Athol Carter grew up in the 1980s with a bedroom window that faced the Bruce Highway in Gympie.
You could literally set your clock to the timetables of dozens of big bangers that rumbled by just a few metres away running north and south each night of the week, Athol recalls.
“You knew what trucks were coming through from miles away due to their sounds,” recalls Athol, now the central Queensland manager at Frasers Livestock in Rockhampton and vice president of the Australian Livestock and Rural Transporters Association.
“It was a time gone by, but that’s what it was like back then. There was definitely a different culture [on the Bruce].”
Queensland’s 1679km section of Highway 1 – the longest national highway in the world – starts in Pine River in Brisbane and runs all the way north to Cairns.
Even though he’s still in his early 40s, the Bruce today bears little resemblance to the one Athol knew growing up in a truck cab alongside his old man.
He can still vividly remember the Bruce going through nearly every local town that was dotted on the map.
Coming out of Brisbane it would meander through Caboolture, from the Glasshouse Mountains to Tanawha, to Woombye, Nambour, Yandina and Eumundi. In most of those towns, it was all single and dual lanes with traffic lights.
From Eumundi it was on to Cooroy, Pomona over Black Mountain down into Cooran and into Traverston Crossing, through Kybong before rolling past the Carter’s house in Gympie.
“You were seriously in the middle of these bustling towns that’s now the Sunshine Coast.
“Every single one of those towns has now been bypassed, including Gympie. There’s always been that fear that a highway that bypasses a town will kill the town but from what I’ve seen it’s totally the opposite effect.
“It allows the town to grow and to prosper, and none of these towns had anywhere for heavy vehicles to stop, to start with.”
Not all doom and gloom
Athol concedes there is still a lot of work to be done on the Bruce, the scene of three major accidents last month in the space of a week, including an ammonium nitrate explosion that claimed the life of 21-year-old ute driver Max Rourke and closed the highway at Bororen for five days.
But there are plenty of major improvements that he believes have benefited industry.
One of the first that comes to mind are huge upgrades at Apple Tree Creek, a “fatal hotspot” for years between Childers and Gin Gin en route to Bundaberg.
He’s also seen huge improvements to the infamous Gin Gin corner, aka rollover corner.
“Many a fleet had rollovers there every day of the week.”
The Wallaville Bridge bypass in the late 1990s between Isis and Gin Gin is another massive boon for truckies.
From Gin Gin north, there’s also the more recent realignment of the ‘Dipper’ and ‘steps and stairs’ on the way to Miriam Vale.
“All that road is now changed. I find it hard to know where some of the old road is these days.
Further north, there’s also the Rocky Ring Road project, upgrades to the Rocky-Yeppen Lagoon, the Mackay Ring Road and the Townsville Ring Road.
“There’s certainly been huge upgrades along the entire Bruce Highway, but it still is in major need of investment.”
Closer to Brisbane, Athol says the Bruce is just too “stop-start” where it goes from four lines into six, back to four, then on to eight.
“It just cannot handle the volume of traffic from Pine River through to the Maroochydore turn-off.
“As Queensland has grown, and as our infrastructure has grown, it means going from Brisbane to the Sunshine Coast for a morning swim is normal for many people; it can be done that quick.
“But if you get 100 of us wanting to go do that, it clogs up our road network.”
Dual carriageway debate
Athol fears the new Gympie Bypass will create safety issues once the four-lane stretches end. Image: TMRAthol doesn’t believe the answer to the Bruce’s safety issues lies in building a dual carriageway from Gympie to Cairns, as many critics were calling for in the wake of the August tragedies.
“We probably do have the traffic volumes [to justify it] but some of those stretches are remote as well,” Athol says.
He’s more concerned in the short term about traffic flows on the first and last mile of the soon-to-be-completed Gympie Bypass.
“The minute we get to Curra from what I can see we are back on to one of the worst bits of the Bruce Highway known to man.
“We’ve got this first and last mile that connects with this beautiful four-lane highway through to Brisbane, which is going to be another bloody death trap.
“People are now going to come off a 110km/h four-lane roadway back to a narrow, rough two-lane highway.
“I can almost guarantee that there will be an accident there.”
Athol agrees that dual carriageways are definitely needed before and after major regional towns.
He said there are multiple sites that fit that bill, particularly between Curra and Maryborough, and Maryborough and Gin Gin.
“But let’s not beat around the bush, it’s from Mackay to Townsville, the whole way.”
Inland Freight Route will help
Athol says the sooner the Inland Freight Route (IRF) – also known as the Second Bruce – is finished the better.
The 1185km route from Mungindi in the south of the state to Charters Towers will take a huge weight off the storm-ravaged Bruce and prove to be a key corridor for the industry’s high productivity vehicles.
“You can never forget the fact that the eastern seaboard of Australia is prone to suffer the effects of natural disasters.
“This really drives home that other important investment for the Inland Freight Route. To have that freight that is coming out of Sydney, Melbourne, etc, and vice versa, from North Queensland.
“North Queensland produce and agriculture feeds Australia – it’s in the markets in Perth, Sydney, Melbourne, and in every town in between.”
Athol says the IRF will pull the “unnecessary freight” that is going to the hubs in Mackay, Townville and Cairns off the Bruce.
“Rail freight only really kicks into gear from Rockhampton north where we have that big intermodal interface with the Linfox’s and the Tolls and those other rail freight operators.
“Plus, there’s also transport companies like Simons, Blenners, Lindsay Brothers that utilise rail.
“It’s like Woolworths and Coles here in Rockhampton, apart from their fresh, cold food that comes out of the Brisbane DCs, everything gets delivered into stores here off rail in a container.”
Preparation is everything
The spate of accidents in August – in one of the bleakest weeks on the highway for some time – has also highlighted the need for better communication, and a return to some of the “old school” practices, believes Athol.
One of those that was drilled into him by his father was to always be wearing a set of boots and a uniform.
“Especially if you are carting dangerous goods. Time and time again I am just absolutely gobsmacked at the appearance and the uniform of some of their drivers out here.”
“You need to be prepared at all times. You might have to, through no fault of your own, bail out and either run for your life, or help others. With a pair of boots on, you can do all that.”
Athol also urged drivers to make people aware that you might have a passenger on board.
“How many times has there been a serious accident in this industry in which someone’s had their girlfriend, a child, or someone in the cab you didn’t know was there? And if you don’t know they’re there, you can’t go looking for them.”
Athol strongly believes that there should also be more industry communication between fleets who are carting dangerous goods and more education about what to do in an emergency.
“Our fleet is interacting with other freight sectors carting ammonium nitrate on a daily basis and we might come across a vehicle carrying ammonium nitrate 10, 20, 30 times a day.
“Only in the very rare circumstances do we see a catastrophic outcome [like the one on August 30] but there’s been many instances where this product is involved in rollovers and other accidents and it comes in many shapes and forms.
“We really need to have a briefing on what it is and what it can do. But unfortunately, for whatever reason, we just don’t have that, that awareness.
“The same goes for oversize, overmass loads. I see it. I drive around Australia all the time and there really is a disconnect between fellow truckies and oversize loads.”
Giving truckies a voice
[L-R] QTA CEO Gary Mahon, president of the LRTAQ Gerard Johnson and ALRTA vice president Athol Carter. Image: Kent MurrayAthol firmly believes that the best way to ensure the dust doesn’t settle after the horrific week on the Bruce and the industry gets the safety changes it needs is for truckies and operators to get behind an association.
“Become a member of the Queensland Trucking Association [QTA] and the Livestock and Rural Transporters Association of Queensland [LRTAQ] and support industry.
“I get sick and tired of hearing all these excuses. Look at the great work that those two associations do, and the funding that they achieve, and the world class programs that they develop and put on for drivers and industry.
“Ninety-nine percent of the time they’re free of charge and then we can’t get anyone to bloody turn up.
“The industry can do better. We’ve got to do better, but you’ve got to get behind these people.
“It takes time, but Gary Mahon [QTA CEO] and Gerald Johnson [LRTAQ president] and their teams all chip away and we make things happen for the industry.
“Don’t whinge – you’ve got to get in and support this stuff.
“It’s now or never. Our road toll is rising, and we’ve got to do something about that now.”
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