Pat Commans

In-depth

2 May

Pat Commans was born, by his own admission a long time ago, in Swan Hill, on the Victorian side of the Murray River.

"When I came along the old man was driving horses and scoops, doing the channels up in the Mallee. When I was very young we moved to Melbourne, East Malvern to be exact, which was pretty toffy area. Dad drove a beer truck which wasn't toffy, but a bloody good job to be in. He had an apparatus made up where he could push the plug in on the barrel and milk the beer out of it. The old man was very proficient at it, as were all his mates.

"He worked on the wharves during wartime. I can remember that because of the blackout at night. It was rationing in those days and you couldn't get sugar or tea or chocolate. Butter, meat – everything was done by weight and your ration cards. He used to bring home these bloody big blocks of chocolate. Used to knock them off from the wharf. He wasn't alone; they were all in on the act.”

"Then we moved up to Hillend and I went to school there. There was a bullock team and I used to wag school and work with the bullock driver. When he was pulling smaller logs he used to break the team in half and let me run them. I would have been 10 or 11 at the time. Every now and then the old bullocky would give me a pound. Wow, I was rolling in money! I loved it up there. I liked all that bush life.”

“From there we moved to Tanjilbren in the Baw Baws. Dad was cutting firewood up there for two boilers, with a horse and sledge. He would load up the sledge and say to old Darkie, the horse, "Number one, Darkie," and the horse would trudge off to that boiler. The boiler man would come out and unload him, and Darkie would turn around and go back to the old man – all by himself. Of a weekend we kids would ride him around. There'd be five or six of us on him at once. We looked after him though; after all he was our bread and butter.”

That was in the days when log trucks were just getting going properly – before folding poles. They carted the polls sticking out over the cabin, full length. In the very early days they pulled them on the ground. This was just after the war. The folding pole was such a simple idea. That bloke – Jack Kendall was his name – from Warragul came up with the idea.”

"I was working at Big River for the Forestry Commission when I was about 16. Me and about six other blokes were the crushing plant – with 12 pound sledgehammers, making the roads. It was good money. I think we were getting £18-£20 a week. It was a real good camp and our board and food were supplied. Then a position came up, driving the little ration truck. It used to go down to Marysville three days a week. It was a little Morris Commercial.

"I asked for the job and the boss says, 'You haven't got a licence. Go and get one and you can have the job.' So I came down to Healesville, told lies to the local copper and became the ration truck driver. It was a doddle after crushing rock and it meant I could get down to Marysville, amongst the girls. Then the business started getting bigger trucks – Fords, Dodges, Inters and the like, and I drove those.”

"I was there for a long time but got to a point where I was looking for a change. I bumped into the old man again – he had left us when we were quite young – and I said how about we go up to the snowy scheme. He was driving a Brockway for Cooks at Thornton when I found him. Cooks had one of the biggest mills in Victoria at Thornton. Anyway we went to the snowy and we were driving Leyland Hippo dump trucks.

"I worked the snowy twice. The second time I was driving a Euclid, hauling rock. I couldn't get away from that bloody rock! I headed up there with six quid to my name. The aeroplane fare was £5.10 shillings to Cooma. The bus fare out to the job was nine bob. I arrived with a shilling to my name.

"I put my stuff in room and they sent me down to the site to meet with the foreman. He said, 'You're here for a truck driving job, yeah? Take that one over there,' pointing to the Euclid. I said, I can't drive one of those mate. He said, 'You're a truck driver aren't you?'

“I said, well I think I am, sort of. There was a bloke walking past and he yelled out, 'Hey Vince, take this useless bastard out and see if he can drive.' So Vince takes me for a couple of laps around the site and to be perfectly honest with you it had me bluffed. I put about four hours into it and then we went back to the boss who asked Vince how I was going. Vince replied that he thought I would be all right if they left me to it. I breathed a bloody great sigh of relief! After about three days I was well used to it and had a lot of fun.

"I had a couple of trucks but I never did any good out of them. I had a 190, then a Kenworth. In the early days you would never see an overweight truck driver. Everything was hand loaded. If you did happen across a forklift you'd think all your Christmases had come at once. That loading and unloading was considered our downtime. From that point of view when I reminisce, I don't call them the good old days.

"Back then there was no such thing as overnight. The trucks were not fast enough. You got there when you got there. Lots of blokes used make a beeline for the pubs at Seymour or Benalla. You'd see half a dozen trucks pulled up, and they'd still be there the next morning. John Wettenhall has got a lot to answer for. He started the overnight runs down the Hume. He ran 160 and 180 Cummins and he wasn't frightened to gear them up. Once they headed downhill they were going! Didn't need brakes – only slowed them down! I was a subbie for John and he was a good bloke to work for. I couldn't get on with the bloke in the yard down here in Melbourne though and that was because I had GM. The whole fleet was Cummins. Childish nonsense it was.”

**Hard to believe today, but this is the Hume Highway**

"When I had the 190 I was working for Kennealy's along the Geelong Road, who were carting stuff up to a coalmine in Queensland. It was all right going up but we had to find our own backload for the return journey. I got onto a bloke out at Gympie who I did three or four loads for and then didn't pay me – and those old 190's liked a drink of petrol. We were fresh out of money and no more coming in. I went and worked for a couple of other blokes and it was more or less the same story. My taste was in my arse when it came to picking jobs!

I didn't keep the 190 very long. I went falling logs to get myself out of debt, then I bought the Kenworth which put me right back into debt.

I was coming down through Benalla in the Kenny at two o'clock in the morning and I heard these two bloke yakking on the UHF: 'I wish they could find another subbie. We are sick of this! This bloody working flat out all time! Can't get a minute to yourself.'

I got on the other CB and said, are you blokes looking for a subbie who's looking for a bit of work? They put me onto this bloke up in Sydney who was carting steel out of Port Kembla to Hastings. I went up and saw him and he asked if I could do three a week? I ordered a trailer and had everything just about ready to go. I thought that we had finally turned the corner and something good was about to happen when I woke up one morning with pins and needles in my foot.”

“I was out in the driveway putting a new brake booster on my truck and I thought, jeez that feels a bit funny. By 10 o'clock that night I was standing on one leg. I was 41. I couldn't leak and that's when I went up to the hospital. It just got worse from there.

They said it was a virus in my spinal cord. That was over 40 years ago. From those pins and needles it took one day for me to never walk again. I've been like this ever since. That's another thing fell on its arse. I'd had the Kenny for a couple of years, when I got crook.

Overnight your life changes. Three kids still at school. I still had the old Kenworth and came to an arrangement with a couple of blokes who offered to drive, maintain and fuel it, and give me $100 a leg. That way I was at least getting some form of income.

It only lasted a couple of weeks when one of them fell asleep at the wheel and crashed it. Insurance? Yeah, right! We nearly lost the house, we nearly lost everything. They never said sorry, they said bugger all. After everything was all squared up they still owed me $4000. I never saw a cent. I'd taken a second mortgage out on the house to pay for the Kenworth. The bank manager cut the payments in half until we sorted ourselves out. That wouldn't happen today."

Pat's positive attitude to life is quite amazing given what he has been through.

"It wasn't too positive at the time I can tell you that. I tried to top myself. But thanks to Marg, the kids and some good friends, I came out the other side."

The intervening years have seen Pat gather an enviable collection of transport pictures from the past. The walls in his home are adorned with hundreds of truck photos, all hand framed by Pat, using timbers from the local forests that once provided his living.

Thirty four years in a wheelchair has not dulled Pat Commans' love of trucks and trucking, particularly if those trucks are hauling logs. Son, Steve, obviously not learning anything from his father, has a log truck. "He's making a better fist of it than I ever did," laughs Pat.