The Des Toohey years 1948-76

I first met Des when he turned up at a quarry in Adelaide where I worked in 1948-50. The operation was owned by an unlovable character named Joe Leverington, who was an unbelievably hard taskmaster, and only the fact that I had been engaged to sort out production problems on his quarry plant, at a salary that was more than double what I could expect in my trade of motor mechanic, kept me there. Des himself had experienced an exceptionally hard childhood, being raised in a tent in the Queensland outback, and finding himself at 13 years of age, driving freight on ex-WW2 trucks across the back blocks on roads that often became impassable, at which times he would have to struggle through on his own with only his dog for company, or camp where he was bogged, and live off the land until some form of assistance arrived.

This was the 18 year old that I put on as a truck driver, and he proved to be by far the best worker we had ever experienced, quickly throwing his well toughened body into any task that appeared about the place, unlike most of our workers who did only their allotted tasks, and little more. Des was to court and marry Doris, the fiery daughter of one of our quarry workers, who lived with his family in a small shack a few hundred yards further up the gully from the quarry operation. Des and I became good friends, and in December of 1948, we both answered an advert, and started work with V.P. Keane, a private quarrying company, and as it turned out the best thing either of us ever did. Des and his younger brother, Trevor, eventually becoming, through dedication and hard work, the owners of the company in later years.

For me the path was different – after a couple of years my life changed, I met Barbara, and the next 10 years were spent on Kangaroo Island. But by 1960, circumstances had again changed, and we very reluctantly left the easy life of KI, for the suburban wilds of Melbourne, and I was once more employed by V.P. Keane in my old position of designing and building a new crushing plant. Des and his brother were now in charge of operations and old Vin still lived in Adelaide with the company's long time secretary, Molly Humphries. They had been partners for years, although Vin in true Catholic form, still retained a distant facade of marriage and an elegant family home. Although he was never blessed with offspring, he did in a manner adopt both Des and Trevor Toohey. I remained good friends with Vin over the years, at one time we even tendered for the supply of crushed stone for the construction of the Kangaroo Island Middle River Dam, but our bid wasn't accepted.

In those days Vin and his elder brother John, who was managing Director of Quarry Industries in South Australia (they had once worked together there) were involved in a sort of strange unofficial tendering war. Vin eventually getting the country areas which was run as a private company with another brother Kevin, and John's company serviced the Adelaide metropolitan area. They were still close family friends, but John lived in a corporate world, which wasn't to Vin or Kevin's liking. In any case, as Vin had taken the company secretary as his own and moved out, this made his position with his brother officially untenable. Later Quarry Industries bought Vin and Kevin out, part of this deal being that they were no longer allowed to operate in South Australia as a company. However they did run two small portable country plant operations, one under Kevin's name and the other under Trevor Toohey's name for a short time, the whole operation eventually being transferred to Melbourne. Tragically Kevin was killed in a bulldozer accident shortly before this happened.

So it was that I commenced work rectifying problems on a newly erected plant at Bundoora. I came to realise that Des, as a hands on Company Director, was at times impossible, as he had no engineering expertise whatsoever, and we clashed frequently over construction details. Most problems were the result of his bombastic interference, but with a newly purchased home and a family, I was in no position to leave the company, and so it was that after the plant was fully operational, I had little to do with the day to day problems, and moved on to the design and building of the first 14 cubic yard super semi trailer in Victoria – Des was basically still a trucky and was never happier than when he was involved with trucks.

Another interesting sideline for me at this time, was becoming involved with the conversion of the company's imported American luxury cars. This came about after Vin imported a Chrysler Imperial le Baron that was converted to right hand drive in the USA. Both the braking and steering proved to be a total disaster, and I was called upon to 'fix it good!'. This proved to be quite an undertaking, and it quickly became obvious that in future it would be easier, quicker, and more effective for me to do the whole job myself. So followed a series of conversions which I carried out, the first in a garage extension at home, a Pontiac Bonneville, then several Chryslers and a Cadillac done at the quarry in a shed erected for the purpose. I really enjoyed these projects. I even became involved in converting a Chrysler New Yorker and a Plymouth Fury, and an early Ford four wheel drive privately in my spare time at home.

By now the company was expanding with plants on the Eastern side of Melbourne at Narre Warren, run by Trevor. Trevor and Des never really got on together that well, they had fought since childhood, Trevor was a pleasant fellow, a normal human being, something that unfortunately, Des hardly ever seemed to be able to manage in the later years that I worked with him.

1963, and it was decided to build a new super plant across the paddock at Bundoora, so I set to working out a design, mostly a few lines that we scratched in the dirt at lunch time! This was transferred to a single large sheet of paper on the drawing board, which Des reluctantly purchased at my insistence! Over the next 12 months, with the assistance of two welders, (Frank Seymour and Johnny Burke) we first built a crane, and then together we slowly cut, erected and welded together what became the ultimate Boulders crushing facility. Even the secondary and tertiary impact crushers were designed by myself and manufactured right there in position on the job.

This crushing plant was to become the company's major asset, and endured for 30 trouble free years in the hands of future operators.

Once the new plant was fully operational, the next project was the design and building of a specialised aggregate blending and mixing machine. This came about through the demands of the road building industry and was a completely new concept at this time. This plant was built on to the end of the storage bins, from where it drew it's basic materials, and was improved as time passed, together with additional specialised stone crushing circuits to supplement the new plant. From then on there was little for me to do apart from supervision until we decided to move into the concrete business. We purchased a complete new plant which I installed and commissioned and this led to the desire to have a second operation at Narre Warren. I found myself fabricating a second plant to accomplish this but when the plant was finished it was never installed! Des, becoming bored and looking to diversify with the substantial earnings of the company, decided to buy into, of all things, the aircraft industry!

Des's wife Doris, had indulged in several outlets for her boundless energy after their three daughters had grown up, one was a successful ladies hairdressing salon. Then for some unknown reason she decided that she was going to learn to fly! This she soon did and immediately embarked upon further flying instruction, with the ambition of becoming a fully fledged commercial pilot! This undoubtedly influenced Des's decision to get into something where his wife could use her newly found talents!

A new Cessna 172 aircraft was bought, plus a major interest in the Moorabbin Cessna agency. This meant that I found myself doing odd, very illegal repairs to wheel spats and other odd jobs that in the normal running of things, cost enormous amounts of money. I started to get my official pilots license, but soon realised that I would be drafted into the company flying operations if I wasn't careful, and so I quickly lost interest in flying!
Later we became the agency for the first Cessna Citation jets, and this gave Des the excuse to go to the States with me along, to see the Cessna operation at Wichita, Kansas, and other places throughout the Mid West. Side trips saw a weekend spent in New Orleans, and a bus journey across New Mexico and Texas, The Grand Canyon, Las Vegas, Reno, Dodge City, Oklahoma, Denver and San Francisco, and many other places – altogether a pleasant couple of weeks, but it was over all too soon.

We returned to work at the quarry, but the office was now frequented by pilots awaiting instructions, and a small airline was soon in operation servicing south western Victoria to places such as Warrnambool and doing odd charter work. It was an incongruous situation – the noise and dust of the crushing plant in full operation, and Des the Managing Director, who never used his main office, being conferred with in his dusty shorts in the small office and lunch room that we shared. It never worried him, but I can still remember the looks on pilot's faces when they first fronted up for work at the main office buildings and were directed to the stone crushing operations area, which they never even knew existed.

About this time there was a World Quarrying Seminar held in Japan and Des, having no wish to attend, arranged that Barb and I would take a six weeks holiday at the company's expense. We planned a journey that would take us up through Malaysia, Bali and Cambodia, Hong Kong, the Phillipines, and a grand tour of Japan. Barb organised our passports, and bought clothing and travel cases, and we were all set to go when major war broke out in Cambodia. This plus the fact that we really weren't happy with leaving the family at home on their own for six weeks, meant that the trip was cancelled, and I returned to work. Poor Barbara had been very excited about the holiday and she was terribly disappointed.

It was shortly after this, that Des came to work one morning and announced that the company with all it's quarrying operations would be sold to Readymix Industries and this sale made Des, Trevor, old Vin and Miss Humphries instant millionaires. At this point, just after the New Year, I was given one last Toohey instruction! This involved jumping on a plane at short notice and flying to Los Angeles USA, to spend four days researching an American idea, that was to eventually emerge in the form of the Flocon trucks. At that point in time, it was a project that had been cooked up privately between Des and the incoming managing director of the Victorian Readymix operation. Upon my return I found that not only was I was now the Readymix/Boulders operations liaison man, but I had the clandestine help of a Readymix drawing board and draughtsman, who were set up in a room of the old Boulders office block. This sideline operation continued until I had completed the design and detailed drawings of the first Flocon semi-trailer. It was at this time that the Readymix MD suddenly lost interest, and the whole project was put to one side until a little later, when the plans were put in the hands of a Thomastown steel fabrication firm, I kept an eye on the construction of the first body, even though I was a full time employee of Readymix, and when it was completed, Des and a long time truck driver employee, Ted Gibson, assembled it on to a Diamond Reo' prime mover in the back yard of Des's married daughter's home at Diamond Creek. It immediately commenced successful specialised cartage operations.

While this was going on, Boulders' affairs were being sorted out and I received a golden handshake that was hardly appropriate and a bill for $2000 for the redundant Holden company car that I had been assured was my own property! I was refused payment of the money that was my due for my 14 years of service with Boulders, this based on a fancy company technicality! I then finished up being saddled with the Readymix operation, something that I didn't tolerate for very long, and soon I became part of the Readymix two man country division together with another new company recruit who had proved unmanageable, Laurie McMahon. It was Laurie's intervention at this time, as part of my transfer agreement to country areas that saw the belated payment of my 14 years long service money.

Not surprisingly, Laurie and I were destined to soon become loose cannons in the Readymix system, and after about a year I found myself back with Des, once more building one of his truck dreams – a smaller truck version of the Flocon. This was supposed to be the start of a new co-operative era for Des and I, the two of us working together as we had once done happily all those years previously. I supposedly had 40% of the fledgling company, and we were happy building our trucks – or so it seemed! But a leopard never changes it's spots, and after a good year, during which together we built several Flocons, and were in the process of developing them for further uses, the 12 month's lease on our small factory ended. It became obvious that Des yearned to have some employees about him he could boss about (something he couldn't do with me!). Also he was keen to get back into the quarrying industry, something that had been very definitely written out of the new venture!
So it was a move to a larger factory, and the re-employment of Des's old gofer, Allan Cadman, known to most as Charlie. Then there were more workers, and soon we were building new quarrying machinery – even a horse and cattle float of enormous proportions! Charlie was reconditioning General Motors Diesels at the rear of the factory, and generally I was none too happy with the change, and made a point of saying so!

At this time I designed, and we built, a number of special high clearance, segmental roll-away doors for the rear opening of Safeway semi-trailer food transporters. This proved to be a very successful venture and we still had unfilled orders in hand, when Des suddenly decided to end the whole operation. He packed up and retired to Queensland, where he and brother Trevor quickly became involved in the gravel industry once more. Almost immediately I had a phone call, and within days found myself in Hong Kong, back with Laurie McMahon, and a whole new work experience – half of the new Readymix South East Asian two man team that was to continue in various forms and different companies, for the last six years of my working life.

It was now 1985, I was 64 years old, and had been eligible for retirement as a World War 2 participant since I had turned 60, and so it was that after a 3 months holiday in Northern Queensland, our Melbourne home was sold up, and we retired to our Gippsland property.