This is ‘The Outback’

By Cliff Graham

Hey g'day my name is Cliff Graham and this is The Outback. Throughout this series, I will share my passion of the outback, the transport industry, and life experiences including the people I have met along the way.

There will be the odd ‘view or opinion throw in for good measure such as my opinions on road building in this state. In recent years driving road trains in Western Australia I have observed what I am calling out as a lack of standards and quality in road building – with no accountability for it in sight.

As many in my generation, I grew up understanding hard work. From helping my father milk cows around the area to working in small piggeries… at 12 catching the train to work in the bush on school holidays – This was my education.

At 13, whilst mustering cattle on horseback, my ride tripped on old fence wire at full gallop - landed on my leg. That put a spanner in things for a while.

Keen to get to the outback, I lived station life in central Queensland and this led to a new direction of interest – driving road trains.

At 18, the opportunity arose where I got to ‘tow’ a road train. I actually did more kilometres towing road train’s than I did towing a single trailer before I even got my license.

To make things official - off I went to the local police station to get my license and the sergeant asked, “How can I help you“.

I said, “I would like to get my semi license”.

To which he instantly replied, “I was wondering when you were going to sort that out “.

Remember this was over forty years ago in a time where we were taught to be accountable for our own actions and cop it on the chin if we stuffed up.

Fixing trucks and trailers on the side of the road when mechanics wouldn’t come out to replacing countless wrecked tyres from substandard roads became the norm.

I have not driven on Australia’s worst roads nor do I have any more kilometres or hours than anyone else; but it has driven me to care about the road transport industry and road safety.

My passion stems from the family history past down from the 1930’s depression years. It is told that my great grandmother said to my grandfather at the time, “Son, we can’t afford to feed you anymore.”

He was 13.

At 13, he left home with what he could carry and set off to find whatever work he could do to survive. No government handouts. No seeing his family again.

He eventually worked his way scraping and saving to central Queensland where he worked to buy a cow or two. This led to a small block of land and more cows. He became a dairy farmer.

This ethos has passed through the generations as I learnt from my father.

I bought my own truck in 1988 to cart grain for harvest. Next I bought some old stock crates and as I could afford it I repaired them to road worthy. This led to more used trailers and crates that needed repairs and eventually I had reliable little fleet.

Life happened and I had to sell the lot and in 2000 I moved to Mackay and was employed driving heavy haulage trucks and floats. I loved that experience and learnt a lot.

Because of the oversized loads I was fortunate to meet many police involved in the escorting. This led to being asked my opinion on several truck accidents as to what might have caused it. This was an exciting concept to me and over the following years I observed and studied different accidents the contributing factors and the laws.