Truckin' Memories: Raise the Curtin on defence

[kscarbel2]

Big Rigs  /  June 7, 2017

RAAF Base Curtin sits 30 odd clicks out of Derby in the Kimberley.

At times it has been a public airport when commercial flights serviced Derby and a refugee processing facility at other times.

The purpose of the base was none of these things, it is regarded by ADF as a 'bare base' and up on Australia's north-west shoulder it is a nuclear-proof war facility built for the possibility of a dystopian future.

The air strip itself has incredible logistics built to withstand all but a direct nuclear hit: grade the debris off and long range intercontinental bombers can land to refuel and rearm from underground storages.

Look at a map of South East Asia including Australia and the strategic importance of Curtin is obvious.

I was there in the mid-80s when the air strip was being built.

At the time, the biggest highway-legal road trains were being used to haul the construction materiel.

In 1986, I found myself in Derby in a four wheel drive hire car heading out along the narrow Great North Western Highway in search of the truck camps.

Bellways had the contract to haul the huge quantity of crushed limestone for the airstrip.

The haulage contract included half a million tonnes of aggregate from the Oscar Range to the site, a round trip of 340 kilometres.

Leighton Engineering won the overall contract for the job - prime contractors. Readymix got the job of supplying the concrete and Bellways the contract to haul the massive quantity of aggregate for Readymix. It was a big job that had to be finished on deadline - the right machinery had to be chosen.

Bellways in those days ran the full spectrum of trucks. Kenworths predominated on the long hauls. Some Macks were also used. Mercedes Benz and Scanias were used on shorter hauls.

Mack Trucks were called on to supply six Ultra-Liner eight wheelers equipped to pull sets of triple tippers. Overall length was within the Western Australian regulation 44m (145ft).

A permit was given for a 142 tonne GVM, and with the Ultra-Liner/tipper combinations with tare weights at just over 40 tonnes, this gave each outfit a payload of a neat 100 tonnes.

In April 1985 work began. Mack R Model prime movers were used for a short time until the Ultra-Liners arrived.

As the big cabovers were delivered, they were put straight into work, and the great four-tipper road trains became a common sight on the road between Derby and Fitzroy Crossing.

I found the Bellways camp carved out of a bit of scrub on a ridge 150km from Derby and 100km from Fitzroy Crossing.

Probably about as isolated a place as you can get and still be on a national highway, the camp is a small group of demountable units and one drive-through shed where trucks are serviced.

Wayne 'Wally' Gater was the driver, and the bloke I was to spend much of the next day with. He's been driving for Bellways for six years.

"Don't look in the mirrors, it will only make you worry,” Wally grinned as I watched the string of trailers snake out behind the prime mover and straighten up as he went through the gears.

It took a couple of kilometres before top gear was reached, but once there the high torque of the V8 churned the 140 odd tonnes along. It was not labouring, but it certainly was working.

A seemingly flat landscape became one of hills and valleys because of the high sensitivity to gravity of the mass of the big roadtrain. Wally let the engine lug back to 1400 rpm on pulls. The shuddering torque pulled the outfit over the rise and was soon up in the horsepower bracket again, getting along at 80 km/h.

Occasionally he would split and on one or two occasions go down a whole gear. But for the most part the Ultra-Liner did the Bellways camp to construction site run in top gear.

Each truck has two drivers, one for the day shift, one for the night shift. Drivers change shifts weekly, so that while Wally was on day shifts this week, he would be on nights the next.

Two round trips are done in each 12 hour shift. The day shift has an extra leg over the night shift.

The Oscar Ranges are a jumble of weirdly formed rocks and hills, apparently part of a prehistoric reef, once under the sea.

Among these rocks, we drove through a pocket of boab trees, and ahead the dense cloud of the quarry lifted into the late evening sky.

Bellways brought a loader for the job, and the usual yellow of the Caterpillar had been changed to the Bellways light blue. Like the trucks, the loader has two operators, one day shift, one night.

We pulled in beside the stock piles, and the Readymix crusher rumbled, as it turned ancient reef into aggregate for a modern air strip.

Val, the loader driver, loaded the truck and trailers in about 20 minutes, signaling Wally when to pull forward. The loader is fitted with a payloader system so that each bucket load is weighed accurately, and loads are all legal.

"Yes, we've had a few run-ins with the law up here, and we try to do everything right,” Wally told me.

Pulling away from the quarry the Ultra-Liner worked hard to negotiate the heavy pull from the crusher site up through the gap in the Oscars leading back to the Great North Western Highway.

Wally changed down by a full gear, as there is not enough rev range differential to split down with this sort of payload at low speed. We did not get past third gear in the pull to the highway.

Through the night, the truck ground up hills on the bitumen. The loader driver was with us now, going back to the camp at the end of his shift. I sat in the sleeper with my feet on the engine tunnel looking out along the Halogen-illuminated black top.

The lights of a truck came out of the darkness far ahead, the bull lights died , and the orange glows of the clearance lights appeared above the white of the driving lights. "Are you a Bellways?” the CB came to life.

"Yeah, mate, that's right, " Wally answered.

"Stay up on the bitumen, mate, I'll run off.” The conversation continued, and the truck ran off onto the shoulder. He was only pulling two trailers! This is the respect given to the Bellways' tippers.

As we snaked off the road back into the Bellways' camp, the night shift drivers were already travelling towards us.

The night shift had eaten their evening meal, and the drivers were ready to go.

As the new driver put his gear in the truck, Wally cleaned the windscreen, and the truck rumbled out again without even shutting down - it is a real 24 hour operation.

Ian is the camp cook and he runs a clean, neat outfit.

After a shower and an ale, we sat down to spaghetti bolognaise in the air- conditioned dining room.

Afterwards we sat outside and yarned. After a few beers to settle the day's dust, the drivers began to wander off to their rooms, to sleep and be ready to go again before daylight.

The long hours exacted a toll on man and machine, but the Derby contract was finished on time.

A mountain was shifted and buried in the ground at Derby to make an almost hidden, nuclear proof front-line defence base.

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