104588

Bagging wheat seed near Minnipa, 1950s

Bagging wheat northeast of Yarwondutta Rock, probably in the late 1950s; the harvester is a Horwood Bagshaw. Bags were filled to about 180 lb by dumping and with a funnel attached to a pipe which was used to make sure the bag was completely full before sewing by hand using a bag needle and twine. A good bag sewer could fill and close 300 bags per day. The bags were then taken by dray or truck to the storage barn or to the railway yard where they were stored in large stacks.

A pile of new hessian bags is sitting on some of the filled bags. The Minnipa Research Centre was an important seed wheat producer on Upper Eyre Peninsula, but there is no evidence from the photograph that this is wheat for seed or for the yard.

(Source: Bob Holloway)