Stan and Bert Thiess formed the original Thiess Bros. in 1934. Beginning as road contractors on the
Darling Downs in 1934, They evolved into a mining, construction and
services contractor with operations throughout Australia
In 1939
the brothers had a D8 bulldozer specially imported from the
United States. The upgrading and expansion of the bulldozer fleet ensured that Thiess Brothers was able to take on more larger excavation projects. The 104-feet deep
Heifer Creek Road cutting between Gatton and
Warwick, Queensland, was the deepest in Australia at the time. Using the D8 bulldozer enabled
the brothers to complete the job in just six months.
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Thiess Bros' first official base was a warehouse in the East
Brisbane suburb of Woolloongabba. Prone to flooding, what was basically a tin shed had been acquired by the company in 1944 to accommodate workers on an increasing number of
Brisbane-based projects.
The Thiess Head Office is now located in
Brisbane's busy South Bank precinct. The 11-storey building, which can be seen across the river from the CBD, is very different from those that had gone before it, including the East
Brisbane shed, the igloo shaped office that opened at Yeerongpilly in
Brisbane in 1949, and the former
Sydney hairdressing salon, which became the first interstate office in 1946.
The second
Sydney office to open was at Mascot in 1954 and was so remote from public transport that Thiess ran a bus service between the Botany tram and the Mascot office. Nowadays, Mascot and Yeerongpilly, both about 7km from the CBD, are classed as inner-city.
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After the war, Bert Thiess went with the company to Milne Bay in Papua New Guinea to recover ex-US military machinery that could be used for railways, roads, farms and companies in Australia. Bert was the operator in Milne Bay - directing, repairing and organising cargo such as machinery, tractors and scrap steel that had been left behind. This was shipped back to
Sydney and reconditioned or reused. Without schemes such as this, Australia would have been short of equipment as the country started growing again.
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Note: Bert grew up on a farm at Drayton, near
Toowoomba, where his father, Henry, a carpenter by trade, and his mother, Mary, ran a small dairy herd. It was a big family, Bert had nine brothers and a sister. Bert James Thiess CBE, AO passed away last year.
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In May 1958, Thiess Brothers became the first Australian company to be awarded a major contract on the
Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme.
At the time, all major contracts had gone to international companies. Les Thiess and his brothers saw this as an opportunity to show what Australians could do.
Thiess Brothers became the largest contractor on the Snowy, successfully completing four major contracts worth more than $98.7 million.
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In 1966, Thiess Holdings acquired three stocked cattle properties in the
Kimberley near
Derby, Mt Hart, Ellendale and Silent Grove, totalling more than one million acres.
A helicopter was hired from
Adelaide at $87 per hour of flying time. And since a bull fetched about $90 at the meatworks, the helicopter had to yard one animal for every hour in the air to break even.
In the 1980s former Thiess employee Stan Coster was at the top of his trade writing and performing Aussie country music.Reflecting on his time constructing the
Greenvale Railway Line in Northern Queensland in the mid-1970s, Stan's lyrics ring with admiration for
the brothers and their workers. In a gesture of respect to the Thiess family and their iconic business, Stan penned the song "Three Rivers Hotel" about a makeshift watering hole created by workers on the
Greenvale line.
Read The Words Here
From an old warehouse in East
Brisbane to new offices in Jakarta, and from a dusty hut in
Sydney to the iconic Thiess building at South Bank, the Thiess family has spread far and wide during the company's history.
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