Bluey Gordon leans back on a desk chair, his demountable office building in the yard sitting adjacent to a varied assortment of Mack trucks. He’s up for a chat and has a multitude of stories to tell, unfortunately some of which can’t be repeated in these pages.
It’s been a long haul for the 76-year-old. Born and raised in the Darling Downs city of Toowoomba, it’s a place he’s always called home, apart from a 12-month compulsory military assignment to Vietnam in the years 1967 to ’68. But more about that later.
Gordon tells of trying his hand at a number of vocations, including truck driving, pulling beers, selling baked goods and, finally, running his own fleet of Mack trucks with a new Anthem leading the way.
For the record, Gordon’s given name is Graham but, as with many men born with red hair in bygone years, that was never going to last.
“I’ve been Bluey all my life,” he explains.
“A lot of people wouldn’t know my name.”
He tells of his early working years driving a water truck around Miles and Chinchilla. “That was when they were doing seismic for oil in those early days. They were just smaller rigs, just truck rigs.
