Vintage RM74 running the Gulflander Croydon to Normanton Qld 1972

Taken in 1972 of the Gulflander on a journey between Croydon and Normanton. As the driver is Stan Tuesley, this film is older than the documentary Bill Peach made for the ABC about the Gulf country in the later 1970s which includes footage of the Gulflander as the driver was Charlie Honey at that time. Charlie was always seen with a rolled cigarette and it was said that the train did so many miles to the tin of log cabin tobacco. When I first visited Croydon in the late 1960s the railway station was covered with a huge canopy as at Normanton. At the time this 8mm film was shot the canopy had been destroyed by a cyclone and there was no trace of it left. The train is seen at and departing Croydon which was reduced to a simple country like station. The tourist boom in the area has led to the building of another canopy which again covers the station an railway. The Gulflander meanders along at a sedate speed ideal for the line and its condition. Photographing it in many places is thus fairly easy if driving. On one trip up there about 1986 with Charlie Honey at the controls though, the train was very hard to catch up to after each photo, and indeed Charlie must have thought he was driving an XPT express. Didn't therefore get much in the way of pictures and to make it worse we had to leave our caravan in Croydon to make the photographic expedition possible and had to go back to pick it up. The Gulflander though, must have made it to Normanton in record time that day. There is a story on a web site page I visited that mentions a person who met Charlie Honey innocently asked - Why do you have honey written on your bag. The reply came in a the slow drawl which was a feature of the former Officer in Charge of the railway, - cause that's me name.