Terry Halifax
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Apr 10/00) - Two buddies from New Zealand found themselves in need of a bit of a walkabout when they decided to come to the opposite pole to do some work.

Truckers Gavin Smith and Mike Fitzgerald were looking for a little adventure when they found an article about these wild Northern ice roads.

"We read about it in the Reader's Digest three years ago, precisely," Smith said. "We read about it and thought it might be a challenge."

The two were hauling ore and fuel for mine sites in the Australian outback and dreamt of escaping the heat of the red dust roads.

The work is pretty much the same, the guys said, but the road deserves some special consideration.

"It's very much the same in the respect that you are isolated," Smith said. "Of course, driving on the ice is completely different than driving on the red dust."

"I was astounded by the amount of traction that you could get on ice -- completely different than what I thought it would be," Fitzgerald added.

The two were very impressed with the way the drivers work up here. When one breaks down, the next one along will pull over to help. Not quite the same on the outback, Smith said.

"They'll just blow right by ya," he said.

"There're no heros here," Smith said. "It's a team effort and Robinson's has been a great help to us. Mike Sutchland at Robinson's really made it happen for us."

The adjustment to the other side of the world has come easy for the two drivers, saying the culture shock has been minimal but for the equipment.

"Our first time, we were driving on the wrong side of the road, sitting on the wrong side of the vehicle, swapping gears with the wrong hand and a wide load to contend with, so it was a quite an introduction," Fitzgerald said.

Language hasn't been much of a factor either, although some of the other drivers have found the accent a bit hard to get around.

"Some of them hear us and mistake us for Newfies," Smith laughed. "It's not so much the language -- it's probably because we're as crazy as Newfies."

On the long, straight roads of the outback, trucks can handle about twice what they can on the ice roads, Smith said, but it also takes about a mile to stop the heavy loads.

"Down there we were hauling legal loads -- 57 metres at 120 tons," he said. "The super Bs are 56-and-a-half tons is what we're hauling up here."

The boys from down under say they plan to come back, government willing.

"If Immigration Canada lets us, yes, we'll be back," Smith said.