During the 1990’s I was lucky to have spent a lot of time in the Australian outback, in particular the Northern Territory, producing a series of documentaries for the Nine Network… and I loved every minute of it.

Through the windscreens of Nissan patrols, I witnessed some of the most amazing landscapes, I slept in swags under the broadest canopy of stars ever and swam in some of the most beautiful lagoons in the most isolated regions of this country.

To me the Northern Territory is Australia’s “Texas” … everything is big.

The wide-open spaces are big, the sunsets are big, the characters and their hats are big, even their Darwin stubby beers are big, and we all know how big/long their road trains can be, so really, I shouldn’t have been surprised when I was recently forwarded this tweet.

The Northern Territory Tow Tractor

For the records, that was three triple-bogey road trains (and there could have been more), and the tow tractor in the tweet was an American-manufactured Steiger.

The Steiger Tractor Company was founded in the 1950’s by farming brothers Douglass and Maurice Steiger from Red Lake Falls, Minnesota, they first built a tractor for their own use in their workshop from old truck parts before mass producing and marketing their tractors throughout the United States and Canada. In 1986, the Steiger brand was bought by Case International Harvester who to this day continue to manufacturer tractor models with the Steiger name.