The longest, roughest, and toughest Cape York service calls are all in a day’s work for Hydraulink’s indomitable Lachie Spicer

In a service territory extending nearly 1,000km from south to north, and encompassing some of Australia’s remotest dirt roads across its breadth, the mobile service call area of Lachie Spicer presents some of the ultimate and most diverse challenges imaginable.

“One day you can be up at the mines at Weipa working with some of the biggest and best heavy diesel mining equipment on the planet, and the next day you can be helping out some newbie from the city down south who has dumped his lovely, brand new and expensive 4wd in a ditch – or broken down and doesn’t know what to do.

“Then you can be delivering service and essential hydraulic hoses to the road crews and their diesel heavy equipment – graders, rollers and the like - that are actually making and repairing the roads you are travelling on. Variety is the spice of life up here,” says Lachie, who set up CCH (Cooktown to Cape Hydraulics) services to provide levels of mechanical service and areas of coverage not previously available at the Top End.

The latest major step in this business growth this year has been to join the national Hydraulink hose and fitting network, which operates under the corporate signature “Best Under Pressure,” and which operates 13 company-owned sites in Australia, 135 network partners, and 150 service vehicles offering 24/7 onsite and mobile services

“Their industry knowledge and service attitudes are great. We fit together hand-in-glove. They prize quality, value, service, and standards compliance wherever we work – and that can be some very interesting places up here.

“In fact, some of the jobs are so far apart, I would like to buy an aircraft so we can get to them even sooner and become Hydraulink’s ultimate mobile service,” says Lachie, 26, who was a commercial pilot in the south of Australia before Covid largely killed demand.

With his wife Kim and a son and daughter to support – and another Bub on the way  – Lachie was quick to see the opportunities of the automotive and service businesses set up to meet local demand.

These new businesses, actively backed with the involvement of Mum Sharyn and Dad Darren, include a fully equipped automotive workshop, a 4wd recovery operation, a car hire operation, Milkwood Lodge rainforest cottages, and other services and facilities needed around Cooktown and beyond.

“To help boost local business we invested in the types of service and skills needed up here,” says Sharyn, “We decided we could do this, and make new businesses  to boost the region. We decided to ‘Just do it. ‘ ”

“Lachie’s skills added a new dimension to the businesses – he is born to be self-reliant and is a shining example to the apprentices and younger people we employ. They have to be self-starters up here to survive, and we show them how.

Teaming up with Hydraulink

“Teaming up with Hydraulink has been one of the best things we have done since starting these businesses. They are very family-oriented, just like us, and jump in to lend a hand and advise us on how to go forward.

“Where they find the people with these great attitudes amazes me, plus how keen they are to help out newbies to their business to learn the ropes and get ahead. They give us a thoroughly good grounding and top quality product plus ongoing training, which is important to the world-class operations we serve. We couldn’t be happier,” says Sharyn.

Hydraulink Australia National Franchise Manager, Wayne Abbott, says the team at Hydraulink Cooktown embody the best characteristics that the company wants to attract to its ranks.

“They are go-getters, they believe in excellence, quality, safety and value – all the things that are bottom-line assets to anyone who comes in contact with them. They will go the extra distance always to ensure that the absolute best job gets done in the very best time, whether it is in their well-equipped homebase workshop, or whether it is Lachie’s ultimate on-site service.

“This is the type of service that brings clients back time after time – Hydraulink Cooktown are born winners with their service-first attitudes. They are very much the type of people we want to work with and develop with to our shared advantage and that of our customers.”