On the road for 1 year!

Trip Start Nov 22, 2010

112

Trip End Ongoing

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Flag of Australia Barmedman, New South Wales, Australia
Monday, November 21, 2011

I arrived in Barmedman on Sunday morning, however as soon as I arrived at the farm it had started raining and the harvesting was over for the day. That left the rest of the day to get to meet the rest of the people on the farm: I landed on the farm of John and Stephanie and their 2 children. They run a 3000 acre farm on which they plant mainly canola, barley and wheat. By the time I arrived on the farm, the canola was all harvested and the barley harvest was almost done. But that still left the largest chunk of the harvest: wheat. The previous chaser-bin driver had gone AWOL and together with Mick from New Zealand I got hired to help them finish their harvest. That Sunday we had a few beers at the local pub, where I also got a short introduction of Barmedman (very small town), it's 'culture' and surroundings.

On Monday we were ready to start harvesting: John has an almost new Case 8120 header, a big tractor (same type as I drove in Dalby) with Chaser bin, and a few trucks to get the product from the paddock to the farm and the big grain storage in town

One of the trucks and the chaser bin

. Kevin, the full-time employee on the farm, is driving the header and 'stripping' (as they call it here) the product of the field. I am driving the tractor with chaser bin with which I have to come up to within 1 meter of beak of the header so the header can discharge its load in the bin while driving. A steady hand is required; you don't wonna drive into the header! As soon as my chaser bin (15 ton, approx. 2 header loads) is full I drive to the headland where I dump the grain into a so-called 'motherbin' which holds 80 tons and from where the trucks can draw their loads. In order to keep up with the header (approx 30 tons of product per hour), John is carting the grain to a big grain storage in town with his road train that holds 40 tons while Mike uses a smaller truck to transport grain to the on-farm grain silo's.

The whole harvesting process is actually great teamwork and fun and in this first day we managed to harvest quite a lot of product. In the evening though one of the axles of the chaserbin had started to crack and we had to call it a day. That night, while having one of Stephanie's great meals, I suddenly realized it..... 21 November - 1 YEAR since I left home! Celebrations were in style with a good days work done and a cold Melbourne bitter at night! Never would I have dreamed that I would do the exact things that I have actually done this last year, but what a GREAT TIME it has been and still is!

Emptying the chaser bin into John's truck

!

That next day we prepared to use another old truck as Chaser bin (an old Leyland with an automatic(!!) gearbox, pretty rare for trucks) but as we were ready to get started, the rain ruined the party. It was great fun driving around in the truck though and I am not real sure anyway how good it would have worked if I would have had to drive an old truck over the paddock with a full load at high speed....

Tuesday and the day after were spent cleaning and maintaining the equipment as the rain didn't relent and the moisture in the wheat was to high to be harvesting. Since more rain is predicted for the weekend and we ran out of jobs I prepared to leave Barmedman for a few days and explore the surroundings.

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