This week just gone I left home extra early for work one morning, but instead of parking up at the yard in Rockdale, I detoured a little further into the neighbouring suburb of Kogarah. On Wednesday I caught up with good old Mick, one of the fellow garbage enthusiasts here on KZfaq and Flickr. Like myself he also works for SITA, but operates in the St George regional contract which covers Rockdale, Hurstville and Kogarah during the week. He started the garbage career working for the in-house team at Sutherland Council on the rear loaders, then scored a job in St George where he started on the rear loaders and got trained up on a side loader. Now he’s got an allocated run and SL42 as his fulltime truck, covering mostly recycling, but also doing green-waste shifts twice a fortnight.
On Wednesday the whole of Kogarah Council gets serviced, being the biggest day for the St George crew and requires extra trucks to get the job done. There are also numerous main roads running all throughout the council which require early morning collections to avoid a whole lot of disruption and pissed off members of the public during the morning. Thus, most of the fleet is out collecting by 4:30am, but plenty are going as of 4am and some are out as early as 3:30am for that even earlier start. The council has requested that the main road and CBD services are complete by 6am, so the early starts are condoned and the trucks and drivers get to let rip in the darkness. Unlike Warringah and Randwick with councillors who have their heads shoved really far up their arse, Kogarah councillors are smart and realise waste services are hazardous and should be done at a safe time, so they allow early morning pick-ups.
On one week Mick begins a green-waste run in the early hours on the western side of the council and on the following week he does recycling in and around the Kogarah CBD. On the week he does recycling, the particular area is the green-waste zone, so he actually bypasses all the houses and only services the unit blocks and commercial bins with weekly collections. In the video we start on the very first bins along the Princes Hwy, work along the council border and move into the backstreets and laneways. As you may notice there isn’t much mercy for the residents in the area, basically tough shit if you get woken up and disturbed by crashing glass and a revving Cummins engine. All I can say is that it was bloody refreshing being out there during early morning domestic collections for the first time in two years, plus it was awesome reminiscing with one of the mean machines I used to drive in St George.