Dinosaurs roamed the vast Australian landscape 95 million years ago, and before that sea-dwelling monsters traversed the oceans that drenched much of this now-arid continent.
Today, the largest things traveling our expansive nation are trucks, but it’s a full circle affair. If it wasn’t for the Titanosaur – the world’s largest dinosaur – we wouldn’t have our Kenworths.
They run on diesel. Diesel comes from crude oil. Crude oil is, quite literally, dinosaur flesh and bone, with some megafauna thrown in, compressed, liquified and fermented over millions of years.
Where the Eromanga sea once spanned 2,000 kilometres in remote Queensland, home to terrifying marine reptiles like the Ichthyosauras and Kronosaurus, and once dry the Titanosaur, now sits a small but mighty refinery, surrounded by a patchwork of oil fields.
The little-known town the refinery occupies, aptly named Eromanga, is home to the furthest fuel station from the sea, and it’s a critical cog in Australia’s outback transport machine.
“But Australia only has two refineries left, and Eromanga isn’t one of them?”
I’d thought that, too. But it’s every bit a refinery, it just doesn’t produce petrol. So, it flies under the radar.
It also doesn’t quite add up at first glance. When I looked at a zoomed-out view of Australia on Google Maps, I couldn’t work out how the furthest fuel station from the ocean is in remote Queensland and not in the Northern Territory. Or somewhere in Western Australia.
But, the Great Australian Bight and Gulf of Carpenteria, which eat into Australia’s northern and southern coastlines, mean the unlikely town of Eromanga is indeed the furthest from the ocean.
In the Spring Issue of ROADBOSS, we follow the IOR fleet transporting 95,000 litres of diesel to the furthest servo from the sea. Images: Thomas Wielecki
I had to know more, so I got in touch with the team at IOR to see if we could get into this little-known refinery in the middle of the bush.
After some back and forth with the IOR crew, I was told to meet a driver at the company’s Lytton Terminal in Brisbane, where 110 million litres of diesel is stored in tanks the size of a small suburb, and where our pilgrimage to the Eromanga Crude Oil Refinery would begin.
Friendly but serious operator Andrew Donnelly is waiting next to a B-double when we arrive. As we get out of the car, he pushes off the bullbar of the Kenworth T659, moving to meet us.
“Here are some shirts for you guys,” he says, enthusiastically, handing me and photographer Thomas Wielecki an IOR-branded T-shirt.
On the back is a cartoon drawing of the same Kenworth he’s standing next to, which is known as ‘The Bus’.
“That’s because it doesn’t stop,” laughs Mark Thompson, the terminal manager, who’s now joined us. “There’s even a seat out where the guys wait to load, called the Bus Stop.”
The Bus also wears the number plate: IOR-01.
We’ll be following The Bus from Brisbane to Eromanga, where the B-double will soon become an AB-triple, transporting 95,000 litres of diesel to the furthest servo from the sea.
Read the full story in the Spring Issue of ROADBOSS Magazine, out soon. Click here to subscribe.
