Dozer

From Griffith REVIEW Edition 20: Cities on the Edge
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.

Written by John Kinsella

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John Kinsella's biography and other articles by this writer

He'd driven dozers for thirty years. From bobcats to D10s. As a young bloke, he'd started in a warehouse driving forklifts. Now that's an art-form. The experienced could whiz them around on a pin and load a truck faster than an army by hand. The trick, they said, was in the positioning of the pallets. He got the hang of it fast, and after a few years was considered a prize to the company. But then they went bust, and he branched out. A job came up for a cat driver – a Caterpillar steel track. He could drive anything, and though he didn't have that ticket he went anyway. He got the job, and the boss – being a bit of a crook like so many of them in the ‘earthworks' trade – let him drive while he sorted out the credentials. Under that boss, he collected experience and credentials. He became a gun – a go-anywhere do-anything dozer driver.

Later, he hooked into the mining industry and got to operate the monster Cat D10 dozer. The bucket was so big it could have carried most of the things he'd driven before. Charging a stack of ore – steel jaw and hung guts of the bucket scraping the ground – he loved the impact with the product. And then the scoop up, the lifting and swallowing. It was brutal and yet beautiful. Mostly he'd get, ‘You love that power, Matt! We know, we know!' But it was never that, it was the getting things done, the efficiency of it. He admired the deftness of the giant; he felt as if it were an extension of him. Muscle, sure, but skill in using it. It was the skill, the finesse.

He had never been out of work, but the industry was under the hammer and he was always conscious that his job might go. The mob he worked for had a bunch of legal cases going on around the world. Like his workmates, he said, ‘Stuff the greenies, those bastards will protest us out of a job!' There'd been toxic spills and damaged environments, but these people seemed not to get it: no mining companies, no modern world to enjoy. But the day did come when the company closed its doors. Not entirely – just their Western Australian operations. Consolidating. We'll be back, they said. Most of his mates spent ages trying to find something else, but he walked into a new job a week later. Ironically, the economy had taken a turn for the better, and a resources and construction boom was just getting started.

HIS NEW JOB WAS south, way south. He'd been up in the Pilbara – place of Big Machinery – for years. Nice to have a cool change! And no more cyclones to worry about.

Ensconced in his cage, he propelled the dozer across the corrugated ground, forcing the great curve of the blade into the ancient Jarrah trees. He wasn't used to having so many eyes on him. He didn't care that the greenies hated him. He just wanted to perform well. Whole trees bounced off the cage, though he was deft enough, even in this sluggish brute, to compel them to fall into heaps – he rounded them up for the track-loaders to sort out later. Occasionally, one of the long-hairs would get in front of the blade and he'd have to stop, but he didn't let it bother him. The cops would drag the long-hair off, then he'd start his work again – meticulous, caring.

In thirty years he'd never failed to have a drink after knock-off – at the pub if it was open or, if he was doing night shift, a cold one from the camp fridge, or maybe one from under a roadhouse counter. In the pub near the clearing site, workers and long-hairs drank together. There were regular fights. The long-hairs always got the worst of it. He wasn't a fighter, but he'd set in and argue hour on hour, just for the hell of it. The long-hairs he argued with were professional ‘dozer-watchers' – something like train-spotters, they explained. He didn't mind them. He liked trees as well. And he loved birds.

When I was a kid, he explained to one of the long-hairs, there was a massive golden oak tree in our suburban backyard. Yes, okay, so I did have a sandpit full of Tonka toys. But do you guys want to hear the story or not? If you do, shut your mouths and listen.

We had this giant golden oak tree out the back. I'd climb it most days, even during bad weather. Lots of birds nested in it, so I'd avoid going up when the eggs had been laid and chicks hatched. That was seasonal, so it didn't cause me much inconvenience. I noticed the same birds coming back to nest year after year, and I got to know some of the young 'uns. Now I know I can tell you guys this because my workmates would be pissing themselves with laughter. But truly, I spoke to them and they spoke with me. My dad said: ‘You spend too much time perched up in that tree like a bloody bird. If you don't chop the wood, I'll give you a hiding.' I never told him I spoke with the birds, but my mum knew. Once when my dad did give me a hiding for not chopping the wood, I blurted it all out to mum and she rubbed my head and said it's okay, it's okay, I understand. Even now when I visit her – she's old, and in a home – she mentions it.