Road trains are probably one of the most spectacular vehicle sights in the world. They involve a truck pulling multiple trailers behind it (that is, two or a lot more!), transporting all sorts of things over long distances in the outback. They move things from livestock and general freight to and can weigh up to 200 tonnes!
If you ever manage to get out of the city in Australia (yes, there is more to Australia than Sydney), you might come across one of these diesel churning beasts along an isolated stretch of highway. If you see one, make sure you give them a huge right of way because you’ll be compressed to the thickness of a pancake if you fail at a game of road train ‘chicken’!.
I’ve passed one of these on a remote Queensland unsealed road, and they churn up a crazy amount of bulldust (slang for lots of dust) which prevents you from seeing one millimetre beyond your windscreen. There is no way in the world I’d be mucking around with one of these!
Anyway, a while back, I received an email with some crazy road train images which really illustrate why these trucks are amazing inventions, so if you know where these pics came from, let me know!
Road Trains – Massive Cattle Movement
All the email had in the subject was ‘large cattle movement’, and that was an understatement! In isolated areas of Australia, road trains are used to move cattle to the nearest abattoir, or for shipping overseas.
These trucks are pulling three trailers each, and each trailer holds a double story of cattle! Even if you’re a vegetarian, you’d have to admit that this is an impressive sight!
Looks like this is the longest parking lot in the world! As you can tell, cattle farming in Australia requires large areas of grazing land because it’s not very fertile and you need many hectares to sustain one beast.
Looks like cows enjoy eating dust out here!
And there you go! I would say that these cattle were mustered over many days from a huge area and placed into these holding yards until the road trains came along to move them somewhere to make them into meat.
As you can tell, that’s a crapload of burgers!
So the next time you are chowing down on a hamburger pattie that’s lodged in between two pieces of bread, have a thought for where it might have come from!
I was once rear ended by one of these monsters while waiting at traffic lights outside Darwin despite the -stop- warning 300 metres back. Fortunately I survived with only some serious whiplash. These trucks are huge and take up lot of road to stop.
Holy crap, you are one lucky punter!