b'19391945 A ceiling of starsWar years The first real job for the fledgling business was in 1933: laying 6 kilometres of first-grade For the war effort, companies withhighway from Forest Hill to Hatton Valethe first contract in Queensland for a bitumen equipment like the Thiess Bros arepre-mix drag surface. They initially ran into difficulties getting the screenings and the expected to lend their facilities andsand to mix evenly in the hopper to pour through the spray, but once they solved that expertise, as well as build infrastructureproblem, they were off and away. After this success, Horn & Thiess took on their first such as roads and runways. The Eagle Farminvestor, a man by the name of Jack Corbett, who put up 600.Airport in Brisbane is one such project.By the time Horn & Thiess took on the Kilkivan Range job in 1934 (with Thiess Bros assisting), they had already found a way to secure willing hands to help, including their 1940 wives who joined them in camps to cook, drive, manage pay sheets and look after the young children. Men with swags on their backs came looking for jobs in those tough early 30s; Les and Jack managed to pick the ones with the greatest capacity for both New Occidental Mine work and humourtraits that remain ever-present in the business today.Thiess Bros wins its first job in NewThe mid-late 1930s was a period when all five Drayton-born Thiess brothers were South Wales. The job also marks the in their element. Les won contracts for road construction as well as smaller jobs, first foray away from roadworks and such as dam-sinking, all around the Downs, then north to Gympie and north-east to into mining site preparation. Maryborough. As each of them married, the brothers and their young families joined Les and his wife Tib at the camps by the various sites. Gradually, they upgraded from sleeping under their tractors to sleeping in tents, then rough huts with sheets of corrugated iron for roofing, hessian bags as walls and dirt floors. They woke to the fresh, tangy scent of eucalypts and tea trees and the wonderful clamour of birds and Australian wildlife. Despite the rough living conditionsor perhaps because of themthe bond of the Thiess brothers and their families grew stronger and stronger, eating together fromtin plates by the light of kerosene lamps.You have to remember that, back then, even houses in the big cities werent fully plumbed and wired, and paved roads were considered a luxury; out in the bush, things were even more austere. A butcher came to the site a couple of times a week, and meat was kept in hanging boxes draped with wet bags, or sometimes a small ice chest. There were also butter coolersearthenware jars dug into the ground. Fortunately, milk, eggs and, occasionally, vegetables and fruit were available from local farmers, and that kept the small team of men well fed. During rains, they struggled to keep the food from going off and often resorted to boiling up the meat with vinegar to preserve it. Old kerosene tins were filled with water and carted from the nearest creek to be heated over campfires for bathing (an old galvanised iron tub did the trick), as well as forthe mountains of laundry and, of course, endless cups of tea.15'