by Nick Drew | Mon 31 Jul 2023
Living the Australian Dream with Red Dog
Thanks to our Digger Man Blog Instagram account, I recently came across a fantastic business in Australia which was founded by an English guy, James Elliott, who made the move Down Under in 2007 and he was keen to tell us his story.
James who originally hails from Worcestershire, England, is a carpenter by trade and back in the day started a civil engineering apprenticeship with a local company called Laser, he later crossed into the building sector using his carpentry skills as an entry.
Sometime later James had his own building business running in the Midlands, and in a scenario straight out of a romantic Mills & Boon novel, he randomly bumped into in his words, a ‘Blonde Bombshell Aussie Chick’ in a country pub in Worcester that he used to frequent called the March Hare.
The two of them hit it off instantly and the rest as they say is history, eventually moving to Australia as previously mentioned in 2007.
James set about establishing himself in the South East corner of the Queensland area, and not long after set up his Red Dog business. The Red Dog Group of companies has now been running for some 14 years and has expanded massively.
The business is now a multi-faceted affair which sees them building homes and commercial buildings, of which they are also developers through their Elliott Property Group division. Earthmoving and civil engineering is also a massive part of what they do, and typically revolves around infrastructure, mining and housing estate projects along with land clearing, land stabilisation and dam work, effectively they can undertake most jobs from start to finish, a real one-stop solution.
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In addition to that they also have Red Dog Diesel, a dedicated heavy plant mechanical division that looks after all their kit, and other contractor’s equipment.
Red Dogs equipment fleet is dominated by machines from the Caterpillar stable, with numerous Next Gen models of excavators taking pride of place with most fitted with 3D GPS systems, tilting buckets and some Engcon tiltrotators. However, keeping to his historical roots James does have some JCB excavators on the fleet including one of the new 245XR models.
The company was named after James own red cattle dog, that he got a year after arriving in Australia. Coincidently, there was a famous Kelpie Australian breed dog that was well known for his travels through Western Australia’s vast Pilbara region. Named ‘Red Dog’ he had a series of owners during his lifetime, and spent long periods wandering on his own, effectively becoming a mascot of the greater Pilbara community, his life’s adventures eventually being made into a movie.
What I loved about James’s story, was the fact that he and his partner have followed their dreams, and made a great success of them, many think about moving to another country and never do it, myself included, but the Red Dog story just shows what can be achieved with skills and a determination to succeed.