Sunday History Photo / Au

In 1979, 3000 truck drivers staged blockages of major highways at nearly 40 locations in Queensland, Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia to protest against ton-mile taxes and low freight rates.Known as the Razorback Blockade, truck drivers involved claimed higher charges made them financially worse off. Their efforts were not in vain and ton-mile tax was abolished shortly after the protests.
Ted ''Greendog'' Stevens, became the face of a nine-day blockade by truckies around Australia demanding the abolition of road taxes. Stevens, Spencer Watling, Colin Bird, Harry Grimson and Jack Hibburt stopped their rigs at the Razorback, near Picton on the Hume Highway, on April 3, 1979. Thanks to CB radios, more than 2000 other owner-drivers joined their stand and blockades spread across Australia.

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The Sydney talkback radio host John Laws made Stevens a hero to his listeners. He was portrayed as the little bloke fighting bureaucracy for his place in the sun. The premier, Neville Wran, deemed him an anarchist and ''a little man lost in the size of his ego''. Stevens and cohort claimed they were unfairly paying up to $20,000 a year tax to repair damage their vehicles caused to roads across the country and their protest was sold as a small-business strike.
In reality, the blockade was a behind-the-scenes campaign by large trucking companies owned by men such as Lindsay Fox to pressure governments into exempting them from paying millions of dollars tax and making other road users pay. Four days after it started the blockade was starting to unravel across Australia except on the Razorback, but the dispute was soon over when transport ministers agreed to scrap the tax.

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At the time I was driving for John Flemming Hardware , Dobney Ave , Wagga Wagga and was in the Blockade at Kalkallo, Vic
And here's a clip I made up last year, Merv Lowery actually came to Kalkallo and entertained the Truckies one night .