A PIONEERING spectacle is set to jump off the history pages in January when one of Australia's biggest private collections of vintage harvesters are fired up in southern New South Wales.
In a scene reminiscent of the 1920s and 1930s, the working display of 27 tractor-drawn vintage harvesters will be stripping a wheat crop near Pleasant Hills, about 30 minutes drive west of Henty, New South Wales.
Pleasant Hills farmer and vintage harvester collector, Kerry Pietsch, wants to give young, old, rural and urban people the chance to see, hear and smell living history.
Pietsch said the Warrangong Vintage Harvest Day on Saturday, 11 January would be a one-off with no plans to hold it again.
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"It will be a scene not witnessed in the Australian bush for generations and will give a unique insight into how our forefathers farmed a century ago,'' he said.
Pietsch, as the principal of the Warrangong Heritage Collection Incorporated, is staging the vintage harvest day on his Pleasant Hills farm, as a follow up to a previous vintage harvest day held in February, 2014.
The vintage harvest day will feature an array of restored and working harvesters, winnowers, strippers, chaff cutters and tractors, harvesting a 15ha crop of the heritage wheat variety Ford.
Pietsch's collection spans a stripper, headers and harvesters, including horse drawn, PTO and self-propelled machines – of every make and model, jockeying for space in an ever-increasing number of sheds.
The collection ranges from a horse-drawn 1902 David Shearer Maker's Mannum stripper to a 1980 John Deere 1051 PTO header and includes Pietsch's favorite, a fully-restored United States manufactured Cockshutt once belonging to his uncle.
He concedes he was born in the wrong era and enjoys nothing more than harvesting on a machine open to the elements. Now semi-retired from sheep and grain growing, he can devote more time to his passion of restoring historic farm machinery.
The collection also includes a homemade header comprising a Gleaner crawler tractor converted to a harvester with planks of wood on the tracks to help with traction in wet conditions. It featured two gear boxes – one to drive the tractor and one to operate the harvester.
A centrepiece of the vintage harvest day will be a restored 1925 Sunshine Auto Header which was designed by Henty's own Headlie Shipard Taylor and marked its centenary in 2024 at the Henty Machinery Field Days.
The event will see gates open at 8am and demonstrations getting underway at 9am.
Vintage machinery enthusiast Kevin Elphick will provide talks throughout the vintage harvest day, while lunch and refreshments will be for sale.
Entry fee is adults $22, concession $18, children 12 to 16 years $10 and Under 12 free. Tickets available online or at the gate via card only.
For more information, contact Kerry Pietsch on mobile phone 0480 143 398 or email: warrangongharvestday@gmail.com
