TRUCKIN’ THROUGH FIVE DECADES

At 70-years of age, Stephen ‘Tiny’ Monkhouse still plies the Hume Highway each night, completing two Sydney to Melbourne return runs and a change-over each week for Sydney-based Lawson’s Transport.

The Mercedes Benz Actros he currently drives provides a stark contrast to the Perkins diesel-powered International AB 180 12-tonner that Stephen cut his teeth on so many years ago.

While some of the details of Stephen’s early working life can be a little hazy, leaving school must have been a pivotal moment in time, as he swiftly quips early in our conversation: “I left school at the age of 14-years and 10 months.” Such chronological specifics might suggest that leaving school was something of a big deal to him.

After bidding farewell to his school days, Stephen went to work with his father, who was a plasterer. He worked hard, seven days a week, but soon found this direction was not for