove through all we went to the uh wadonga cop shop they said you got to go back to auburn repeat that we've got nothing to do with it so i went back because i'd already let them know i went back and then i you're only supposed to drive at 1900 in those gm's i just belted it back belted it back to footscray road and they looked at the tachograph i thought i was helping them by getting in the same you know back him into the docks then you went home yes yeah well i backed it into the dock i think and then they they uh they uh i had to well i didn't snatch it they spared me because i went over the speed limit right uh you know they also used if you were seen with a beard suzanne says if you were seen with a beard because we used to go out at night if a member of the public or a shareholder shareholder saw you with a beard you spent a week on the dock is that right yes and if you they they provided uniforms with kenworth stick pins and little cummins badges tiny ones and they like you to wear them now somebody just lost them it didn't matter but if you were seen in on the brisbane boy anywhere on the forbes run say when it's hot with your shirt off and a blue thing that underneath you've got a week on the dock okay that's fair thing they're pretty strict no longer yeah they were rich like these people yes yes representing the company it's right what about what about quicker there they all had ties with the quickest air stick pin through and it was the it was a purple tie as quick as their pin and they were encouraged to wear them they were they were professionals they had uniforms before police those had uniforms but no one else before them ever had uniforms it wasn't because they couldn't afford them no one wore them but they wanted you to have afe in the circle on there wait i i haven't got a shirt but i've still got one of the so on patches okay you know well then i drove for linfox on the transtars at the stage they were just taking over cameron's in bayswater uh i think i was offered at kenworth with a 318 903 and i said no i want to stay in this transtar that didn't look real flash in foxy's colours but it had a 335 turbo in it would leave those kenworths for dead so stating that uh mate yeah they got their money's worth out yes then i uh i went to john nash john nash started up with two brand new louisville's carton glass hi hang on i left out bolshees too i used to cut glass for bolshees in a v6 atkinson you've worked for a few i worked for everyone the pink pages and and uh yeah anyway i knew what the glass was like carting it's top-heavy but it's not sort of you you know drive properly and i was with bolshy i think and then i snatched that and uh the uh the manager of john nash's rang me he said what about driving a new louisville for us we've got a lot of glass now ourselves so yeah they got they got a lot of glass through pilkington too so i went to them in a brand new louisville with no sleeper it didn't matter them days you could have two logbooks and um i left nashes uh just left no worries you know on my own accord for once and um i i um went to um i saw a photo of noel bundon in a post magazine standing beside an r model mack it was called the call of the wild and it just it hit something in me struck a chord struck a chord i was sick of the hume so uh we took my wife and i and our little kid took a year off and they wouldn't give me a job i said you've done you've had no experience with cows but we've got a job coming up but ranger uranium in mind they're opening a a mine at jabaru and we're putting for a job cutting lime about what uh year would this be 78 okay and uh so i um kept going up to darwin and we stayed in uh we had a 12-foot van caravan we stayed in the overland at caravan park which is sort of opposite truck city now then yeah there's there's a bloody there's a there's a wow store there now but in those days it was a caravan park i got a job with knt doubles to alice they they hauled uh ridgeways ridgeways mainly and motor cars i drove a benz it wasn't a 1418 though it was a bit more powerful and we pulled two trailers and then uh a bloke offered me a job driving a a it was an arm model with a cool power in them traveling from darwin to brisbane and i loved that i couldn't believe when i got there that i was parked at three ways in an r model mac driving doubles down to brisbane you know everyone knows about the three ways at ten and creek i couldn't believe i was there thought you were made in the shade did you make it i thought reached the penny got kicked yeah kicked a big goal yeah yeah kicked a big goal i did that for barry for a while and then a bloke called glenn forbes sent a telegram to the house we had and my wife's brother rang me and said there's a glenn forbes wants you to ring him about accommodation in alice because the depot was full so i rang him back and he said yeah they're stuffing us around a little bit all you know in the production of everything they wanted uh but it's going to kick off so uh but meanwhile my first wife had gone she said this is too hot and i said yeah i'll never see you later you know and um so i uh no he said oh we've got single mans so i drove down there drove back to alice left barry bales on my own terms actually and um started on the line i start i stayed in the single man's quarters to see it you wouldn't believe it when i walked in there was a bloke of sleep you know just in a pair of jocks yeah called rags and um yeah he just had a pair of jocks and i thought geez what's this you know and um but anyway i see there's your room there that little strip heater on it tiny room i thought this is i'm driving for my night that's it that's my that'll do me i can die now you know and like though then we did the lime they went down and introduced me the blood at the time was doing wheel bearings a bloke by the name of bully ashford and he said come down i'll show you how we do it the next day um and this is the bloke you'll be off siding well i looked at the bloke he's here now too today and i thought when i was about 30 or middle 30s i thought this place got to be in his 50s well he was younger than me but he'd done a bit of a bunny so he had a few creases you know the desert canada yes yes and uh they said he said uh billy said uh you know um this is this is musk i didn't know i didn't have the name then he said peter this is muscles i thought oh i saw muscles the other day did you good yeah he is a absolute mate and he anyway put us in a mac first night i'd pull three trailers i said i must say you better drive first here this is the first time you've been first trip yeah first trip three line boxes three 20-foot line boxes loaded on 40-foot trailers sitting in the middle there was no such things as some container pins but the scale easily get us let us get away with uh a thing they call a hook bolt put them into the hole and turn them and they just and then you just put it down through your tie rail tighten it up with a big washer yep and i i've still got the photo the first time i was proudest punch i'm near the devil's marbles i got a blue singlet on and muscles has take the photo of me it's an f model mccabe over i'm not sure if the air con work anyway don't matter um and then we got the jabaroo and um they were trying to quicken the times up you know they've been doing it for a while i'd actually didn't start when i started there was already they already had a few drivers but i had the i had the donga because i was a single man and they had caravans and then um yeah we did that for a while we were you're supposed to do it as soon as you got there as soon as you unloaded which was a forklift lifting three trailers off yet three boxes they put six empty ones or if they or if they didn't have any empty they'd say see you later i don't know you didn't have to do anything but throw this bloody 12 hook bolts in the toolbox so and you needed a shifter that's all so we just go back but um muscles yeah we heat drive a bit i drive a bit we had no changeover points just when he was tired he tapped me and when i was tired i'd tap him that works it does work and we're a good mate and we stay good mates i didn't know i was going to go though because he he smoked and drank four ex-stubbies and i don't think he did a lot of sleeping well you're a carlton draft man were you oh but i yeah he just drink them wouldn't we didn't have oh yeah we had a knot we had an angled fridge it sat on the cover the engine cover and um mate he i'd say you right he'd say yeah i'll have another can and bloody and then drive there's no worries we're pretty well known for that i think at that stage i think everybody was i didn't know they just yeah they have a charge and um so a couple of times we were supposed to be a 52-hour turnaround well i think so you know we did it in 52 about once and they said come on you blows you got a bit yeah yeah yeah all we were doing was driving stopping and having a shower on our way out near the guard keeper's hut because he had to let you've been on the iranian mind they had to they'd actually see you coming you couldn't just drive in they couldn't get your paperwork off you it's a brand new joint yep anyway um we continued for a while and then they said this is not working because someone saw us in a parking bay and we're both sitting in the chair oh i'm sitting i'm sitting in the chair with muscles are sitting in the passengers he said did the world the sun's coming in on us of course people can see you in a cab over so they said well it's not really working so they gave me a um they gave me a truck number 13 called the power and the glory and because my nine had big names on the side of the vehicle yeah and the bonnet yeah the most anyway power in the glory and it had a 450 kt 450 in it well uh it just was wonderful it sang did it it sang and muscles had muscles like max so i think he got an r model he loved max i do now but i didn't at the time never driven a mac and then um over yeah then i don't think they ever put us two up again it was a bit of a joke you know and um so we stayed there stayed there he had his business he had a misses and three children they lived in a beautiful house and uh i'd met a girl then i was living in carmichael caravan park and it was still a wonderful job uh sometimes you could do it yourself in 52 hours return no no worries but i think that both of us were he i used to sometimes tap me foot he'd we get to have tea at dunmara there'd be john baine and billy basket and bloody flanagan and partington and all these blokes all that have become reasonably big names there now they were just one owner operators okay in road bosses we get on the pis muscles like the cold drink on a hot day and uh we're sitting at dunmara and uh i'd had a clout and in about a three quarters an hour i started clicking a bit and he's there having stubby after stuff he said come on mate we're going to get going we've got to get going we're going to get going we're going up so i felt like i wanted to get there i thought i actually thought of leaving him and going up the jabaru and he would have been still standing in the same place but he wasn't we got going he'd had about 12 so he just went to bed i'd had about three it was the best time that dunmar was the best place on the road in those days now we got the jab room we got back and you know like uh they knew that was the end of it you know and they said we've got we've got another truck now so your bloke's going i think muscles got into the f model and i got into a w model and kept going and then they had to renew the contract and they didn't get it um i don't know why there was nothing wrong with the service but i just don't i don't know why and um oh another bloke took us over for a while a boat called uh del zeal right and we kept driving for him but not our own not our same trucks i had a white w model i was too up i can't remember who it was but um malfunction i think and um he so we drove for them and then then bundo had an auction and i thought oh this is not going to get out of the single quarters but um no he didn't he the auction wendy got rid of a lot of stuff was very sad but then we started driving these w models was this when when noel was selling up yeah selling the business yes he sold at the blog called i think it was rollie del zeel anyway i agree i've got photos of me carrying 44 gallon drums on the front trailer uh you know because you had 10 foot of space yeah because there's only 20 footer i i got photos of 44 grand drums roped onto the front or rope near the container because uh no one to give you credit no one you couldn't book up a feed yeah you're allowed to pick up a feed on the fuel bill but not everyone couldn't buy cartons of piss on it and um so so he brought it back they they uh his name was run into the ground uh which we didn't like either because we had the yeah yeah no one liked dalziel i don't think and uh so bunning bought it back he went and got um 14 super liners so you're back with noel ah so yeah yeah so uh i can't remember the rigmarole but we end we ended up back in catherine and i don't know but the lime but it didn't keep going with del zeal anyway that wasn't a very good episode you know so um i went uh and i said well there's yeah there's nothing here boys peter gunner said um go up see hobbsy he was the cattle manager the one on up there and i was the only one that went i don't know the other blokes were sort of the other blokes were set up in ellis they were family men you know and um so muscles got a job with timor timor transport a well-known company in the time in them in those days they went uh they went out bush with oil rigs and that yeah he wasn't going to move to catherine i i only had me by myself by then and uh didn't mind where you were oh yeah that's right i mean your girlfriend was wonderful you know so we just moved into a caravan park the riverview caravan park and i started on the couch you finally got to the cows mate it was took you a few years it was it was an r model uh i don't know whether it had two sticks or seven i didn't care i just two single only two single deckers they'd uh i wanted to drive a no a body truck with two singles single dolly and bogey trailer i think yep and then um they said uh yeah you can go into double deckers now but it was still um i don't know who got the body truck probably another new driver and um i got a kenworth uh with two double deckers and a single on the back and then i was mixing with blokes uh blokes i got to know and they were absolute legends then they started 20 years before me blokes like jack taylor and tonesy and reggie mcguinness and you know just peter burns they were just already done it for 10 they had 10 or 20 on me you know really did there was a good camaraderie out on the highway but they'd never been on the hume highway that's all they knew driving cow trucks and walking around in bare feet and singlets it wasn't like handsets well i think you're overdressed wouldn't you wouldn't have worked out here mate if you're you were overdressed if you had a pair of bongs on okay and uh it was just it was absolutely magic you were they were um they all looked rough and tough they had green shirts that might add a pocket off you know or a sleeve off and solder the earth i loved it i loved it and then they said well mate she's not like the lime you haven't got another driver i said that's all right i got it i've got a spare driver in my pocket you know and that was the way it was and uh i i only finished up last year right so that was from whatever about 80 war 80 80 82 or 83 and then i've just driven with all the previous the you know my nine sold out to one of his drivers dicky david who went on to become the biggest road train driver the biggest road train operator in the well i don't know about australia but in the territory yep from being a from being a a tyre boy to a road boss and then the owner well he would have he would have remembered his roots and where he came from and how he came up through the ranks and yeah you would hope that that would give him some insight into the camaraderie with his drivers yeah we all yeah everyone knew us because we drove abundance yes there was only a few companies there was yeah there wasn't the big there was ntfs there was uh um cup there was uh cohort yep a big operator but um we were the only ones on cows there was no competition and then um hit when diggy bought it he got done a lot of repairs got it looking good bought and then bought 12 w models uh a nice 14. there's a photo somewhere i've seen it probably in big rigs uh of 14 kenworth in a line and you can just see the 14th but just 14 prime movers all in dickie david's colors oh buddies colors yes yeah but just as he started up again i forgot to tell you as he bought the 14 super liners he changed the name to not right on roadways to rta road trains of australia yes and he i i've i've heard the story and i don't know i'll have to ask patty but um uh we heard it we they called it rta because it was the the road traffic authority which is rta was giving him in wyndham and i'm i'm pretty sure he that was a way of getting back at them and a wonderful name anyway absolutely i mean if you if you could put road trains on the front of your business name it's nearly as good as bun time yes so he had road trains of australia and dickie david he just bought a heap of transport companies he bought i think he bought bainey and basket cloppers uh he just and he everything he touched turned to gold because bainey was bringing the beer into darwin you can't go wrong you know and um yeah wrong and then um he uh in 93 uh jim cooper bought it i mean i don't know whether he i don't know whether dickie sold it i don't know why but um he had so many companies anyway and i know that jim cooper i've never met jim cooper oh and of course jim cooper is he had you know he had tippers always golf transport they were red and they were yellow and they looked good everything was always clean they had yellow rims everything was always washed because we didn't get to see a tap very often i was going to say not an easy feat out here no no but that's that's right but we never got to see a tap much because um they had a big base in darwin and they drove to places like tennant i suppose they could wash them a bit but you know but anyway i think he wanted to buy he just everyone wanted to own by nines because of the loyalty of both both them bosses to us both they both looked after you and um legends of the outback they were and as a consequence uh yeah whether they created it or the type of person that the the business attracted a lot of legendary drivers oh of course there is of which you're one well yeah now but i didn't yeah i just wanted to have a good time you know what didn't you all mate some of them bloke say some of their blokes at the start of the season with one nine big john for one i uh he's passed on now but when he got when he used to come up every year in a panel van from sydney or brisbane i think sydney he would take the passenger seat out unbolt it in the w model put it up in the loft and put the biggest angle fridge you could get in in there and if he picked up a shield well she had to sit on the angle we'll get in the bed or get in the cave you know either way he was a winner in the day he was the winner because she either drank piss and sat in the bunk or she drank piss and probably have to lift her ass every 10 minutes so big john can have a drink so you just retired last year did you yes i retired in may when our house was sold and how old are you now is it if you don't mind me asking i'll be uh 69 on new year's day friday we look both good look good too yeah and um so i can remember big john one day we both pulled up a walk-up which was the pub before you got the dunmara and we both we're both in there and we both went out and had the biggest clout and i said right i will get really i will lay in the bunk until they start firing we both woke up in the morning we'd had a bigger sleep and raced at the waist of the gear we just both went to bed i thought no he'll wake me in an hour i'll wake him about six o'clock in the morning out for the camp yeah i probably went to bed at midnight and we should have been up the road you know but they were the days and no one chipped you no one chipped you there was no tachographs because you know they didn't need them um that looked they had to take account of the the climatic conditions apart from anything else the state of the road well and i'm sure you've had plenty of times where you got stuck in the mud for a long period of time of course we've been stuck at stations for five days we've been stuck at wave hill for five days and the manager at the time gavin hoed he we just got three meals a day and all the piss we could drink and i don't think he booked it up to rda he just did it okay and then different sort of world only three years ago or four years ago we got bogged at pigeonhole which is an outstation of vrd four days just treated like the family yeah i think i booked up a car i was a road boss in those days so since we got there he said what he's going to do i said can we book up a couple of cartons to brookie that was rta manager he said yeah of course he said he'll cover it i don't care so i think on the fifth day out of pigeonhole we had dried out uh we had a camera crew with us so they only came on the fifth day because they weren't interested in watching new blokes get pissed exactly they stayed at the top spring hotel two two aussies two aussie photographers and uh their boss from america uh and he wasn't interested in seeing us he don't want to see us just bogged anyway in the fifth day it dried out was the sun and the wind was on it and we moved them and there was only six of us uh and uh so they said well we'll come on the morning which is a loading anyway that might happen but um so we got a i was first uh road bosses are supposed to travel last but um in the in the because i was first at the joint i was first to go through and first get loaded and they just said go go don't worry about helping the second bloke just go well that started at about 10 in the morning sorry four trucks i got back to tops well i i come back through you know they said give it to her and i couldn't get traction i got traction but about one kilometer up it was real rocky stuff and you could get through that then just up on top of a rise i couldn't get traction so they grader towed me uh a grader told me with a stiff bar on the grader and then when i thought i was right to go i had a brand new bloke with me he'd never seen a stiff bar he'd never seen a wire rope we'd already and we'd already uh i'd already been stiff barred through the river because empty i'd already been stiff barred through by uh another bloke one colored fella we had there and uh so he he couldn't believe he's he seen a stiff base what's that yeah i said well it's just we all have one and we all got wire ropes and we all got this and that you know yeah he was wrapped anyway when the grader got me out he kept saying how's it going now listen i said no you're still pulling me you're still pulling me and he went a little bit further and then he sort of slowed down and i knew then that i was going you could see yourself catching the tow rope yeah yeah so um i said to kurt quick quick mate um get that get that stiff bar so he run out he run out to get the stiff bar and he started walking back to the third trailer i think that's where we had it you should have had it on the lead but we didn't yeah we had in the spare wheel carrier the third and as he is another the raider and then i got caught again the greatest driver's saying give it to her you know give it to her so i'm giving it to her and the new bloke is standing there with the stiff bar he didn't try and sort of hurry thought up lizard will pull up in a minute well he didn't they didn't get out the next morning and i had his clothes his wallet and i and i can remember seeing him in the mirror uh to this very day he just chucked the stiff bar on the ground and thought where the are you going well i just kept going i got out to the road about i got to i got back on the road at camfield at about nine o'clock that night and got the top springs i i i said can i have a feed they said we'll have a sandwich here for you i got to there about midnight those are the blokes plus kurt with no clothes or nothing didn't get out till the next afternoon and the last bloke he got he got back which he had he had kurt with him then because he said well you just don't help me he got back to darwin about 18 hours after me and i had his gear in his wallet i thought he's gonna thump me so you've had a life of no regrets not one uh you've loved it not one always been in your blood yeah yeah i think it has always will be yes now i can't let you go no without asking you how you got the name lizard um you're allowed to say stuff yeah but about how you get the dry mouth well the story going around you know when you know when i when i talk to magazines i got to tell them that i get a dry mouth because when i've been going for about three days the tongue hangs out the actual story is when you have a clout when you have a clout your tongue licks around now when you start clicking your tongue goes like this and the bloke said prickles this prickles he said to me he's still up there he said made you like a lizard but in the magazine you've usually got to put wait it's when i'm uh when i'm tired the actual fact is yeah you have a cup of juice and a couple of shakers and yeah exactly and that worked as you said earlier everybody did back then oh but you know that even you don't i don't do it and they don't talk about it because they've got fatigue management and you're out of it now you can say whatever you like i've got plenty of old mates that i've spoken to they all tell the same story and it's the only way they got from a to b it was just part and parcel of the job everyone knew yeah i think everyone knew that yeah they used to portray us on the hume there's drug crazed truckies well you know you know they used to we used to people used to ride in and back us up yep bugs like bloody bob macmillan you know he would say well look what would you rather have would you uh uh you know what do you want the truck driver to do uh you know um uh chew a pill or chew a gum leaf which means hitting a tree when jim cooper brought us out he streamlined the maintenance and it was it probably come in a time when the export was going crazy the meat works were closing export was the new thing there's millions of asians you you can't send the asians meat out of a meat works in a in a meat box for a frozen meat box because most people in asia and that haven't got a fridge 98 of them have still not got a fridge okay so if you send them box meat it goes off and then they only want it so when you send cows over or steers or whatever they they [Applause] they um they take they buy three when they unload that bloke buys three and he takes him home and looks after him and fattens him up yes and he kills one or if he kills one that goes to the wet market and someone buys a haunch aura you know yep there's no then they've got to eat it that night yes and so they have now they have beef and rice not rice just right so the export this year is already on the way well it was 300 and something last year this year is going to be 700 and something it's huge that's twice yes twice what we've ever done this year talking about now so um and anyway uh i don't know whether cooper could see it coming but uh he bought the biggest bang as he could uh you know uh c500s with uh 19 liter engines no uh no um no no electronics no harnesses all that and he was pedantic about servicing he was just like if you cassette played up he said we'll go and get another one see the storm and quote your truck number he supplied angle fridges you had to buy your own everywhere else okay not a big angle but a good angle yep it went between the seats he didn't want you moving the seat over and rubbing on the bloody passenger door which some blades used to do so we had angles but the only thing is he put in a thing that beeped when you went over a hundred and i think he was pretty strict but he never i don't think he actually spared anybody because when we're all going along the barclay talking to each other all you could hear was beep beep beep [Laughter] i think it's like a knight to the bar yeah clicking a to the bar so some bloke should put their beanie over it a little bit yes and i'd say as old cooper's 100 100k policy card they say up the and be gone big everyone had a beep so he didn't he didn't suck anyone he didn't suck anyone at all though uh an old legend bloke tonsi he saw what was going to happen so he went to hamptons they'd just start they were just they had a couple of trucks in fact we used to call them pantene haulage we reckon it won't happen overnight but it will happen yeah yeah so but jim i think he forgot the idea of the beeps it probably only lasted six months yeah and we on and our ears were killing his body lost scores [Music] you copy 100 hours yeah listen b b b you know you copy 100 there you go now you slow down a bit beep beep beep beep so it was just we'd be rolling along laughing and i think and thinking well if we get the spear we've had a wonderful time doing it and we never got the spear you never got the spare from jim because [Music] the loyalty the loyalty was there that man he chopped off every he chopped off every ball race turntable there was hundreds of them he we had oversized rollers to push the brakes out a bit to get more out of the linings okay it's not illegal but it's not the best practice so he he outlawed oversized rollers and bought 20-foot containers of brake drums the right diameter they hadn't been worn out right led lights weren't out but they if they were out he would have been refused they had him yes yeah and a mate of mine who pulled for ridgeways he saw us coming along one day and he must have heard us because we all react we all react on this uhf all night and all day on channel 40. he said lizard it was the night time he said lizard that year since cooper now that cooper's got it every side light working every clearance light's working and it's magnificent and it's you couldn't have found better ah i work i worked for him for 13 years and i never met him but he said i want you to buy a house in darwin uh i want you to be a road boss up here for the um export cattle so i told my wife that jim would like us to move and uh you know he was paying mo he was paying my accommodation at the bermuda hotel he couldn't get any better that was a truckee's pub it's now a harvey norman that's a shame doesn't matter yeah if you were dribbling into darwin and you looked across at the berima there'd have been about 18 prime movers there all on the piss but all sleeping in a room waiting for a load out yeah and it become our official watering hole mate well it was already our official warrior long before i got there they had paintings of some of the drivers like right they had paintings of an r model mac and we had a bloke a colored load called pissy pepperell now he's there's there's people here today that have come to look at his head on the wall he died in 91 but if you were around a table talking to old drivers all they would ever talk about was pissy pepperoni he was allowed to ride pissy on the front of his cab over okay bunning didn't care he said look if someone can paint that on you have it but no one else was allowed well no one else was called pissy and i've got that photo somewhere and uh he was a legends legend oh he was he was the black prince yeah okay he was a black prince he said he's written up over there i visited his grey i visited his grave yesterday and his daughter had just dropped some flowers there nice yesterday so you you worked uh you you obviously you enjoyed working under jim cooper then found him a an honorable sort of a bloke and a gentleman and in two hours after his trucks you were saying oh look after his drivers best maintenance ever took off all the ball races did this and that and it was the best man i've ever worked for uh it was the hardest thing he'd ever made but he just wanted to concentrate on mines mine mine mining and tippers you can see that regulations we got a bit tougher so we sold out to hamptons right they now um i've worked for them for the last five years i changed the colors though didn't they well that's a bit of a sore point with me they they they kept the name thank god uh but they've changed the colors as as a green and white truck is replaced it's replaced by we call them the mountain parrots because they're yellow and blue and uh but they've retained the name which is still a big help because everyone knows what rta stands for and who used to have it and who's had it and who's had it and who's got it now well the trucks are still the same but uh yeah i think the drivers are becoming more scarce they're going to the mines they're just having trouble getting blokes should have done cattle and uh i wish him well i just hope that blokes will see that mining is real good you get three grand a week but you're away from your wife you're on a fly and fly out and you know there's still a good company they're still called rda and rda will be around for a long long time lizard a life well led thank you mate thank you buddy good to talk to you no worries you want a coffee [Music] you

Channel: Truckin With Kermie

Views: 51,444

Keywords:

Id: g0XK13HMxuA

Length: 55min 1sec (3301 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 12 2021