28/08/2026
K. & J. Baker Cartage Pty. Ltd. – Flashback Friday 📸
This week’s Flashback Friday takes us back to the old soil yard and depot in Murtoa, over Lakeside!
Back in the day, we were also batching concrete from the depot in Murtoa, and these photos give us a pretty good look at how it was all done.
The first photo shows the old W7 Case loader, which was apparently a pretty good little loader for batching concrete. Alongside it is one of our old “Butter Boxes” – International ACCOs, fitted up with a concrete agitator. The concrete bowl was powered by a Holden 186 red motor. (Sorry to all the Ford fans out there, but Pop tells me they couldn’t handle the high revs 🤣🤣)
Down the bottom of the hopper is a young Lofty, opening the chute once each material had reached the right weight before it went up into the cement bowl. Up top of the Readymix plant is Barry Mackley, with a 1,000kg bulka bag of cement being put into the hopper.
You can also see the scales on the right-hand side, which were used to weigh up the stone, sand and cement for each batch.
In the next photo we’ve got Kevin Edwards, better known as “Sitch!”, waiting for his load of concrete to be batched into the truck and heading off for delivery. I reckon there’d be a few good stories about dear old Sitch! 😂
Pop tells me he had five concrete trucks operating out of this depot back in the day, which would have kept everyone pretty busy delivering concrete all around the district.
A lot has certainly changed since the days when the yard was over Lakeside!
Can anyone remember the old yard and concrete plant in Murtoa? Or maybe you remember these fellas batching some of the concrete that’s still standing around your town or area? Any stories or memories, let us know in the comments! 🚛🤩👇🏽
