I am not sure if the following info is relevant, and if so, it it should be on the other thread, but I share, and I am sure a moderator would be able to delete or modify it if it is not suitable or if it is not actually contributing to advancing the quest for our OP.
One of the first non horse driven vehicles in the central western districts of NSW arrived into Bathurst. That was a steam car for Dr Mac Hattie in Bathurst in around 1903. I think you may find that motorised commercial trucks arrived after the 1930s Great Depression, and that it was still possible that many families relied on horse and sulky well into the 1950s in and around Dubbo, Narromine and towards Parkes, Cumnock, Wellington and down through Molong, and back towards Eugowra.
I was born in 1947 in the Central West (on the Lachlan). I have strong memories of bullock wagons moving bales of Wool and of live sheep being moved by steam trains pulling 100 or more sheep trucks on the railway lines, heading off to Homebush Meat Works after a huge fire at Daroobalgie (its near Forbes) Meat Works in around 1962 or 1963. I also remember a school teacher in the 1950s telling us about their own first time seeing the first motor car to arrive in Condo (as in Condoblin) and in Dubbo. I also remember the Queen arriving in Dubbo in 1954 and many people came for hundreds of miles, on wagons pulled by oxen, not many motorised vehicles at all. The ‘pews’ in our church were loaded onto the back of a wagon, and we went to Dubbo seated on the back of that type of wagon (huge team of oxen all harnessed up, men walked with whips to keep the oxen in order. This was from one of our uncle’s farms, our near Oakdene so I guess that would be about 15 miles into Dubbo Showgrounds where the Queen drove around in an open carriage waving.
Until motorised vehicles arrived in the western districts of NSW, the usual meaning of the word ‘truck’ was associated with the opening up of the western line of railways in the 1880s Truck is still the word used in NSW for the open top ‘carriage’ moving coal from the mine to the power station to make electricity.
So for example in 1900, in the Dubbo newspapers commercial sections, there would be articles about the trucks moving cattle, sheep etc from Dubbo by rail. These were the cattle trucks and the sheep trucks where the drover and his plant would deliver the graziers herd to the railway yard (near the sales yard) and assist with loading the live stock onto the train – either to deliver them to a railway yard along the railway line or take them all the way to the Meat Works.
Narromine got a railway line in the early 1880s. It was part of the line from Sydney to Bourke, the Main Western Line.
JM
