Ian Riley, Tarrangower Times

Now that the dust has settled and the amazing Maldon Easter weekend is behind us, I am thinking back to one of the larger vehicles that you may have noticed in the parade.

If you have any toddlers in your life, you probably have a full-time job picking up Lego blocks, toys, or dolls everywhere in and around the house.

Brendan Baker’s family didn’t have that problem because he was very keen on this machine right back when he was four and pretty much ever since.

So he is a mine of information and can tell you anything you need to know without drawing breath.

Traction engines were hired to farmers as a power source back before diesel engines or electricity were commonly used.

So, if you were a farmer who needed some crop threshing, sheep shearing, water pumping, the tractor contractor would come around and they would connect the big belt drive to the tractor flywheel at one end and your shearing shed or hay bailer or pump or whatever at the other end and away you go.

What seems like an antiquated device would have been a very welcome sight if the alternative was very hard manual labour.

As we saw at Easter, the traction engine travels under its own steam, literally, and gets along at about six kilometres per hour.

At that pace, Brendan has taken it right up to Echuca, to the Lake Goldsmith Rally near Beaufort and all around Victoria.

It was working commercially right into the seventies, clearing scrub around Orbost.

Seeing it running, it’s easy to see how it would have made a lifelong impression on a four-year-old.

This article appeared in Tarrangower Times, 9 May 2025.