A WHEAT harvest wouldn’t be the same without a walk back in time to celebrate an agriculture industry that helped shape Australia.
The Croppa Creek Classic Harvest will on November 15-16-17 celebrate more than 100 years of automated headers in a paddock at the property, Baroma, owned by the Thompson and Siddins families.
The site sits on the Croppa-Moree road just past the Croppa Creek crossing at the junction of Croppa Creek Road and Belmore Downs Road.
The display – tagged A Walk Back in Time by event organiser Lawrie Timmins – features historical machinery from the late 1800s through to the 1970s.
Mr Timmins expects up to 1000 people over three days to watch the old machinery in harvest action.
“We get 200 or 300 people each day,” he said.
A feature will be a Meadowbank stripper from the 1890s, manufactured not long after South Australian firm, Mellor Brothers, established the Meadowbank Manufacturing Company near Ryde in Sydney.
Mellor Brothers manufactured wheat separators, ploughs, harrows, scarifiers, stump-jump implements, strippers, windmills, pumps, horse-rakes and general agricultural implements, but by the 1930, the company had closed, a victim of the Great Depression.
“The Meadowbank harvester will also have a hand-turned winnower,” Mr Timmins said.
He said many pieces at the Croppa Creek Classic Harvest will be operational.
“There will be some static displays and tractor-drawn ploughing displays as well as a horse-operated bag slinger loading a horse-drawn wagon,” Mr Timmins said.
Also on display will be a 1950s tractor-drawn Massey Harris PTO and a John Deere 25 Beetle Back from the same era.
In all, more than a dozen vintage and veteran pieces will be displayed, many of them in working order.
The on-farm working museum came about by accident about 10 years ago.
Mr Timmins was at a clearance sale and spotted an old Brown drive header among the lots.
He bid against a scrap metal merchant and the piece of farming history was his.
“It was in pretty good condition and was going to go to scrap metal,” Mr Timmins said.
“I thought, it was too good for that, so I put in a bid. The metal man pulled out and I ended up winning it for fifty bucks,” he grinned.
“We brought it home and towed it around the flat with a little tractor. It all worked and was all pretty good.
“A few people came along and watched and when we let it out we were going to give an old Sunshine ground-roller a run, another 25 or 30 people turned up.
“The next year we found another header, so we gave that one a run, too. It all started from that. This year, we’ll have 10 or 12 headers on display, with many of them working,” he said.
Croppa Creek Classic Harvest: A Walk Back in Time
When: November 15-16-17 (Friday-Saturday-Sunday)
Where: Baroma (Croppa-Moree road just past the Croppa Creek crossing)
Information: 0427 545227
