Road Trains

Mostly around 10 March 2025

Roadtrains are something that I was advised about on my first visit to Australia, when I purchased the Troopy and was doing some test camping. I met a really nice, and knowledgeable, guy in a campground who warned me to give them space. I didn’t really see any big ones in New South Wales or along the coast of Queensland or Cape York. Saw a few in Outback Queensland but once I was in the NT I started to see more. Now I’m in the mining area of Western Australia, WA, and I’m seeing a lot of them. These are, more or less, highway trucks. I’d say they are semis with several trailers. The smallest ones might have only 2 trailers, but they are usually pretty big out here. The largest will be pulling four trailers. I’ve seen signs on the highways that caution about passing them because of their length. They usually have some signage on the rear advising you that they are long vehicles. After a lot of driving around I’ve decided that the length is regulated and they are different sizes in different areas of Oz. Some road signs say they can be as long as 53 meters. But here’s a photo that I took from one of my videos that says 60 meters. Just think about that. That’s longer than half of a football field.

For no good reason these really capture my interest and attention. So I’ll give a short discussion and photos. I don’t think I have any really good photos of one parked. I know I’ve taken a few but must have lost them in the meantime. So you’ll just have to put up with the videos.

I camped for several nights at an abandoned gold mining town called Big Bell, not far from the town of Cue. I’ll probably show a few photos of the town later, in a post about abandoned gold towns in this part of WA. There’s an active gold mine about 5 to 10 km away from where I was camped. I couldn’t determine a lot about exactly how they are mining. They apparently extract the ore and load it into long road trains and truck it off to somewhere that the gold can be extracted. So there were lots of roadtrains driving the gravel road close to where I camped. Not so close that the noise was a problem. In fact it was almost like calming white noise…the low grumble of big diesel engines and the sound of tires on the road. At night the lights and sound were like a ghost train running in the night. I found it strangely intriguing.

And this is what they looked like during the day. You can see that these are some pretty large trucks.

Here’s a shot of one coming through town in the evening. A fairly impressive sight. Many small towns have signs that require the road trains to bypass the center of the town. But a lot of the towns are small enough that there’s just one main street and no way to keep them out of the center.

I seldom pass one on the main highway. There are lots of passing lanes, called overtaking lanes in Oz, so there are opportunities to pass. If the road isn’t hilly, they tend to drive almost as fast as I do. But in the outback sometimes I’ve got to pass. It can be unnerving. Fortunately, they often will give a sign with their blinker that it’s clear to pass. And, most use UHF channel 40 and I monitor that when driving. So every so often I’ve had truckies give me the go ahead on the radio. Here are a couple of passes. Notice the slight wiggle on the white tanker road train just before I start to pass.

On most highways there’s enough room when one is coming the other way. Here’s what it looks like on a “normal” road. Not too close. But on some narrower roads and on the gravel roads I tend to slow down and move way to the left to give them room. Here’s a view of one coming in the other lane. No worries.

They also move a lot of really large equipment on these roads in WA. It’s the mining industry! Most days I’ll see one or more oversize trucks coming at me. They run flashing lights and often have a regular ute in front giving warning. For these I almost always slow way down and pull as far to the left as possible. There have been cases where I’ve actually moved to the shoulder. It’s always clear how to stay safe. You can’t drive inattentively! Here are a couple of photos of an oversized truck that had broken down and was pulled to the side of the road. This one was truckin’ some big tires!

Sometimes with my UHF radio on and tuned to channel 40 (the trucker’s channel) I’ll hear them talking to each other. It’s often hard to tell what they are saying with the radio interference and really thick Aussie accents. But in the case of this truck with the tires, stopped by the side of the road I could hear them warning each other of the obstruction. There was plenty of room but not if two cars had met head on right there.