Situated at the junction of the Cobb and Riverina Highways in the Riverina region of NSW, Deniliquin is a trucking town, and the Purtill family has been a prominent name in all things transport with a history in the area going back to 1951.
From an initial foray as a school bus operator, company founder Keith Purtill branched out into fuel transport in 1974, taking on the local Caltex agency, with the company growing over the next few decades into a large multi-faceted company.
Along the way the family had amassed quite a diverse collection of vehicles and memorabilia, and with a vision to showcase this and celebrate the regions transport history, opened ‘The Depot’ in early 2020.
The museum has since become a popular tourist attraction, drawing around 15,000 visitors annually. The facility has also been a finalist in the NSW Tourism awards in the last few years.
Managing Director Neville Purtill is justifiably proud of the facility which houses everything transport related, from trucks and cars through to a wide range of transport and oil-company memorabilia, and in particular, a couple of long serving buses from the Purtill fleet.
“The Depot has been labour of love,” Neville said. “We have our 1948 Bedford bus ‘Rosie’, which at the time was the oldest registered school bus in Australia when we took her off the road.
“It had never been restored and people wanted to see it, which started off the idea for the museum. It grew from there, and also part of the brief was to honour the transport pioneers who did the hard yards to get the industry to where it is today.”
Having divested the bus operations in 2019, fuel haulage and distribution is today the cornerstone of the Purtill business. The company celebrated its 50-year association with Caltex (now Ampol) last year, with a fleet of four road trains and a B-double keeping fuel supplies flowing across a wide part of southern NSW.
“We started off with Caltex with one Bedford truck – back then it was a lot of drum fuel as well as bulk delivery. The job has grown, and we have seen the name change to Ampol – with our road train project we were the first ones to pull road train fuel out to the Caltex terminal in Newport (Melbourne) up into New South Wales,” he said.
The Depot has a vast collection of vehicles and historical transport memorabilia.As a result of the association with Ampol, The Depot also houses the Golden Fleece fuel memorabilia collection with the centrepiece being a beautifully restored 1948 Fargo fuel tanker, along with many other Golden Fleece items ranging from fuel bowsers and old signage through to restaurant menus.
“The Golden Fleece is collection owned by Ampol and is on permanent loan to us – it was locked up in a shed at the Kurnell Refinery. When Ampol management saw what we were doing here they asked if we would consider putting it on display here, so we sent three trucks up to Sydney and unveiled when it we had the national Ampol distributor conference here in 2023,” explained Neville.
With the vehicle collection housing everything from police cars to a pink Cadillac through to a Rolls Royce once owned by Christopher Skase, the trucks currently on display all have a connection to the Deniliquin area.
“We have a focus on local trucks, we have a couple of trucks including a White 3000, and a Maple Leaf rebuilt here in our workshops which were owned by the late Neil Scott who was a stock carrier here in the 1950s.
“We also have a couple of Ford Louisvilles, one is a northern Victoria truck, and the other is painted in Grimison Transport livery which share that vision of honouring our local carriers,” said Neville.
With the annual Deniliquin Truck Show and Transport Industry Wall of Fame induction now a fixture on the calendar, Neville is also looking at using The Depot to help honour the locals who have made their mark in transport.
The Depot’s two Ford Louisvilles enjoying their retirement in Deniliquin.“We want to set up a display here which will acknowledge the Wall of Fame inductees and tell a bit more of their stories – I want their families to be able to bring people here to tell their stories. There are a few families around the district who have gone looking for ‘dad’s old truck’ to restore and want to display it when its finished.”
Education of the younger generation is also one of the Nevilles goals.
“We have education rooms to get school groups here and teach them about transport and especially for kids before they get their licences and get out of the road – we show them what a road train is and where the blind spots are and so on – we can also show kids how an internal combustion engine works, and so on.”
Open seven days a week, The Depot is an easy place to spend half a day taking in all that there is to see, and with plenty of ‘stuff’ still stored away, future expansion is on the cards.
“Every town relies on road transport at some stage – if there’s no transport it doesn’t happen. It is a very strong transport district around here and there’s stories behind the people here, and we can help tell those stories of what life was like back in the day,” concluded Neville.
[signup]
The post The Depot museum delights in Deni appeared first on Big Rigs.