After 14 relentless months of campaigning, truckies’ advocate Wes Walker is celebrating the news today that the Gatton hook-ups now have two portable toilets on site.
Walker is still unsure how they got there. He only discovered them when he arrived for one of his routine drive-throughs this morning.
But regardless of their origins, Walker tells Big Rigs he’s thrilled for truckies that his message seems to have finally got through to somewhere that counts.
“A massive smile on my face,” said Walker of his first reaction to seeing the toilets on the busy Queensland freight site.
“I’m getting my daughter to do two signs up to put inside each toilet: ‘I fought hard to get these toilets for you, please keep clean,’ Wes.”
“It’s unbelievable. I’m going to get my BBQ out there now and have a sausage sizzle and say we won.
“It’s not exactly what we want but this is a victory within itself, isn’t it.”
Walker said ideally he’d like to see a big mobile unit with two toilets, showers and a hand basin on a concrete slab next to the existing power point on the Gatton side.
Earlier last month Senators Carol Brown and Glenn Sterle, and NHVR CEO Sal Pettrocitto took up Walker’s invitation to visit the site while attending the National Road Freighters Association conference in nearby Toowoomba.
Big Rigs has contacted the Department of Main Roads to see if the state agency can shed any light on the toilets’ sudden appearance, and to ask if they are there to stay.