The cotton picking finished at 8pm Thursday 16th June. At 8.30pm we left on our Grey Nomad journey. With 13 days to get to Katherine for July 1st cracker night!!! Yehaaa!!!! Finally, finally, finally we were on our way......... and travelled 10km to my Mum and Dad's for the night!!!!! Next morning we set out at 9am, smoko stop at Ray and Carol's (Chinchilla), lunch stop at a roadside stop at Miles then on to Mitchell to the Neil Turner Weir for Friday night - a great free camp spot. Next morning we went to the Hot Artesian Spa Baths in Mitchell - I really enjoyed it as it was a very cold morning but David didn't really think the Baths were anything special. We spent Saturday night and Sunday morning at Chris and Robyn's near Blackall. After lunch we headed to Barcaldine, checked out the Tree of Knowledge, Thong-a-phone, Marimba and the Rose Gardens. Stopped overnight at Newstead Creek rest area near Longreach.
About to leave Mum and Dad's
Neil Turner Weir - Mitchell
The booming main street of Augathella on a Saturday afternoon!!!!
When it rains and the cotton picking comes to a standstill the big boys go out to play!!!! Terry and kids were at 'Windalea' for the long weekend and had brought their old bomb commodore out on a trailer. David had slashed a race track for them down near the creek. Owen managed to get his old bomb cortina going (but it didn't keep going long). So it was off to the race track for some fun and noise.
Terry's commodore
Owen's cortina
Turn up the volume for these videos!!!
Fun and Noise
The race is on
Terry doing a burnout on the bitumen (note the pop near the end - just before my exclamation-when the tyre blew out)!!!!!
Terry made some wheels with a difference - the noise is rather impressive on the bitumen. At night a burnout with the steel checker plate wheels creates an impressive fireworks display.
Is the wind blowing? What direction is it blowing from? These are important questions when it's spraying time on the farm. Because if the neighbours have a crop growing against your boundry you could kill with the chemical that you are about to spray on your crop it is very important that you know if the wind is blowing and in what direction. Other people use wind vanes, wind socks, a smoky fire etc. but my Dad has a unique wind direction indicator!!!! Why use expensive time consuming things when a piece of string hanging on a bent wire mounted on the front of the Massey Ferguson 35 will do the job!!!!!
There is no wind!!!! Spray plane flying over too.
Now the wind is blowing from the west!!!!
And if the piece of string is wet you know it's raining!!!!!!!
The long awaited and late cotton picking started at last!!!! Thank goodness for some lovely warm sunny days to dry the ground and cotton out.
Owen had employed a contractor (Adam) to pick his cotton on Mum and Dad's place "Sunrise". I did a round on the cotton picker with Adam to get some first hand knowledge and videos of the process.
Adam's picker (the green John Deere in the photos) makes bales of cotton and does the whole process with the one machine without stopping. The John Deere picks the cotton, builds it in to bales and wraps the bales in plastic then spits the bale out the back of the picker, then starts the whole process again. The picker is totally computerised - all Adam has to do is steer the picker and keep his eye on all the read-outs on the computers in front of him and if something goes wrong eg. something clogs or jams up a buzzer warns him to check the computers. Some of the other things the computers show him are his ground speed, hectares picked, total bales picked, number of bales picked in each hectare, how much of the paddock he has picked, fuel usage per hectare, bales picked in each section of the paddock, the building of the bale, wrapping of the bale. He also has a rear camera that shows him a picture of the bale building, wrapping, etc.
As you can see from the video Owen's cotton is planted skip row so the middle two heads of the picker are lifted up and not in use. So that style of picker is a one man operation from cotton plant to cotton bale wrapped. A bale weighs two and a half tonnes and is much higher than me and you can see the size of the picker with David standing beside it. (It is the same size and brand of picker as Greg's that burnt). These pickers are worth approx. $850,000.00 dollars. The round bales then have to be loaded onto semi-trailers and taken to the Cotton Gin to be processed.
In Adam's picker
Dad moving the bales into a line for the semi trailers to collect
Loading bales onto the semi
Adam's picker
Some of the computers in the cabin
Completed Wrapped Bale
Semi-trailers waiting in line to be loaded with bales
Bales on their way to the Cotton Gin
The other way to pick cotton is with Owen's picker (the red Case International) but it only picks the cotton, one row at a time. Then the cotton has to be transfered into a Boll Buggy to take it off the paddock then transfered into the module builder which compresses the cotton and makes it into a large module 40ft x 8ft x 8ft which weighs 15 tonnes. This whole process needs 3 men and 3 machines. Then the modules have to be picked up on trucks also and taken to the Cotton Gin.
Owen's Cotton Picker
Boll Buggy
Cotton ready to pick
Completed Module
Module Builder
Module Builder pressing down the cotton to make the module
Monday 30th May (David's birthday) we decided to do something that we hadn't done since our girls were at High School, nine years ago. We went to the Dalby Eisteddfod Winner's Night at the Great Hall in Dalby. I wondered why there were only piano and choral entries on the program when we got to the door and didn't find out until after that they have now split up the Eisteddfod into two different sections and the drama and instrumental are not until July. It was the drama and instrumental that we were really looking forward to (Annaleise and Roxy were in the instrumental sections most years) which was disappointing but there were some good singing entries anyway. We will have left Dalby by the time the drama and instrumental section is held.
Choral Choral - "Ashokan Farewell"
Ellen, Matthew and Laura Cook- Song from a musical - "Goin' Courting"
The video is far from top quality but the Great Hall is a bit open space with lots of people in the audience.
The next day I went to Dalby to do a flower arrangement for my good friend Dawn. We did the flower choosing from a florist I used to work for after I was married (not the florist shop I used to own before I was married though). Then went back to Dawn's to do the arrangement.
A couple of things out of the norm that brought back memories of many years ago!!!
After we left "Yellowstone" on Monday 2nd May we headed back towards "Windalea" but had a 2 night break at Ray and Carol's at Chinchilla. It was decided that next day we would go to see Greg's (Ray and Carol's son) big cotton picker working at Toobeah (Goondiwindi direction) approx. 265km from Chinchilla.
Next morning we left early and headed off - Carol had very kindly packed our morning tea and lunch. The GPS was activated as we neared Meandarra as there was some doubt by some of the passengers which road to take. So after everyone had their say Ray took the road we all thought the GPS meant. After a few km's along that road Carol asked Ray, "do you know if this is the right road?", "No" says Ray. "Well do you know where this road goes" asked Carol, "No" says Ray. "Have you checked the map Ray" asked Carol, "No" says Ray. "Well stop the car and read the map" says Carol. So we stopped and waited in silence while Ray read the map. After Ray folded up the map and put it away we started moving again in the same direction. "Is this the right road" asked Carol. "No" says Ray. "Well where are we going" asked Carol, "to find a turn around spot" says Ray. So after all this and much laughing as you can imagine we eventually found the right road and continued on the journey. After we had travelled for more than 100km we got a phone call from Greg to tell us it was raining at Toobeah so there wasn't any point coming and we may as well go home to Chinchilla!!!!! After much discussion and continued driving in the same direction we decided that as I had never been to my Uncle Roy and Aunty Joyce's place "Tarawindi" between Goondiwindi and Tara and we weren't too far from there we would go and have morning tea with them. So we turned off at Westmar and headed to "Tarawindi" for morning tea. After lots more questions about where we were going, etc, etc, and lots more laughing we arrived at the house - and no one was home. As we had our morning tea with us we just made ourselves at home and had our smoko break, minus Uncle Roy and Aunty Joyce!!!
After smoko we headed home towards Chinchilla (the comment was made, "it was a long way to come for morning tea"!!!!!) It was a very cold, rainy day by this stage so Carol suggested that we stop at The Gums and buy a hot lunch (and have our lunch for tea when we got home) as we couldn't sit under a tree and eat our salad lunch in that sort of weather!!!! So we stopped at The Gums for lunch and we all had the same thing - steak and vegetables (cooked fresh) and all enjoyed it. The Gums isn't exactly a boom town, check out the photo's of the post office boxes for all the people who live there!!!!!! Not sure where all the other numbers went to!!!!!!
Where we had lunch
Where are all the rest????
The Gums Australia Post and Store!!!
Chinchilla Weir - a nice camping spot
Then we headed back to Chinchilla, calling into the Chinchilla Weir as David and I had never been there before. There is a really nice camping spot beside the Weir, even some powered sites. Approx. distance travelled was 370km - it WAS a long way to go for morning tea and lunch but we saw some different country and had lots of laughs along the way. But we unfortunately didn't get to see Greg's picker working - and only a short while after that the picker burnt out completely while the driver was picking with it. Driver got out ok though.
On Wednesday 4th May we headed back to "Windalea" to wait for the cotton harvest to start.
