1912-1936 

From Little things, big things grow

Noel Little was born in 1912 in the South-Western coastal town of Bunbury. He started school after a move to Westonia, a small town in the West Australian Wheatbelt, where his father, Edward, was the local bank manager. But at only seven years of age, his mother and father separated and set in motion a pivotal moment of change for his future. His mother, Clarrie, was faced with the prospect of raising Noel and his three brothers alone, and the necessity to financially support herself and her sons. Work was not easy to come by in the small rural town and Noel found himself back near Bunbury, sent to live with relatives while his mother travelled in search of an income. He was to spend most of his schooling years in the South West, first at Boyanup Primary, and then Bunbury High School.

When his studies were done, Noel found work helping on relatives’ farms, and then at the Wellington Dam for sustenance pay. During these years he helped his mother financially, something that he continued until after he married. But with the onset of the Depression in the ‘30s, the money dried up and, like his mother, he was left to drift in search of work. Word spread of a growing mining industry, and he found himself headed to Wiluna in search of better fortune.

On arrival, Noel found that it wasn’t to be the paradise that some had foretold. Even in a mining town jobs were hard to come by, especially underground. But through determination he earned a position as a woodcutter and then as a truck driver, skills that would prove influential in later years. But despite his income and success, the call of work from under the surface remained, and of the higher pay that came with it.

Noel told the story of his first day underground at Wiluna long into his life, of lining up each day for a week at the start of the shift waiting to see if he got a start. Eventually, his name was called and he was given his first job under the earth: shovelling ore into skips. After three hours working the shovel his hands begun to bleed from the work. Not deterred, he ripped his shirt into strips, bound his hands and kept working. It was a week before his hands calloused over and the bleeding stopped. He passed the test and stayed underground, working his way up to a machine miner.

Wiluna, though, wasn’t to be his future. In 1936 Noel made his way to Kalgoorlie’s gold industry armed with a letter of introduction from the Wiluna mine manager that described him as always having been ‘efficient, sober and reliable’. Always determined, he quickly found employ at the Great Boulder Mines, a place where he would spend the next twenty-four years working his way from miner to shift boss and eventually, mine foreman.

But most importantly, it was in Kalgoorlie that he was to meet Geraldine Farrow, or Gell as he came to call her, the love of his life whom he married in 1939.

1939-1945

The War

History reads turbulently for so many in the 20th century, and like many Australians of his time, Noel enlisted to serve in the 2nd World War. An infantryman with the 2/43rd Battalion, Noel saw action in the Middle East at El Alamein, and again in the jungles of New Guinea as part of operations to capture Lae and secure the Huon Pensinsula.

In 1944, his battalion returned to Australia, but Noel carried a leg wound from the Middle East and malaria from his time in New Guinea. His service was coming to its end. He wrote to his old manager at Great Boulder and enquired about whether he would find his job waiting for him. The reply that he received read:

“Replying to your personal application for reinstatement in your old position with the Great Boulder Pty Gold Mines Limited, we have to advise that should you have your C.O’s permission for your discharge from the army, you can be very usefully employed in our Hamilton shaft section.”

Granted that discharge, Noel made his way home from the war and did his best to pick up where he had left off, devoting the next 16 years of his life to the goldmining industry and his family.

1960-1964

Lakewood Firewood Company

In 1960, Noel was offered the position of manager of the Lakewood Firewood Company, the last of the wood lines that supplied timber and firewood to Kalgoorlie’s goldmining industry. He accepted and made a great success of the venture that cut, hauled, and dressed timber for the companies of the Golden Mile.

1965

Mining Timber Service Begins

Towards the end of 1964, Lakewood ceased its supply of mining timber and firewood, and always astute, Noel saw the opportunity to take over this supply to three of the Kalgoorlie-Boulder gold mines: Lake View & Star, North Kalgurli and Great Boulder Mines. He signed his letter of resignation to the Lakewood Firewood Company, thanking them for four years of service. His next letter followed only months after, offering his services to resume the supply of timber to the mines, and so began the Mining Timber Service, a Little family company.

Mining Timber Service formally came into existence on the 20th of January 1965, and under Noel’s experienced direction began supplying timber to the gold mining industry in the Eastern Goldfields. The timing was right: timber sales to gold, and later nickel, mining companies flourished, and the small partnership began to expand.

1967

MiCROWAVE TOWERS

As the 20th century ground on, the existing telephone and telegraph infrastructure rapidly grew insufficient for the country’s transcontinental communication needs. While there was a copper wire between Perth and Kalgoorlie, and Kalgoorlie to Port Augusta, by the end of 1963 the system’s multiple 12-channel telephone circuits were falling behind demand for communication. Expensive and cumbersome, the decision was made to move away from cable to a wireless system, and the way paved for the Trans-Nullarbor Microwave Link, the first major communication link between the east and west coasts of Australia.

In 1966 a $10 million contract for the 2GHz microwave radio system between Northam (WA) and Port Pirie (SA) was signed. Over the 2300km route, proposed were 60 repeaters for the main 600-channel telephony bearer and its standby, which was also to carry and required interstate TV signals.

A company called EPT had the contract to build the towers, and Little Industries the contract to support the construction of the towers with haulage and the supply of materials. The towers would arrive disassembled by rail to Parkston, a rail site out of Kalgoorlie, sent from the east coast. There they would be loaded onto the company’s trucks and carted to a building site every 25 miles Merredin to Eucla. Each site was different in its demands as towers built high on features were shorter, meaning smaller footings and less metal, and on the wide open flat, like the Eyre Highway, each tower needed to be taller, calling for more blue metal, sand and material. Thousands of hours of engineering, fabrication and labour went into each, and they were built well. One needs only to traverse the landscape to see the metallic frames reaching skyward still to this day. Some still gleam, given a new lease on life with upgraded, current-day technology for east-west links, or studded with antennas for mobile networks. But most, now non-functional and forgotten, switched off many years ago and their equipment pulled down, stand tall and silent, their presence nothing more than a mark of the passing of time and a tip of the hat to those that laboured to build them.

Continuing from 1967 to 1970, and running almost in parallel with the water carting on the Eyre Highway, the microwave towers proved another key contract for Noel and Little Industries. The demands of the work created the necessity the company needed to expand its equipment, which had been structured almost entirely around the carting of timber. Instead of a problem, Noel saw the opportunity to commit to investing in back-tipping trailers with which the company could efficiently cart the blue metal and sand from its quarry in Kalgoorlie. This, the company’s first non-timber job, shaped the company’s future, and positioned them to break into the haulage industry in the Goldfields.

 1967-1970

Eyre Hwy Water Carting

The Eyre Highway is the only sealed road linking the states of Western Australia and South Australia. It runs east from Norseman for 1200 kilometres, stretching across the Nullabor Plain, along the top of the Eyre Peninsula and into the South Australian town of Port Augusta.

First constructed during the Second World War, the Eyre Highway followed a telegraph link between the eastern and western coasts when a narrow horse-and-cart track was widened into a passable gravel road, ranging from 4 to 9 metres in width.

But as the 20th century wound on, the Eyre wasn’t holding up to expectations. Despite yearly maintenance, expensive works were deemed unwarranted. The highway simply didn’t get enough traffic, with estimates being fourteen vehicles per day throughout the 1950s.

But the situation was made worse by the region’s lack of rainfall. The Eyre would be smoothed out each year by maintenance crews with small sections freshly gravelled. But the soil that the road was made from was too weak to be an effective road surface, and when rain did come, the road would turn to a bog as the bulldust transformed into impassable mud.

When Perth was awarded the Commonwealth Games in 1962, the Eyre finally saw heavy traffic as large numbers of vehicles travelled east to west. Unable to hold up to this increase in use, the Eyre was damaged in many locations, and the lack of water along the highway meant that maintenance crews to pump salt water over 100m from below the surface. A reality was finally becoming undeniable: it was time to seal the Eyre.

The State governments agreed, and work began to seal the Eyre in the 1960s and 1970s without Federal funding. Responsible for its side of the highway, the Western Australia government began construction in 1960 with crews starting at Norseman and slowly sealing their way east. By the end of that year, eight kilometres of road had been reconstructed and lay ready for a sealing at a width of 6.1 metres. Over the next ten years, sealing progressed at 100km per annum, and by 1969 WA’s portion of the highway was sealed, from Norseman to Eucla.

During this decade, camps for the construction crews progressively moved along the highway as the blacktop stretched across the nation. But there was no fresh water along the Eyre, and all water had to be carted from Norseman, an arduous task that proved difficult. and a more effective and flexible water solution was needed

In 1967, Little Industries were approached for a three-month contract to cart the water from Norseman to the camps. By that point, the sealed road was 40 miles west of Caiguna, about 350km away from Norseman. There were four camps that needed supplying: a formation camp that lay 20 miles ahead of the blacktop, the final trim camp just ahead of the road, the sealing crew, and behind them the ready-mix camp that crushed blue metal for the road surface’s aggregate.

Equipped and ready for the task, Little Industries began hauling three trips per week, each taking two days to complete the 700km round trip. The State Government supplied the water tanks which were hauled by the company’s trailers and trucks, and quickly the camps’ water issues were solved.

At the time of this contract, the company was still Mining Timber and Services, a timber provider for the Goldfields mining industry with only a small fleet of trucks. In order to maintain their current contracts and service this new demand on their trucks, the water carting operation was seamlessly integrated with the timber hauling. The timber trailer would be unhitched in Norseman and the water tank picked up for a few trips down the Eyre. By the time the truck returned empty, the wood cutters would have loaded the timber trailer to be hauled back to Kalgoorlie.

At the time of its commencement, the contract for the water supply was three months in length. It ended three years after it began, when the blacktop marched across the border, and Little Industries supporting its advance all the way.

These years of work were enough to convince Noel to upgrade the fleet as the old trucks that the company had weren’t quite up to the job, or other new contracts that the company was beginning to service. One truck that is not-so-fondly remembered was a Leyland Beaver that had four gears and maximum speed of 35mph, which made the 350km journey all that more difficult.

Quickly, trucks were bought that could handle the work that the company was undertaking, and for new contracts that the company was positioning itself to service. After their success on the Eyre, water carting became a key service for the company. Little Industries had once again proved its reputation for reliability and getting the job done.

 1968-1970

Rockmelon Carting from Desert Farm

Wiluna seems an unlikely place for a citrus farm given that it sits on the edge of the Western Desert. Yet in 1967, a man by the name of Jack Parr set about doing exactly that when he cleared 70 acres and planted mandarins, valencias, navel oranges and grapefruit. The land was surprisingly perfect for citrus trees that took to the dry heat and fertile soil and water was in plentiful supply, provided from a network of 15 bores that spread across the land. And as the trees grew, the aptly named Desert Farm rooted itself into financial success.

Desert Farm was created to develop a strong supply of citrus for Australia’s eastern states that would come online out of season. The products could be brought to market out of season, and with less competition from other growers would be in demand and fetch a higher price. But there was a problem: after the trees were first planted, there remained a number of years before they would be sufficiently mature to produce a crop. Eager to establish a cashflow, the owners of Desert Farm struck upon an interesting idea: to plant rockmelons at the base of the trees as a cash crop to supplement their turnover until the citrus trees came into reached maturity.

In the first year of the rockmelon harvest, a Perth company had the contract to cart the melons from Wiluna to Parkeston, where they would load them onto a train for the journey east. These were rough roads, too, with gravel spanning from Leonora to Wiluna, an 1100-kilometre round-trip that took two long days for a truck to traverse. The melons would be picked green, one or two weeks before turning ripe and allowed to mature on the trip east to market. They would be stored in chilled trailers for the road journey and pulled by some of the Perth company’s prime movers. But quickly there were more melons than the contractor could manage, and Little Industries were approached to supplement the fleet with its trucks.

During harvest, every day through December and January two of the company’s trucks would haul 50 tonnes of rockmelons down to Parkeston to be hand-loaded onto rail and sent east. A familiar story, the Little trucks got the job done without issue while the contracted Perth company faced issues with unreliable trucks and drivers.

When it came time for the second harvest of melons, Desert Farm purchased their own chiller trailers and asked Little Industries to take over the haulage contract. Little Industries were more than happy to provide. This haulage arrangement continued for a few years, and every harvest came off without a hitch.

Where the previous company had been halted by problems, Little Industries did what it took to get the job done, again proving a recurring theme in the company’s history: second to the party, but the first to step up and take over a contract when an incumbent faltered and failed.

And to make their success all that sweeter, the truck drivers would always come back with a few boxes of ripe rock melons. For those few years, rockmelon was a regular choice on the company menu.

1969

A New Name and The Rise of Haulage.

During the late Sixties, the times were changing yet again, and with them the mining industry. The need for timber began to lessen, and Noel was forced to adjust his operations to survive. Already equipped to transport loads, Mining Timber Services seized upon contracts for haulage of water, sand and metal, and they boomed. After only five years of timber supply, in 1969 the last load of wood was delivered and the company concentrated on the growing transport industry in the region.

With the loss of timber supply from the company’s repertoire of services, a name change was overdue. Chosen to reflect the greater involvement of Noel’s sons Alan and Joe, N.B. Little and Sons Pty Ltd was born.

Reinforced by his kin, Noel turned the attention of the company to the state-wide need for infrastructure. Major contracts were tendered for, won and serviced for the cartage of water to seal the Eyre Highway, and of sand and metal for microwave tower supports spanning the whole of Western Australia.

The boom in work saw both Alan and Joe working throughout WA until the early ‘70s when the company expanded from Kalgoorlie and established its first depot in the nearby town of Kambalda, a move intended to better service cartage customers in the region. Led by Joe, the company experienced a growth in contracts in the area so substantial that the focus of operations began to shift, leading to the eventual closure of the Boulder depot.

One such contract was a three million tonne sand backfill project. Another, the commencement of ore cartage for Western Mining Corporation at Kambalda, and another the haulage of aggregates for 60,000 yards of road sealing near the town of Port Hedland. Beyond doubt, N.B Little and Sons had survived the transition from timber supply to the provision of mining services and haulage.

This shift was followed by two new dimensions of the company’s operations in the early 1980’s: a boost in international demand for Lefroy salt led to N.B. Little and Sons winning major contracts for the harvesting and cartage of salt, and for ship-loading at the southern port town of Esperance. In addition to these contracts, the company undertook civil works including dams, both tailing and catchment.

 1974

Tyre PROBLEMS

In October 1973, the members of the Organisation of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries declared an oil embargo in response to the United States’ support for Israel during the Yom Kippur War. By the end of the embargo in March 1974, the oil price had leapt from US $3 per barrel to nearly $12. The embargo caused an oil crisis worldwide with countless flow-on effects on politics and the economy, especially for a company that dealt in haulage. One of the more troublesome issues that Little Industries faced after the first oil shock shortage of truck tyres. At the time, the company was encountering a lot of tyre trouble from a part of the WMC causeway at Kambalda, surfaced with rough, sharp rocks. In those days, the rubber of choice was either rag (bias) tyres, both cheap and nasty and incredibly susceptible to overheating and blowing out under load, or Michelin steel-belted tyres that stood up to thermal demand on the highway with heavy loads.

But on this job, the rough surface of the causeway was slaughtering the company’s stockpile of Michelins with punctures and fractures. Because of the oil shock and tyre shortage, it was obvious that if the company didn’t do something quickly they’d run out of tyres. Noel got on to Dunlop in Kalgoorlie and found out that they had huge stocks of rag tyres that were falling out of favour with the industry, but not a great deal of Michelins. An idea forming in his mind, Noel bought a large amount of the rags at a better-than-good price and fitted them all on the single truck and trailer. The next week, that rag-tyred truck didn’t suffer a single flat, whereas those other trucks running Michelins were riddled with punctures. He realised that the flexibility in the rag tyres was protecting them against the piercing nature of the jagged rocks, whilst the rigidity of the steel-belted Michelins was making them vulnerable to penetration. Within two weeks, every truck on that route ran on rags, and Noel bought as many as he could from Dunlop for a bargain price. If there hadn’t been an oil shock and the resulting shortage of steel-belted tyres, the company never would have found out that the rags were superior for that job.

1982

NOEL: LITTLE RETIRES

In 1982, 46 years after he first lifted a tool in a mining company and 17 after he serviced his first contract as an entrepreneur, Noel Little retired from the company that he had built, and the industry that he had been instrumental in shaping. His part in the Little company had come to its end.

Following in their father’s footsteps, Alan and Joe took over the management of the company, and with new skippers at the helm came immense growth, a new direction, and a new trading name: Little Industries. The depot in Boulder was closed and all operations of the company were centred in Kambalda. The Little Company’s employee base rapidly grew from 20 to 150 employees, and new endeavours were undertaken.

In mid-1983, the company began crushing waste rock from the mines in Kambalda to supply a variety of quarry products to mining companies and government agencies in the Goldfields region. Rail ballast to was delivered for Westrail and the Australian National Railways (ANR). Concrete and sealing aggregates were supplied for the construction of most of the major mines in the region, including Western Mining’s Kambalda, St Ives, Kalgoorlie Nickel Smelter, Leinster and Mt Keith operations, as well as New Celebration, Paddington, Gidgie Roaster, KCGM Kalgoorlie, Bulong Nickel, Murrin Murrin and many other smaller projects.

In addition to servicing the mining industry, the company’s sealing aggregates were used on all the major highways and towns in the region, including the Eyre Highway, Goldfields Highway and Great Eastern Highway, and the towns of Kalgoorlie, Kambalda, Coolgardie, Esperance, Leinster, Leonora, Laverton, Wiluna and Southern Cross. A new tailings dam was constructed for WMC at Kambalda, including all drainage and collection dams and access roads.

Contract crushing was performed at WMC Kambalda, St Ives, Kalgoorlie, Nickel Smelter, Leinster, Ora Banda, Cue, and Laverton. Major crushing and heap leach projects were undertaken at ACM Westonia, and mine rehabilitation at WMC Resources Foster & Carnilya Minesites.

However, it was bulk haulage of mineral ores that remained the major portion of business, with major contracts being completed for WMC Kambalda, St Ives, Kalgoorlie Nickel Smelter, Leinster, Ora Banda, New Celebration and Jubilee.

1992

The Building of Anzac Drive

Reflective of the community spirit held by the company was the 1992 construction of Anzac Drive. Kalgoorlie badly needed a bypass road from West Kalgoorlie to Goldfields Highway, but for years the requests of residents and haulage companies had fallen upon deaf ears.

Out of sheer need and frustration, a group of local haulage, earthmoving and mining company executives decided to take action. On the weekend of the 18-20th of September, 1992 trucks, loaders, graders and scrappers were put to work along with a small army of volunteers. Working through the weekend, seven kilometres of well-designed and formed road were built, wide enough for the heaviest of traffic and far from the city’s streets.

With the road successfully in place and creating an effective bypass around the town, public support swelled in its favour. Forced to accept its existence, the State government sealed the road, and the roadbuilders of Anzac Drive, with the Littles amongst them, had changed Kalgoorlie-Boulder forever.

1993-2003

Quiet Time

Always an unstable game, in 1999 came the winds of change for the mining industry and those that supported it. The nickel price crashed, and with it many mines in the region. Little Industries stayed true to its heritage and kept to its geographical area, taking what work remained.

Crucially for the company, Western Mining sold off their nickel mines in the region. Instead of one large contract for all their mines, the market was filled with smaller operators needing service providers. Little Industries retained some of the work, but not all, and by 1999 had diminished to only 12 drivers. It was an opportunity to regroup, reinvent, and keep on rolling.

2003-Now

ANOTHER BOOM STARTS

After a lull in the mining industry, 2003 saw an acceleration in tempo. The resources of Western Australia were once again in global demand, and Little Industries went along for the ride. With calculated surety, vehicles and plant equipment were built back up again.

Where the ‘60s to mid-‘90s had required volume and turnover, this upturn allowed the company to use its wealth of experience and turn its hand to specialisation and its areas of expertise. Having learned from the downturn that followed the last boom, the company was more flexible, better able to ride the fluctuations and change its direction to stay with the times.

2003 saw the start and end of various long-standing contracts. After an ongoing relationship that spanned several years, June 2003 saw Little Industries complete a long-term contract with Western Mining Corporantion, carting Nickel Ore from various Mines, also providing machines to feed the Nickel processing plant Primary Crusher.

After Western Mining sold most of their nickel mines, we were awarded a few additional contracts Nickel haulage contracts that continued between 2003 and 2018.

Since the mid-80s, Quarry products have always been a consist part of Little Industries, however, in 2003, this became a bigger part of the company than previous decades. Contracts with Main Roads and other key contenders in the industry. Little Industries has been an integral part of various blue metal railway projects for contractors such as Arc Infrastructure and West Australian Rails.

This new era saw fluctuations in our employee structure. In 1999, we had over 50 employees and with time, this shaped into a robust team of 10. 2003 saw us increase our core workforce to 20. Now our team consists of a mix of company drivers and subcontractors, enabling more flexibility with lengths of contracts. By staying streamlined and remaining selective of our clients and contracts, the company ensured the quality of every job.

While varying facets of business started to expand, it was ore haulage in the changed times that played a lesser role. However, December 2009 to 2015 did see us take over the ore haulage from Mincore and Marriner Group. Although we have seen a downturn in ore haulage contracts in recent years, we look forward to the potential uptick yet to come.

By 2018, Little Industries moulded a solid focus on Quarry Products. We now almost exclusively specialise in Quarry Products and associated materials.

Our Future

Today, carried on by Alan, Joe and all who work in his name, Noel Little’s story continues.
To become a part of it, please contact us.

To find out more about the history of the Goldfields, check out the Woodlines of Eastern Goldfields Western Australia Facebook Group, supported by Little Industries.