Men of the Road - Peter Bottams

In-depth

14 June

Prologue: In 2012 I travelled to the Alice Springs Trucking Hall of Fame Reunion with good mates Paul and Brenda Witte. There I was introduced to a number of Paul’s old mates from his South Road days, working for Cold Storage.

One of those mates was Pete Bottams who I sat down and had a chat with. That ‘chat’ went on for a couple of hours or more. Like every truckie, Pete has many stories. This is his.

…..

Pete Bottams lowers himself into the chair, his knees having passed their use-by date thanks to years of climbing in and out of cabs, and one too many accidents. He lounges forward, a smoke in one hand and a drink in the other. The lines in his face could be a roadmap of every highway, byway, rutted track and pothole in Australia. A quietly spoken man, his eyes gaze off into the distance as he begins to reminisce openly and honestly of a life of trucking.

"I drove the South Road from 1970 to '74. It was a good period, and although you would only see them occasionally on the road – there were no CB radios back then – I made lifelong friends from that era. Like attracts like and doing the Darwin run we had a lot in common. I guess a lot of us were pretty similar in personality.

“John Hickman stores were the major food retailers in Darwin and we (Cold Storage) supplied 75% of the tucker for that city. Everything we carted was individually packed – even the T-bones. When the floods were on in '73 I was stuck, along with eight other drivers for 13 days. We had just enough fuel between us to keep everything cold over that period. I remember a bloke named Donnie Murray. He had nine pallets of beer on board. By the time we left he had two.

“There were around 200 tourists there as well and they didn't have a lot of tucker. A couple of them had babies so we took milk to them every day. Donnie and I found a wheelbarrow and loaded it up with freight from the trucks. Everything in it was 20 cents – from beer right up to those T-bones. We did the rounds every morning, and with their tummies full everyone was happy. From memory the boss lost around $25,000 of food. He was on to the government about it and they did an air drop. Guess what they dropped? Fly spray, Spam and tins of fish. They dropped it from such a height that the whole lot splattered everywhere! When we got to Adelaide River the cops were there to escort us in. They only had about one day's supply of food left in Darwin.”

**Cold Storage supplied 75% of Darwin's frozen needs at one stage.**

“Cold Storage had the largest privately owned fleet of Kenworths (13) in the southern hemisphere back then in the early 70s. Cameron's may have bought the first Kenworth into the country but they didn't have the biggest fleet.

“When the Ghan came through again in 2003, about 700 people lost their jobs in the transport industry – not only truck drivers but ancillary businesses as well. Did you know that the Ghan was built as a defence in case of war? This was around the time of the Indonesian crisis. A lot of stuff was taken out of Pukapunyal, Holsworthy and Singleton, and taken up to Tindal. The railway line was built to move heavy equipment up north quickly, if needed. The public was not told that at the time, of course. There's a railway siding at Catherine that you want to see – its massive – 2 km x 2 km I reckon, in the middle of nowhere. You can put a lot of equipment there.

“Here's another piece of little-known history. Kenworth wouldn't let anybody deliver a Kenworth unless they had Kenworth experience. So they'd ring Cold Storage and ask if any drivers were available for delivery. We'd take a truck bobtail to Sydney, Adelaide or wherever for $45 plus a plane ride home. $45 doesn't sound like a lot, but at the time most people were lucky to make that much a week.

“I did my last trip after Cyclone Tracy hit. I decided that I'd had enough of the Top End. I got plenty of offers to stay because people knew that I'd run the South Road for a decent period and they didn't want to put their freight with just anybody. In those days, and in that part of the world, experience counted.”

**Why you could get stuck on the South Road.**

“I went up to Ceduna after that and spray rendered houses for three months. Then I ran into a mate who offered me a weekly run to Perth. One day I'm coming down Greenmount Hill going to Perth in an F88 Volvo. I'm just feathering the brakes when something goes 'Bang!' and the pedal goes straight to the floor. I'm off, I'm gone. No Jake brakes in those days. I had a mate in the cab with me and he's yelling, "We're gone, we're gone! What we do?"

“I said, 'Jump!' So he jumps out and I'm hanging on for dear life. About halfway down there's a left-hander and you've got houses there. There was a house with a cutaway drive in it and a tree out front. This is about 9am, so the traffic is pretty heavy. I decided I was going to hit that tree dead centre and take myself out. So I've got the tree lined up dead centre and I'm coming at it. I don't know if it was because I was so tired after a long drive that I imagined there were two kids in front of the tree, but I swerved at the last second. As I did, one side of the truck has lifted off the ground. I've gone bang, into the side of this cutaway driveway, then up out of that and I'm heading straight towards the side of this house. There's this big thick edge and you wouldn't believe it, the truck hit it and that's how it stopped. The trailer dug into the cutaway and that slowed me up one hell of a lot. The hedge did the rest. There I am staring at the sky.

“I'm sitting there looking at the clouds thinking, 'That's fine. I'm alive.' I get out of the truck and walk around the back and there's my mate running down the road. "Are you all right?" he yells, and with that he collapses in a heap. When he jumped out of the truck he shattered his ankle.

“So they bring a tow truck. That's fine but it's only a small tow truck and it couldn't hold the weight. We're slowly getting it out, backing up the hill. Meanwhile the cops have arrived and are directing traffic. The silly buggers are letting cars through. We're nearly done when the cable breaks and I'm off down the road again. There's a bloke in a brand-new F100 ute and I'm coming straight at him. I'm thinking, 'This blokes gone!' I don't know how I did it but I got around him, then bang, crash, bang – and I'm back in the hedge again. Sky!

“I'll never forget there was this goat, short tethered. Well, the second time I got out of the truck he's nearly choked himself. I reckon he was saying, "Get me away from this bugger! This monster keeps coming at me!"

“At some stage a copper, white as a ghost, comes up to me and asks if I'm all right? 'Yeah, as good as gold.' He says are you sure? 'Yeah, no worries.' He said, "I've been to a lot of truck accidents mate, and you're the coolest and calmest I've ever come across." I said, 'It hasn't hit home yet, pal!'

**Mates from Cold Storage days – Paul Witte, Des White, Muzza Peel and Pete.**

“I called it quits going across the Nullarbor one night after travelling 90 miles that I couldn't remember. That's one hell of a blackout in a truck doing 100 km an hour! I decided to stick to Melbourne and local work.

“In '77 I bought an F8000 and the turntable had a fair bit of slack in it. At short notice I was asked to pick up some 30 foot lengths of angle iron – about 16 tonnes. I only had one chain which worried me a bit but I wasn't going very far. I'm puttering along doing maybe 30 miles an hour and I notice there's a cop car behind me. I'm hoping to get through the lights ahead but of course they change at the last minute and with the cops behind me I figure I'd better hit the brakes. The next thing, my belly button is touching my vertebrae. Two lengths of steel whizzed by me and about 13 feet past the bonnet. Another two went through the back of the cab and into the back of the seat which put me into the steering wheel. I look over and there's the copper standing there as white as a ghost – he expected to see my guts hanging off the end of the steel. Another foot and I would have been cut in half! That copper was so glad to see me alive that he didn't book me.

“Currently I have five trucks and trailers. Some have been idle but I won't work cheap. I'd rather let them sit there and rust. They cost me rego and insurance but I own them. B-doubles? I could have all the trucks going flat out on B-double work but you're carting 14 tons for shit. I won't do it. Most companies seem to treat their drivers pretty well but everywhere you go it's rob the subbie. Way back in the early 70s Frigmobile had the best payment scheme for subbies – 10% of the gross pulling their trailers. It was a good system and I reckon that's how they should work all loads – everybody was making a quid, ETA's were spot-on, freight was looked after.”

“Now I'm 65 and thinking about winding down. I'll always keep one truck. I know of a fwd ute for sale – 9800 km on the clock, bull bar, canopy, the works. It's nearly time to hook up the van and head off into the sunset. Maybe we'll work our way around and I might even do a spot driving here and there. But then again, maybe not.”

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