FARMING AS A COMMUNITY ACTIVITY
Cropping at Yanget at times became a bit of a community exercise with favours extending to 20 tonnes of fertiliser coming
cheap on the back of a friend’s big order. A handy tonne or so of leftover wheat seed found its way into the culti-trashes
towards the end of an intensive few weeks of seeding via another friend. Machinery was lent or donated and time spent fixing
it up was given gratis alongside the paid mechanic.
When the season broke and every bastard in the district was trying to book in a spray contractor, Bill and Rod were grateful
that the McCartney boys adjusted their own seeding program to come to Yanget for a few days and also took time to truck in
some lupins. Sometimes money changed hands, but Bill was kept busy killing sheep to keep up with favours done.
This was a community kicking in to support one of their own.
LUPINS
One day Bill, Geoff and I prepared for a delivery of about 20 tonnes of lupins. This required
making sure the auger motor was capable of firing up so the mouth of this serpentine mechanical
tunnel could sit over the top of the silo, suck the seed from the delivery truck and convey it up
the moving ramp to the hole in the top.
The auger was rusty and had clearly spent time lying around in a paddock. I continued to be
amazed that practically every piece of equipment in this gig relied on firing up rusty old petrol
engines and stunned by the amount of oil-industry based products in general required to run a
modest farming operation.
Normally, Bill would start an engine farmer-style by sticking a screwdriver in between two points
so it kick-started the starter motor, but left to his own devices, Geoff fashioned a nifty key out of
a scrap of metal that hung near the ON button so the thing could be turned on conventionally.
39