Toots Makes 3
Readers of this site have noticed a pattern. After writing up two astonishing women of Cooktown, I should add a third.
This one belongs in the Tough section of Cassowary Crossing, and warrants a reappearance:
Call her Thora, and Toots Holzheimer would mow you down with a semi-trailer. Mother of eight, Toots was a trailblazing trucker of the 1960s. The lady could change tyres, overhaul engines and replace axles.
She drove most weeks through shin-deep mud, her beloved Diesel MAN a regular sight between Cairns and Weipa when the Developmental Highway was more an Experimental Highway.
One bloke recalls Toots hoisting 44-gallons drums, and two days the same sheila gave birth to a baby girl. Tragically the only thing to pin this gal down was a swinging timber pylon at Weipa wharf, giving the 57-year-old the only fight she never won.
Cooktown councilors were quick to pay homage, dubbing the first bridge to cross the Kennedy River in Lakefield National Park the Thora Holzheimer Bridge. Mind you, Toots would have preferred plain Toots. [As for Toot’s old MAN, that’s parked in the Trucking Hall of Fame, in Alice Springs, NT.]
October 13th, 2009 at 12:35 pm
I just bought a Slim Dusty CD at the Moonie Crossroads and a song on it is called “the lady is a trucker” and it took me back to my time in Weipa between 1971 and 1982. One of my jobs in that period was as manager of a small contracting company and Toots often used to bring supplies and machine parts from Cairns and I got to know her reasonably well.
Everything you will read about her and every thing that Slim put in his song, are true – she was a true legend (a word used a bit too freely these days) and even 27 years on from when I last saw her, I can still picture those bare feet, that rough and ready smile and a heart of gold.
Miss you Toots – hope you are fine in truckin’ heaven
December 31st, 2009 at 8:15 pm
John,
That song is, as you said, dedicated to Thora “Toots” Holzheimer! What a story! Hope Toots and Slim are sharin’ stories up yonder around the Pearly Gates!
Joe
February 20th, 2010 at 10:40 am
Forgot to mention the name of the albums for anyone interested in getting it!
The albums the song John mentioned in his comment, The Lady Is A Truckie, are on are:
Makin’ A Mile (original appearance) – track 6
Sittin’ On 80: 80 Aussie Truckin’ Classics (all Slim’s truck songs) CD 4 – track 7