Dillon from Broadacre Contracting yarns with Jimmy from Pitson Contracting about building a family-run...
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Legends, hope your day is treating you alright.
But if you need my help, there is a fair chance it is not.
As the boys on the Catch My Drift podcast say, a problem shared is a problem halved.
Speaking of Catch My Drift, I am on with the boys tonight, and I am bloody keen for it. Tune into Episode 82 to have a listen.
So if you have had a breakdown, need to hire a chaser bin, a header, or find a contractor in a hurry, give Dillon at Broadacre Contracting a call on 0439 300 380.
We will solve your problem straight away.
We generally say 6am to 9pm, but honestly, if it is urgent, it is urgent.
If you have a minute and you are not flat out in the paddock, jump on the Broadacre Contracting website and do it yourself by going to My Account > New Tender Post > Post the job.
An instant alert goes out and any available contractor can call you directly.
Make sure you come back to enjoy this yarn though.
Dillon Harrison and the film crew from Broadacre Contracting are out at Coonamble in Northern New South Wales, catching up with Jimmy, Andy, Sandy and the crew from Kanimbla Contracting.
If you are not familiar with Coonamble, it sits out in that proper western NSW country, north of Gilgandra, out past Warren, west of Coonabarabran.
It is an area with big hectares, and it is either boom or bust.
This is yellow country.
New Holland through and through.
I love Coonamble.
I have spent a few years out on the Carinda Road, out at Uno.
The family I was working for on wages had a block out there.
Now I am going to be dead honest here.
This country is what I feel is proper risky.
I have spoken to growers and had a lot to do with the people in the area, and more often than not the conversation ends up in the direction of, “Mate, I had my arse hanging out for a bit there and thought we were done, but somehow we pulled through.”
Then the next question becomes, “Have we got the energy to deal with the beatings again and try to expand more, or do we keep ourselves where we are?”
There is so much to take from that.
Honestly, I feel this country is make or break.
What you will find is that families up that way often have a block up there, then a block down in the Riverina, or a more reliable area.
That structure is pretty common in ag.
We do our best and try to spread the risk.
As most of you know, the country up at Coonamble is often big hectares, so if you are getting in and having a good year, there is money to make.
But it is not uncommon to contend with floods, drought, feral pigs smashing bags and thousands upon thousands of roos in a drought.
If you are a grower reading this from the area, please feel free to jump in and give us some insights.
Righto, into it.
The Kanimbla Contracting crew are based at Skipton in Western Victoria, but like every good harvest crew, they travel wherever the work takes them.
This season, they are out in the Coonamble region chewing through barley and faba beans with their New Holland CR9s.
Andy has been around headers for a long time and has a lot to offer to blokes like me who are learning.
As Jimmy said in the Talking Gear Tuesday episode, his old boy Andy has run New Holland for 40 years.
They have tried every colour you can think of, from Massey to John Deere to Case, and they always end up back at yellow.
There is a story in that, and today we are going to hear it.
So before we dive in, if you are a grower needing a hand with your harvest program, or a contractor wanting to build your reputation and relationships with growers, give Dillon a buzz on 0439 300 380 from 6am to 9pm.
Fair warning, he loves a yarn.
Let us talk New Holland headers, 40 years of contracting experience and loyalty.
Kanimbla Contracting is a family harvest contracting business based out of Skipton in Western Victoria.
But like every serious harvest crew, they travel.
This episode was filmed at Coonamble in Northern NSW, with the crew chewing through barley and faba beans during the 2025/26 harvest.
The Gardiner family has a long history in harvesting, and the New Holland CR gear they run now is the result of decades of testing, learning and trying different colours along the way.
This yarn is not just about headers.
It is about family, loyalty, testing gear the hard way and building a contracting business around what works.
The Kanimbla crew started on a Massey Ferguson 585, doing a bit of contracting from home.
Then Andy branched out and bought a John Deere 955.
At the time, they thought that was the duck’s guts.
Until a bloke came in with a New Holland 8060 and blew the 955 away.
So the Johnny went on the market.
They found a New Holland 8060 out of Castlemaine and ran that for several years.
Then the TRs came around, around the TR98 era with a 30-foot front, and they ran that for years.
Cut a long story short, they have had every colour.
Then the 9660 bullet rotor John Deere came along.
They could not get a New Holland at the time because they had sold their other New Holland privately, so a mate sold Andy a 9660 out of Hauslers in Sea Lake, VIC.
They set it up with a 36-foot Honeybee front, stripping about 8 bags just out of Sea Lake.
Andy called Darren and said, “You have to come out here. There is something wrong with this thing. It has no power.”
Darren came out, jumped in and said, “That is it. That is what they are.”
“All the hype, this is it?”
“Yep.”
They sold it.
Then they went to a Case 7120.
That was not too bad.
But then they went back to the CRS, and they have not changed since.
Okay, I am a young buck, turning 34 in a few days actually, and this conversation with Andy really took me back a moment.
The Massey Ferguson 585 was officially released in December 1955.
They were manufactured in Australia and famously used by farmers across the country through the late 1970s.
1970, mate, that does not seem too long ago.
As we stand, it is 56 years.
Mhhm, I suppose now that I am breaking it down like this it might have been some time ago, but it still does not feel it, even though I was not even born.
What I am trying to say is that it does not feel like it was too long ago that headers did not have cabs on them.
It really is not that long ago.
I am speaking with people who were operating them.
I am really spinning out on this, and I am going on a side mission here.
1970 to 2026.
Righto legends, I am giving you a time-travelling machine to go back in time.
We are not going forward because I reckon that will scare us.
I am not really in the mood for giving CPR.
The Massey Ferguson 585 was released in 1955 and used through the 1970s.
It was a conventional walker, no cab, open platform, with basic drum and concave threshing.
I have watched videos of these things and the lads are just sitting up and into it, either out in the open, under an umbrella as a shade cover, or with an aftermarket Gason cab on them.
Speaking of Gason, I drove past the Gason workshop in Ararat, VIC the other day. It is looking tidy. Good representation.
Moving out of the Masseys and into the John Deeres, the John Deere 955 was around from the late 1970s through to the early 1980s.
It was still a conventional walker, but now had a cab, a 6-cylinder diesel engine and straw walkers.
Bit of a step up in comfort and capacity.
As Andy said above, it was pretty handy. They thought it was the duck’s guts until yellow came into the paddock.
The New Holland 8060 came to market around 1979 through to 1986.
Still conventional walker like the Massey and Deere, but with a bigger cleaning area, a few extra ponies, a better cab and electric reel speed.
This is the one that blew the 955 away and sent the Johnny to market.
Then in 1997, the whole game really changed.
The New Holland TR98 was released with Twin Rotor technology.
The straw walker system was out, and we had two rotors threshing and separating.
It led to a fairly solid jump in capacity, and this is when New Holland went rotary and left conventional behind.
Andy ran this with a 30-foot front for years.
The boys then ended up with a 9660 John Deere STS as they could not get a New Holland at the time.
The STS 9660 was John Deere’s answer to rotary.
Still a good bit of gear for what it was, but she did not meet the Kanimbla Contracting crew’s expectations.
So she got moved on, and they jumped into the Case 7120.
The Kanimbla crew sold that off and went back to the New Holland CRS.
They are still running them now.
The latest generation Twin Rotor gear has a massive cleaning area and serious capacity.
Full circle.
Over 50 years, we went from open platform headers with no cab and basic drum threshing to twin rotor technology with GPS, yield mapping, air-conditioned cabs, automation and everything else you could think of.
So my question is this.
What is coming in the next 50 years?
Mate, I am scared thinking about it.
Anyone from New Holland or John Deere want to tell me I am wrong on any of this?
Jump in the comments. I dare ya.
The new CRS headers today?
Andy reckons they are phenomenal.
The Kanimbla crew was sitting on 4.5 tonnes per hectare in the barley, and the faba beans went about 2.5 tonnes per hectare.
They were pushing 50 to 60 tonnes an hour in the barley and about 35 tonnes an hour in the fabas.
They were wrapped with how the CRS was chewing the crop.
I am not colour orientated.
I feel every colour has its positives and negatives.
But I am a real big fan when I do not see grain out the back, and we are still getting capacity.
I do not want to sit here and blow the trumpet, but what I feel I should say is this.
If you want to reduce losses and still get the capacity of the machine, then New Holland could be a good option.
I was really impressed by the yellow gear.
And if you ask our film crew, they are the best headers to capture content of.
So from a marketing angle, yellow could also provide there.
I am always a firm believer that everything has a positive and a negative, whether it is gear, people, business or whatever else.
There will be something negative about New Holland, and I would probably target the resale value myself as it did not use to hold.
Nowadays, I am starting to see a shift though.
One real question I do have is this.
The gear is good. Are the dealers pulling the weight?
I would love the opportunity to walk through a dealership one day with our film crew and really put dealership life into perspective.
I might reach out to Ballarat Tractors actually.
They have been engaging well and giving us some good feedback recently.
Anyway, diving back out of the gear and going back to Coonamble for a moment.
I was up harvesting on the Uno block in the 2024/25 season.
The grower I worked for on wages had the whole farm sown with wheat, and the variety was Sunmaster.
The average over the whole farm was 5.1 tonnes per hectare.
It was a thumper of a year.
From memory, we went up and put a little bit of nitrogen out on some paddocks.
But that country cracks open, she breathes, self-mulches and does not really require fert thrown at it hard like some country.
I suppose that is the beauty of it.
Before I get lost with where I am going, as I bloody will, Sunmaster was such good threshing wheat.
It just threshed well.
Easy.
We were getting over the country with a John Deere 9770, a 7240 and a new 8250.
I just loved it. Honestly, it will stay with me, that harvest.
We went hard.
We worked hard as a team.
We got pretty loose at the start of harvest as it rained, so we got that out of our system early and then meant business.
I would like to hear others’ opinions on that Sunmaster variety.
Who has grown it?
Where?
What do you reckon of it?
Side mission complete.
Sandy stayed home and raised the family.
Two kids.
Jimmy was one of them.
All Jimmy wanted to do was play with his toy header.
He would fill it up with oats in the sandpit.
Real oats.
He would auger it out.
“What are you doing? What are you augering out?”
“Oats.”
But it was a New Holland.
This hits home.
My lovely partner of 11 years and I have just had our first child, little Elsie.
As I call her, Miss Elsie May Harrison.
All I want to do is give her a good life.
I hope she walks in my footsteps.
I hope she is the better version of me, but also her own person.
I hope she loves cropping.
I hope one day we will have farms.
I hope one day she will be in the header harvesting our crops, and I hope to be around to see my grandkids getting involved.
Hearing the family side of it when I was with Kanimbla Contracting really hit.
It is good to see these conversations come into everything we are doing.
I am looking forward to not needing an excuse for why I am in the sandpit playing with headers.
Nah love, I am just in here levelling the sand out for the kids.
You can view Kanimbla Contracting’s equipment and service details on the Broadacre Contracting website.
If you want to put out an instant alert looking for a harvest contractor, post a job through Broadacre tenders.
If you want to have a yarn about finding a reliable harvest contractor, or you want to get your own contracting business out there, give Dillon a call on 0439 300 380 from 6am to 9pm.
At Broadacre Contracting, we want to become an advocate and trusted partner to the agriculture sector.
We showcase contractors who align with our core values of respect, reliability and responsibility.
Kanimbla Contracting is a family operation with 40 years of history, running quality gear and travelling from Skipton VIC to Coonamble NSW to get the job done.
That is the kind of commitment and reliability we respect.
Want to feature on Talking Gear Tuesday?
Give Dillon a call on 0439 300 380 from 6am to 9pm.
These resources may help growers and contractors watch the episode, find harvest contractors, post a job or understand the New Holland CR gear discussed in this yarn.
If you are looking for harvest contractors, chaser bin hire, header contractors or contract harvesting support around Coonamble, Gilgandra, Warren, Coonabarabran, Walgett, Nyngan or anywhere across the broadacre belt, Broadacre Contracting gives you a clearer place to start.
Watch the Kanimbla Contracting episode, browse harvest contractors or post a tender so verified contractors can see the job and contact you directly.
Kanimbla Contracting is a harvest contracting business based out of Skipton in Western Victoria. The Gardiner family travels across the broadacre belt for harvest work, and this Talking Gear Tuesday episode was filmed at Coonamble in Northern NSW.
Kanimbla Contracting runs New Holland CR headers. The family has run New Holland for decades, having tried Massey Ferguson, John Deere and Case over the years before settling back on yellow.
Kanimbla Contracting is based at Skipton VIC and travels for harvest work. This episode was filmed around Coonamble in Northern NSW, and Broadacre listings also show Kanimbla seeking work in parts of Queensland.
In the episode, the crew mentioned barley sitting around 4.5 tonnes per hectare and faba beans around 2.5 tonnes per hectare, with the New Holland CRS pushing strong hourly capacity in those crops.
According to the episode, the family tried multiple colours over the years, including Massey Ferguson, John Deere and Case, but kept coming back to New Holland because of capacity, performance and how the headers handled crop.
You can post a tender on Broadacre Contracting, browse harvest contractor listings or call Dillon on 0439 300 380 so Broadacre can help connect you with available verified contractors.
Yes. Broadacre Contracting can help growers find harvest contractors, chaser bins, headers and other gear by sending job alerts to verified contractors and operators across the network.
Talking Gear Tuesday is Broadacre Contracting’s video series where we sit down with growers, contractors and ag operators to yarn about gear, businesses, risks, lessons and the real stories behind Australian agriculture.
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