October, at least in the more temperate parts of Australia, brings with it seasonal change. It’s often the renewal September promises but never quite delivers.
As the thoroughbreds of horse racing and the two major football codes prepare for events that culminate the year, there is a group of travellers that have by now returned home after making, what is for some, an annual pilgrimage to Alice Springs for the annual Festival of Transport.
It’s here that the latest inductees to the Shell Rimula Wall of Fame are announced.
Far from the glitz and glitter of the nation’s capitals, it’s a ceremony, where people from all walks of life, attend having been nominated, sometimes confidentially, by colleagues, peers and family for services provided, often under the radar, that have kept the lights on somewhere or put food on the table somewhere else.
The biographies contain multitudes. Jamie Cooper, to cite the seemingly contrasting bookends of his journey, went from mining haulage in the Gulf to moving wine out of the Barossa.
Nicknames like “Jungle” and “Trumby” are par for the course.
Anecdotes are intertwined with heritage trucks. The Leyland Comet, Chev Blitz, Dodge 760 and International S180s are peppered through these individual histories.
Sometimes the roots to the land run deep. Other times a legend is made on the run, in transit, between places or vocations.
Many began apprenticeships as fitters, machinists, panel beaters and fabricators.
There are legacies that span the better part of the last century across geographic touchstones that will inspire intrepid travellers keen to know their own country a little better.
From cattle mustering at Kurundi Station, logging contractors in the wilds of Tasmania, sawmilling communities, cement towing outposts, roadtrains in Tennant Creek, multi-generational family businesses out of Maryborough in western Victoria or central Queensland – take your pick – tiny towns like Killarney in southwest Victoria and small farms in Yumali, South Australia, to the picturesque hamlet of Dorrigo in the Tablelands of New South Wales.
There was someone honoured who was either from there or worked there or ended up there after intending to pass through.
Each commemorative plaque is inscribed with the distinction: ‘Lifetime Service to the Australian Road Transport Industry.’ Veneration should be simple.
Among the higher profile inductions were Mick and Dan Cahill of Cahill Transport, whose father Joe Cahill Jnr, joined the Wall of Fame 20 years ago.
Another was Graeme Elphinstone, who after fitting imported scales to a log truck in Triabunna, Tasmania in 1976, later became a recognised name in trailer and equipment design.
His many innovations include the world’s first folding skel trailer and quad dog trailers repurposed from idle tandem jinkers.
Goldstar Transport Managing Director Sean Carren, one of nine inductees this year from Western Australia told me it was a privilege to be part of the event, saving a special mention.
“I have to share this accolade with our first driver Dwayne Hickman, who has since moved back to New Zealand. He was immense for us when we were starting out and Dwayne’s son actually works for us now,” he said.
“That legacy of family and good people is important, and the Festival of Transport had so many of those good people there and it just confirms for me the one thing the transport industry has running through its veins is good people.”
The past, in that sense, is never really the past. A lesson that bears repeating for those who forget winter will come again.
