Thousands Watch Procession

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31366, 11 May 1967, Page 14

Thousands Watch Procession

Thousands of lunch-time shoppers lined the inner-city streets of Christchurch yesterday to watch a procession of more than 40 exhibits to mark the 1967 world ploughing contest.

It represented a historical record of agricultural farming in this country since the disappearance of the horse and the evolution of motorpowered farm machinery. It emphasised that no longer does the ploughman homeward plod his weary way but roars back on foam-rub-ber-cushioned comfort aboard anything from a 30 h.p. to 100 h.p. tractor. One thing was strikingly obvious. Mechanical progress had done practically nothing to the shape and structure of the plough. Even the manner of forging ploughs has altered little during 100 years, as one of the floats carrying two working blacksmiths indicated.

Heading the procession was a vintage Ford truck carrying officials and the Golden Plough. The St. Andrew’s College Pipe Band followed ahead of two vehicles of the competition sponsor, the Atlantic Union Oil Company, Ltd.

Old ploughs once pulled by noble Clydesdales were mounted on trailers bearing signs that they would be preserved by the Science Museum.

Then came the New Zealand competitors in the national and world competitions, followed by a match plough used 41 years ago. A 1922 Dennis fire engine once used by the Owaka Volunteer Fire Brigade in Central Otago was contested with a new engine attached to the Christchurch Metropolitan Fire Brigade. All the farm machinery dealers entered complete ranges of tractors, and some included other farm machinery such as hay balers and chaff cutters. A huge bulldozer carrier of Ryan Bros, bore the flags of the competing nations and a group of young Canterbury farmers wearing competitors’ sashes. A lone drover mounted on horseback followed by two sheep dogs made up the entire non-mechanical part of the procession. One outstanding entry was a traction engine built three years ago by an Ashburton engineer, Mr Hugh Rainey. The -ngine was built to a onethird scale of an original 1914 working engine. Mr Rainey made every part of the coalfired engine except the nuts and bolts. Recently it was driven around the bar of a hotel in Invercargill. A 1913 traction engine restored by Mr S. L. Pester, of Culverden, was another reminder of the old days. The engine pulled an even older chaff cutter Mr Pester resurrected from the remains of a model built by Andrews and Beaven, Ltd., of Christchurch, in 1912.

Mr J. Dawson, a Christchurch tractor salesman, entered a 1917 Case industrial tractor which had once been used in Canterbury. Two families dressed in period costume depicted how the domestic chores were done 50 years ago. One family had a 51-year-old Ocean Wave washing machine manufactured in Christchurch. The machine was simply a rectangular tank which when filled was manually rocked to and fro like a cradle.