Little Yellow Tractor

Abe and Dorothy Hassan enjoy their life on a small farm in Wedderburn North West of Bendigo. The 25 acre property has been home for the last 16 years. They are proud of the work they have done renovating the old farm house and Abe grows a small crop of Barley.

With recent bushfires Abe is keen to protect the property. "A neighbour’s place burnt down last summer and it reminds you just how careful you have to be to keep the property fire safe. We basically need to keep the grass down around the house and along the fence lines. Plus collect and burn off the branches that continually fall under the gum trees.

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Bronwen Knows Best

Bronwen Sinnot and her partner Martin Burt live on a picturesque 5 acre bush property in Gembrook, Victoria. "We bought this property because we love nature and living in the hills" explained Bronwen. "We built a rustic home that is environmentally friendly and works in with the natural surroundings. Although much of the land is bush we had to develop some of it for practical day to day living.

Until recently we have been doing work around the place the hard way. The builders cut in a rough driveway but we were left with something that was pretty well impassable in winter. So we had 20 tonnes of road base delivered and we were crazy enough to do it by hand! It took us weekend after weekend with no more than shovels, wheel barrows and rakes. We got it done but it nearly killed us. We had similar experiences with carting firewood out of steep gullies.

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Moving Forward

Peter Bourke and his wife Trish survived the Kinglake bush fires and are doing their best to keep moving forward.

Peter explained "Like a lot of people up here we lost our house, cars, tractors and pretty much everything we owned. And getting out of the fires was very traumatic. The fire just roared through totally sideways. Imagine the strongest wind you have been in and multiply it by one hundred - it was unbelievable. The radiant heat was so intense just getting from the house to car made me red like sunburn for two months.

Many of our neighbours were less fortunate and lost their lives. This kind of loss takes its toll and I have had a stint in hospital with stress. But time does help heal and we are steadily working on rebuilding the property and our lives.

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Doing It Easy

Darel Sommer has deep roots in his family property in Witta, Qld situated close to the Glass House Mountains. The 183 acre property has been in the family since 1887 and he is the third generation on the farm. It was originally run as a dairy farm and Darel has fond memories of growing up there as a kid. He also remembers well, working very hard as everything was done by hand.

Darel worked on the farm from the age of 16 but eventually left to raise his family in Brisbane. In that time he spent many years driving garbage trucks for the local council. Since retiring Darel has spent more time on the farm and it has become more of a lifestyle property these days.

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A 'Hole' Lot of Fun

Tim Sandilands is one of those blokes who just can't sit still! Whether it's in his business life or "relaxing" on his 5 acre Queensland property he's always in top gear. Tim is the franchisor of a successful group of hydraulic service outlets and his wife Denise reckons that when he needs to unwind he goes out and digs a hole with his tractor.

When Tim digs a hole he doesn't muck around. Pictured are a couple of Tim's holes. His latest project is a 40 metre long lap pool. Tim says "my wife and I are triathletes and we figured a training pool at home would be a lot of fun. So I started digging! I have used my East Wind tractor to dig out over 500 cubic metres of sand for the pool just using the front end loader. In fact I have found the East Wind to be very handy for the whole pool building project to date.

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Seen It All

Bart Geeson is the owner of Peachester Field Services and as the name suggests, he services machinery in the Peachester area near the Glass House Mountains in Queensland. He has been operating in the field for over 50 years and in that time has seen it all.

"I did my apprenticeship in the UK where we worked in iron ore mines. I developed my skills as a motor technician, diesel fitter and welder. I worked on all kinds of machines from Caterpillar D7 and D8 dozers, scrapers, graders, through to diesel electric locomotives for carting the iron ore. I particularly remember the locos as they were powered by Rolls Royce engines" explained Bart.

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Building a Better Zoo

Alma Park Zoo has been a family favourite in Queensland for 40 years. It is situated in Brisbane's northern suburbs and is well known for its mix of native and endangered exotic animals set in lush gardens and sub tropical rainforest.

Garry Connell, general manager of the zoo explained, "We have worked hard in the last few years to really bring the zoo to a new level. We have recently added new attractions such as Lemur Island, home to the five Ring Tailed Lemurs (native to Madagasca), Green Iguanas from South America and have more new primate species coming soon.

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Breathing New Life into Bushland

We first caught up with Colin Smith to see how he was using his dozer to help develop an airpark at his 70 acre property located on the western fringe of Melbourne.

Colin's lifestyle property "Daisy Banks" has been his home for 20 years. "My wife and daughter have a few horses, my son has his stock car and I have enough room to play with my planes and farm equipment" Colin told us.

Colin also has a keen interest in nurturing the native flora and fauna in the area, particularly along the 2 kilometres of creek frontage which runs through the property.

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Buying a Chinese Tractor – What to look out for

John Hughes has a small hobby farm in the rolling hills of Narre Warren East, Victoria. In addition to the usual tasks of carting hay, collecting firewood and keeping the driveway graded, he had a big drainage project coming up so he decided it was time to look at a new tractor.

John is of Scottish descent so he likes to be canny with his money. He had seen various ads for Chinese tractors at significant savings compared to their Korean, Japanese and European counterparts. But the question was - is it worth taking the risk? We've all heard the horror stories of cheap, poor quality product coming out of China.

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Bulldozing the Dream Property

In 2001 Mark Goopy, a panelbeater by trade, bought 150 acres of rough, rugged, variable soil property to build his dream house in the lush rural land 30km behind the Gold Coast in Queensland.

Since then he has been devoting all his spare time to improving the land - a paltry one-and-a-half days each week. He wants to keep as much of the forest as he can but to make way for the driveway and house slab some clearing and levelling needed to happen.

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