Published The Advocate, October 2, 2004
OFF this time towards Smithton, on the Duck River, until ABC Classic FM becomes scratchy on the car radio.
Through Sisters Hills, which badly need more overtaking lanes. Black cows gather tightly together like a cloud on the green grass. A corrugated iron water tank is graffitied ``Save Our Forest Industries'', pretty in pink.
And spotting fox roadkill before realising it is red bark that has fallen from a passing timber truck.
Smithton. My old Adelaide mate George Kelleher spent part of his childhood at Smithton.
His dad was the local police constable between 1938 and 1941. I went to George's 70th a year or two back, so he would have been under 10 at the time.
I rang George in Melbourne and only needed to mention I was standing in front of the Bridge Hotel and he went flying back to the Smithton of his memories.
He remembered Grey's Sawmillers, which is no longer there, and the Duck River Co-op Butter Factory Company, which I had to tell him was now used as an indoor sports centre.
I assured him Smithton seemed to be prospering.
There was still the timber industry, of course, with Gunns timber yard stacked high and wide with thousands of drying planks. There were also the Tasmanian Seafood Processors, a McCain's processing plant and more millionaires per capita than anywhere else in Australia.
George was not really listening. He said his dad used to drive a Standard Ten police car and whenever Police Sergeant Fisher ``hit the turps'' George's father would have to lock him up.
And George and his brothers used to pick on a kid named Lindsay Packham.
As I hung up, George was still reminiscing and hoping to visit me soon so we could take a trip together down the memory lanes of Smithton. Look forward to it, George.
On the way home I took the turnoff to Forest. There was no forest, just red loam paddocks.
I am always staggered by the tenacity of the white pioneers who grubbed out the giant trees, one by one, with nothing more than an axe, a saw, a block and tackle, and a horse if they were lucky.
You could imagine how Forest got its name by the few batches of tall gums left standing. Nor are there many hardwood forests in the Prime Minister's electorate of Bennelong yet the PM can sniff votes in ending old-growth logging in Tasmania.
How he will do that and not cost any timber jobs, as he indicates, remains to be seen.
It would take an act of great faith for a town of sawmillers to see an alternative future in the "knowledge economy'', as the Greens suggest, in IT or some pseudo-intellectual pursuit.
Or perhaps in serving chardonnay at a sidewalk café in Smithton.
When you have a mortgage and kids to educate, what confidence would you have in any government to ensure you are properly compensated after your timber job is gone?
Not much, is my guess, and please pass the axe.
Thursday, September 30, 2004
Published The Advocate, September 25, 2004
Trucks on road, rocks in head
ONCE, trucks were slow and held up everyone. Frustrated motorists died trying to pass them.
Now powerful B-doubles thunder along the road, tailgating and trying to overpass as if those monster 36-wheel rigs were zippy little family cars.
They scare the hell out of me.
Winding along the coast highway to Devonport the other day, the truck ahead was doing
110km/h, on the limit, and roller-coasting around the curves, cutting off the bike lane.
The raw speed was not the problem so much as the driver never slowed, as if the cruise
control was set on 110 and he was trying to do the Burnie-Devonport run without touching the brakes.
Except, now and then, the wheels would blow blue smoke under hard braking on coming up
fast behind a slower vehicle, and the driver swerved aggressively from one lane to the
other.
From behind, I trembled and hung back.
The truck was carrying a large white cylinder. I could not get close enough to read the cylinder's contents but I assumed the worst _ acid or flammable gas _ and noted the truck's number plate.
The way he took the shortest line, cutting the cambers, and accelerating to gain extra speed for the next hill, the driver obviously knew the road well.
Maybe he was running late _ ``The boss will kill me if I'm late!'' _ if someone else was not killed first.
Or perhaps he was on drugs. Amphetamines are not known as ``speed'' for nothing.
The statistics are frightening. One in four truckies who die in accidents test positive to stimulants, which is six times the rate for other drivers. A quarter of the fatalities test positive to both alcohol and drugs. Fatal accidents involving trucks account for 20 per cent of the nation's road toll.
Many truck drivers are not fully in control of themselves much less the vehicles they drive.
Some people blame trucking companies for imposing impossibly tight, inflexible schedules, which force the drivers to take drugs and to speed.
I actually don't care whose fault it is. I simply do not take kindly to having my life endangered by a drug-addled, homicidal maniac.
Were it up to me, the police would be empowered to take saliva samples from truckies as well as blood alcohol breathalyser readings.
Any truckie who returned a positive swab for amphetamines would lose his/her licence for at least a year and the truck would be temporarily deregistered to exact a heavy commercial penalty on the owner as well.
Back on the Bass Hwy a few days later, I soon had the rear view mirror filled with the grill of a truck up my backside at 100kmk/h. It passed me doing at least 120km/h. It was the same truck.
No doubt truck drivers have their problems with cars driving too slowly or cutting in
front of them and not making allowance for their weight, length and mass.
The difference is if I collide with a truck, I know who will come off second best.
Trucks on road, rocks in head
ONCE, trucks were slow and held up everyone. Frustrated motorists died trying to pass them.
Now powerful B-doubles thunder along the road, tailgating and trying to overpass as if those monster 36-wheel rigs were zippy little family cars.
They scare the hell out of me.
Winding along the coast highway to Devonport the other day, the truck ahead was doing
110km/h, on the limit, and roller-coasting around the curves, cutting off the bike lane.
The raw speed was not the problem so much as the driver never slowed, as if the cruise
control was set on 110 and he was trying to do the Burnie-Devonport run without touching the brakes.
Except, now and then, the wheels would blow blue smoke under hard braking on coming up
fast behind a slower vehicle, and the driver swerved aggressively from one lane to the
other.
From behind, I trembled and hung back.
The truck was carrying a large white cylinder. I could not get close enough to read the cylinder's contents but I assumed the worst _ acid or flammable gas _ and noted the truck's number plate.
The way he took the shortest line, cutting the cambers, and accelerating to gain extra speed for the next hill, the driver obviously knew the road well.
Maybe he was running late _ ``The boss will kill me if I'm late!'' _ if someone else was not killed first.
Or perhaps he was on drugs. Amphetamines are not known as ``speed'' for nothing.
The statistics are frightening. One in four truckies who die in accidents test positive to stimulants, which is six times the rate for other drivers. A quarter of the fatalities test positive to both alcohol and drugs. Fatal accidents involving trucks account for 20 per cent of the nation's road toll.
Many truck drivers are not fully in control of themselves much less the vehicles they drive.
Some people blame trucking companies for imposing impossibly tight, inflexible schedules, which force the drivers to take drugs and to speed.
I actually don't care whose fault it is. I simply do not take kindly to having my life endangered by a drug-addled, homicidal maniac.
Were it up to me, the police would be empowered to take saliva samples from truckies as well as blood alcohol breathalyser readings.
Any truckie who returned a positive swab for amphetamines would lose his/her licence for at least a year and the truck would be temporarily deregistered to exact a heavy commercial penalty on the owner as well.
Back on the Bass Hwy a few days later, I soon had the rear view mirror filled with the grill of a truck up my backside at 100kmk/h. It passed me doing at least 120km/h. It was the same truck.
No doubt truck drivers have their problems with cars driving too slowly or cutting in
front of them and not making allowance for their weight, length and mass.
The difference is if I collide with a truck, I know who will come off second best.
