Owner/Driver #339

sight of their sons being captured in an image of little boys
and big boys’ toys. The symbolism is strong and the photo will
eventually adorn calendars and the walls of corporate offices
from Canada to the US and Australia.
The younger of the two lads is my son, Dane. The other is
Quinten Mathie, the only child of logging operator, Phillip
Mathie. Time and circumstance will ultimately take each of the
boys along completely different paths but with surprisingly
similar levels of initiative and the brash, sometimes troubling
boldness of youth, both will carve highly satisfying, rewarding
careers of their own choosing.
Right at that moment though, I had no idea what future
endeavours would entice my son. There was, however, little
uncertainty surrounding Quinten’s direction, even at such a
tender age. Rarely shy about expressing an opinion, he already
knew exactly what he wanted to do and I don’t doubt his
parents knew it, too. Especially Dad!
Indeed, except for those days when his mother Jenny levered
their son to school, Quinten was either in a truck with his
father, in the workshop or begging for a chance at the controls
of an excavator or bulldozer. He was, in every sense, born to a
life of trucks and heavy machinery, and if it wasn’t his father
being hounded to the edge of tolerance, it was Phillip’s trusted
and highly capable workmate, the late Merv Breust taking the
youngster under his burly wing. For the young Mathie, skilful
mentors were never far away and critically, lessons were not
without a firmly enforced discipline for safety.
Yet, Quinten is not, of course, peculiar to a hands-on
upbringing in a family business. There are many young men
and women with similar stories, sourcing solid livelihoods
from the collective influences of personal initiative and the
example and experience of forebears who, in instances such
as the Mathie’s, stretch way back to the days of drays and fourlegged
force.
Quinten is, in fact, the fourth generation of a prominent
south coast family involved in logging and haulage, starting
with great grandfather John Mathie’s bullock team pulling
logs out of the bush around the family’s historic home at
Wandandian, today just a 20 or 30 minute drive south of the
district centre at Nowra.
Likewise, Quinten’s grandfather Bruce Mathie also hauled
logs with a bullock team while on Jenny’s side of the family
tree, his maternal grandfather was equally a well-regarded
axeman. Yet, while naïve nostalgia might paint a somewhat
picturesque, even idyllic image of these early days, it was
often a life of hardship and financial struggle. As the family
“The people at
Western Star have been
as loyal to us as we’ve
been to them.”
Above & opposite top: From this
to this. The transformation of the
1955 White WC28 from little more
than scrap metal to a stunning
piece of trucking history typifies
the passion of its owner and the
skills of Cleary Bros tradesmen
Opposite middle: Phillip and
Jenny Mathie. It has been a
hard slog at times but devotion
and determination are the
foundations of an immensely
stoic and loyal family
Below: Pride and passion. For
Phillip Mathie, blindness hasn’t
diminished his absolute regard for
White trucks and Cat machinery.
Nor has it stalled his appreciation
and awareness of high quality
workmanship
story goes, the depression years of the 1930s saw Bruce Mathie
mustering and droving cattle before moving back to log felling
and eventually buying his own bullock team.
Mechanical muscle, however, was on the rise and in 1946
Bruce bought his first tractor for snigging logs, followed by a
White ‘Super Power’ truck in 1948. The White connection would
run particularly strong, and stay strong, in the second of
Bruce’s four sons, Phillip.
The 1960s were a time of change, no less in the Mathie
household in Wandandian when opportunity saw logging
displaced by a milk haulage business that grew to seven trucks,
hand loading and unloading milk cans from dairy farms in
and around the district. As Phillip remembers, the family milk
business went well until the evolution of bulk tankers and,
while his father wasn’t against the move into tankers, it seems
milk co-ops were against contractors moving into the tanker
trade.
Ironically, tankers would many years later become an
integral part of Quinten’s future, but fuel rather than milk.
Anyway, left with few options, Bruce returned to the forests
and as his sons reached working age, the modest enterprise
developed into Bruce Mathie & Sons. The mould was set.
Similarly though, while Quinten’s early days were spent in
the shadow of his father, it’s a smiling Phillip who reflects
on his own childhood and youth where almost every waking
moment was spent with own father.
“Yeah, I suppose it’s a bit of history repeating itself,” he says
with a soft laugh. “I just enjoyed being with Dad. There was
always something to learn from him.”
Bruce passed away in 1980 at 61 years of age and, even now as
Phillip closes in on his 70th birthday, the emotion stirs close
under the skin.
“He’d worked hard but I know he would’ve liked to have done
a bit more. He still had plenty to give. For sure!”
Quiet for a few moments, it’s a sombre Phillip who adds
quietly: “He was just a really good bloke to be around.”
Southern Stars
Since our first meeting in the mid ’80s when Bruce Mathie
& Sons became an early supporter of a Western Star brand
struggling for resurrection from the ashes of White, Phillip
64 APRIL 2021 ownerdriver.com.au