Twenty One Hour Days

After a while, when you've been driving a cotton picker up and down at 4.2 miles per hour (don't know what that is in metric, I'm too tired to work it out) you start to see things that aren't there. And not seeing things that are there. Accidents happen and damage occurs - you'd be surprised how expensive a 4m.p.h. crash can be. When you realise that the machine costs around $550,000 and that yearly maintenance on the picker heads alone costs $40,000 to $50,000 just on normal wear and tear some of the surprise may dissipate.

Thankfully, no accidents so far this year, but in the past I have seen pickers roll over, burn down and crash into various solid objects and once, when the driver had fallen asleep, I saw a picker pull out of the paddock, through the tail-drain and into the return channel. Would have been funny except the driver went out through the windscreen and over the picker heads, luckily he didn't get caught up in the angle-drives. Actually, it WAS funny. Nevertheless, it caused around $100,000 damage and cost the driver three days in hospital as well as his job.

A few years ago, when I worked at Colly Cotton, I saw the roof of the operators cab knocked off the same module builder three times in two days - twice by pickers and once by a boll-buggy. The guy operating the builder was a massive Maori shearer we called Gigantor. Luckily he had a sense of humour or we'd all be dead.

I'm tired. I forgot what I was going to say.

'Bye.