A quick-thinking truck driver saved more than 100 head of cattle after one of his trailers caught fire while he was travelling on one of the Northern Territory’s roughest and most remote roads.
Late last month Cory Stirling was transporting six decks of cattle to Alice Springs via the Tanami Road when he heard a loud bang at about 10pm.
Colloquially known as the Tanami, the road connects Central Australia to the Kimberley region of WA, stretches over 1,000 kilometres, and is notorious for its poor condition.
Mr Stirling explained he pulled the road train up immediately and ran down the side of the 50-metre-long rig to find his rear airbag brake had blown and was on fire.
"I see my airbag was alight so, I just ran back up to my truck to grab my fire extinguisher, went back, tried to extinguish, but it ran out of fire powder," Mr Stirling said.
"Then it got under the tyres, then once they lit up, she was all over."
Mr Stirling had to act quickly to separate the trailers to ensure the safety of the cattle.
"I dropped the front run-throughs and then just started jumping as many cattle off [as possible]," he said.
One died on the crate and another had to be euthanased.
"It is tough — it's really tough," Mr Stirling said.
"You've got love animals and if you love doing something, like I love carting cattle … it's really tough to watch."
A representative of the station where the cattle came from has informed ABC Rural that the remaining cattle on the front two trailers have safely arrived in Alice Springs.
The cattle let off the burning trailer were tracked by helicopters the next morning and moved to a water point on a nearby station and will be collected at a later date.
Poor condition of Tanami an old foe
Mr Stirling pointed to the poor condition of the road as the primary culprit for the loss of cattle and damage to his truck.
"You have a brand-new crate that could do the same thing," he said.
"You prep yourself for it, but it's very harsh conditions, you let your tyres down to half the per cent of PSI but still it's terrible."
For decades, truck drivers have been calling for maintenance of the Tanami Road.
Local companies in the Northern Territory told ABC Rural they were losing up to $10,000 a week to repairs.
Losing a trailer is a lot of money to a small business.
Mr Stirling said this was a hefty blow to his haulage company.
"Income revolves around having a crate cattle now I've lost a crate," he said.
"So, I won't be able to get the income.
"Hopefully [we can] source or replace, but they're very hard to find at the minute.
"We spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on maintenance a year."
Bitumen is on the way
The NT government is funding upgrades to the Tanami Road, with work underway to seal a further 60 kilometres of the road beyond the Yuendumu turn-off.
In a statement to ABC Rural, a spokesperson for the Department of Infrastructure said "150 kilometres of the Tanami Road is set to be sealed over the next two years".
This would seal past the point where Mr Stirling's truck caught fire but, for the road train industry, the bitumen for the road could not come quick enough.
NT Road Transport Association CEO Louise Bilato said the expansion of the Tanami gold mine meant there were a lot more trucks on the road.
"The corrugations on the Tanami Road are very well known … corrugations will appear very quickly after a grade, and as it gets hotter it will get worse," Ms Bilato said.
Ms Bilato said last week's incident was not the first time she had heard of a bad road causing a fire in a truck.
"If it's not batteries, brakes or shock-absorbers, it can be something else [that catches fire]," she said.
"My strongest urging to the road transport industry is to constantly monitor your equipment and don't assume that you know the Tanami Road."
