Donald Charles Stewart
Inducted into the Shell Rimula Wall of Fame in 2022.
Donald Charles Stewart was born in April 1942 and has lived in Park Street, Bright, Victoria his entire life. As a child, Donald grew up with a backyard of trucks, watching the busy comings and goings of his father’s cartage business. Cartage contracting has been in the family since the arrival of Donald’s grandfather in Australia in 1844. Within a few years of his arrival, Donald’s grandfather had established a business with 40 horse drawn drays and had a council contract to cart materials for road building in Windsor, Melbourne.
Donald left school at 15 to train as a mechanic at the local Showers Garage in Bright but when he turned 21 in 1963, he started driving a semi-trailer. Donald loved the freedom that came from working as an owner driver. Following his marriage to Heather Nicol, the couple built a house adjacent to the family’s Park Street truck yard and this was where the couple raised their family of three girls – Laura, Amy and Alice.
Donald’s first truck was a red Federal which he used to cart sawn hardwood from a timber mill at Porepunkah to a retail timber yard in Essendon, Victoria. He then started working in the apple industry in nearby Wandiligong. Donald’s job was to cart apples from the orchards to the cool store and delivering loads of apples to the markets in Melbourne and Sydney.
At the height of the season, the picked apples needed to be quickly moved to the cool store. One year Donald did 100 loads from Stanley to Wandiligong including 16 loads in four days via Myrtleford and Beechworth - 60km each way. He also remembers loading bins in a snowfall at Stanley.
Donald bought his second truck, a teal Commer, which he drove throughout the 1980s. His third and final truck was a Kenworth which he restored and painted red. He drove this truck from 1990 until he retired.
Donald spent 40 years carting apples for the Nightingale family’s Wandiligong orchard travelling through Bright where he and his truck were icons. The entire town recognised the sound of Donald’s truck engine as it came through town! Donald was renowned for his reliability, conscientiousness, attention to safety and care of the produce he was transporting.
Donald retired in 2013 having been a proud owner-driver for his entire 50-year career in the trucking industry.