Dot Leech
Inducted into the Shell Rimula Wall of Fame at Reunion 2014.
Dorothy (Dot) Leech was born in Harcourt, Victoria in October 1922. She married Jack Leech in Castlemaine in 1944 in the midst of the 1944 bushfires which had burned fiercely across the whole district. They went on to have three sons and enjoyed a marriage that lasted 61 years. Dot is proof that behind every good man there is a good woman, always taking her father's advice, you must always pull together, never against one another.
Dot's first experience with transport was going down Keilor Hill to Melbourne and the wheel came off the truck. It took the then pregnant Dorothy and Jack hours to find the wheel. Never the less, Dot supported Jack when they purchased their first truck in 1944. Following this Dot travelled with Jack when ever she could. She accompanied Jack with their three year old son to Brisbane with the first load of apples out of the Harcourt orchards. It took two weeks to complete the trip and the couple enjoyed the new experience and a different way of life. Once when laying the tarp out by the side of the road they realised they were camped on a bull ants nest and all hell literally broke loose! Another memory that stays with Dot is having a shower at an old hotel with a jam tin tied to a rope; a kettle was supplied to fill it that came with strict instructions not to waste the water.
Over the years Dot made many trips to Sydney with Jack for the family transport business, JJ Leech & Sons. The children would take turns of joining them on their journeys. Dot often worked alongside Jack loading and unloading trucks. She helped load foot long blocks of timber onto Jack's trucks, whilst maintaining a household and always getting up at ungodly hours to get Jack and her boys off to work with a cooked breakfast and a freshly packed lunch. Today Dot continues to live beside the truck yard and vis- its daily to keep an eye on things and watch with pride as the next two generations of Leeches work hard at continuing her and Jack's dream. Dot still gets a thrill when a shiny new truck comes into the yard and annually visits the Castlemaine Truck Show to admire the company's entries into the show.
