Sparra’s life with trucks

I started out on my own with my father. Over a period of years business was very good.

We built our fleet up to 19 vehicles and employed 40 odd people.

The first load of sheep I ever done was for a man by the name of Lewis Nagle, out at Warragoon. I was only young; I had no licence. I put on 200 sheep and bought into the Yarrawonga Saleyards for the sheep sale.

I got my licence about a week after. I went down to the Yarrawonga Police Station. Dad was too busy to take me, so he said, "look son, you drive yourself down there".

We had a little Morris Minor, which I drove there on my own, and Frank Fox was the policeman. He said, "Oh, young Weygood, what do you want?”

“Ah, Mr. Fox I would love to have my licence,” I replied.

“I've seen you drive around now for quite a while; I think that'll be alright. Can you drive me around to the post office?" he asked.

So, we drove around to the post office, he got the mail, then we went down to Yarrawonga Grove.

Then he said, "do you think you can do a handbrake start?" I said, "Hell yeah".

There was a bit of a bank there, so we pulled up and did a handbrake start and back to the police station. I came home with my licence. Dad asked; "how did you go son?" I said, "done well". He said, "no problems?" I said, "No, Mr. Fox said I was a good driver".

During the years we carted a lot of stock. We moved into carting ostriches, emus, alpacas, and deer. The most difficult of all were the emus because they had no brains, no sense. You had to put a hood over their head to blindfold them, then walk them backwards.

We carted thousands of emus out of Western Australia and went through to Myrtleford up to Eurobin, where they were slaughtered. The longest trip I had done with ostriches was from Geraldton, Western Australia to Byron Bay in New South Wales.

One of the most exciting trips was in my early days when I first got my new truck, the International, I had never been to Melbourne before in my life. I thought "oh, everyone is talking about Pretty Sally what a dangerous big hill it was".

I candidly thought "hmm, I'm pretty smart, I'm 18 years old, brand-new truck, it will have good brakes".

So, I descended off the top of the hill and then next minute I got fast, I got faster, and then I got faster and then the only alternative I had then was to throw it out of gear.

I think as I went through WaIlan, I touched up around 70 miles per hour. I soon learnt to take Pretty Sally pretty casually.

In that era, late 50s early 60s, it used to take seven hours to go from here to Melbourne. You would leave Yarrawonga and your first stop would be Euroa. You would have a break and a meal and then the next, Seymour. Then the big job was on, because from Seymour to Melbourne was only 60 miles, but because it was all hills, it was a good three-hour drive in that era.

At that time there was the Newmarket Saleyards in Melbourne, which catered for hundreds of thousands of sheep, and you would unload there. Then you would stay the night and then go out to the Shell Depot and bring drummed fuel back to old Mr. Jimmy Walshe who had a Shell Depot in McNally Street, next to McCulloch Carrying Company.

On the way home I would drop off 10 drums at Lake Rowan and drop another 10 drums at Tungamah. You spent half your night coming home delivering fuel.

The only reason I stopped driving trucks was I had crook eyes which I did nothing about. That was in 1980 and my career driving came to an end.

In one year, I had three mishaps. I ran over three mobs of sheep between Yarrawonga and Albury, and I topped it off by running over a tractor.

VicRoads at the time said, "Mr. Weygood, I think you better retire from driving".

I asked "Why?"…. "Well, we are sick and tired of following you around to make sure you get home safely".

I sold out my business in 2005 and went into retirement. I was 75 years of age.