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This is a May Brothers' header ready for action. It cut a 1.5m
(5 foot) swath.
(Photo Stan O'Dea) |
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A tractor with solid rubber tires drawing a trailer carrying 60
bags of grain in 1925 or 26. (Wheat sold then for 4 pence ha'penny
per bag.)
This tractor traveled the 4 miles (7km) from Huddleston to Crystal Brook at about 8 m.p.h. (13 km/hr). 2200 bags were carted in this season. Photo thanks to H.H. Williams. |
Hay Cutting and Carting
If I remember correctly from my childhood, the horse team is pulling
a machine called a binder. The binder cut the hay, and then tied it
in bundles and dropped them on the ground where they could dry
before being carted onto haystacks.
If stacked too green, the hay would rot, or possibly even get so hot as to spontaneously catch fire, or so the old belief went. (It would certainly get hot, so hot that you couldn't hold your hand inside a bundle of hay, but whether it would get so hot as to catch fire is more questionable.)
One of the more interesting points about this photo is that there appears to be a vineyard in the background. (Click on the photo to see a larger copy.)
I would guess that this photo was taken before 1950, possibly much before.
The sheaves of hay left by the binder would be stacked into groups
called stooks to dry. In the stooks the sheaves would be stood on
end.
Once dry, the hay would be picked up and thrown on a cart using a
long-handled pitchfork, then carted to a convenient spot and built
into a hay stack. Building the hay stack was an art; it had to
hold together, so the sheaves would have been overlapped in adjacent
layers, like a brick wall, and the outside layer had to run the
rain off, like a thatched roof.
Horticulture
It's odd that in the early 1900s grapes were grown in the Beetaloo
Valley, while in 2001, when they are being grown everywhere else
that is remotely suitable, few are grown in Beetaloo; perhaps
a missed opportunity?
Innovation
Innovation has always been important in Australian farming.
Here the haystack is nearing completion.
A truck-load of grapes, probably from Cox's of Beetaloo.
This photo shows a 15/30 Tractor pulling a Sun header, but note
that the tractor can be controlled from the header. The steering
has an extension, and a rope controls the tractor clutch.
There was no control of the tractor brakes from the header, so the
system would not have been safe in hilly country.
Here is Gordon Greig at age 18, seeding with a Fordson tractor, and
remote control again.