Resident Greg Clarke was recently inducted into the National Road Transport Hall of Fame in Alice Springs.
The event, of which Shell Australia has been a sponsor for the past 11 years, saw 1000 truck drivers and transport industry members travel to Alice to recognise the 85 inductees of the Shell Rimula Wall of Fame who were honoured for their lifetime of service to the industry.
Born in 1948, the first son and third child of eight, Greg Clarke’s career with trucks began at 11 years of age, driving his father’s milk truck. He acquired his semi-trailer licence at age 19.
In 1966 Greg’s father established Clarke and Sons Transport with the purchase of his first semi, a red Dodge with a 210 Cummins on board.
Clarke and Sons Transport would cart timber from Thora to Brisbane, and then travel out to the Darling Downs to load grain for the return trip to Wauchope.
Greg remembers one night with his father at the Rocklea Pub in Brisbane, where they learned that Collins and Davies had the first two f86 Volvos in Australia.
Making their way to Breakfast Creek to have a look, Greg remembers his father commenting on the difficulty there would be in having foreign parts shipped to Australia.
However, in the following years they found themselves the owners of 32 Volvos.
In the aftermath of Cyclone Tracy, Greg was one of three drivers asked to drive a 1418 Benz and trailer carrying a 38ft x 10ft toilet block from Hughenden to Richmond, a 75 kilometre dirt road. Delayed by a storm, it took Greg four days to make it to Darwin, where he witnessed the devastation of the natural disaster.
In the mid-1980s Greg and his wife Therese bought the family business from Greg’s parents. Having scaled down the business, these days Greg carts soil and gravel in his new Scania tipper.
