KENWORTH MASTER CLASS
IT’S MID-WEEK in early December and Victorians are tentatively emerging from 112 days of severe lockdown – unquestionably the strictest and most gruelling restrictions in the country, by a long shot.
Yet, walking through Tullamarine airport for the first time in a year, and in cafes and hotels and shops, there’s a subtle but nonetheless sanguine sense of reprieve as the state nervously retreats from a depressingly difficult and, as many believe and begrudge, largely avoidable second wave of COVID-19 infections. A wave that took more than 800 Victorian lives.
Still, it comes as no real surprise that at Paccar Australia headquarters in Bayswater on Melbourne’s south-eastern rim, COVID protocols remain robust and uncompromising. Security has always been tight at ‘Kenworth castle’ but never like this. For employees and visitors alike, temperature checks are first order of the day, social distancing is disciplined, masks are mandatory and within the executive sanctum of head office, it’s quickly apparent that despite half hidden faces, some office staff are only now seeing each other for the first time in months. In most cases, many months as lockdown forced the ‘work from home’ ethos to become something of a new norm for white collar workers.
What does come as a surprise though, the whole place is abuzz. In fact, if it weren’t for the masks and all the signs about keeping the bug at bay, you’d swear it was just any ordinary day on the job during a peak period. Sparkling new trucks are everywhere, fresh off the production line, a maze of models, colours and configurations. There’s movement all around as trollies and forklifts ferry components into the beating heart of the Bayswater plant as yet another creation rumbles off the line, looking for a temporary parking space before heading to work in the hard and fast tempo of Australian road transport.
It’s just as obvious, however, that far more than health and social protocols have changed since the last
