ROADBOSS climbs into one of Cochrane’s iconic red rigids on an overnight mail run into the beating heart of remote South Australia, to find out how one company became the lifeblood of the region
There are so many places I’d rather be than Port Augusta at 1:30am on a Monday night, or is it Tuesday morning? The Augusta Highway, which a few hours ago had us in convoy with road trains hauling everything from bulk fuel to livestock, is now all but empty. The pastel pink salt flats bordering the northern end of town glow under a half-moon as we look for our starting point, weary-eyed and leaning in over the wheel to catch the warm air from the heater, and to get our bearings on a pithy two hours’ sleep.
At the end of an industrial strip nudged up near the edge of town, the Cochrane’s Transport depot lights up the night. A row of red rigids line the yard, stainless bullbars pointed north, soon to be scattered across the countryside. A Volvo semi idles next to the main shed, which is bustling with activity; a flurry of high-vis against a pitch-black backdrop.
A supervisor wanders over and tells me the guys have been expecting us. A few look up to nod, but most keep working around what can only be described as mounds of packages.
If there’s a stranded tourist waiting for a tyre and it doesn’t show up – it’s another day before they get it. There’s people’s mail, bread for the local IGA, stuff these towns are relying on.
There are an engine and cartons of beer in one pile, non-descript boxes, soft packages and a washing machine in another. This is where the mail and online orders for the countless towns around regional South Australia are sorted, before being loaded onto rigid trucks and sent off into the night.
Damien Butler greets us with a firm handshake and an easy-going smile, before making his way into the sorting room to look at his manifest for the night. I give him a wide berth, because it’s a quarter-to-two in the morning and we’re undoubtedly an annoyance. He’s checking every package off against the manifest, making sure it’s all on his truck.
“It’s not that I don’t trust these guys, but you can imagine,” he says, “if there’s a stranded tourist waiting for a tyre and it doesn’t show up – it’s another day before they get it. There’s people’s mail, bread for the local IGA, stuff these towns are relying on.”
His truck is one of the iconic red ones, but that’s every truck here. Cochrane’s signature livery is synonymous with outback South Australia; red rims, red chassis, red body.
Damien Butler’s Fuso Fighter is one of Cochrane’s Transport’s iconic red trucks synonymous with freight transport in outback South Australia
Inside the Fuso Fighter curtain-sider there’s bread for the IGA at Quorn, vaccines in Coolpac boxes for the hospital at Hawker, cages of mail for the post office in Leigh Creek, and parts for a workshop in a tiny town called Copley.
This is the 500-kilometre return run from Port Augusta to Leigh Creek that Damien does five, sometimes six days a week, which runs along the western flank of the Flinders Ranges. He hits every small town and station gate that’s expecting mail or supplies, taking The Outback Highway all the way to Leigh Creek and sometimes slightly beyond, before running back to Port Augusta.
The Fuso rolls out of the depot and we slot in behind it, snapper Thomas doing his best to capture the departure as our headlights struggle to illuminate the truck. Damien must be pedal-to-the-metal, because he’s carrying a brisk pace along the Flinders Ranges Way.
He’s been with Cochrane’s eight years. Before that he spent the better part of two decades driving rigid trucks much like this one around Adelaide for StarTrack. It never quite suited him. He grew up in the city but has spent most of his adult life trying to get away, which is how he landed in Quorn.
Heaps of the places we’ll drive through today were in Wolf Creek.
“My family used to come to Quorn on holidays in the ‘80s,” he tells me. “Then I’d come up myself when I had holidays. Then I met my fiance here 20 years ago now, so I knew it would eventually become home.”
The first hour out of Port Augusta is fairly boring. The road runs flat and straight along the Flinders, which at this hour is nothing more than a slightly distinguishable shadow against a dark sky. Damien’s tail-lights are all we can see, as we tuck in behind him to avoid the ‘roos we’ve been warned about.
A sudden flash of Damien’s tail-lights prompts us to stab the brakes, and as we do an enormous ‘roo barrels down the shoulder, narrowly missing our rental car. Damien pulls up to check for damage. His left-hand spotlight is gone, and there’s a trail of blood from the corner of his bullbar down the passenger-side curtain. At least it didn’t suffer.
“It happens out here,” he says, wincing. “Hit a horse last week, which is a nightmare. By some miracle I only clipped it with the mirror. I posted on the local Facebook page and the owner said it was alright.”
Inside the Fuso Fighter there’s bread for the IGA at Quorn, vaccines in Coolpac boxes for the hospital at Hawker, and cages of mail for the post office in Leigh Creek
Half an hour later we hit Quorn. It’s the largest town we’ll see all night, population 1,200, and it’s actually quite famous. Parts of The Water Diviner were shot here, and Wolf Creek too.
“Heaps of the places we’ll drive through today were in Wolf Creek,” Damien says when he hears us talking about it. Which isn’t surprising. The country out here could pass for remote Western Australia or the Northern Territory or rural Queensland. It’s beautiful, but also non-descript, like so much of the outback.
We’re at a mechanic’s yard on the edge of town. There’s a shipping container out the back that acts as a parcel pickup point, run on the side by the mechanic as a community service, and for a bit of extra cash. Cochrane’s has partnerships like this all over South Australia, usually small businesses that double as collection points.
Two streets away, Damien unloads bread out the back of the local IGA. Then it’s the post office, where cages of mail are wheeled in through a side door for the postie who’s almost certainly still asleep.
Sunrises. They’ve got to be the best part of the job. Oh, and the people. The people also make the job special for me.
Next is Hawker, a tourist hub at the base of the Flinders with a rich pastoral history dating back to 1880. Damien’s stop is brief; more mail, more bread, a couple of small packages.
By now the rest of the world is waking up, and Damien gets his first interaction of the day at the Hawker Motors servo.
“You get to the gym this morning?” Damien asks Scott Teague, son of owners John and Janet Teague. The sun still isn’t up, so it’d be an impressive feat of willpower if he did.
“Nah mate, not today,” he responds. The two quietly catch up as Damien counts out the loaves of bread before handing them off.
Damien Butler does the 500-kilometre return run from Port Augusta to Leigh Creek five, sometimes six days a week, which runs along the western flank of the Flinders Ranges
I duck around the back to find the cleanest servo toilets I’ve ever used, which is always a reliable indicator of how well a place is run.
Half-an-hour north of Hawker the Flinders begin to present themselves, backlit by a magnificent sunrise from the east. First a burning crimson, not dissimilar to the Cochrane’s red, followed by a deep orange glow that radiates down the rocky peaks, prompting us to stop for a photo.
The dewy grass in the paddocks glows, unusually green for this time of year after recent rain. A wedge-tailed eagle the size of a toddler is parked a few metres off the bitumen, tearing strips of flesh off some roadkill while keeping an eye on us.
“Sunrises,” Damien says pointing. “They’ve got to be the best part of the job. This is a good one, but they get even better than this.”
Sunrises. They’ve got to be the best part of the job. Oh, and the people. The people also make the job special for me.
He shows me some photos he’s taken. A photographer himself, he mainly shoots all sorts of transport and landscapes – and he’s right. The sunrises out here are something else.
“Oh, and the people,” he adds, after pausing for a moment. “The people also make the job special for me.”
Six hours south, the man responsible for the red rigids so ubiquitous in remote South Australia is probably already on a forklift at the company’s 40,000-square-metre depot in Gillman, Adelaide.
Peter Cochrane OAM insists on jumping on the forklifts, to keep the younger staff honest (“I give them heaps,” he’d told me earlier, chuckling) and probably to stay a part of it all the best way he knows how. Most of his life has been spent running the business, and at 79 the passion is very much still there.
Me and my late wife, Christine, started with two Bedford trucks 50 years ago.
I’d met him the day before, in the boardroom at the company’s Gillman office, his daughter Jodie Hill, a director of the company, and CEO Mike Lean joining. Peter is the kind of man who answers a question with a story, and he’s got plenty of them.
“Me and my late wife, Christine, started with two Bedford trucks 50 years ago,” he told me when I asked him to take me back to the very beginning. He skipped about 20 years, though.
It actually started when Peter was quite literally born on the road – in his parent’s car outside the Botanic Hotel in Adelaide.
“Mum didn’t quite make it to the hospital in time,” he recounts. “So you could say I was born on the move … literally born in transport.”
Damien Butler grew up in the city but has spent most of his adult life trying to get away from the big smoke, which is how he landed in Quorn
Fast forward a decade-or-so, and Peter was helping deliver papers for local newsagent Clive Hunt – he even ended up getting his own news stand on Unley Road as a 10-year-old, where he’d sell papers after school each day.
Clive sold the newspaper round and took on the contract to deliver magazines for Australian Consolidated Press (ACP) around Adelaide, acquiring two trucks and a ute. In those days magazines were delivered to regional Australia by rail and bus, so the operation was pretty innovative. A pre-teen Peter would ride along in the truck, morning and night. He loved it.
Peter’s old man, Richard, came home one night with the news Clive had offered to take him on full-time as soon as he finished out the week of school. He was 13.
“Best day ever,” he says, lightning up at the thought … 66 years on. “I’ve still got the grin on my face, don’t I? That’s what really started it all for me.”
Best day ever. I’ve still got the grin on my face, don’t I? That’s what really started it all for me.
After that, he’d do a stint driving trucks for Halliburton. It was a job Peter somewhat conned his way into, given he didn’t have much machinery experience at the time.
Then, as the Vietnam War started to take off in the early ‘60s, he and a few mates grew increasingly paranoid they’d be conscripted.
“Because we thought we were going to get called up to National Service, we decided to chuck everything in and go surfing for six months and see more of Australia,” he says.
Armed with a brand-spanking green HT Holden panel van, which he paid cash for, Peter got as far as Crescent Head on the mid-north coast of New South Wales before something anchored him to the town. He met his wife-to-be, Christine.
Damien Butler has been with Cochrane’s for eight years. Before that he spent the better part of two decades driving rigid trucks much like this one around Adelaide for StarTrack
By the early ‘70s Peter and Christine had returned to Adelaide and were running a small transport operation out of the backyard of their Mitcham home. It was actually Clive’s old business which he’d sold, before he passed away, to a fellow named Syd Rivett. When Syd wanted to sell in 1972, a 24-year-old Peter stumped up $20,000 and the business was his, complete with two Bedfords and a ute.
He and Christine delivered stacks of Australian Women’s Weekly magazines to newsagents across metropolitan Adelaide, before landing Cleo and a handful of other big circulation titles.
They went on to land the distribution for all three of the major publishers – Gordon & Gotch, Fairfax and ACP– at a time when none of them would allow their freight on the same truck.
“They just wouldn’t let me do it,” he says. “But I showed them that … who cares if you’re all on the same truck.”
My claim to fame is that I could do 20 jobs in the yard. I can only do one behind the wheel of a truck.
The newspapers, though, were the real prize. Peter picked up The News, Murdoch’s long-defunct afternoon paper. Not long after, the country edition of The Advertiser, which he’d hold for the next 35 years.
“That was my lynchpin to get into the country,” he shares, with a sense of pride in his voice.
Today, Cochrane’s operates more than 400 trucks, employs 300-odd South Australians, services 1,600 towns across one million square kilometres, and partners with every major national carrier – FedEx, Linfox, StarTrack, DHL, Border Express, Australia Post – carrying to the places they can’t … or won’t.
If a parcel needs to reach a station gate in remote South Australia by the morning, it’s almost certainly on the back of a red truck. And why red? Well, Peter likes the colour.
Besides the incredible sunrises, it’s the people that make the job special for Cochrane’s driver Damien Butler
“Just look at my socks,” he says, leaning down to lift the cuff of his pant leg. Lo and behold: the same eye-catching red as the fleet outside.
Past Hawker now, the landscape opens up with saltbush and rust-orange dirt running out towards the distant Parachilna Gorge to the east. Damien tells me every creek crossing along this stretch flooded in February, which cuts off many of the towns north of Port Augusta. When the roads do open, it’s often a slow run.
In February he followed a grader for two hours between Hawker and Parachilna at 10 km/h, because there was three feet of water on the road and the grader was the only way he’d get through.
“Just to get the bread up,” he says. “Buddy Bowden, the owner of IGA Leigh Creek, came down with his ute to meet me, actually. Took it the rest of the way himself.”
We’d never knock a head off a Hino in a million kilometres.
When I’d asked Peter whether he missed being in the cabin of a truck earlier, particularly on the outback runs, his answer was refreshingly honest.
“Not really. My claim to fame is that I could do 20 jobs in the yard. I can only do one behind the wheel of a truck,” he says.
Peter liked owning trucks. Liked running trucks. Liked employing locals. Liked watching his company service remote Australia. He was just more use outside the cab.
There is one cabin you couldn’t get him out of though.
Today, Cochrane’s operates more than 400 trucks, employs 300-odd South Australians, services 1,600 towns across one million square kilometres, and partners with every major national carrier
His first race car was a Studebaker Lark, built for him by a mechanic named Graham ‘Stevo’ Stevenson, which he used for the Variety Bash three years running before becoming Chairman of the event in 1993 – where he remains a board member today.
He had a taste for road rallies, and the drives kept getting bigger. Two round-Australia trials. Two London-to-Sydney rallies. Five international cross-country rallies.
In the 2000 London-to-Sydney, 30 days end-to-end, with Antonov cargo planes used to transport the cars between continents, he was running second outright. Three days from the finish a ball joint let go in the Flinders Ranges (of all places) and he dropped to sixtieth. Two years later he returned to run ninth outright.
Wilder yet was the Cape Norway to Red Sea rally, which ran for 20 days and included three days rallying through Syria. You read that right – Syria!
Mum didn’t quite make it to the hospital in time. So you could say I was born on the move … literally born in transport.
“Power and people,” he says, when I asked how on earth those rallies were possible. “It’s all done on closed roads, so there’s a lot of planning and pulling strings to get it to come together.”
Christine rode shotgun as his navigator. It isn’t the same without her, but Peter still runs the swag truck for the Variety Bash every year, which raised a record $2.7 million for charity in 2025.
His many years volunteering for the Variety Bash and other charities even nabbed him an Order of Australia Medal in 2017.
Back in the truck, the Flinders are throwing a morning shadow and the rigid Fuso is loping along at 110 – a perk of running a medium-rigid truck, as opposed to a speed-limited semi or B-double.
These days Cochrane’s rigid fleet largely comprises Hinos supplemented by Isuzu F-Series and a small batch of Fuso Fighters
While it’s mostly Kenworths and Macks pulling road-train sets, the less visible work of getting bread and mail and the Amazon orders into the bush is done by Japanese rigids like this one.
There are only a handful of Fusos in the Cochrane’s fleet, Mike Lean had told me, units the company has brought in to try out, to see how they handle the country and what the drivers make of them. Damien likes his but doesn’t make a big deal about it.
“It’s alright,” he shrugs. “Bit noisy. I prefer the new Isuzus we have. Actually, I like the Hinos too.”
So does everyone else. The Hinos are the ones staff and customers and anyone else in South Australia remembers. Even the 50-year-anniversary artwork features a Hino 500 Series. Go back 10 or 15 years and the company ran almost nothing else. They were, in Peter’s words, sensational.
I enjoy stopping for a coffee and having a bit of a chat wherever I go – I think it’s important. It feels like I’m part of all these small towns.
“We’d never knock a head off a Hino in a million kilometres,” he says.
Behind the many million-kilometre Hinos was an Allison automatic, equally robust. Mike told me the Allison people in America couldn’t believe what Cochrane’s were getting out of them when they first found out. They kept asking for proof.
“Allison in America couldn’t believe that we weren’t touching these transmissions,” Mike says. “We’d send back the kilometres and even they were surprised.”
These days the Hinos are supplemented by Isuzu F-Series and the small batch of Fuso Fighters. The linehaul, which gets the freight out to Cochrane’s seven regional depots (Peter wants more, he told me, as Jodie shook her head – presumably because it isn’t a cheap exercise) is all Volvo: FH13s and FH16s in semi all the way up to AB-triple road train form, pulling bulk freight across state lines every night.
Damien Butler hits every small town and station gate that’s expecting mail or supplies, taking The Outback Highway all the way to Leigh Creek and sometimes slightly beyond
Whatever the truck, though, it has to be clean.
“They’ve got to be washed,” Peter tells me, glaring at one of his trucks through the boardroom window, as if checking it over. “Walked across the yard the other day and saw a dirty one. Disgrace.”
He has high standards, which might be why he’s always out on the forklift. It’s the perfect cover for an ‘Undercover Boss’ type scenario.
Nathan Chase, Regional Operations Manager, tells me Peter still catches things on the floor that no one else notices.
I always get a coffee at Parachilna. They look after me and it’s good to catch up.
“You can’t sneak anything past Pete,” he says as we wander through the main warehouse. “If he sees something that hasn’t travelled, that might’ve been missed, he’s on it. He’s probably on the forklift somewhere now actually … I wouldn’t be surprised if we see him.”
Parachilna emerges out of nowhere, like an outback oasis. It’s one of the most beautiful half-pub-half-hotel setups in the country, owned by Ross and Jane Fargher. It’s even got a brewery. Damien pulls up and we head inside to have a coffee, while the staff throw a bit of banter his way.
“You brought the documentary crew, eh?” a young man quips. Damien lets out a half laugh.
“I always get a coffee at Parachilna,” he tells me. “They look after me and it’s good to catch up.”
The country out here could pass for remote Western Australia or the Northern Territory or rural Queensland. It’s beautiful, but also non-descript, like so much of the outback
He gets one at Leigh Creek too. And one at Hawker on the way back down, though by then he’s often already had three. You can bet he catches up with locals at those stops, too.
The roadside drops come next – Moralana, where we hand off a parcel to a station owner who’s driven down in a ute; Merna Mora, Edeowie, Commodore. Names that don’t show up on a road map but are critical stops for Damien. We drop spare parts, stock vaccines and an assortment of packages.
This, in essence, is what Mike had been driving home back at Gillman. Trains and ships move freight, he’d said. Trucks deliver. Out here the difference matters, because the only way anything is getting in or out is on the back of a truck. Probably a red one.
Leigh Creek feels like it’s hanging on by a thread as we enter the main strip. It’s a town that epitomises the mining boom-to-bust cycle, going from a thriving 2,500-person town in the ‘80s, to a 90-person town today.
There’s talk of something big, which I think could build the town back up.
When the coal mine closed in 2015, many of the houses were knocked down. Driving through, defunct streets are blocked by concrete barriers.
Still, there’s an IGA with an optimistic new owner, and a post office run by a woman who needs to get her mail sorted by 9:00am because a Cessna flies out of here on certain mornings, taking parcels to stations even further north. We’ve held Damien up a little bit, and I get the sense she isn’t too happy.
He hangs around the back of the post office helping her with the mail cages. I hear them laughing – crisis averted. On our way out, he hand delivers a package to a local woman, greeting her by first name. People are as happy to see Damien as they are to see the red truck carrying their supplies.
Five minutes up the road, in a tiny town called Copley, we make one last delivery to Cookes Outback Motors, where owner Dwayne Logan gives us a wave, smoking a cigarette as his one customer for the day – the local police officer – hands over the keys to his LandCruiser. He and his wife Kym bought the workshop two years ago, but it’s been here for more than 30. When I ask him about what’s left of Leigh Creek, he tells me it’s “on the up again”.
Damien Butler’s journey includes roadside drops; names that don’t show up on a road map but include critical spare parts, stock vaccines and an assortment of packages
“There’s talk of something big, which I think could build the town back up,” he says, not giving me much more than that. “It’ll be good for us, let me tell you that.”
There’s a proposed urea mine for Leigh Creek, which could produce one million tonnes annually. It’s a $2.6+ billion proposal, so I assume that’s what Dwayne is talking about.
He and Damien are talking like old mates, on another of his drop-off catchups. The copper seems to know Damien too, throwing him a familiar ‘G’day’.
“A lot of drivers would be back in Quorn by now,” he says, once we’re back in the truck. “But I enjoy stopping for a coffee and having a bit of a chat wherever I go – I think it’s important. I know the people out here now. It feels like I’m part of all these small towns.”
They’ve got to be washed. Walked across the yard the other day and saw a dirty one. Disgrace.
He is. He knows everyone by name. He knows their kids’ names. He knows whether it’s been a good year for them. He’s part of the fabric out here, which I think is what separates this from other transport jobs.
Cochrane’s don’t move freight, they deliver it. To people who really need it. At least that’s been my experience with Damien – who, when I mention that sentiment, shrugs it off.
When I asked Peter if he’d do it all again, all 54 years of it – buying the magazine account for $20,000, the Hinos, the rallies, all the moments spent in the business with Christine and daughters Jodie and Rebecca – he nods as a contented smile spread across his face.
“In a heartbeat … in a heartbeat,” he says.
Peter hands me a signed copy of his autobiography, My Life On The Road, before I left, with a message on the inside front cover: ‘Hope you find a good story to tell – all the best, Cocho.’ That I did.
At 79, founder Peter Cochrane remains actively involved in the business he and his late wife Christine established more than 50 years ago
