THE INDOMITABLE SNOW MAN
IT WAS the Spring of 1979 and an unseasonably heavy snowfall had dumped on the Snowy Mountains. Unseasonable or not, the dump was ideal, for two valuable, yet vastly different, reasons.
First, as the relatively new staff writer on the formerly formidable Truck & Bus magazine, I was heading to a Department of Main Roads (DMR) depot deep on the New South Wales side of the Snowy to do a story on a batch of MAN off-roaders bought for their versatility to operate as a snow plough, tipper and crane truck. Obviously, the more snow, the better the conditions to see the trucks doing their thing.
Second, with absolutely no experience driving cars, trucks or anything else on snow or icy roads, but loaded to the limit with the heavy-footed folly of ignorance, it was perhaps inevitable that the spanking new Ford Cortina staff car would slide off an ice-coated curve and drop nose-first into a table drain filled with freshly ploughed snow. Ironically, as I was soon informed, snow ploughed by one of the trucks I was heading to see.
Cold as a Tassie trout after scratching snow from around wheels, it wasn’t too long before a local in a Land Rover stopped and, with a glare as frosty as the countryside, hooked a long strap around the axle, snapped the
