THE START OF HARVEST

THE CHASER BIN DRIVER

We have just spent the last few weeks harvesting all the Canola. They had a bumper crop this year. At last count it was approx 1,400 Tonne or more and at 600 bucks a tonne, it has been a fairly good money maker this year. Steve is now a fully fledged “Chaser Driver”. A Chaser Driver (for those who aren’t up with the farm lingo) is a person who drives a tractor towing a large 25 tonne bin and chases around the paddock emptying the Headers. This isn’t as easy as it sounds as you have to keep moving. The Headers don’t stop and when they are using the large comb, which is 36 ft wide, you’re getting to within a couple of feet from them . Once they are full, they call you on the radio and you drive up along side and have to drive at their pace, in the same line they are travelling, without losing any grain. It usually takes about three Header loads to fill the Chaser bin. Once the bin is full, Steve races back to the large paddock bins and empties out and then goes back to fill up again. The bins can sometimes be quite a distance from the headers. The largest paddock of Canola was 1700 acres. It was 5kms long. The paddock bins hold approx 50 tonne. The road trains then come in and fill up from the paddock bins. Steve’s on the night shift so he’s going from 3 or 4 in the arvo til any hour in the morning so far nothing earlier than 2 am.

While they were swathing the Canola, one of the Headers got bogged in a creek between two paddocks . Steve had fun helping the owners recover it mainly because the son, Peter, decided that seen as he was the only person to know where to hook the tow chains, he would have to be the one that got dirty. Steve stayed clean and dry and Pete got covered in mud (you see by the photo’s the chains had to go around the larger wheel axles deep in mud).

They had just started to harvest the Wheat and it started to rain wo we have had six days off to wait for everything to dry out. We had a couple of good lightning shows when the storms came.

The rain came at a good time really as everyone was gettting a bit tired. Steve’s longest shift so far was 18 hours and it’s hard to adjust your body clock to sleeping half the day. We have been out touring while things have been idle. We have been down to Dongara, Port Dennison and Mingenew to the South and up to Yuna, Northampton, Horrocks Beach and Coronation Beach to the North. Port Dennison is the nicest place we have found on the coast so far. It is well planned and designed.

It is a real coastal town that caters to the tourist and enhances its assets whereas most of the other towns are normal everyday working towns with a beach as their backyard, oh for a bit of good old hospitality. W.A. seems to be like Victoria was 30 years ago, no idea how to cater to anyone other than locals. When we went up to Northhampton we decided to have lunch at the pub. Well, that was a frustrating decision. Three pubs later and no meals (in one pub not a soul to be found anywhere behind the bar) - we decided to ask at the tourist info centre where to get something to eat. They pointed us in the direction of a Café up the street, I was nervous as soon as we walked in, no eye contact, no smile and barely a response when Dianne said G’day. Anyway, we ordered a Hamburger with chips and salad on the side. While we were waiting, a fella came back in and returned a pie which was mouldy (Shit you say) now I really was nervous. We got our Burgers if that’s what you could call them. They consisted of a cooked frozen pattie between a roll with 2 rings of onion and sauce. The salad on the side was a piece of lettuce, a slice of tomato and shredded purple cabbage (2 shreds) and a smidge of carrot. Sorry, I forgot to mention the 10 chips – at a BARGAIN price of $9.50. If anyone with a bit of nouse wanted to get into a takeaway or hospitality business, the opportunities are endless in nearly all country WA towns we’ve visited. They just have no idea.