Snatch block

G'day Allan
Yes the same thought passed my mind when him standing close to the cable, they sure have some equipment.

Engineers degree Muz?? I doubt it. You don't need a degree to do that work. I was part of a team that did the same in Australia. No formal civilian qualification among our lot. Military training courses would suffice.

However one day we will need a degree to do it even if it is for all the OH&S stuff.

Phil

Phil, one day we all need a degree b4 we can drive a 4x4

Damien

G'day Phil
wow you hit a soft nerve with that bottom photo, I would love to have one of those all nicely done up.. Thanks for the fab pics mate.

Phil I just noticed the 2 black marks, looks like there might be something the public was not meant to see.

Knowing the yanks Doug it could be anything from a gum dispenser to a rocket launcher.

How about one of these. Looks brutal as well.

Phil

Aust Army Mack R600

Let's not get carried away with some sort of conspiracy theory...

....they're eyebrows over the two red eyes.

Cheers

Anthony

Hi Anthony, any of these eyebrows?

eyebrows !!!!!

Hi Ron

At the ripe old age of five, I remember sitting in the front of an old Yankee jeep, up on the Bogong High Plains next to my big brother and being towed by a big dozer (unknown type) through a bog hole with mud seeping over the bonnet and into our lap. We forgot the windscreen was down!!Well my big brother forgot it. I was only five. He was 18 years older than me.

Didn't Mum go off the deep end. We had to go out the back and strip off. It was winter and we lived in My Beauty. Cold!!!

Memories.

Phil

Phil - Yes, I think most of us have been there and done that.
God knows how many dozers I;ve extracted from bogs where the mud was over the floor plates.
Tying a log to the tracks worked 98% of the time - but then there were the times when you couldn't get near the machine with anything else.
Times when you'd push a 6 foot (1.8M) crowbar straight into the ground, and it would disappear out of sight, without touching bottom!

In SVN, one bloke bogged a Cat D7 so badly, the radiator cap went below ground level!
We ended up with a wrecker, a Cat 966C loader (170HP and 15 tonnes), and a Centurion, all attached to the D7, to extract it!
Once the D7 started moving, the Centurion just took over, and left the wrecker and the 966C behind!

You should have seen the size of the hole left behind when the D7 was finally out! LOL
The Vietnamese are probably still using it as a waterhole! LOL

Mt Beauty? Isn't that above the snowline?? LOL
Spent a week staying in Wangaratta in early July, and that was plenty cold enough for me!!
Couldn't imagine what Winters are like in the Alpine country! Just thinking about it, gives me the shivers! LOL

Cheers, Ron.

It's cold enough at Mt Beauty when you are almost starkers. We were stuck up around the Kiewa Scheme works on the Bogong High Plain. Not in Beauty.

Spent some time (nashos) with 7fdsqn and 24constructionsqn before going to sigs. Don't tell me you drove tunzaguts.

I know the 966. Was doing driver and recovery stuff at 7FDWKSP, RAEME got plenty of time on most of their plant when on exercises. I had to get a licence for all their plant anyway. So . . . Good times.

Phil

No, never drove tunzaguts, but I must have driven nearly everything else! Qualified on motor scrapers and dozers, but I drove loaders, forklifts, graders, rollers, water trucks, dump trucks, and virtually anything with an engine in it - as well as scrapers and dozers.

Built heaps of roads and a few bridges, operated quarries and crushers - hauled sand off the beach at Long Hai - whilst watching the U.S. Phantoms bomb the VC only a couple of kays away in the hills!

Licencing didn't matter in 'Nam, if you could show you knew how to drive it, you got a job driving it!
Of course, I'd been driving most equipment before I was called up, the Green Machine training was just refresher stuff.

As you can see, I was with the Land Clearing Team with 4 x D8's. Spent 3 mths with them.
What a mongrel of a job. Mud and dust - massive bomb craters that just swallowed D8's - scorpions, centipedes a foot long, monkeys, snakes, rats - they all joined you in the cab!
I once had a monstrous rat fall out of the canopy and run along the bonnet towards me - then it jumped straight off the bonnet, into my lap! Did some fancy dancing about then, I can tell you!

Then there were the mortars, the RPG's and the mines to contend with, as well.
We had one lucky escape when the VC dropped mortars on us - one hit the rounded top of an oxy-acetylene bottle, and bounced off and fell flat in the mud alongside the oxy bottle, without going off!

Best job I had was unloading the Jeparit in Vung Tau. The Vietnamese semis were so broken down, we had to push them up the hill into the yard at Vungers with the Case W7 forklifts!

The Cases were terrors, they had the hydraulic tank mounted right in front of the operator.
Work them hard on a hot day and the hydraulic oil would heat up and expand and blow out the tank breather, and cover you with oil! Oh, those fun days!

Wish I'd taken more photos!

Cheers, Ron.

No SVN with RAEME for me. Was with 104/110 Sigs when OS. I would have rather been with RAE myself. My job scared the be-whats-its out of me. Too late - sent me to Saigon for a break and never left there.
Who were you with?
Phil

PS Getting a little BIG little off topic Ron. Good to chant anyway. Catchya

Happier times - "up north".

Phil, I was with 17 Construction Sqdn. It was good doing constructive work, but dodging the explosives was the tricky part.
We lost a lot of equipment, and a lot of blokes were hurt and a few killed.

A little Tassie mate, Ivan Ballard (deceased all too soon a few years ago) has sent all his pics of our operations to the AWM.
Here's a link to all his pics.

Sapper Ivan Ballard's photos of 17 Construction Sqdn

Here's a bunch of us having lunch on the rebuild of Route 2. It was some dumb corporals idea (not mine) to combine all the tins in the ration pack into a dogs breakfast for lunch!
I know all the blokes in the photo - the only bloke wearing a shirt is Mickey Wighton, he was a blackfella from Condobolin, he ended up becoming a high-level fat-cat in Canberra! LOL

Sappers at lunch on the road

Rode in the passenger seat of this F5 tipper to work for 3 weeks - and about 2 or 3 days after I changed jobs for Christmas, and stopped riding in that seat, my mate Peter Bates ran over a 10lb satchel charge! - with the passenger side front wheel!
This was on 27/12/70, I think - we were working the quarry at NDP Garth, it was real Noggie country, had a lot of really violent contacts all around us.

Peter Bates survived with blast injuries, he was medevacced on 28/12/70 and I never saw him again.
They eventually found his rifle more than 200M away!

Peter Bates tipper after mine blast

Close-up of Peter Bates tipper cabin

Cheers, Ron.

Luckily you chose "other means" instead of the Mk iV. We had an M113A1 at 7WKSP of which I was one of two drivers. Yep, Stood in as a mechanic for a couple of exercises.

Did you ever meet a Sapper Denis Lowe?. Spent time at 7FD with him and chasing waves. Lost track when I went to Sigs. We also had a couple of Mickey Wighton's mob with us in SVN. Lots of time for them. Worked their guts out. I always knew if I gave them a job it would be done and properly. Much reliable that one or two of my mob that I still know.

Take care but I think that we are way off topic mate. may catch up one day.

Phil

Phil - No, didn't come across any Denis Lowe. Yes, we're definitely off-topic.
Yes, maybe we will catch up one day. Age is catching up with all of us first and fast, though.

Went to slightly edit my previous post - and you posted in the meantime, and that stopped my edit, and wiped out all my photo links.

Here's the photo links again, for the curious ...

Sapper Ivan Ballard's pics of 17 Construction

Sappers at lunch on the road

Peter Bates tipper after mine blast

Close-up of Peter Bates tipper cabin

Cheers, Ron.

We've fed dozer track on using that method, since dozers were invented - but they've got winches around them galore - they could have winched the track back on by pulling it over the top of the top rollers from the front.
Tracks roll on so easily using that technique, it doesn't take a lot of power.
Don't see any of them wearing gloves! They must be one tough lot of GI's! LOL
Anytime I work with Steel Wire Rope, gloves are a total necessity!
Saves a lot of missing skin and pinched fingers!!

Cheers, Ron.