Beauford 3373,Victoria, Australia
I always look forward to reading your most interesting magazine.
When I finish, it goes into circulation around the local steam
enthusiasts. Since I have taken the magazine for the past two
years, there has been no mention of steam, engines or threshers in
Australia.
Our Society, formed about six years ago, to preserve a few of
the old relics for future generations. We were sorry to see them
being cut up by scrap iron buyers so started saving a few. Since
then, there have been about fifty collected and most of them
restored. We also have two threshers and quite a few tractors, plus
some other implements.
The oldest relic I have is a one horse tread power, built by
Wheelers in New York, U. S. A., 1858. The only steam engines built
in U. S. A. around this area are Buffalo Pitts, Case, Birdsall and
Kelly. Perhaps there are others that I have not heard of.
Most of the traction engines were English made and the Fowlers
were the most popular. I think there were only four different makes
of engines built in Australia and am enclosing pictures of two of
them.
We hold two rallies every year, one in May and the other in
November. Ours was the first to be held in Australia and although
we are not in a thickly populated area, we have had a crowd of
three thousand.
