Meet 15 of Australian agriculture’s most committed farming veterans
NSW farmer Keith Lynch may be 96 years old, but that isn’t stopping him. And he’s not the oldest farmer still committed to the job.
These veterans who have toiled on farms and in the ag industry have hundreds of years of knowledge and experience between them spanning generations.
They have experienced enormous change, adapted, passed on their knowledge to the next generation, and paved the way for future generations on the land.
Here we shine a light on those who have dedicated their lives to ag.
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AUSTRALIAN AG’S NEXT GENERATION: 35 FARMERS UNDER 35
ROB ALLEN, 85, LALBERT, VIC
Mallee grain grower Rob Allen last year notched up his 70th harvest.
The Lalbert farmer, 85, undertook his first harvest in 1950 at just 15.
A lot has changed over that time, from technology to harvester size, and he has endured many tough seasons.
Throughout his years working on farm, the worst drought he can recall was in 1982.
“But like every other year we still got the header out,” he said.
His daughter Deirdre McKenzie said her father was “still kicking goals and it is in his blood”.
JIM BARHAM, 90, STAWELL, VIC
There aren’t too many people who know the lay of the land in Victoria’s Wimmera better than Jim Barham.
The rural real estate agent based in Stawell has sold the same patch of farmland west of Marnoo four times over 49 years.
At 90, Jim is considered a legend of the industry and is Victoria’s longest practising real estate agent, with 68 years under his belt.
Selling Chatsworth House near Mortlake in 1988 to the Ashby Merino breeding stud in South Australia was one of his most prominent sales.
And at a sprightly 87 years of age, Jim sold Marnoo cropping property Maori Lodge, home of Australia’s greatest trotter and another Marnoo legend, Maori’s Idol, which had won a record 24 races in a row in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
“That triggered another three properties in a week,” he said.
Jim has sold a number of properties to overseas buyers, and also sold properties to three generations of the same family.
And as for retirement? He said most people retired to take up pursuits they enjoy, such as travelling. He considers himself retired because he was still enjoying the pursuit he enjoyed most — selling real estate.
MAX BEGELY, 86, SIMPSON, VICTORIA
Farming was all Max Begely wanted to do from a young age. As a schoolboy in Orbost, Max would join his father who was sharefarmer milking cows before school.
“When I was going to school I always wanted to be a farmer. Dad was a share farmer and I used to help him milk cows before school. When I was 10 or 12 I used to milk 25 cows by hand before school, eventually we got milking machines,” he recollects.
After spending three years in Queensland for a working holiday when he was 18, Max returned to Victoria, where he was a share farmer for 12 years in Orbost before receiving a farm in Simpson as part of the Heytesbury settlement scheme in 1970.
“It’s been the best thing. I’ve never regretted it. The highlight of my time on the land is getting the farm and seeing it grow and develop.
“When we first started we were only allowed to have 40 cows. Now we are milking 350.”
While Max now share-farms with his daughter and her husband who, he said, now did most of the work, he still likes to get out to help as much as he can.
Whether it’s hosing down the yards, checking on the calves, or getting out on his four-wheeler to keep an eye on contractors putting down gravel for new roads.
And the thing that has kept him going all these years, he said, was the lifestyle, caring for the animals and having pride in your farm.
He also is proud to have passed on his passion for farming to yet another generation of the family, with his grandson recently returning to the farm and is now the main calf reader.
TOM BLAIR, 82, KALKEE, VIC
Farming runs through Tom Blair’s veins — literally.
The 82-year-old Kalkee sheep and grain farmer has had heart surgery twice, including a bovine heart valve replacement.
“I said to the surgeon I could have brought in an animal, took the valve and put the rest of the vealer in the fridge,” Mr Blair said.
He said the surgery gave him “a new lease on life” and he has continued to work on the family farm ever since, alongside his two sons.
After 70 years in the job, Mr Blair said he wasn’t looking at stopping work anytime soon, though he has reduced his hours now.
“I’ll just keep farming as long as my body and health lets me,” he said.
Mr Blair said one of the biggest challenges he has had to face has been years of prolonged drought, in addition to a couple of health scares.
His advice for dealing with those challenges and getting through the tough times?
“You’ve got to manage what you can manage,” he said.
“And I suggest to people you’ve just got to do what you like doing.”
Mr Blair said while he had a number of farming highlights over the decades, including the updates to farming equipment making life a lot easier, his greatest achievements includes his 61 years of marriage to his wife Heather, four children, 11 grandchildren and one great-grandchild.
“I’ve been extremely lucky to have my family and my health – it’s been very kind to me.,” he said.
FRANK CONDOLUCI, 90, KORUMBURRA, VIC
When Frank Condoluci first began it was all done with horses, until he bought his first tractor in 1953.
“When he first started a lot of the work was manual labour — there were no excavators; it was all pick and shovel,” Mr Condoluci’s son Frank Jnr said.
Mr Condoluci emigrated from Italy to Australia in 1949 and started working on farms in the Gippsland area at night and over the weekend while also working at the local council.
He eventually purchased his own farm and started growing peas and potatoes.
And at 90 years old he shows no signs of slowing down, still working on the farm with his two sons while also running a transport company.
“He won’t retire — he’s got no plans for that at all,” Frank Jnr said.
RAY GILBERT, 80, CAMPERDOWN, VIC
Mechanic Ray Gilbert is the cog in the wheel that keeps farmers across the Western District operating.
For more than 60 years Mr Gilbert has provided a vital service to the farmers across the area repairing and servicing vital farm machinery and tractors.
These days, while his sons Kelvin and Neville deal with the high-tech stuff, Mr Gilbert sticks to working on the agricultural classics.
“In the tractors, the 135 Fergies and the old Fordson Majors — they were the ones that gave people years and years of reliable service,” he said.
“A lot of those tractors are still in service on farms today. In fact, I’ve got a couple myself — I’ve got a ’65 Fergie, a Fordson Major, a Ford 5000 — I get a lot of enjoyment out of them still operating and putting them to work.”
Mr Gilbert started his career in 1958 in Nullawarre, and a decade later, set up his own business in Noorat, just north of Terang. He relocated his business to Camperdown in 1985 — where he remains to this day.
“Things have changed a lot in that 60 or so years. When I was working at Noorat, farmers were still carting their milk to the factory in their little Morris commercial trucks. Then compulsory refrigeration came along and that put a lot of the smaller farmers out of business.”
DARYL GORMAN, 74, SHEPPARTON, VIC
What started as a hobby almost 50 years ago soon grew into a business that turns over 45 tractors a year, for Shepparton’s Daryl Gorman, 74.
“I started in 1972 — it was always just my weekend hobby to play around with them,” Daryl said.
“It just became a hobby that got out of control.”
Daryl, who grew up in the Goulburn Valley region, says he recalls the change in 1957 from the use of original horse power on farms to tractors as drovers moved through the area buying all the Clydesdales as they were replaced by Grey Fergies.
“They started up in Murchison and came through buying up all the horses for the meat market in Melbourne,” Daryl says.
“All these poor horses were getting shipped out, and everywhere where there used to be horses there were Grey Fergies — and they were doing the job of three or four horses.”
Today Daryl shows no signs of slowing down with his spare parts business a seven-day-a-week operation as well as repairing and reconditioning the Grey Fergies.
With his wife, Bernadette, helping him, Daryl is “always on the lookout” for Grey Fergies to rebuild for resale.
KENNETH HALL, 98, BROOKTON, WA
There aren’t many workplaces the age gap is 87 years, but that’s the case at Murray Hall’s farm where at times both his son, 17, and dad Kenneth, 98, work side-by-side.
Although Ken is officially retired, Murray said his passion for farming still continues and he still finds him working on the farm — a mixed operation in Brookton about an hour and a half southeast of Perth.
“Just the other day I came across him mustering up some sheep,” Murray said.
“His main driver to keep farming is to keep fit, he knows he has to keep moving. He has slowed down a bit in the past 12 months.”
Murray said his dad now lived in town, just 3km from the farm, where he continued to have pet sheep on a few acres.
“He has a few pet sheep, which he talk to like his children,” Murray said.
And the farming tradition continues through the generations, with Murray’s son now studying business and ag science.
ANGUS LANE, 77, TOOWOOMBA, QLD
If you don’t recognise his face, if you’ve been to Ekka, Beef Australia or Gippsland’s Sale agricultural show, you might recognise his voice.
Angus Lane, 77 has been a ring announcer at ag shows across Australia for more than 30 years.
He first started at his local Jandowae Show, in the Western Downs of Queensland in the early ’80s, then at the Ekka in 1992 where, coronavirus aside, he continues to announce yearly. At the peak, he announced at more than 50 shows a year, and now his annual event calendar normally includes about 30: Royal events in Darwin and Perth, through to Gippsland’s Sale show, as well as occasional events such as the three-yearly Beef Australia expo.
“As a nine-year-old my mum asked me what I’d like to do and I said take the microphone and be the announcer,” he said.
Angus left school at 17 to sharefarm with his uncle and aunt on their Jandowae pig and dairy farm, buying the property in 1967, expanding it to 450ha and turning it into a vealer production and grain growing property, which he sold in 1992.
In the mid-70s Angus began selling gate tickets at the local show and when a role became vacant he became the announcer.
More than 30 years on, Angus is calling it a day, and dropping the mic on the his long career as a show announcer.
It’s fitting that Angus called his last show on the weekend at Toowoomba where it all began and his home town.
KEITH LYNCH, 96, ADAMINABY, NSW
Keith Lynch, 96, was the last farmer to drove stock through the streets of Cooma in the Snowy Mountains of NSW.
“He would bring a mob of sheep up the main street of the town. But one day — it was around knock-off time for staff on the Snowy Scheme — it was gridlock. After that droving was banned in Cooma’s streets,” Keith’s son Dean said.
Keith, a fifth-generation farmer, co-manages the family’s, 1620ha property Kunuma Angus — Australia’s highest elevated Angus stud at 1400m at Adaminaby — with Dean and grandson, Mitch.
He remembers how tough times were back when he first started out. He was 20 years old before he had electricity and he used to plough paddocks with horses, which he said would take a day to plough one acre (0.4ha).
And on shearing jobs he would have to pack his own mattress with straw to sleep on.
“It’s hard to explain, but it was peasant times back then. Everything is wonderful now,” he said.
“When I started shearing when I was 14, you would get $2.25 per 100, now you get more than that for one sheep.”
And while he has slowed down a bit in recent year, Dean said his dad was still active on the farm from checking on stock to driving the bulldozer.
“And he has plenty more years left in him,” Dean said.
LOU JANSSENS, 80, YARROWEYAH, VIC
Lou Janssens, 80, never misses a day of milking.
Despite retiring from farming in 2000, Lou has continued to work on the farm which he purchased in 1981 and is now owned by his son Damian and his wife.
Damian said his dad had a special bond with the animals
“He milks seven days a week,” Damian said.
“He finds milking cows relaxing, it’s how he unwinds. It’s his way of completing the day.”
Lou, who migrated from Holland when he was 13, with his parents and seven siblings, has been milking cows since he was 14.
“He is fitter than me, he doesn't drink and he is up at 5.45am every morning.
“He will easily continue until he is 85 or 90.”
GRAEME LOCKHART, 79, CLIFTON SPRINGS, VIC
Graeme Lockhart is the brains’ trust of the Lockhart family.
“He is always the first one to call when you have something to fix,” his son Greg said.
“He is invaluable to us, we couldn’t do it without him.”
Graeme, 79, grew up in Dean near Ballarat on a spud farm. After he finished school he went back home farm before he bought a cropping and sheep farm at Lismore with his brother.
He sold the farm when he was 50 but has remained an active on his four sons’s beef, cropping and sheep farms.
Greg, who run a sheep and cropping property at Irrewarra said his dad was “always there to help”.
“He does 80 per cent of the tractor work,” Greg said.
“He always loved tractors and trucks, and always preferred cropping over sheep.
“He could spend 25 hours a day on a tractor and never complain about it.
“He will keep doing it till he can’t.”
HENRY MCKENZIE, 71, CALROSSIE, VIC
For so many, farming is a family affair passed down from generation to generation, just like Gippsland’s McKenzie family.
Dairy farmer Henry McKenzie, 71, milked for his father Dave in the 1960s, before buying his first 30ha of land in 1970, with 42 cows.
Building up the farm over the past 50 years has been one of the great moments, Henry said.
“That and getting in the top 100 (cell count) list. Being your own boss. Any farmer will tell you that’s one of the best parts of any type of farming,” he said.
Henry continues to operate what is now the 214ha farm with his wife Lola at Calrossie near Yarram, while their son Michael is a share farmer down the road.
BILL STONES, 90, RUTHERGLEN, VIC
Owning his own farm was an ambition Rutherglen’s Bill Stones always had.
And it’s an ambition he and his wife Hazel, both 90, have worked hard all their lives to fulfil.
After leaving school, Bill got a job at the post office but when they wanted to send him off to Corryong, he packed it in.
“I said ‘I’m not going to Corryong’,” he said.
He managed to get work as a roustabout with a mate’s dad who was a shearing contractor.
“I did know if I wanted to get some money I had to go into shearing,” he said.
“That was my only hope to get money.
“I never got a shovel or a shilling given to me.”
He and Hazel bought their first farm in the mid-1960s.
It was a 46ha dairy farm in Rutherglen milking about 20 cows and they built their herd up to about 70, before they finished up in dairying in the 2000s and diversified the farm into broadacre and livestock grazing.
Bill and Hazel’s son, Des, credited his parents for their hard work over the years.
“Bill continued shearing to pay for the farm. They used to have some pigs too, and he would get out of bed at 4am, feed the pigs, milk the cows, go shearing, come home, milk the cows, feed the pigs, go to bed, and do it again the following day. And Mum worked just as hard,” Des said.
Bill says though his body isn’t as strong as it once was, he still gets out on to the farm to check on the cows, feed the cattle and take out bales of round hay.
And he loves cropping.
“One of the best jobs I’ve ever had is sitting in an airconditioned tractor,” he said.
BILL WEIDNER, 92, RIVERINA, NSW
Age and technology is no barrier for 92-year-old cattle farmer Bill Weidner.
The Riverina farmer Bill Weidner has experienced a lot of change during his time on the land, but perhaps none more so than this year during coronavirus.
For the last 75 years he had attended more cattle sales at Wodonga until last year when coronavirus restrictions meant he could no longer attend.
“Right through all my life I have gone to most of the sales,” Bill said.
So to keep his property, Bungowannah Park, near Albury stocked, he bought cattle through online auctions, with the help of his daughter Gayle Quinn.
“And while I click the bids, it’s very much under the direction of Dad sitting beside me doing the selection and purchasing, just as he has always done,” Gayle said.
Despite adapting to last year’s changes due to COVID, he was happy to get back to the sales when crowds were allowed back, Gayle said.
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