Reading a story on essential services workers performing unsocial hours – including a garbage truck driver – ROADBOSS wondered what is the coolest garbo gig in the land? We reckon we found it!
“Not a bad office, ay?” Paul Walters says as he jumps out of his truck to greet us on the rapidly narrowing strip of sand at Inskip Point that serves as the rudimentary departure point for the short barge trip across to K’gari (Fraser Island).
It’s just past sunrise and the near-new Astra HD9 8×8 garbage truck stands out among the throng of four-wheel drives lining up to get onboard the first barge of the day (minus the usual few that got bogged at the entry to the notoriously difficult strip). Kids frolic in the water, excited for the holiday that lies ahead, and a few of the boys are already on the cans – “tins before tents” ROADBOSS photographer Matt Williams quips.
“You never get sick of this view,” Paul adds, as we cast our eyes across the glistening waters of the Great Sandy Strait to Hook Point and up 75 Mile Beach.
Paul Walters’ typical day involves running around 150 kilometres along K’gari’s world-famous beaches and inland tracks emptying bins full to the brim with garbage left by tourists. Images: Matt Williams
Not a bad way to start your workday. And it only gets better. After the surprisingly short 10-minute trip across the water on one of two Mantaray Barges that service the island from Inskip Point, the inaugural driver (and project manager) of Reuse & Recycle Group’s new waste collection service launches into his typical day running around 150 kilometres along K’gari’s world-famous beaches and inland tracks emptying bins full to the brim with garbage left by the throng of tourists that flock to the world’s biggest sand island all-year round.
Over here, the highway tar makes way for hundreds of kilometres of sand as white (and as soft) as pure driven snow; suburban traffic calming devices like speed humps, chicanes and roundabouts are replaced with myriad washouts flowing with crystal clean rainwater that filters through the island’s sand into a massive underground freshwater aquifer and out to sea; and houses and parked cars are replaced with tents, caravans, campervans and four-wheel drives lining the beaches.
It’s a dramatic – and welcome – sea change for Paul, who until July was the office-bound Operations Manager for Reuse & Recycle Group, a community-based recycling and recovery enterprise, responsible for running its operations at Fraser Coast Regional Council waste collection sites at Nikenbah and at Maryborough.
Read the full story in the Spring Issue of ROADBOSS Magazine, out now!
