It was a great surprise to catch up with our old friend Leigh Phillips, from Saint Arnaud in Victoria, at Kempton, in company with Dwayne McDonald, promoter for the Red Hot Summer Tour.
They were enroute from Launceston to set things up for the event in the Royal Hobart Botanical Gardens, and they were enjoying their stay in Tasmania hugely, as always.
The last time we featured Phillips in Big Rigs was approximately 19 years ago, when he stopped over at the BP at Wingfield driving his 1982 S-Line along with his son Brenton, aged 12 then, but 31 now.
Also Phillips then had black hair, and I had hair as well, and so there were many reminiscences about friends in the industry from those days, especially Lenny Smith, Gerri Hoare, Grand-dad, Billy Taylor, Ronny Ryan, young Tommy Buckle and co, and it was great to swap yarns about the ‘good old days’.
It turns out in the interim that Phillips and his wife Lynne have subsequently bought and run the Saint Arnaud Junction Roadhouse, and in their spare time, Phillips operates a couple of trucks and trailers, and McDonald likewise, and they kind of mix and match them as Phillips organises the freight for the Red Hot Summer Tour trips.