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