A554

Fordson tractors were very popular in Australia during the 50s and 60s.

I operated a similar hay baler in Sweden in 1980. I was working on a farm in southern Sweden and we made some "rough" hay for the family pony to eat through the winter. The 18 year old son did most of the tractor driving but he was having problems with the knotters on this baler that had been borrowed from a neighbour. I helped him fix the knotters but he lost interest and got me to finish the job. This baler had a chute to load a trailer pulled behind the baler. As we were doing only a small area we dropped onto the ground and pick up later.

Photos of JD 1051 pull type combine available in Australia. The photos show the type of front that was popular in Australia - the long fingers worked well with wheat, barley and oats, with minimal straw taken into the combine. As the third photo shows, the header was permanently attached to the combine and was designed to go into a transport position as required.

Sugar cane is a giant grass. The sugar is concentrated in the stems. The harvester cuts off the leaves at the top, the stalks are cut at ground level and the cut stalk cut into approx 12 inch pieces. Trash is blown out of the harvester and is left as mulch over the plants. Cane can be harvested several times (annualy) before cultivating and replanting. The cut pieces are transported to a mill and crushed and heated to extract the juice and sugar. The remaining plant trash is used to fire the boilers to generate electricity to power the mill and also sold for use by locals.

Chamberlain tractors were manufactured in West Australia starting after WW2. They were part owned by John Deere when the tractor in the photo was built in the 1980s. These Chamberlains were powered by JD engines.

Yes it is sugar cane being harvested in Australia and probably in the 1960s. These photos are a couple of years old but same process being used. Most cane in Australia is harvested "green", that is unburnt.

IH had a long history of building combines in Geelong Australia particularly after WW2. Many IH combines were imported into Aust from US mainly I believe, before manufacturing started here. Most popular combines built here were pull type with self-propelled more popular in 1960s. This included the IH 711 which was an Aust made combine that was sold for many years alongside the 715 from the US. To my knowledge the 711 was not based on the 715 and the 725/6 were updates on the 711.

I think the 725 and 726 combines were made in Australia and only sold in Australia. The photos show the combines with 'closed front' headers that were widely used in Australia to harvest grain crops. These headers are designed to only cut a small amount of straw with the heads. The 715 was sold in Australia and replaced by the axial flow combines in the 80s.

Loadstar, I stand corrected. Just looked up my Power Farming Technical Annual for 1960 and see that indeed the 585 was powered by a 6-cylinder engine. My mistake. Probably something to do with the year in which I was born.

The Sunshine Harvestor Company became part of Massey Ferguson in Australia and the early auto harvestors continued to be developed and ended production during the 1960s. The 585 and 587 models were popular in the 1960s. The auto version had a 4 cylinder Chrysler flat head petrol(gas) engine.

Seeders in Australia mostly had a row of cultivator tynes in front of the seeding tynes and another row of cultivating tynes behind the seeding ones. Up until air seeders came in this arrangement was common and provided some weed kill at the same time as sowing the crop. These seeders were referred to as "combines" in Australia. Not sure if it meant combining some cultivation with seeding or combining seed and fertiliser together as they were put into the ground. We have now caught up and combines are the big expensive machines for harvesting crops. Photo of an Australian made IH986 and Shearer combine and an ad for a IH Australian made combine from 1960s.

I have never seen any Cockshutt tractors in Australia. I worked on a farm in Manitoba in 1979 and drove a gas powered 50 and really liked that old tractor. Cockshutts were advertised in Australia in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Here is a scan of the diesel 50 in the Power Farming Technical Annual of 1960 together with a list of dealers around Australia. perhaps this is as far as they went in coming to Australia.

A couple of photos of a KL Bulldog tractor on a pull in Victoria, Australia.. Lanz tractors were made in made in Australia for a while by the Kelly & Lewis company and marketed as KL tractors. Must have been a tough tractor to spend any time working them - this one just seemed to "tremble and shake" under load and got louder with more smoke and flames.

The 622 cotton picker was in the 1976 IH Australian buyers guide.

In 1979 I worked on a farm in Manitoba on an exchange program. They had a brand new MF 750 and an older 760 combines and I recall the problems we had with crops wrapping on the paddle feeder system. You can see in 2 of the photos the inspection/access hatch is open so that the operator can check to see if wrapping has started. We found that we had to stop as soon as we saw it starting to wrap and cut it off the paddle. The combines are working in Birdsfoot Trefoil and it is combined at about the same stage as it would be baled for hay so it is still green and was prone to wrap. MF had a kit that was designed to reduce wrapping and we fitted a kit to the 750. It consisted of sheet metal bolted onto the shaft/paddles to increase the "diameter" of the shaft and thus reduce wrapping. We lost a fair bit of knuckle skin but it did improve the performance but the trefoil and flax still wrapped regularly.