Road-Trains Rule the Roads in Australia’s Outback

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DELAIDE, Australia - When it is time to water the cattle in Australia’s Outback, the livestock is driven to watering holes.

But these cattle drives do not include cowboys on horses herding the livestock along as is done in the United States. These cattle drives use “road-trains” — a truck with three or more trailers hooked together — to get the livestock to water.

The Outback is hot and dry and encompasses thousands of square miles in the center of Australia. Most of it is called “crown land” — which means it is still undeveloped and belongs to the government. But although the Outback is not considered good farmland, it is used to raise cattle.

The area’s cattle stations, as the ranches are called, are hundreds of square miles of hot, dry land that have very little surface water. Most of the cattle drink at man-made water holes that use windmills to pump the water up from underground wells.

These water holes are hundreds of miles apart, and the road-trains are needed to transport the cattle to them.

But cattle are not the only things trucked around the Outback by road-trains. All road freight is moved by road-trains.

For the full story, see the June 30 edition of Transport Topics. Subscribe today.

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