Water Tanker - v - Concrete Truck

Further to John Gill’s account of the water tanker driver and the fence - http://disasterfilm.blogspot.com/2010/06/trailer-trash-respect-red-face-farmer.html - I add an account of my own experience.


We have a new estate going in about 2klms up the hill and have put up with months of percussive rock hammering as they change the face of the slope.

A few weeks back a concrete agitator truck came down the hill and pulled up at a storm water inlet drain opposite our place where the driver proceeded to empty the agitator of its concrete sullage down the drain.

We walked over and I told him he was not allowed to do that as it was storm water pollution and that drain ran to the river where there was a large amount of local wild fowl and other wild life living down there that the town folk cared for. He told me in no uncertain terms that he WAS going to dump his sullage and was also going to wash out the agitator and empty that down the drain as well and that he did not give a 'flying F' about any wildlife.

I walked around to the cabin of his truck and, as luck would have it, there was a large bunch of keys in the ignition- far more than truck keys. I removed those and went back to where he was pumping out. I said to him:

"And, when you are finished, you might haveto go fishing for these!" Showed him his keys and threw them towards him but he missed catching them as they slipped down the 2 metre deep S/W inlet.

He went off his peanut and began calling the police while he tried to shut down the agitor and turn off his water pump. We merely walked back across the road to home.

Later the police arrived at home and asked me about throwing his keys down the drain. I denied any knowledge of them and suggested that he may have dropped them down the drain himself when washing out his sullage - after all, it is illegal isn't it officer to leave keys unattended in the ignition of a vehicle and no responsible commercial driver would do that, would they?

I asked the police what action they were going to take about his environmental vandalism. The police left.

The agitator truck remained there overnight until a spare set of keys for it could be fetched the following day from the depot in Goulburn, 84klms away.

They ARE amazing, tho’, aren’t they?