WonderBULL... the truth behind the tale

The Wonderful Bulldozer is a true story, but many details came from the author’s imagination – he never even spoke to the three men who made the epic journey.   BY GAVIN RILEY

Famous author and broadcaster Jim Henderson wrote his Wonderful Bulldozer story, notable for its richness of detail, without interviewing the three men who drove the 23-ton machine through 60 kilometres of rugged and dense South Westland rain forest more than half a century ago.

Eddie Story, 87, the only one of the trio still alive, says Henderson never talked to him or his two companions, Ray Smith (pictured here on the bulldozer) or Maurie Hartley, though he may have spoken to their boss, Bill Blair, managing director of the Commonwealth Construction Co of Reefton.

However, Blair knew only what the three had told him, whereas The Wonderful Bulldozer contains a wealth of descriptive information – detailed word pictures of the forest, terrain, weather and mosquito attacks, and the three individuals’ actions, feelings, thoughts and conversations. One is led to conclude that either someone on the epic journey from Paringa to Haast made detailed day-to-day notes, which was not the case, or Henderson used his extraordinary storyteller’s vivid imagination to embroider basic facts.

When Henderson wrote The Wonderful Bulldozer as the first chapter of his 1984 book, Tales of the West Coast, his main source for those facts was probably not Blair but a 75-column-centimetre article in the Hokitika Guardian newspaper 30 years earlier, which was based on an interview with Blair.

Blair claimed in another 1954 newspaper report that he had followed in the wake of the “trail-blazing” D8 dozer and that the terrain was not exceptionally rough. But Eddie Story says Blair never walked the route but only flew over it – which would explain why, in the Hokitika Guardian article, Blair “was reluctant to discuss the journey as he considered it just part of the job”. 

Eddie Story is wrongly referred to throughout Jim Henderson’s tale as “Ted Storey”. While that is the kind of mistake that creeps into a second- or third-hand account, Story says Henderson made only a few factual errors, none of which he can recall offhand.

Story is far more concerned that a priceless six rolls of film he shot on The Wonderful Bulldozer journey disappeared. Blair took the photos and negatives off him, promising to have extra prints produced from each shot so they could all have a set.

“And that was the last I saw of my photos,” Story says. Inquiries he has made of the Blair family indicate that Blair’s wife, a fastidious woman around the house, threw the prints out after his death.

Eddie Story has lived in Reefton for 70 years. In 1953, aged 33, he was working for Blair at the Garvey Creek opencast coal mine. When Blair decided around Christmas of that year that a small team would take the bulldozer through the forest to begin work at Halfway Bluff on the Jackson Bay-Otago roading project, operator Ray Smith agreed to go only if Story was allowed to come along as his back-up.

When Smith, Story and scout and “food-fetcher” Maurie Hartley set off in mid-January 1954, it was generally expected the journey would last a fortnight. In fact, it took nearly three times as long – 38 days.

The bulldozer worked on only 16 and a half days, clocking up 70 hours on the odometer. The remaining 21 and a half days were taken up with scouting for a suitable route, carrying out minor repairs, packing food, and delays through bad weather.

The terrain was so testing and the forest so dense in places that the trio’s daily progress was very uneven, varying from a mere 10 chains (200 metres) to as much as 10 miles (16 kilometres). And the men’s food supply was so erratic that they frequently had to carry out hard physical work on an empty stomach, especially after the first fortnight.

Story says he had lost possibly more than 12kg (two stone) by journey’s end – yet he and his two mates began work on the roading contract immediately.

He says they regarded what they had achieved as unremarkable – “just another day’s work and a bit of a change of scenery”. He still feels the same way, despite those 1954 newspaper reports, Jim Henderson’s 1984 written account, serious talk the same year of making a documentary film of the feat, and owning a cassette containing Henderson’s reading of the story on radio.

Strictly speaking, Story is not the sole survivor of those directly associated with The Wonderful Bulldozer adventure. Maurice Costello, whose task was to deliver diesel fuel to the men in 12-gallon drums on a pack horse, lives in a Greymouth rest home. But the others are dead.

Bill Blair’s Commonwealth Construction Co went out of business soon after the Halfway Bluff contract and he never got to work on the Paringa-Haast road, which partially followed the bulldozer route and was opened in 1965. Blair subsequently became county clerk and at one time managed Reefton’s TAB.

Maurie Hartley worked as a safety officer on the Manapouri hydro scheme, then held similar positions on projects in South Africa and China, where he subsequently died. Ray Smith died in the Waipukurau area, where he had been employed by the local catchment board as a bulldozer operator.

Eddie Story, a mine worker for most of his working life, visits adult children in Christchurch and Auckland and has been to Australia (three times), Singapore and Fiji. But, a Coaster at heart, he can never return home quickly enough. “I can’t stand city life,” he says.

Though troubled by arthritis, he still enjoys regular visits to the Reefton Working Men’s Club, which he has been a member of since it opened nearly 60 years ago. “It’s less than 100 yards away, but it can be hard getting down there sometimes – and it’s not easier coming home,” he says with a chuckle.

As for Jim Henderson, who died two years ago...well, anyone who read his Wonderful Bulldozer in Contractor will forgive him posthumously for having put his imagination into overdrive to add considerable fictional flesh to basic factual bones. By using his renowned storytelling skills, Henderson brought the tale to life, gave it colour, and made readers feel they were experiencing the amazing and arduous journey for themselves (a journey which, for environmental and safety and health reasons, would not be permitted today).

Henderson also brought deserved recognition to three humble working men – who, by the way, achieved what they did for just 7s 6d a day. That’s slightly less than a dollar.