Museums

cobbadog wrote:

I also have to find out about a naval boat or submarine on the Hume Hwy somewhere between here and the Canberra turn off. Any clues please?

Brilliant and thank you so much. Another place to have a cuppa.

We were on an organized tour and had to go with what was scheduled, based mainly on antique trucks. I would very much like to come back Down Under!! Rent a car, eat in pubs, stay in local motels, and set my own schedule. There is also a sugar mill display / museum, that takes about 1-2 hours, on the A1 between Mackay and Sarnia that was very interesting. Our fabulous lady bus driver, after she got the drift of our interests, knew about it and added it to our tour. By the time we left Tony Champion's she definitely had a case of "Tired Iron Fever"!!

Sounds like the Sarina Sugar Shed, Brocky, their "products" are to die for.

www.sarinasugarshed.com.au/distillery

Cobbadog and Cobbarette,
Hayseed posted a great pic of HMAS Otway. It is right on the highway in the middle of Holbrook. It is a memorial to a local Lieutenant? Holbrook who was killed in action during World War Two.

Those Beastings are great, are'nt they? They were originally made in Brittain with the filling made from colostreum, the milk from cows that have calved within the past few days. The milk has lots of extra nutrients for the new-born calf. That is were the name came from. I hope this information has not put you off them. The name, here anyway, has changed a little to Bee Stings.

Justscared myself. Got some pics to load from the phone.

Holbrook was a Pom who got his VC in WW1. Even back in those days the idiots were rewriting history and changed the town name from Germanton to Holbrook.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_Douglas_Holbrook

There is a model of his WW1 submarine in town as well as HMAS Otway (or the top half thereof). I had my one and only underwater ride in Otway on an Army/Navy liaison course for 2 hours between Sydney heads and Jervis Bay

V8Ian wrote:

Sounds like the Sarina Sugar Shed, Brocky, their "products" are to die for.

www.sarinasugarshed.com.au/distillery

I do not remember a rum distillery?? I do not think the place we visited is the one in the link posted as it was in front of an operating mill visible from the main road?? There was a mini mill to show how the cane was processed and a large gift shop with a lot of candy in it, but I did not spend any time in there, My wife did!!
Here are a couple of pictures of the equipment in the yard. The mini mill is in the background of the loader. MrsMack Paul can tell us the name of it as he recognized it when I posted the pictures on Just Old Trucks in 2015

Cobba,

You're looking for Holbrook.

The sub is in the main street.

Brocky45 wrote:

V8Ian wrote:

Sounds like the Sarina Sugar Shed, Brocky, their "products" are to die for.

www.sarinasugarshed.com.au/distillery

I do not remember a rum distillery?? I do not think the place we visited is the one in the link posted as it was in front of an operating mill visible from the main road?? There was a mini mill to show how the cane was processed and a large gift shop with a lot of candy in it, but I did not spend any time in there, My wife did!!
Here are a couple of pictures of the equipment in the yard. The mini mill is in the background of the loader. MrsMack Paul can tell us the name of it as he recognized it when I posted the pictures on Just Old Trucks in 2015

Thats definitely the Sarina museum there Brocky, just near the river on the highway heading south out of town

The top photo is a MF harvester, they got into trouble and a big court case because they stole (caught red handed in the farmers shed) the idea of spirals on the front to untangle the sugar cane, Canavan were the peoples name that came up with this and it was their worker who came up with the idea of the spirals
His now elderly wife told me this some years ago while working on their property

There first harvester was this one
It still sits on the side of the road in Home Hill, it was towed with either a wheeled tractor or crawler tractor



Later there the self propelled harvester was invented

The ones in Brocky's photos on IH tractors were made in Bundaberg by Toft brothers, Toft entered a short lived agreement with IH Australia to build these
They were a whole stick machine were as Canavan and MF were chopper machines

The last photo of Brocky's is the Toft whole stick loader

These got really advanced and were made on two blitz front axles and were self propelled all wheel drive all wheel steer machines, all types of attachments were made for the boom and the could do just about anything a excavator could do
Really adavnced for their time but the OHS rules sent most to the scrap bin

MF were world leaders in cane harvester technology closely flowed by TOFT, all made at Bundaberg and exported around the world

A rouge in the Toft family flogged Toft harvester plans and took them to the US

A company called CAMECO bought the plans and hired this rouge family member and started building cane harvesters that were almost as close as you could get, the rollers and a lot of other parts were interchangeable between a TOFT and a CAMECO

These machines all had a swinging knife for cutting the cane into billets

MF was still building its machines but they just couldn't compete because the feed system was all mechanical and if they choked badly the just striped the gears and broke the chains etc

Anyway I think CAMECO was the first to combine the "chopper box" pinch cut out of a MF with a hydraulic drive and it sold like hot cakes

TOFT offered both a swinging knife and a chopper box for a short time before making just the chopper box

Well CAMECO got bought out by John Deere and TOFT by Case IH
Both are made in Brazil now and exported back to Australia

Funny enough but in a very Australian way both TOFT and CAMECO took their technology to Brazil in the 80's in a desperate bid to be the greatest and both never survived
Thats so very Australian

Sorry way off topic

So here is some more Canavan pictures







Paul