Thread: LR DEALERS IN THE SIII DAYS

Originally Posted by JDNSW

I had not thought about the effects of the trade practices act, but I suspect both it and other changes designed to protect consumers have had the unintended effect of making life more difficult for non-urban Australians by making services to them uneconomic and hence withdrawn or not offered in the first place. And this would have been compounded by the exodus from the country as farming became less profitable and more mechanised - I can only think of one place round here that actually has even one permanent or even casual employee (some use of contractors for shearing, harvest etc), where forty years ago probably half of them did.

John

Look at Winton where I spent a lot of my childhood and youth. When wool was king, only the smallest of properties were worked purely by the family. Most had ringers, cook, gardener, cowboy, governess, bore and windmill man, sometimes even fencers and tank sinkers on wages. On some of the properties the squatter did no physical work, just gave orders and supervised. Some wore suit and tie and Homburg hat around the property. Bit different now. No ladies or gentlemen on most properties. The family does most of the work with contractors called in ad hoc. Some even shear their own which was unheard of and would have been looked down upon.

Winton had Holden, Ford, Chrysler, International, BMC, Leyland & Land Rover dealers. Now there is only Central Motors left, once the Ford dealer, now Fords parts and service only and makes their living out of bikes, trikes, quads, stationary engines. Longreach had a full hand of dealerships and a full motor engineering and reconditioning works. Now only one is left that sells Ford and Toyota. They usually have either a Falcon or Camry sedan on the floor but not two.

My family held the Nuken mail change and the Dagworth/Kynuna stations mail runs in the 1920's and I found the run books when cleaning out after a family death. There were 250 people listed as receiving mail on that contract.

Dagworth is now run from Kynuna. Both are owned by NAP. Staff is fifteen for both stations. Don't know if Nuken even still exists.

The Awu rep told me the average age of a shearer in the district is over 50 and Barcoo Transport reckons the same of road train drivers. Lack of jobs and better jobs in more comfortable locations drove the young people out of the outback towns.

Originally Posted by Brian Hjelm

When I bought my bought my County Isuzu, the nearest dealer did not even have a parts book for "anything that old".

When I moved to this area, the local dealer did - but they managed to get me a Series 2/3 pedal rubber instead of one for the County. That was about when I gave up on them and started getting all my parts by mail!

I prefer to do business with the local blokes, but they do make it difficult a lot of the time!

John