Kōrero: Rural workers

Threshing machines were used in New Zealand for more than 80 years, finally declining in use in the mid-1940s. Forerunners of combine harvesters, they separated the grain of crops such as wheat and oats.

Listen to Jack Perkins in his radio show ‘From the Back Country’ interviewing Ron Gordon who recalls threshing mills before the Second World War.

Transcript

The team work, each man at his own job, he forced the sheafs to this chap and he forced it on to the band cutter and the band cutter spread it into the mill. And at the bag sewer, he sewed the bag, carried it and built his bag heap and had to build it properly. There were the rolling nature of the bags of grain. The heap had to be well built, plenty of straw on top and a cover over it and every man had his job even to a man with a horse and sledge carting water to the steam engine. Every man had his job and there was a rhythm about the whole thing and the rhythm about the engine and the puffing noise and the hum of the mill, the whole thing was so industrial.