Five Wheels on my Wagon

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DAY 382

I slept well last night after our very long day, but wow it is personally rewarding, my soul is settled as it feels like it has gained its worth again, that is important to me. I am a man who likes to be busy, I need to make a contribution and I love travelling but I also need a purpose.

I have been at the point of driving Caroline nuts, when we were in Darwin, I felt I just needed to be working, and consequently became a pain in the backside, though Caroline has also now been through these feelings herself, though I have no doubt that it will all fit in to place when we settle and get back full time to the work thing when the time is right.

Farm life is tough, I am an Electrical Engineer by trade, and a Project Manager for 20 years, but this environment is new to me, I know nothing about agriculture and I need to be told what needs to be done, Jason and Josh are good blokes and they guide me through my day, with their skill and lots of laughs which makes the day go so quick.

Josh and I have a quick cup of tea then walk to the out buildings where the header is parked, and go through its usual routine, big filter, little filter, these need to be blown out with the compressor as they get absolutely filthy, they are taken away from the header the full length of the hose down wind and blown out as the dust that comes out is plentiful.

Then the engine bay has to be blown out, again with the compressor, as chaff sits on top of the exhaust manifold, this is what led to the fire we attended to last week at the property just down the road, so precautions have to be taken.

Once the engine is attended to then the huge radiator, and condensers have to be blown out, it plays havoc with my hay fever but Its no good being a woos, it needs to be done.

Next we have to fill it up with about 1000 litres of fuel for the day and that’s everything at high level except for “checking” the oil but I personally like it black, checks just don’t suit it.

The last job for me is to walk around the header with the air line blowing out all the straw and other debris that we have collected the day before, there is lots and makes a hell of a mess, but soon the header is prepped for the next round, once Jason has walked around greasing her.

With Jason driving the header, the comb (front blades) are already up in the paddock as we left them there ready last night along with the little tractor and the chaser bin so I drive one of the land cruisers and Josh jumps in with me.

The old tractor won’t start this morning as the battery was left connected, it is an old tractor and must have an electrical fault on it so the battery drained overnight (the same battery that we attended to until 1.00 one morning as it caught fire), I fire the little tractor up and run it over to the other tractor and jump the old tractor in to life so we can move the large Vennings bin.

I am soon “Chasing” Jason down the long straight lines of the paddock receiving 6-ton loads from him, then shoot off and dump them awaiting the arrival of the grain truck to take it away.

As the Header uses GPS it gathers data, on the yield of wheat, the number of paddocks we have done and the relationship between yield and area, just roughly we have done approximately 380 hectares (give or take a hectare or two) which have yielded at 1.8 tonnes per hectare, we unloaded 42 times yesterday and have binned about 750 tonnes of grain to date, which I think is quite impressive.

We rattle this paddock out this morning, which alone is about 37 hectares, there are 2.48 acres to the hectare.

With this paddock harvested, again all the equipment has to be moved on to the next paddock. I have to spot for the header, that means I have to be the forward eyes for the header driver looking where he cannot see and giving him directions which way to turn, as we have to get the comb which is 9.1 mtrs wide through (over) the fences with out damage to fence or header.

We have four sets of gates and get it through without any bother, I am taken up to the chaser to bring it to its new position and jump in and start it up, I follow Josh who is in the cruiser down the track, Josh peels off in through the front gate and I decide to keep going as the track is fairly smooth, I am loaded with 6 tonnes of grain and I need to take a little bit of care.

My intention is to go to the end of the lane, which meets the main road, turn round on the main road then head back in to the paddock via the bottom gates just off the road.

I have slowed up, the hydro static gear box has slowed me down and I am gently, turning in the road, when suddenly the trailer appears at a peculiar angle, it takes me a couple of seconds to bring the tractor to a dead stop and turn round, and looking through the window I see one of the huge wheels has come off the trailer, and I can see into the top of the bin and see the top of the grain.

SH*T!!

I get on the UHF and tell Jason and Josh, they are both there in a flash, our first priority is to take away being a hazard so I jump out the tractor and make sure the traffic, which fortunately is extremely light, has no problems getting past, we move the big wheel out of the way, then decide our next move, so Josh goes and gets the truck that they call the Acco so we can decant the 6 tonnes of grain from the chaser bin to the truck so as to make the trailer lighter to lift.

This done, we get the Caterpillar front loader and sling a chain around the broken stub axel and around the front end of the loader and lift, with me gingerly driving the tractor towing the one wheeled bin Josh skilfully keeps the axel supported and follows me in so we can move the damaged trailer to a more sensible position.

We survey the damage, the stub axel has completely sheered off, still no one was hurt which is the main thing. While we survey the damage a highway police officer who is not particularly friendly to truck drivers, stopped to look at the scene, he laughed and then drove on.

Jason asks me to go with Josh and get the mobile fuel bowser with the Landcruiser as it has a compressor on board all the tyres on the Acco truck are pretty flat, so we go back to the sheds.

I have brought the equipment back and have already inflated the off side front truck tyre, Robert approaches me and then it all goes terribly wrong, and the next bit we are leaving out as we feel it is not appropriate to publish, however lets just say a huge disagreement followed as I had followed instructions from Jason in order to get things moving but these were questioned by Robert who had different priorities that no one was aware of.

Robert has been a very difficult man since we arrived here, it is harvest time which is a stressful time for farming, but I am not going to dwell on this any more for the sake of Helen, it would be unfair of us to put up everything that has happened on the blog, though we always like to tell the truth, we are not out to offend anyone, especially people that we have a deep and sincere connection with so that is all I will say about the subject.

Basically I am not prepared to take anymore abuse, and tell Robert this and walk back to Woodstock, which is about 3K’s, I am walking along the edge of the road and a bloke in a Ute stops and asks me if I need a lift anywhere, “no mate” I say, “I have just had a blue, with Robert and am walking back to Woodstock to clear my head”, “yea, no worries mate” he said and speeds off.

My day has been very different to Andy’s, I finished off some paperwork from yesterday and published the blog, Josh appears mid morning and asks if they could all have a toasted cheese sandwich, for some reason they are all hungry.

We cannot deny them a bit of food as they are working hard out there, you may wonder why a cheese toasty out here in the Australian heat, but the weird thing about today is, it is…. dare I say it…… COLD! Yes at 19 degrees it is a cold day here I am actually wearing a long sleeve t-shirt and long hiking trousers. Andy even had the heater on in the tractor.

With their lunches and a fresh cheese toasty all packed Josh disappears down the lane, with that done Helen was able to free herself so that we could go to Wagga Wagga and get some shopping in.

We have a nice lunch in the Moorish café near John Deere, we did have some errands to run like picking up a new battery in John Deere, dropping a faulty UHF unit and base station in for repair. Once the errands were done I had a few things to do like pop into the bank and needed to get Andy some new t-shirts so we went in Myers and Big W, however while we were in Big W Helen received a phone call, I could tell by the sound of her voice that this was not good.

She has been told the news about the chaser bin and the next part is that she has to drive down to Corowa to pick up a new stub axle, just to put this into perspective this is roughly a 2 hour drive from Wagga Wagga, which is like driving from Southampton to Birmingham (on a good day with no traffic).

So we pick up a bottle of water each, pay for our shopping and head out of Wagga toward The Rock and onwards to Corowa.

A chore that needs to be done, if we waited for a courier the part would not be on the farm until at least Thursday lunchtime, thus the urgency to drive down and get the part and bring it back tonight. Of course it takes up a lot of Helen’s day doing all the running around, it would not be so bad if everything was located nearby, but it is not this is the reality of living in this Australian environment.

I joke with Helen that I should document her day from the time she gets up to the time she goes to bed that is to say “A Day in the Life of Helen Sheridan”, I think she would be surprised at what her day really entails, even though she “retired” two years ago.

The landscape changes, it is becoming greener, they have had significant rain down here, there are huge puddles lying in the verges. Fewer crops have been harvested here and the crop that has been harvested is mainly baled and stacked high.

On the way down Josh speaks to Helen, I hear that Robert and Andy have had another run in, I knew that he had gone back to the house and I half suspected that he may be sat in the Patrol with the trailer hooked up and ready to go.

We get the part, and head back, Josh called as he was making dinner tonight, and it is Cheap Tuesday, which usually means pizza night from Dominoes or Eagle Boys, but Josh is making pizza instead, we relay where all the ingredients are and tell him what time we will be back.

We get back at 8.30pm, just in time to slip a tape in to video Packed to the Rafters, but we saw Josh busy in the shed on the way in, so figured that dinner would not be done.

I get in to find Andy sitting and reading; we have a quick chat about what happened today, he was quite upset by the whole scenario, he has worked exceptionally hard especially with no knowledge of farming and taking what direction he could from Jason.

Josh appeared, he grabbed a beer for him and Andy so I figured I should just get on with dinner, so I knocked up some pepperoni pizza for all of us, by the time everyone is in and ready for dinner it is 9.30.

Jason pops in to download the software from the header onto the John Deere software package, which takes all the stats, we persuaded him to have some pizza with us.

It was another crazy day for everyone and bedtime was most welcome.

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Photos

5 Wheels on my Wagon
Lifting the bin with the loader

What's the Score?
This is the score that I put in the road

Josh
And his tube of condesnse milk.

My morning View
Through my front windsreen