Freeling farmer Harry Schuster goes viral for paddock Australia Day art

This might just be the most Australia Day thing ever. A young farmer has gone to extreme lengths to pay tribute to our great country.

A farmer near the Barossa Valley has unveiled an incredible design in his paddock, crafting an eye-catching crop pattern to celebrate Australia Day.

Harry Schuster, 27, finished drawing a map of Australia at his family’s paddock at Freeling on Thursday, complete with an Australian flag design and signed with his initials.

Harry Schuster’s giant map of Australia that he mowed into a paddock at Freeling, north of Adelaide, ready for Australia Day.

The engineering graduate first designed his creation on the computer, converting an image into a GPS map, and then took a John Deere tractor to carve it into the field.

Harry said the creation took about two hours.

“I planned it over the course of a few nights after work, it’s hard to put a number on it,” he said.

Harry Schuster planned his masterpiece over a few nights. Mowing it took two hours. Picture: Kelly Barnes

The cereal and legume farmer used the farm’s main work tractor, which he refers to as the “work horse” or the “puller”, normally used to plant seeds, to make the pattern, which is about 50 hectares in size.

“I did it using a combination of tools but basically just by using the programming skills I picked up from university to be able to turn the photo into a shape you can put on the screen and then it’s just a matter of following the purple line.

“People think it’s automatic – not quite. There’s a bit of manual involvement.”

The massive design is not Mr Schuster’s first foray into large-scale art.

Last year, Mr Schuster mowed a large sunflower into the same paddock – known as The Barns of Freeling – with the design big enough to be seen on Google Maps.

The sunflower from last year Harry Schuster had mowed at Freeling, as seen from Google Maps.

Popular South Australian personality Andrew ‘Cosi’ Costello shared the design to his Facebook page, applauding the young farmer’s efforts.

“Well done to the Schuster family for being so clever,” Costello wrote.

“Australia, thank you for being my home. I will always love you and be so grateful to be able to call myself an Australian.”

In 2022, the Schuster family planted a crop of sunflowers to act as a background for their property’s function centre.

Harry Schuster flying the Australian flag. Picture: Kelly Barnes

When they bloomed, they decided to open the gates of the field for a gold coin donation to HeartKids SA – raising more than $15,000 in just two weeks.

In 2023, more than $10,000 was raised for KCNT1 Epilepsy Foundation from gold coin donations to the paddock.

Originally published as Freeling farmer Harry Schuster goes viral for paddock Australia Day art