Extreme Truckers Road Train run to Weipa is an exciting and gruelling freight journey to the top end of Australia, for any outback trucker.
Join us a little before 4am in Mareeba one Saturday morning late in October, although it could have been any Saturday morning. The main street is quiet and desolate, apart that is, from a young couple staggering away from a pub along the right hand footpath and a dog’s solitary bark off in the distance.
Out on the northern outskirts of town at Bowyer’s Transport yard a yellowish brownish glow from the dust stained headlights of an old Holden ute, that’d seen more than its fair share of dusty trails and pot holes, lit the Kenworth T6 connected to a 45 foot fridge van parked off to the right of the yard. Dust gingerly stirred as the eight foot high chain wire gates with their bent bottom rails were dragged open through the red gravel.
This was the start of Jim Miles, weekly supply run to cattle stations, roadhouses and the remote mining centre of Weipa in the top of the Australia’s gulf country. It is a vital run that everybody relies on.
The journey continues in Episode-2