Along with spending over 40 years on the road, with millions of kilometres under his belt, 74-year-old Murray Cooper has spent almost the same amount of time collecting and restoring vintage garage memorabilia.
His immaculate collection of restored petrol bowsers, pedal cars, enamel signs from service stations and garages, oil racks and bottles number almost 300 pieces. Around 200 of those items are now on show for all to see at the aptly named Cooper’s Garage Museum. It’s located in Westonia, a small town in Western Australia’s Wheatbelt region – around 300 kilometres east of Perth.
Image: Murray Cooper
As Murray told Big Rigs, his career in truck driving fuelled (pardon the pun) his interest in collecting garage memorabilia.
Murray has lived in the town of Elgin, in the state’s south-west for all of his life. It’s about six hours away from the new museum that bears his name and his collection. “Growing up on a small farm, I loved machinery and tractors as a kid, so I thought if I don’t get my own farm, I’ll get into driving trucks,” he said.
After leaving school in the mid 1960’s, Murray began working at a sheep and wheat farm – a job that suited him to a tee. “I liked that lifestyle, you go hard for a few months of the year, at seeding and harvest time, then there was shearing, fencing, driving the truck around and so on.”
That all changed though when he was enlisted for compulsory military service for two years. “When I came back, everything had changed and then I got seriously ill with a blood disorder. That really knocked me around. Once I came through the other side, I was offered a job driving a fuel truck.”
With his first child on the way, Murray took up the offer – and went on to drive trucks for the next 42 years, up until he retired two years ago. In that time, he saw a great deal of change in the fuel transport industry, most notably in the trucks themselves. “If you can imagine going from transporting fuel on a flat top International C1800 with demountable tanks and no power steering to the trucks we have now, where everything is bulk and digital. I can understand why so many older truck drivers have back issues, it was hard yakka back then,” recalled Murray.
“Now everything is bulk, digital and at the push of a button. The last truck I drove before I retired was a Volvo FM. They are so comfortable and I reckon they’re quieter than what my car is out on the road!”
Murray worked for the same Caltex fuel distributor in Bunbury for 34 years, before moving onto a different role. “When I decided to leave that company, it was a hard decision but I was up for a new challenge, and it turned out to be very rewarding. I continued driving trucks mainly but also worked as a salesman and did a bit of everything.”
Murray’s skill and professionalism out on the road even saw him recognised with numerous awards including the Road Transport Forum (RTA) – now known as the Australian Trucking Association – WA Truck Driver of the Year in 1994 and the RTA National Truck Driver of the Year in 1998.
“I really loved driving and meeting new people, and that’s how I came across some of the petrol pumps. It was a hobby that kept growing over 40 years,” Murray added.
His love for collecting vintage garage memorabilia all started on one particular trip. As Murray explained, “I was taking a load of drums out to a little drum depot and when I got there, I noticed a sign laying on the ground. It was a Texaco oil company sign. I asked the proprietor if he was going to do anything with it and he said I could take it. That was the first piece in my collection.”
From there, Murray decided he wanted to get his hands on an old petrol bowser. Purchasing the first one and restoring it is what Murray calls “the start of the disease”.
“That’s what kicked it off and I just kept collecting more and more. I have a wonderful collection and they’ve all been restored. I’d pull the bowsers to bits. They’ve all been completely stripped down to the last nut and bolt, sand blasted to remove any rust. I try and put them back as original as possible, in working order. If any panels are badly rusted though, I’ll have new ones made up.”
Each of these bowsers is a true labour of love, typically taking at least eight to nine weeks to restore – or longer if Murray needs to source parts.
The oldest item in his collection is a 1902 petrol cart, followed by a 1908 petrol bowser.
“That pump is quite rare because there weren’t too many of them made. I picked that one up from South Australia. I’ve also bought pumps from Victoria and Queensland, and imported one from America. Over there, they had bigger 10 and 15 gallon pumps, whereas in Australia ours were 5 and 6 gallon pumps.
“I’ve varied them up a bit as I didn’t want to have two of the same pump – so they’re all different. A lot of the ones I have are from the 1920s and 1930s, which are the older style ones. Back then, there were a lot of little companies, before the major companies we know today took them over.
“Pumps went from manual to semi electric, and then by around 1965 they were the modern pumps. Those ones didn’t interest me. I was only interested in the older pumps with the brass, that polish up real nice. And if you could find one with the original globe at the top, that was a real bonus.”
When Murray was first approached by the Shire of Westonia, who pitched the idea of a museum to display the collection, he admits the decision wasn’t an easy one. “It was very hard to part with all these items because you do get a bond with it all. You know where each item came from, what you’ve done to it. A lot of hard work and sweat went into these pieces, so it was hard to let it go,” he said.
“But now, seeing what they’ve done with this museum, I couldn’t be happier with how it’s all turned out. They’ve done such a fantastic job of it.”
It was back in June that two truckloads of Murray’s prized collection were picked up from his home and transported to Cooper’s Garage Museum. Then it had its official opening in early November.
When Murray got to see it all for the first time, he recognised most of the items – except for one. “I didn’t know it, but they also had a mannequin made up of me. They’ve used one of my old work hats and my old work boots and shirt.”
Although most of Murray’s lifelong collection now lives at Westonia, he’s held on to quite a few items too – including two petrol bowsers he’s currently in the process of restoring.
So now I have 2 things on my bucket list in WA the big Chamberlain and Coopers garage
Westonia is a place that is worth visiting. They have two museums located in adjacent buildings and both are worth the small fee to get inside them – we visited Coopers the week after it opened – it was very good