Stephen, Julie, Helen and Jim McClelland when their surname became synonymous in Goulburn with sand and soil. Stephen and Julie joined their father in the business. They lost Helen on 29 March 2007. Photo: McClelland family.
When Jim McClelland and his brother-in-law Reg Tremble talk about the mid-1950s you can almost hear the chips of wood flying off the stringybark trees they felled when they swung their axes for a living.
In their 20s and partners, the men cut tons of wood filling contracts to supply Goulburn Jail, Kenmore Hospital, Gulson’s Brickworks (for firing the kilns) and anyone else needing good, dry fuel.
At the jail, inmates using cross-cut saws cut logs down for firewood for the schools around Goulburn.
Jim had been swinging an axe to earn money from about age 13 to support his parents Norm and Elsie struggling to make a living at Wattle Vale near Bungonia.
When he turned 14 his teacher suggested he leave school.
At age 15 he found work with sand carters Burgess brothers, Keith, Max and Bill in Goulburn. Jim worked alongside them until he was 20, leaving on occasions when called up for compulsory National Service including tough training at Ingleburn.
He had met a girl, Pam Chandler, a friend of his sister Audrey’s, who thought he should meet her sweet younger sister Helen, and organised an introduction in a cafe in the main street. From there Pam cleared out on her bike, Helen continued seeing Jim and the couple married in April, 1956.
Pam and Helen’s brother Reg, now in partnership with Jim, thought they would find the firewood business easier with the introduction of chainsaws.
“I remember the first chainsaw came out, it was a Blue Streak chainsaw and we thought we would be right,” Reg said. But the rigmarole of starting and operating the new-fangled machine was too tedious for two young men in a hurry. “We threw it aside and went back to the axes because it was faster,” Reg said. “You’d have half a ton cut by the time you got going with the chainsaw.”
“I carted wood from ‘every corner of the globe’ around Goulburn, Windellama and Bungonia,” Jim said.
They had no shortage of firewood to pick from. “One bloke in particular, Lionel Hansell who had a property ‘Ellerslie’ and had young people from the Salvation Army’s orphanage coming out to ring bark acres of trees around Bungonia,” Jim said.
Reg Tremble called in to see his lifelong mate Jim McClelland who celebrated his 89th birthday in Goulburn Base Hospital on Monday afternoon (3 March). Photo: John Thistleton.
Always fascinated by trucks, Jim bought a Ford Blitz wagon with a crane on the back which they used for loading logs. Reg also bought a truck, and when the partnership split amicably, he went to work for the Roads and Traffic Authority.
The partners had been up for anything to make money, including carting hay in the days before mechanisation took the back-breaking strain out of hoisting heavy bales of clover or straw.
Sometimes he would see the Burgess brothers’ trucks rushing by as he toiled away.
“I thought I could do the same thing as the Burgess brothers and do it better, carting sand and soil,” he said. “I decided to have a bit of a go.”
He bought a block of land on the corner of Bungonia and Braidwood roads on Goulburn’s eastern outskirts and had his solicitor Brian Lulham draw up an agreement to repay the 3000 pounds purchase price, enabling him to open his sand yard for customers who bought sand and soil for their gardens.
He built large holding bins for the soil and eventually acquired two little Daihatsu tipper trucks, ideal for getting the soil into backyards where it was needed.
As his workforce grew he employed his daughter Julie, then 17 and out of TAFE College, for bookkeeping and his son Stephen on kerb and guttering projects. Ray Barker became one of his long-term drivers delivering sand and soil.
He took on other projects, including resurfacing tennis courts, demolishing the former RSL Club before it was redeveloped, Hoyts picture theatre and the former Railway Institute at the back of Knowlmans Store.
Focusing on big contracts for the then Goulburn City Council and Public Works, he earned a name for reliability and engaged other accomplished owner/drivers in the trucking industry, including Kevin Nosworthy and on other occasions Andy Divall and his brother Michael.
Having started with an axe, and going on to own a small fleet of trucks and employing 11 people, Jim said he had been as game as a cock sparrow taking on risks and any work he could get. “Everyone seemed to know me, a young fella off the block, having a bit of a go and appreciating that,” he said.
