Seeding 1957

In 1954, my parents were granted two conditional purchase blocks of uncleared scrubland at North Ongerup. This Sketchbook drawing depicts the machinery used to plant the first wheat crop in 1957. A Wiles 20 run seed drill pulled by a Caterpillar D2 3J series. Dad and I planted 300 acres of wheat during the three weeks of seeding in late June. Pop Martin cooked for us as well as provide other help with the tasks.

  Clearing Mallee

This Sketchbook picture is based on a photo that my brother took of me driving the same Cat D2 pulling a wide salmon gum log that we used to knock down the lighter scrub on the new land blocks. I’ve used manual photo clone airbrush to produce the painting using the photo as a template.

This is my depiction of autumn burning of previously spring logged scrub. If the fire was hot enough to create a vapour cloud at the top of the pillar of smoke, it indicated a very clean burn which would not need any cleaning up before the first plowing. A clean burn could be cropped the same year but an unclean burn would have to be left as fallow until the following year.