Private collection of 27 vintage harvesters being put to work in NSW

One of Australia's largest private collections of vintage harvest machines is on display in southern New South Wales.

Transcript

00:00The vintage machines have been pulled out of the shed and put to work.

00:06Retired farmer Kerry Peach has been collecting and restoring vintage harvesters for more

00:12than 60 years.

00:13He has 30 in his collection and 26 are in action today, ranging from a stripper built

00:19in 1902 through to models from the 1980s.

00:24There's a handful of highly prized Sunshine Harvesters and these were designed and developed

00:30in Australia and able to harvest the grain as well as thresh it and bag it all in one

00:36operation.

00:37Now you might see these kinds of machines in a museum or on display, but to see them

00:42operating is a real treat.

00:44It's just so rare and to see it working in a crop, I think it's just good for young people

00:51and older people to see the last of this machinery working.

00:56Unlike the fully air-conditioned cabins, GPS navigation and automatic steering of the large

01:01harvesters that farmers use today, most of these vintage machines are towed behind other

01:06tractors and preparing them has been a big task for the 77-year-old collector.

01:13But it's something that's bringing back memories for many of the crowd, a lot of them who were

01:18farmers.

01:19We had plenty of things to talk about and it took us three weeks to harvest this one

01:24paddock and now I've sat in a modern header and harvested in about four or six hours.

01:30A bit of charm with these old girls though?

01:33Oh yes, plenty of dust and you'd be sitting on those things and cop dust, hope the wind

01:41was going sideways and blowing the dust away.

01:43The crop itself is a heritage variety that would have been grown in this district between

01:48Wagga and Albury in the 1930s and at the end of the day's harvest it's going to be

01:53bagged up for chicken feed.

01:55This field day is an opportunity to gain an insight into agricultural development and

02:01the innovation in mechanical grain harvesting in the past 120 years.