All in a life’s work

Every Monday morning George White goes to work, just as he has done for most of his 85 years.

“I've got a bit of a problem; I just can't sit around,” said George. “I don't want to try it, I just like being active and working.”

George was born in Orange in 1934, the fourth of five boys. His mother sadly passed away when he was twelve and a few years later, George left school to help his father in the family orchard.

“We had an orchard three miles out on the Anson Road and I walked to school rain, hail or shine,” said George.

“I remember at the end of the war living on the orchard with coupons to buy food. We had no electricity, no fridge, no washing machine, the dunny was down the backyard. My five brothers and I worked picking and packing the fruit, caring for and milking a cow and feeding the pigs.

“The last three years of my schooling was very tough, and I left school at the age of 15 and worked for my father for ten shillings a week and my keep.”

But after two years, George said he had seen nothing of his promised pay and so left Orange to go work on the farm of an uncle near Condobolin.

“I share farmed for three years growing wheat and one year we had a really good year, the next year was very wet and the third year drought. I left and came home to Orange and bought a truck.”

And trucks were to be George’s life for the next 55 years.

“I started carting fruit to Sydney markets, Melbourne and Brisbane. I wouldn't be able to count how many trips I made over the mountains. I used to do three and even four trips a week carting fruit to Sydney and coming home,” said George.

“I had an experience on that [Victoria] pass in the early days. It was the last market before Easter, and I broke an axle right on the steep bit there. It was very hard to hold and it was creeping backwards and I was just sitting there ready to jump out. A fellow pulled up and I yelled out for him to come and help me and he started to roll a cigarette. I said, ‘listen mate, get me a chock or I’m going to jump out of this and let it go! We had to unload that truck there on the steep path and still get into that last market before Easter. We made it, but it was pretty hectic!

“I had no heater in my truck, so I put a copper pipe across the seat, the full width of the truck, connected to the radiator and that was my heater. And we used to sleep beside the truck on the ground. I would take me 19 hours driving to Brisbane and now they do it in about 9 or 10 hours.”

In the late 1950s, George bought two mobile cranes, the only ones in Orange at that time.

“I did a lot of building of hay sheds — forklifts were not around, so cranes were used for lifting everything,” said George, who lifted all the steel for the construction of the second floor of the ex-services club, the old Channel 8 Studio on the Bathurst Road, and the Suma Park Dam.

Today, three of George’s six children are in the trucking game, but he handed in his heavy vehicle licence when he turned 80.

“I’m 85 now and I still work five days a week, I pick up the cardboard from the Chemists and all the shops and take it out to recycling. People pay me to take it away,” said George, who has no plans of retiring anytime soon.

“I do about ten pick-ups a day and take it all out to the recycling, I've been doing this cardboard for the last 12 years probably — and I don't want to stop! I just like working; I don't know how you retire at 65!”