IF YOU thought farm truck and tractor tyres were expensive to replace, be thankful they don’t cost $28,000 each – that’s the price of a giant truck tyre used on the big rigs working at Cadia’s gold and copper mine near Orange.
Each truck burns through six tyres a year at the mine which was the featured exhibit attracting plenty of attention at this week’s Australian National Field Days (ANFD).
Farm inventions of all sizes were also making their mark this year at The Land site where the annual field day inventor competition marked its 50th anniversary.
A portable, free range egg station, the Chicken Caravan, made by Daniel and Evan O’Brien of Wauchope cleaned up in The Land and NSW Farmers Farm Inventor of the Year, winning the over $1000 regional judging and later first place in the national finals at Orange.
The O’Briens first showed their design at the Farming Small Areas Expo, staged in the Hawkesbury, last November, and had received plenty of interest in the product since, making modifications based on the feedback.
The Chicken Caravan, built to 150- or 450-bird capacities, is easily towed from paddock to paddock.
Winning the under $1000 title in the ANFD regional heat was first time entrant, Simon Archer, of Merrygoen, with his post hole shovel.
Meanwhile the winner of this year’s The Land Machine of the Year at Orange was Agrowplow’s new 8.1 metre wide Agrowsow AS3000 seeding unit, which folds to 3.5 metres for transportation on its lugged press wheel tyres.
ANFD chairman Robert Armstrong said about 600 exhibitors were involved in this year’s field days.
The field days feature exhibit, staffed by Cadia mine volunteers, has given parent company Newcrest Mining the chance to explain to Central Tablelands farmers and the wider community what happens at the Cadia site 25 kilometres south of Orange.
Newcrest’s big investment in the tablelands includes about 8000 hectares of farmland leased to producers, about 1400 jobs at the site and a $1.9 billion new mine development about to begin producing ore.
“We're very much part of the local community and proud of our involvement,” said Cadia Valley operations general manager Tony McPaul.
