Doug Hamilton’s Machine Memories (Part Twelve)

Continuing our series focusing on the memories of retired plant man Doug Hamilton in his own words and featuring archive photos from his own private collection.

"It was 1977 the year Elvis died and I was still working at the McIntyre Mine it was a busy place and we were often working night shifts, one time we were coming off the shift and we were heading down the mountain on board a company bus, someone at the back shouted to the driver to “slow down!” and the guy sat next to me said, “I got a bad feeling about this” and sure enough, moments later the bus went over and rolled towards the edge, it ended up hanging perilously over the edge of the steep mountain road. One guy had suffered a broken arm and the bus driver called for the on-site ambulance, but none came, we then waited for another bus to come back for us, and we were all told that nobody was allowed to mention the incident again, not even at our safety meetings or else!"

"As I mentioned previously safety on this site was only implemented when it suited the bosses, I found this was often the case back in those days, its probably a lot different in todays H&S culture! One of the machines I got to spend time on here was the 150-tonne capacity Lectra Haul. These trucks were manufactured by a company called Unit Rig, who first entered the off-highway truck sector in 1963 when they launched the M-85 diesel electric truck".

"The most popular wheeled loaders on this job were Caterpillar 992’s, but there was also another rare old machine kicking around the job. The Dart D600 was a bit of an oddball with its cab mounted high-up over on the left-hand side of the machine, this was supposed to give you better visibility, but it felt a bit strange to operate. The machine featured a 15-cubic yard bucket and was powered a Cummins VT12 diesel engine which had a power output of 700hp, impressive power and capacity but sadly this machine was an old girl and spent much of its time on site broke down".

"The Lectra Haul trucks were primarily being loaded by large P&H rope operated face shovels".

Look out for more machine memories from Doug in a future instalment here on the Digger Man Blog.