Heifer Creek Cutting- Thiess Memorial

Description

Drive through the Thiess brothers’ spectacular first major earthworks job, carving out a huge section of stone for road access. The cutting is 104 foot deep and a remarkable sight knowing that it was carved without the aid of modern day machinery. Thiess Brothers from Drayton employed 40 men on the project which took 6 months to complete using a Caterpillar D8.Originally designed to be a tunnel through sandstone, the brothers argued that a cut would be much more economical and convinced the powers that be by submitting price of £4000 less than the tunnel price, this won the day.

Heifer Creek is reputed to have been the turning point where the Thiess brothers changed from a small group of contractors doing mainly rural work such as farm dams and rural roads for local councils, to a group dedicated to infrastructure projects of all sizes. At this time, Bert and Leslie Thiess joined in the formation of Thiess Bros which had just bought its first and biggest bulldozer, a brand new Cat D8 known as Gertie.

Seven kilometres down the road, stop at the rest area and read the Thiess Memorial at Heifer Creek. This memorial commemorates the contribution of the Thiess Brothers (Bert and Leslie) had to Australian earthmoving.