Colin Campbell (2010)
Inducted into the Shell Rimula Wall of Fame at ReUnion 2010.
Colin David Campbell or CD as he was known, was born at Mirboo North, Victoria on the 14th January 1917 and moved to Cobram with his family in 1927 to help set up the family's new grazing and wheat property in the area.
In 1935 Col purchased his first truck, a Chevrolet, later replaced by an Oldsmobile, to cart fruit from the Cobram area into Shepparton and Melbourne. A Chevrolet Maple Leaf arrived in 1939 and, together with the Oldsmobile, Col worked the trucks on the Tocumwal Air Base.
During WWII the trucks went by train to Clermont, Queensland to work for the Allied Works Council. By the time Col arrived, his trucks were already in-service, so he commenced work on the defence road from Charters Towers to Clermont operating a large Inter dozer that the Americans had brought into Townsville from the USA.
After WW1I, Col bought a K5 International to cart tomatoes , oranges, firewood and sawn red gum and pine flooring timber. Other trucks included: a Reo, a Thorneycroft Cab-over, two Federals, a K6 International and an F600 Ford.
In 1950, CD began his association with the new Murray Valley Co-operative Dairy Company at Cobram (later to become Murray Goulburn Co-operative Co Ltd), carting cheese and butter to Victoria butter factory, Melbourne and Portland, and back-loading salt from Geelong, cheese crates, butter boxes, and sometimes, milk vats from South Australia. In a typical day, Col would hand load two 15-ton loads of cement at a Tocumwal rail yard by himself, and then load cheese or butter at the factory that night to go to Melbourne. He moved to Melbourne in the 60s, hiding out because of road tax warrants, which he finally paid off by monthly instalments. He drove for Yarra Taxi Trucks and, when the business sold, found work driving for ACI for a while.
Col then went to Mulwala, NSW and worked for Jack McKee driving a Loadstar International ridged tipper with a V6 Jimmy engine, to form the local RSL and Ski Club's car parks; the breakwater at Mulwala and the extensions at Cobram Barooga Golf Club.
He retired to Cobram after a life-time of owning and driving trucks in a vastly different era from that of today. After some years of illness, CD Campbell passed away at the Cobram District Hospital in October, 1998.
