Tractor heritage, news and features

Legacy of a visionary

The establishment of this collection was due to a visionary who could see that the tools of the pioneers were being lost to future generations. During the 1960s he made it known that he would accept anything vaguely agricultural for the collection and so began what is now known as Brayshaw Park.

Norm Brayshaw was apparently a chemist by trade; an unlikely profession, you may think, to breed a collector of vintage farm machinery. But Norm was more than a collector of rusty relics and in 1975 he was awarded the British Empire Medal for outstanding commitment to the Provincial history of Marlborough. Among his achievements he was instrumental in establishing museums in the townships of Renwick, Havelock and Picton. He established the Marlborough Archives, which for many years were housed in a tin shed behind his home in Howick Road.

A life-long dream was finally realised when in 1968 the landfill of Blenheim’s early refuse dump was officially established as Brayshaw Park. The site was gifted by the local council – possibly in the belief that if the scheme fell apart then all the rusty relics could easily be disposed of in the dump. The park now hosts five different organisations. Included among them are the buildings of Beavertown, which Norm was instrumental in creating from material collected from the demolition of some of the old shops in Blenheim. Replicas of the old dentist shop and livery stables are just two of the buildings that have been recreated.

Keep from deterioration

The Marlborough Vintage Farm and Machinery Society occupies a 12-acre site at Brayshaw Park comprising 21 sheds containing a collection of farm machinery, tractors and horse drawn equipment. Vice-president of the Society is Bernie Mason who says the main aim of the group is keep the vast collection from deteriorating so that it may be restored by subsequent generations. “In the beginning Norm would tow the various bits of machinery to the park from farmyards and hedgerows with his old car. There was absolutely no money,” says Bernie, “so when a tractor was to be collected members would have a whip round from those assembled to fund the cost of recovery.

“Later on, Ralph Denton, a retired farmer bequeathed $NZ500,000 from the sale of his property for the establishment of the museum. This has enabled buildings to be constructed to house the machinery and to provide some funds for running costs. Only three of the sheds have concrete floors and not one horse-drawn item is resting on a solid floor, so deterioration is inevitable unless we can erect more buildings.”

Square metre club

The society has just raised $NZ100,000 for a new building by writing to farmers in Marlborough, inviting them to become members of the ‘square metre club’. For $NZ330 a member can contribute to a square metre of building, which will be used to house horse-drawn equipment and restored items that once worked the land of the Wairau Plains. One of the disadvantages of building on top of a rubbish dump is the foundations required to construct a new shed. The impressive tractor house is built using 24ft railway irons driven down to find a secure footing. Recently while excavating a septic tank site the digger came upon a buried traction engine! “There is more treasure buried beneath the site than there is above ground,” says Bernie.
Visitors come from all over the world to see the collection. There is a huge variety of machinery and some of it is extremely rare.

New Zealand farmers were always very efficient, constantly looking for innovations and were quick to grab new technology. The geographical isolation meant that machines were not melted down for the war effort and the dry climate helped
with their preservation, even if they were parked outside under a tree. All the tractors are now numbered and registered on a National Museum Register and details of who donated or loaned them to the Society are recorded.

Among the rare tractors in the collection is possibly the first New Zealand-built tractor. It is powered by a 10hp Blackstone Engine, which was built in England in 1908 and shipped to this country. Andrews and Beavan of Christchurch designed and built a chassis complete with chaffcutter for the tractor and it worked around Springfield until 1918. AR Wooding of Ward then purchased it, removed the chaffcutter and shortened the chassis to utilise it as a tractor. It was retired in 1938 and was brought to Brayshaw Park in 1973.

Rare machines

Another rare item is a 1916 four-wheel-drive tractor built by the Four Drive Tractor Company, Big Rapids, Michigan. This one was owned by Roy McCallum of Riverlands and carried a hefty price tag for the period of £650. It has been repowered at some time with a period Dorman engine. Behind one of the sheds rests the remains of a Hanomag crawler tractor from 1918. It is considered to be the only one left in the world and was the result of an attempt by the Germans to circumnavigate the arms embargo and develop tracked vehicle technology by building tractors instead of tanks. In 1916 General Motors unsuccessfully dabbled in the tractor market with the Samson Sieve-Grip, a three-wheeled 8-10hp tractor complete with a directional arrow to assist the driver, as the front wheel was not visible from the seat. This particular example ran over its owner’s leg while being started, breaking it in several places. It then trundled down the paddock coming to rest against a tree, where it lay for the next 25 years before being rescued. In one of the dusty sheds is a Fordson E27N half-track. It is reputed to have only done 50 hours work as something went seriously wrong in the gearbox and it was parked up and left.

A Swedish built Munktells type 25 was one of a number shipped to New Zealand in the mid 30s as a result of a deal done between the respective governments. The tractor featured a two-cylinder, two-stroke, ignition bulb 32hp 5.3-litre engine that was started with compressed air. It proved to be unpopular with farmers so any government department that needed a tractor was given one. A more popular tractor in Australia and New Zealand was the Peterboro made by Peter Brotherhood Ltd in Peterborough, England. The 30hp tractor featured a Ricardo-designed petrol paraffin engine. The example at Brayshaw Park is reputed to be one of only 12 remaining in the world. Another Peterboro minus its engine lies in one of the dusty sheds at the park. The Allis Chalmers Model A was a 50hp tractor; some 1200 were manufactured and one of the five imported to the country lives at Brayshaw Park. The Allis was purchased at the Christchurch Show in 1937 and was driven the 350km to Blenheim towing a Red River threshing machine. It is believed the trip took three days and 180 gallons of fuel.

A considerable advancement from the use of the scythe is the Cuthbert Harvester reaper which was imported to the district in 1855. Behind the reciprocating blade was a wooden platform from where the crop was raked by hand. Examples of fencing materials line one wall of a shed. For a developing country the all important long run wire was brought the farms of New Zealand in 1850 and barbed wire was invented in the 1880s.

Anyone planning a visit to this corner of the world should allot a day to spend wandering around this extraordinary piece of concentrated history from New Zealand’s agricultural past. It is the legacy of a visionary.