THE convoy of 21 trucks, utilities and Landrovers edged slowly towards South Australia. Melbourne lay far behind them and was about to grow even more distant as the vehicles navigated north-west via the Ghan and headed for mining town, Mary Kathleen.
In 1957, Mary Kathleen, or Mary K, was just a rough spear-grassed paddock rather than a town, but the discovery of uranium was to ensure its growth in a remote location, halfway between Cloncurry and Mount Isa on an access road known as the RedX Horror Strip.
A Tasmanian builder by trade sat in one of the trucks. The lure of adventure had drawn him in and the RedX Horror Strip, the heat, and the isolation had not dissuaded his excitement.
The builder, Brian Addison, may have been born on April Fools’ Day in 1928, but he was no jester, nor did he base his decisions on jest. Rather, when a contractor approached him with the offer of an eight-month contract to help build 225 houses at Mary K, Brian was thinking about opportunity. Opportunity and the blustering south-westerly winds of Tasmania that blew in from the South Pole.
“Everyone was talking about Queensland – it was taking off,” Brian said.
“Queensland had been in the doldrums for years, but they discovered this uranium. It was something exciting and something I’d never been involved with before,” he said.
“The activity – everything had to be done yesterday. It was all rush and tear and go and it was so exciting to see it all happening.”
Brian took up the offer and soon found himself joined by his wife Marjorie and their two small children. They would add another two children to their brood, one during their time at Mary K.
While the contract was only meant to last for eight months, the Addison family ended up staying for three years.
“I just went on the convoy for a bit of adventure and it led me to another adventure,” Brian said.
“Mary Kathleen originally had its own power supply, its own dam – it was a complete unit by itself.”
He said there were some 400 people in the settlement – families and a lot of single men – the majority of which lived out of tents until houses were built.
Supplies were railed from Maryborough and quite often building materials would get lost along the way.
“It was the remotest place in the world – everything had to go by rail because there was no road from Townsville to Mount Isa.”
There was no way to communicate – no telephone, no television, and barely any radio reception.
Brian’s wife, Marjorie, said they would sometimes tune into a radio station in Newcastle at 10pm on a clear night while for leisure there was a drive-in theatre and a swimming pool, quite impressive for a town whose foundations are all that remain today.
Trips to Mount Isa were precarious two-hour long journeys where travellers had to forge their own way over the mountains and across the Leichhardt River. Marjorie soon became an experienced driver, making the trip every two weeks for provisions.
While Mary K was definitely an adventure, at the end of the three years, it was time to move on. The question became, where to? Brian had fallen in love with the weather in north-west Queensland and didn’t want to go back to Tasmania. So, in 1960, they moved to Townsville.
“I was interested in building what they call repetitive housing, which is just a very limited number of designs which you can build quite rapidly and inexpensively,” Brian said.
“I had a firm do a survey to see what the potential was. It appeared it would work, so we launched it in 1960 and called it Planet Homes.”
Brian was still doing quite a lot of work out west, which was difficult and expensive.
“You only needed to break a sink or a window and it would cost you more than it was worth,” he said.
“I decided then to come up with a suitable transportable home.”
Brian travelled to America in 1967 as the guest of Weyerhaeuser Company, one of the largest private owners of timberlands in the world and from whom Brian imported timber, to see what other companies were doing in the way of transportable homes. He left disappointed.
“There was nothing overseas that was suitable because we had vast distances to travel – we used to take these homes as far as Western Australia. The systems over there all had trailers and then they had to haul those trailers back home.
“We created a system where the houses weren’t on trailers; well we made a trailer by fitting wheels under the house.
“We used to tow a full house in two sections behind one truck and then we could bring all the bits and pieces – the wheels and towbars etc – all back home just on that truck.
“The truck would also carry all the gravel and sand, so it was quite an economical system.”
The trucks back then were nothing like the road trains we see today. They were six-cylinder, diesel trucks that “just had to work their heart out.”
“They were as big a truck as they had then, but they are tiddlers compared to today.”
Planet Homes took off quickly. The company premises expanded on Woolcock Street (where Sam’s Warehouse is today) and Brian soon employed over 300 builders.
Whole suburbs were built – a blend of Brian’s repetitive housing and transportable home ideas. Brian also did a lot of work for Australian Estates. The homestead, quarters and all other buildings on Walhallow Station in the Northern Territory are Planet Home transportables.
“We used to make seven transportable houses a week. We built the roadhouse at Daly Waters. It was a huge building with a motel behind in.”
Brian had to put great faith in his drivers with no way of communicating with them once they left the factory.
“Trucks would leave and be gone a week, would have set the whole house up and returned.”
A lot of the time, trips out west were mentally and physically fatiguing, manoeuvring a truck with two trailers across washed out creeks and dirt roads.
One of the hardest terrains Planet Homes came across was the road to Edward River in the Gulf of Carpentaria.
“We took a church to Edward River – it was in five parts. We had to hire a grader, which towed a bulldozer and had to push our own road through Rutland Plains and it rained. When the drivers came to a bridge, the wheels on the house were wider than the bridge. They were very good drivers.”
Planet Homes didn’t only travel over land. All the 16 units on Hinchinbrook Island resort were driven to Cardwell and then floated over on boats to the island.
Brian believed there were always ways to improve his “basic invention” and so he began testing his houses for their durability during cyclones at James Cook University.
“When Cyclone Althea came through in 1972, we had heaps of these tested houses around. We lost the roofs off a couple but otherwise they were all good.
“I suppose I have been successful, but behind every successful person there is usually a lady and Marjorie certainly brought up the kids and did all the colour schemes for the houses.”
Brian sold Planet Homes in 1988 and continued on with three other businesses – engineering, rental car hire, and a hardware store. Two of his sons, Michael and Leon, now run the latter two while his other children Christopher and Trudy pursue their own interests. All four children serve to make up Brian’s “fabulous family” which includes 14 grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren with another on the way.
Brian has also made huge contributions to the community serving for 30-odd years with Rotary and 16 years with the Lions Club.
“I am a great believer that if you are reasonably successful, you should give back to the community.”
And, for all those just starting out, Brian recommends the following.
“Anybody who doesn’t want to do something scholastically, I would recommend to take on an apprenticeship because they don’t have to do it forever; it teaches them how to use their hands, to think, and how to make money. What more do you need?”
In 1996, Brian retired. He now lives atop Mount Louisa, ironically in a house he didn’t build. With floor-to-ceiling windows, it is a far cry from the houses he built at Mary K. Yet, it is surrounded by north Queensland flora and fauna and the north Queensland sun streams through glorious. A steady convoy of cars stream by in the distance and all is reminiscent of the adventurous life he has lived.
