Phillip Brown

Inducted into the Shell Rimula Wall of Fame at ReUnion 2011.

Phil started his working life felling trees in the Warburton (Vic) area and was fighting fires on Black Friday 1939 on his 21st birthday. He did a night course to become a boiler attendant because timber mills had boilers.

During the war, unable to join the Army because of injuries received from a motor bike accident, he drove trucks for the home guard working out of Darwin.  After the war he drove for many people and finally worked for a Sydney guy, John Paul, who had ex army Macks travelling to Darwin, North Queensland and Adelaide and by our current standards was pretty rough gear, but then, top of the line.

As the clippings show he was the first truck in Townsville with food during the 1947 rail strike. After 5 years with John Paul he went back to logging in Gippsland in Victoria with a Chev Blitz and in the fifties went back to interstate driving, working for Don and Flip Cameron running to the Sydney markets (in their early days), and Clive Smith and Bill Green carting offal to Sydney and furnace coke out of Wollongong back to various engineering works in Melbourne. This was before front-end loaders and tippers. A coke shovel was used to unload it - hard yakka.

He then operated a Leyland Hippo subbing for Beamish Heavy Haulage in Melbourne for some years.

Finally he went back to being a boiler attendant before retiring.

In 1970 the Mack bulletin published a story on his driving. His most unusual job was driving a General Grant tank (minus gun turret) from Bandiana Victoria to Grafton New South Wales where it was used for snigging logs out the forests.