Tuesday 13 April 2010

Found a pic of my first truck!


On the Hume Highway between Melbourne & Sydney!

In those days there was only a little dual carriageway at each end of the highway, i.e at Tullamarine at the Melbourne end, and from about Campbelltown at the Sydney end. In between was basically two lane road, with dirt edges. Now of course, they've built the M31 Hume Freeway all the way up to the Victorian border at Wodonga and a little way into NSW.

Oh, and at Gundagai there was a bridge built of wood, (see left & below) which had great big bolts that would pop up now and again and puncture your tyres.
This bridge crossed the Murrumbidgee river, which only flooded once in a blue moon. I can't ever remember seeing water under the bridge at Gundagai.

What I can remember was a fantastic Milk Bar in the main street at Gundagai. When you asked for burger with "the lot" it came about six inches high and two hands were not enough!

Then there was the famous Australian folk songs; "Along the road to Gundagai", and "Where the dog sits on the tucker box." There's a famous statue (see left) at Snake Gully, about five miles from Gundagai.

And "Little Harbor" (see the non wooden bridge below) just up the road from Gundagai. You can well see why it's called "Little Harbor" and I can recall approaching it from a couple of miles on the southern side, while I was heading for Sydney, and the IPEC MAN's were rocketing south from Sydney. You certainly didn't want to meet one of these on the Little Harbor bridge as they were doing between 60 and 70mph.

But those were the good old days!

New overtaking ban on the M11.

There has been some comment on what appears to be a new truck overtaking ban on the southbound M11 from Junction 9, and northbound from about 7 miles north of Junction 8.

For the record, being caught overtaking in a vehicle exceeding 7.5 tonnes, between 7:00am and 7:00pm is a fine and three points. In exceptional cases the police have the option to charge the offender with Dangerous Driving.

Now I like to get from A to B as quickly as possible, but my attitude is that I should do it within the law, even if I think the law is an ass!

So I'm very surprised to see trucks basically ignoring this law, (and on the longer no overtaking section on the A14 as well.)

As I wrote on the TruckNet Forum, I can't afford the three points on my licence and my professional pride at being caught driving illegally, would take a serious battering. But then, that's just me.