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Territorians are renowned for their innovative and inventive approach to the problems which arise from living in a remote area and one of the greatest innovators is Kurt Johannsen, mechanic, inventor and dogged pioneer.
His association with motor vehicles began on the family property at Deep
Well Station, some 80 kilometres south of
Alice Springs. At age 14 the family left the property and moved into the city where Kurt acquired the contract for sanitary and garbage collection to help provide for the family. His reputation for hard work grew and he was soon operating mail runs to the eastern stations and Arltunga Goldfields, He took the first motorised excursion to Ayers
Rock and was the first person to sign a list at
the summit.
In the late 1930s he took over the mail run to Birdum in the north.
In 1937 Kurt had the overland mail contract from
Alice Springs to Birdum, then the northern railhead to
Darwin. The contract called for a weekly delivery to
Tennant Creek and once a month to Birdum. In 1938 the biggest 'wet season' in twenty years hit the Territory and this presented problems for the delivery.
The pack-horsemen, threatening a shoot-out, demanded double rates for the final section of the run from Roderick
Bore to Birdum and Johannsen refused to pay.
He decided to take his old 4 cylinder Dodge through the flooded section and deliver the mail himself.
He stripped it down to the frame leaving space only for the mailbox, a swag and rations. He modified the rear axle and fitted 24 inch dual wheels with
home made chains, and set off.
Near Powell Creek surging floodwaters became a problem and he waterproofed the magneto and spark plugs with a paste made from the local soil. At
Lake woods, the water was 10
miles further out than it normally was and he was forced to detour over ridges and around the lake to get back to the telegraph line.
He eventually made it to
Newcastle Waters where he wired 12, 44 gallon drums together and prepared a raft to float the truck accross. He crossed
Newcastle Creek by tying a rope to the front of the truck and swimming from tree-top to treetop securing the truck as he went. 24 hours later the floodwaters swept him to the opposite bank with the truck and mail intact.
He then headed for Sturt Plain, now a huge lake 12
miles across. With the throttle jammed open and the dual wheels and chains providing traction, he made the crossing at 4 mph.
A QANTAS pilot flying from
Daly Waters to Queensland was the first to know that Johannsen was getting the mail through when he saw an enormous and inexplicable bow-wave streaming across the flooded plain.
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I have to give a smile about the Kid above the Cab, Workplace H.S comes to mind.
Utilising a Diamond T 980 (Ex US ARMY issue), Kurt built a roadtrain the likes of which had never been seen before. The bureaucrats questioned his sanity and property owners scoffed at the idea but Kurt persevered and was soon putting the drovers out of work. He lengthened the chassis on the truck and fitted it with a crate, and then built three trailers using ex-US Army bren gun carriers. Kurt used the principal of the self-tracking mechanisms on the AEC roadtrain to develop his simpler but more effective version on his own trailers. Self-tracking meant the trailers could follow exactly in the tracks of the prime-mover.
What made these self-tracking trailers work is that the trailers themselves actually followed the prime mover. So Kurt made these trailers that would follow round goat tracks and out in the bush and carted stores and supplies out to cattle stations and the like and brought cattle in. We had no formed roads, hence the self-tracking trailer could go on goat tracks. It has pioneered today's modern road trains, as we see going up and down the road today. It revolutionised the transport in the bush, like with trucks carting cattle and general stores out to communities and stations out further. Kurt has given the bush a lot of life.
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