Rob Townsing

Rob Townsing was born in Melbourne in 1958. His career started out while he was still at school, washing buses after hours and on school holidays. Rob’s first trip to Alice Springs was when he was 13, and it was two years later that he started his career as an apprentice diesel mechanic working for bus company Gippsland Educational Tours & Funfari. A great deal of his apprenticeship involved fixing breakdowns on buses on the side of roads enroute to Alice Springs.

Rob worked on buses driving tourists and schools to the NT for approximately 10 years. When he finished his apprenticeship he bought an R-200 International truck and worked as an owner driver on excavations and building sites. In 1986 he set up a company and married his wife Jane, whom he had met whilst driving the school bus route. He started off with a tandem tipper, moved on to a Kenworth with a body and dog trailer, before progressing on to driving and owning semi tippers, B-doubles and flat tops.

Robert and his wife Jane have four children who all take an interest in the family business. The same company now owns 20 trucks and has employed many people over the years. Rob is happily married to this day and continues to work with the ongoing support of his wife and four adult children by his side.

His career has taken him and his family all over Australia for work and Rob often still takes his wife along with him for interstate work and long trips. Some of the companies Rob has worked with over the years include Gippsland Educational Tours, Laurie Pincini, Centralian Staff and Coach Tours, and Contiki to name a few.

Rob’s favourite memories from early in his career include driving passengers in tourist coaches on camping safari buses to Uluru, which was known as Ayres Rock at the time. While on the Alice Springs run, Rob recalls being stuck in floods for 2 weeks in 1976 before being towed out by dozers after police unsuccessfully tried to tow the buses out with 4whee drives.

Rob takes pride in keeping many of the earlier model trucks used by the companies he worked for still running to this day. Rob participates in historical truck shows from time to time, allowing his children to drive the vehicles to shows such as Lancefield, Geelong, Echuca and Albury.