growers@sgcotton.com.au Roger Tomkins - Greenmount Press

innocently and diligently ploughing the soil like any normal well
adjusted farmer. He would execute a broad turn and an almost
vertical hair raising dive before levelling out at zero altitude, then
line me up in his sights and come screaming head on towards
the Chamberlain. At the last possible moment, by which time my
heart rate had gone off the Richter scale, he thankfully wrenched
back the controls of his airborne contraption and zoomed inches
over the Chamberlain’s canopy.
This dive bombing would continue for around ten minutes
until Jim tired of the ‘fun’ or noticed his fuel was running low.
Phew! I guarantee I would not return to my trance-like meditative
state that day.
I actually went to the expense of having a special AWA 12 volt
radio mounted on one of the Chamberlain’s mudguards. It came
complete with a set of headphones and I was keenly anticipating
being able to listening to John Laws, in order to while away
the time and ease the monotony of the never ending rotations
of a thousand acre paddock. Sadly, even at full volume, John
The LA Case was used as a spare back-up tractor, but
could handle only the smaller implements. It proved to be
extremely reliable and trouble free. Even the old fashioned
chain drive transmission worked perfectly. (Photo IMJ)
The Fiat 70 CI Crawler was used exclusively for scrub clearing
and the maintenance of the property’s roads. It was capable
of work way beyond what its size would suggest. (Photo IMJ)
Laws’ golden tonsils were thoroughly drowned out by the super
charged two stroke diesel. Even when transferred to the Massey
Ferguson, the radio proved useless.
The Massey Ferguson Super 90
The Massey Ferguson Super 90 was equipped with an aftermarket
Gason cab, which resembled a cross between a tomato
grower’s glass house and an outback dunny. You see the front
and side windscreens were virtually louvre glass windows
comprising scores of these panes of non-safety glass which could
be opened parallel to each other by a series of levers. There was
no rear window – just an open space. So the dust was sucked
into the cab via the exposed rear end and coated the inside of
the louvres thus effectively blocking out vision, resulting in the
‘windows’ having to remain open irrespective of the weather.
Then there was the noise! The Perkins diesel engine is noted
for its low decibel output. But in the case of the Massey Ferguson
Super 90, the din reverberating down from the tin roof and
ricocheting around inside the cabin, magnified the engine sounds
to a deafening cacophony.
The Case
The Case LA served really no purpose except as a nostalgic
memory of one of the tractors I drove in my jackeroo days.
The orange tractor was originally designed to run on power
kerosene, following a warm up on petrol, but power kerosene
was no longer available, which meant it had to be fuelled entirely
with petrol. Which was ok, except that it consumed the entire
contents of a 44 gallon drum in a ten hour day whilst only pulling
a 12 foot scarifier! Accordingly, it spent most of its time parked
under the pepper tree.
The Lanz Bulldog
The Lanz Bulldog D1706 was not one of these belching
monsters that had to be started with the aid of a blowlamp.
Instead, this was one of the new technology Bulldogs (still
with only a single cylinder two stroke semi-diesel engine) but
utilising an ingenious starter motor with a reversible solenoid,
that enabled the piston to be rocked in a pendulum motion, as
distinct from ‘turning it over’, until it fired into life. Although
being only a diminutive tractor (in fact the smallest Lanz ever sold
The Lanz Bulldog D1706 was a brilliant little utility tractor,
equipped with down thrust three point linkage, independent
front suspension and a passenger seat. Its semi-diesel (11 to 1
compression ratio) single cylinder valveless two stroke engine
could work all day on a mere one pint of diesel. (Photo IMJ)
50 — The Australian Cottongrower August–September 2012