When I think about construction machinery today, the road leads back without fail to my earliest childhood in the early 1970s. Still sitting in my pram, I watched them in awe – huge, loud, powerful machines building a new railway line. The western portal of a tunnel lay on my mother's daily walk at the time, and there they came and went: Caterpillar 621 rear dumpers. They left the tunnel fully loaded, helped raise a mighty embankment, and disappeared back into the mountain with empty bodies.
Those images have stayed vivid, and they were the beginning of a lifelong fascination.
Not long after, that enthusiasm moved in with me in miniature. The NZG model of the Cat 621 with Athey wagon was among the finest toys I owned. Articulated steering, big wheels, those particular movements – to me they always had something animal about them and reminded me of dinosaurs. And then the noise that commanded respect. None of it ever let go of me, and it fascinates me to this day.
My father played his part too. As a truck driver he regularly brought home stories from others in the trade – about dumper drivers, big construction sites and new machines. One of those stories has stayed with me above all: the sensation that a wheel loader could fill a truck with a single bucket. Five cubic metres in one go – that must have been a Cat 988. Moments like that were magic to me. The matching NZG model sadly remained a dream that never came true. The rear dumper, by contrast, was played with so intensely that it did not survive my childhood. As an adult I was determined to have this legend of my youth in my collection, and I found a collector who sold me one in good condition.
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