Holy Truck!
by Joel Bowman
A Behemothic banana, a mammoth macadamia nut, gargantuan
gumboots and a tremendously towering Tasmanian
devil...welcome to a land utterly infatuated with all
things BIG.
So enamored are Australians with erecting giant monuments
to all things important (and many decidedly unimportant)
that we have gone about building some 146 monuments across
our continent. Enthusiastic Aussies have covered everything
from a giant avocado in Tweed Heads, Queensland, to one
whopper of a worm in Bass, Victoria.
Why on earth would we want to carpenter such an array of
ridiculously oversized objects? Well, some are easier to
explain than others...
For example: How else would you expect to excavate,
transport and export the world's largest reserves of coal
without the help of some of the world's largest trucks?
Earlier this week I received an interesting email from a
mate of mine back home, Dwade. He and his business partner
had ventured out into the great Aussie Outback to meet with
clients and present a property management workshop.
Dwade excitedly recalled the events to me in his email:
"Everything is big out there. Big guys, big girls, big
holes in the ground and big trucks (very big trucks). In
fact the wheels on the trucks are three times the height of
me and the trucks themselves are more than 7 meters wide
and 6 meters tall. It's a whole new world and one far
removed of that of our own."
The sheer magnitude of the measurements used when referring
to the Australian coal industry is mind-boggling. In 2004,
the world coal production stood at around 755 million
tones. Sooty Australian workers were responsible for just
shy of 220 million of those tones –more than twice the
output of Indonesia, it's nearest rival.
Fast forward to the 2005 season and the "old new" energy
source was bringing in a staggering $22 billion dollars – a
65% increase from the previous year's profit takings. Iron
ore, oil and petrol and liquid natural gas were also major
percentage gainers.
The trucks Dwade referred to rumble along a rather sizable
patch of earth in the Queensland outback...some unbearable
distance west of a place called Dingo. "These mines produce
enough coal to fill 160 coal trains per week. Each train
has 100 carts and each cart can carry 104 tonnes of coal.
This means that each one of the 160 trains carry more than
10,000 tonne each," notes an astonished Dwade.
