Reminiscences of Lou Benaud There were no tarred or concrete roads in those times. The roads were dirt or dirt reinforced with blue metal. Workers used picks, shovels and carts in their roadmaking and road maintenance efforts. When weight was needed to complete any roadwork, a traction engine was used. In the immediate vicinity of a town roads were usually in very fair order but the same could not be said about roads in outlying districts, especially after periods of heavy rain. It was even possible to get bogged when driving a sulky over some roads and one had to possess super driving powers to miss deep gutters and potholes that existed in plague proportions. Some outlying roads were so boggy that people in those areas, in order to be able to drive along such roads, laid tree branches across the boggy surfaces thus building what we called a corduroy road. When we travelled in a sulky over corduroy sections of road we thought that they must be the roughest roads in the world.
Farming & Industry
