Some old photos

[willedoo]

Have been going through the process of scanning some old photos into digital form. I don't know what film format these are; Red would know. It's whatever type of compact camera one would have had in 1988.

 

A couple of photos for onetrack as it's sort of over his way in a roundabout fashion. Unloading at Legune Station, 1988. Legune is in the Territory up near the Joseph Bonaparte Gulf but is accessed via Kununarra and then up through the Ord scheme farmland. I remember well that horrible trip. I flew to Alice Springs and picked up the truck and machine and drove it from there all the way to Legune in hot weather with 55mph diffs and no lining inside the cab roof, just bare metal. For anyone who hasn't driven a B model, there's not much room between your head and the roof so it was certainly cooking the melon. To get anywhere soon, I had to push the foot down and with a very heavy throttle spring, the right foot was numb most of the way. One saving grace is that it didn't have 48mph diffs. That would have been too cruel. The plan was to go back to Alice springs and bring the second machine up, but fortunately they found someone else to drop it off at Katherine, so the second trip was only from Legune to Katherine and return.

 

The tractors were stick shift D7Gs with manual angle blade, rippers and scrub canopy, about 27 tonne in weight. The float was a side load float that swivelled sideways and you could pin it solid but nobody ever did. It didn't sway much out on the road unless you really cranked it around a tight bend. Not the sort of thing you do in a B model anyway. To end load it you needed a big bank or ramp as it had full size 20" wheels on the back, and was only done if loading graders. I learned to side load with this same truck and float four years earlier when the leader of our pack led us across a Quinyambie Station track on a trip from Toowoomba to Frome Downs. He wasn't the world's best navigator.

 

The track was passable for single trailers but had too many sandy dune crossings for doubles. Not high dunes, but just raw sand with no clay on the dune crossings. We had a 375 V8 R model Mack with a dozer on a float, and a second hay hauling trailer carrying a grader hooked on behind, and it got stuck on almost every dune for about 140 klm of the trip. He would drive until he got stuck, then I'd pull up behind him in the old B model with the single float and dozer, unload the dozer, then tow him over the dune, reload the dozer, then follow on to the next dune and do it all again. From memory it took about three days and I side loaded and unloaded that machine about a million times. I'd never side loaded before that trip. The old B model with the quad box was good in the sand dune country. You never get stuck for a gear in one of those. Just rattle the sticks round and round and it will always drop into a gear somewhere.

 

At Legune

 

 

The camera catching the blade as it's about to topple over. This is the second machine (with new tracks)

 

Retirement is good; there are some things I miss but I don't miss the flies and getting up at 4am..

[willedoo]

Another scan. William Creek Hotel, 1984. It's probably changed a bit and that pet donkey would be long gone. He used to wander around in the bar; I think he belonged to the pub owners.

 

 

[ClintonB]

I like looking through my dad’s old photos, that same square format, often on that embossed texture type material.

he had a lifetime of travelling the outback shearing from the age of 19. There are shots of a bunch of is mates and him drinking flagons crossing the Nullarbor for the first time, looked dirt still then, in a Hillman hunter sports sedan.

there are shearing sheds in the middle Queensland and many places I remember him describing to me as a child looking through the albums.

i kept these when I lost him as I found them more precious than the physical goods he had. I will sit down and show my grandson through them when he is old enough to understand what they are.

is their anyone on the forum who was a shearer in the 60’s and 70’s or around the big shearing properties back then?