Item 04: Memoirs of a Colonial Boy by Robert Joseph Stewart, ca. 1971 - Page 415
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[Page 415]
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bridge by day-labour with my own staff; a three-span reinforced concrete structure replacing an old wooden one known as "Angel" bridge near Woonoona. When this was ready for traffic we began construction of another one of comparable size at Duck Creek a few miles south of Dapto.
In these days of road construction there was not the marvellous "Caterpillar" mechanical road building machines that came along just before World War II from the United States. To wit, the huge powerful diesel "D8s" bulldozers and rippers, the big fast carryalls, the long irresistible graders and the handy end-loaders, all hydraulically operated. Our only mechanical plant comprised seven steam road rollers, six rather crude and inefficient diesel ones and two semi-portable bituminous-concrete hot mixing units.
The maintenance gangs had a few light horse-drawn graders which were useful on gravel surfaces only. Earth was excavated by horse-drawn ploughs and scoops; if very hard by road roller scarifier-tynes, a very slow process. Spoil for the banks was hand-shovelled into tipping motor trucks, mostly hired by the hour from private owners, and none with a greater load capacity than four tons. Rock of course had to be blasted with explosives placed in holes drilled by manpower - hammer and drill. Portable, petrol or diesel, air compressors and jackhammers were just beinning to be used for tunnelling and ditching only.
Local labour was not overplentiful; the old-time railway construction navvy of the bowyangs, dungaree-trousers, sweat-rag and blucher-boots had disappeared after World War I. South of Wollongong many of the small dairy farmers worked as labourers between milkings. But the trouble with them was that they wanted to "knock off" an hour too early every day to start their evening milking. I remember one infuriated ganger pointing through a nearby fence to a fellow milking a cow in an open shed. "That coot", he raged, "was here in this gang of mine not half an hour ago, and two other cow-cockies".
Mine was a very congenial job in a very pleasant rural countryside, and I spent about half of my working hours in the