Lizard: A Trucking Life

In-depth

17 Nov

Part 1: The Long Road to Buntine.

In 2014 I was in Alice at the Hall of Fame induction and had occasion to sit down with one of the true trucking characters of the Outback, Peter Williams, aka Lizard. We talked and I filmed him for over an hour. The length of the interview precluded reproducing it in full in the paper I worked for at the time. It got put into the too-hard-basket, and eventually forgotten. Lizard’s story is much too good for that so I have revisited it and condensed it into what I hope gives a true reflection of the man and his life in trucking in the Northern Territory. The full length video interview, re-edited and including photos and video will shortly be up on Truckin With Kermie TV. I would highly recommend that you give it a look.

Lizard began his career with Marsden’s, running Austral Cable and Leggett’s rubber up and down the Hume in Benz 1418’s.

“The 1418’s were indestructible. They came in just after the petrol 90 which I never drove because there were only two left at Marsden’s and I had no wish to drive a petrol motor because I wasn’t a mechanic you know. They are a magic truck. You didn’t want be seen in them but it was like driving a Louis - they did the job. They were magic. The 1418 set up a lot of operators that went on to Atkinson’s and stuff.

“At the depot we’d transfer the gear onto AB150’s. They were fantastic with the steering wheel on your chest and Armstrong steering. He was a good bloke, Alf Marsden.”

Following on from Marsden’s, Lizard worked for Taylor Dalton, Harry Powell, Barney Kerr, Bolshies, John Nash and Eastoes.

“Eastoes were an iconic company. That was as good as anything I think. You thought you’d made it to the top working there. They had 250 Cummins in cab overs. I do remember once when a Kenworth was off the road - which was very unusual for Eastoes – they put me in a 250 Peterbilt with twin sticks. Being a cab over, all the cables were stretched so you didn’t know what gear you were in. Often you weren’t in at all! Both sticks were like stir in a bowl of porridge. It was still wonderful because it was a Peterbilt.

“Then a mate of mine, Billy Varland, talked me into going to Ansett’s. We changed over at Nhill, then to Forbes were we had a 10 hour break in this lovely lady’s house. You could make yourself a feed and it beat the shit out of sleeping in the truck which didn’t have sleepers then. The other shuttle was at Yass, where we stayed at the Australia hotel. Four to a room, they had heated carpet. One or two would sleep on the bed and the others would sleep on the carpet because it wasn’t cold. They were great times.”

“We had a bloke (a heavy gambler) who used to leave five dollars at Tumbalong – another changeover station, just before South Gundagai. When he went up to the Australian hotel and gambled everything away, he still had five dollars at Tumbalong to get bacon and eggs which was enough to get you home. That was forward thinking!

I got the sack in the end for speeding. I’d hit a cow and was trying to do the right thing and get back on time. They looked at the tachograph and that was it. They were pretty strict. If you were seen with a beard, or in a blue singlet, you spent a week on the dock. Reg liked his people to look smart.

“Then I drove for Linfox on the Transtars. I think I was offered a Kenworth but I said no, I want to stay in the Transtar. It didn’t look real flash in Foxies colours but it had a 335 turbo in it. It would leave those Kenworth’s for dead.”

“Then I saw a photo of old Buntine in a magazine, standing beside an R model Mack. The article was called, ‘Call of the Wild’. It struck a chord in me. I was sick of the Hume so my wife and I and our little kid took a year off and headed north.

“They wouldn’t give me a job. Said I’d had no experience with cows. But they had a possible job coming up at Ranger Uranium Mine. This would have been around 1978. Meanwhile I got a job with K&T, pulling doubles to Alice. Then a bloke offered me a job driving an R model, travelling from Darwin to Brisbane. I thought I’d kicked a big goal. I did that for Barry Bayles for a while and then Glen Forbes from Buntine contacted me and offered me a job on the lime, based in Alice and working out of Jabiru.

“Single now, I had a tiny room in the single man’s quarters. I didn’t care because I was driving for Buntine’s! That’ll do me, I thought. I can die happy now. This was when I met great blokes like Bully Ashwood and Muscles, who I was off-siding.”

**Marvin O’Brien, better known as Muscles**

“They put us in an F model Mack cab-over. The first night I pulled three trailers. I’ve still got the photo taken near the Devils Marbles. I was proud as punch. Muscles would drive a bit, I’d drive a bit. We had no changeover points. When you were tired you’d tap the other bloke on the shoulder. It worked. We were good mates and we’ve stayed good mates. I didn’t know how it would go at the time. He smoked and drank XXXX stubbies. We had an Engle fridge which sat on the engine cover. I’d say, “You right?” And he’d say, “Yeah, I’ll have another can.” And then drive. Everybody did back then and it was no worries, but I didn’t know that.

“It was supposed to be a 52 hour turnaround. I think we did it in 52 only once and they eventually split us up, putting me into truck number 13, a KT 458 called the Power and the Glory. Buntine had the numbers on the bonnets and big names for each of his rigs. It was wonderful. It sang. It was a wonderful job. Along the way I met John Bain, Billy Baskett, Flannigan and Partington and all these blokes who’ve become reasonably big names now. They were just one man owner-operators in Road Bosses then.”

“Buntine had to renew the contract and didn’t get it. A bloke called Roly Dalziel took us over for a while. So we drove for them and Buntine had an auction. He got rid of a lot of stuff which was very sad. This was when Buntine was selling the business. I’ve got photos of me carrying 44 gallon drums roped on the front the trailer where there was 10 foot of space, because no one would give me credit. You couldn’t book up a feed. So Noel Buntine’s name was run into the ground which we didn’t like either.

“Buntine eventually bought the business back. He went and got 14 Superliner’s and I was back in the fold. Go up and see Hobbsy up in Katherine, they told me - he was the cattle manager of Buntine - and I started on the cows. I finally got there! It took me a few years!

“They said, well mate, she’s not like the lime, you haven't got another driver. I said that's all right, I've got a spare driver in my pocket, you know. That was the way it was. There were blokes I got to know that were absolute legends back then. People like Jack Taylor, Tonsey, Reggie McGuinness and Peter Byrnes. They all had 10 or 20 years on me and they’d done at all. All they knew was driving cow trucks and walking around in bare feet and singlets. They'd never been on the highway. It wasn't like Ansett’s. You were overdressed if you had a pair of thongs on. It was absolute magic. I loved it, I loved it.”

“Buntine sold out to one of his drivers, Dickie David, who went on to become the biggest road train operator in the Territory, if not Australia. From being a tyre boy to a road boss and then the owner. He bought 14 W Model Kenworth's, all in Buntine's colours and he changed the name to HHhRTA – Road Trains of Australia. I've heard the story that he called it RTA because the Road Traffic Authority was giving him shit in Wyndham. I'm pretty sure it was a way of getting back at them and it was a wonderful name anyway. If you can put Road Trains on the front of your business name, it's nearly as good as Buntine.”

“In ‘93 Jim Cooper, who owned Gulf Transport and was into tippers, bought the business. Everyone wanted to buy Buntine's because of the loyalty of both those bosses to us. They both looked after us. They were legends of the outback, along with the drivers….

Lizard Part 2: Stories of the Outback.

After eventually landing a gig at the famous Buntine Transport and figuring that he’d died and gone to heaven, Lizard was put to work on the lime out of Jabiru. Finally he made it to cows and knew that he’d achieved his long held dream. It was here that he met the trucking legends of the Outback and became one himself…..

….. “Well, I don't know about that, I just wanted to have a good time. Didn't we all? Big John who’s passed on now, would come up every year. He would take the passenger seat out of his W model, replacing it with the biggest Engel fridge you could get in there. If he picked up a Sheila she would have to sit on the Engel or get in the cave. Either way he was a winner. She was already in the cot or lifting the lid every 10 minutes so he could get another beer.”

“You ask about getting stuck? It happened all the time. We've been stuck at stations for five days. Wave Hill was one. Gavin, the manager at the time, gave us three meals a day and all the piss we could drink. I don't think we booked it up to RTA, he just did it. That’s what the Outback is like.”

“Four or five years ago we got bogged at Pigeon Hole for four days. I was the road boss then. On the fifth day it dried out and we were ready to move on. We had a camera crew with us who only came on the fifth day because they weren't interested in filming us getting bogged or pissed. There were six of us. I was first out, although road bosses are supposed to travel last. Anyway, the graders hauling me out until, eventually I could feel myself gaining traction, and I said to the new bloke, Kurt, to get the stiff bar.”

“He ran to get it and started walking back to the third trailer which is where I think we had it instead of on the lead. I’m giving to her and the new bloke is standing there with the stiff bar, thinking I would pull up in a minute. The grader driver was telling me to go, so I kept going because I had to. The rest of ‘em didn't get out until the next morning and I had Kurt’s clothes and wallet. I remember seeing him in the mirror to this very day. He chucked the stiff bar onto the ground and looked at me as if to say, “Where the f*** are you going?”

“I got out to the road at about 9 o'clock that night and got to Top Springs about midnight. The last bloke who had Kurt with him got to Darwin about 18 hours after me. Old mate had to lend him money. Kurt’s back down south now with a wife and kid. He’s with another cattle company. He reckons they have no idea what went on in the Northern Territory. He reckons they’re a bunch of pussies. He's never forgotten that day either.”

“When I talked to magazines I've told 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 you start clicking and the tongue is going in and out. A bloke called prickles said to me, “Mate, you're like a f***ing lizard!”

“In a magazine you usually have to put, “Because I'm tired.” It was a couple of Duramine or a couple of shakers. Everybody did back then. But they didn't talk about it. I'm out of it now so I guess I can say what I like. You ask anybody back then and that's how they all got from A to B. It was part and parcel of the job. Everyone knew.

“When Jim Cooper bought us out he streamlined the maintenance. It probably came at a time when export was going crazy. The meat works were closing and export was the new thing. You couldn’t send the Asians meat in a frozen box because most of them didn't have a fridge. Boxed meat goes off unless you use it in one hit. When you send cows or steers, they buy three. The bloke takes them home, looks after them, fattens them up and kills one. That might go to the wet market and someone buys a haunch or whatever. Now they have beef and rice, not just rice. Between 2013 and 2014 the export doubled.”

“I don't know whether Cooper could see it coming but he bought the biggest bangers he could. C 500’s with 19 litre engines. No electronic harnesses and all that shit. He was pedantic about servicing. If your cassettes played up he'd say go and see the storeman, quote your truck number and get another one. He supplied an Engel that fitted between the seats, whereas everywhere else you had to buy your own. He put in a thing that beeped when you went over 100. I think he was pretty strict but I don't think he actually speared anybody.

“When we were going along the Barkly talking to each other, all you could here was beep, beep, beep, clicking 8 to the bar. Some blokes would put their beanie over it to muffle it but that didn't work very well. “How is old Cooper’s 100k policy?” they'd say. “Up the shit!” we'd reply. I think the beepers only lasted about six months - our ears were killing us.”

“Tonsey, another legend, thought he might get done, so he went to Hamptons. They had a couple of trucks. In fact we used to call them Pantene Haulage – It won't happen overnight but it will happen.

“We used to say that if we got the spear we’d had a wonderful time doing it, but we never did get speared. Not from Jim Cooper because the loyalty was there. That man chopped off every ball race turntable. There were hundreds of them. We had oversize rollers to push the brakes out a bit to get more out of the lining. It's not illegal but it's not the best practice. So he outlawed oversize rollers and bought 20 foot containers of brake drums the right diameter. If LED lights were available then he would have been the first to buy them. Every light worked. I worked for him for 13 years.

“I'd never personally met him until he said, “I want you to buy a house in Darwin and be a road boss up there for export cattle.” Meanwhile he paid my accommodation at the Berrimah hotel (now sadly replaced by a Harvey Norman) which was a truckies pub. You couldn't get any better. If you were travelling into Darwin and you looked across at the Berrimah, there would have been about 18 prime movers there at any one time. All on the piss and all sleeping in a room waiting for a load to take out. They had paintings of an R model Mack and some of the drivers on the walls. We had a bloke called Pissy Paperal. He died in ‘91 and there are people go to Alice today to look at his picture on the wall. He was allowed to write ‘Pissy’ on the front of his cab over. Buntine didn't care. Mind you, no-one else was allowed. He was a legend's legend. He was the Black Prince.

“Jim Cooper had RTA for 13 years. It was an icon before he bought it and he made it an even bigger icon. The best man I have worked for. Selling was the hardest decision ever made but he wanted to concentrate on mining and tippers. He could see the regulations were going to get a bit stiffer so he sold out to Hamptons and I worked for them for the last five years.”

“They changed the colours which is a bit sore point with me. They kept the name, thank God, but changed the colours to yellow and blue. We called them Mountain Parrots because of the colour. But they've retained the name which is still a big help because everybody knows what RTA stands for. The trucks are still the same but drivers are becoming scarcer. Many went to the mines for the money and they had trouble getting blokes that have done cattle. RTA is still a good company and RTA will be around for a long, long time.”

The Lizard wrapped up his ‘life well led’ in 2013, after some thirty years with Buntine/RTA.

“I've had a life of no regrets – not one. It was in the blood. Always was.”