A SIMILAR TALE OF MANY IN THE BUSH.
You see them everywhere from a time of yesteryear.
A space, a base, with only trace left, abandoned gear.
Place and time of family hopes and dreams, nature as the boss.
One by one as they join the drift, the old community, has a loss.
What is left hangs on as best it can, nature on course to reclaim.
Slowly, surely, no prisoners taken until little evidence will remain.
My look for clues, did tell some tale of how occupants filled their days.
When rivers ran and rain did fall, the woolly sheep did productively graze.
Pioneer of farming way ahead of time with silos, tractor and seeding gear.
Had their stabled working horses, these blokes, hard work they didn’t fear”
Hamish Holcombe 17-09-2023
This one a homestead now engulfed on National Park near Goodooga.
Empty house looks like a ‘Fifties era’ at a time when wool was the king.
Sitting faithfully by its side is the obligatory must have: “The Hills Hoist”
[A rotary clothes line using modern day ‘renewables’ of wind and solar]
The Hills Hoist was developed in Adelaide, by World War II veteran Lance Hill in 1945.
Designed and built a rotary clothesline from some old pipe.
The line could also be hoisted up to catch breezes after being loaded with wet laundry.
His first batch was made from tubing salvaged from under the Sydney Harbor Bridge, originally hung to catch enemy subs in WWII.
Many a sheep passed through this shed, sheep yards all but disapeared, Cattle yards a relic.
A common sight in early days was the 'Donkey' a wood fired arrangement of wlded drums holding water with a chimney through the middle to keep it warm. This one particularly flash with two together for more capacity of a large team of shearers.
Quite common was the almost majority use of horses as the property working tool.
With stables and horse round yards for training of younger and wilder animals.
Not so common was the seeding gear, way ahead of its times for the area.
One can only imagine the looks of the neighbours when this new fangled machine turned up so far west, smack bang in the middle of sheep country.
They must have been successful in growing some grain because it warrented not one but two silos !
D92 in the grass looks like a really early model compared to the display version of D879 below
The item is an end panel from the box section of a "SUN' Seed & Fertilizer Drill. It was manufactured by H.V. McKay Pty. Ltd. at their agricultural machinery manufacturing plant in Sunshine Victoria. The date of manufacture is estimated to be somewhere between 1921 and 1930 because of the imprint H.V. McKay Pty. Ltd. According to the Museum Metadata Exchange (http://museumex.org/oai/mv/2749) the Sunshine Harvester Works was reformed as H.V. McKay Pty. Ltd. in 1921 and in 1930 it became H.V. McKay Massey Harris Pty. Ltd after a merger with the Canadian farm machinery manufacturer Massey Harris.
A four cylinder diesel 'International Harvester' Tractor is the power source.
Of course the machine needed to be powered by something and the past gave up some more clues.albeit not complete, the engine is lying separate.
You will note the two mechanics checking the rear end in the middle picture, but did you notice the 'state of the art' air conditioning system supplied with the machine. ?
The umbrellor holding structure intact however not so the canvas awning, that is long gorn!!
THIS WAS A PROGRESSIVE OPERATION FOR ITS DAY
Useless Information Folder Material
The Hills Hoist was developed in Adelaide, South Australia by World War II veteran Lance Hill in 1945. As the story goes: Hill got home from the war and realized his backyard was getting crowded, so he designed and built a rotary clothesline from some old pipe.
Hill decided to go into business building and selling clotheslines. His first batch was made from tubing salvaged from under the Sydney Harbor Bridge, originally hung to catch enemy subs in WWII.
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