PEOPLE collect all manner of things so it comes as no surprise there is a farmer in Mt Walker whose hobby is collecting tractors.
While to some the idea of buying a hodgepodge of rusty iron seems unfathomable, to Norm Kerle, it makes perfect sense.
“It all started when my dad bought the neighbouring farm in 1951,” he said.
“In 1952 he was using draught horses on the farm. He went to Modern Motors in Ipswich and bought a brand new petrol/kero e27n Fordson tractor with everything on it and a three furrow plough, and drove it home at three-miles-an-hour.
“When he started ploughing all the neighbours would call in because it was the first three-point linkage tractor in the district.
“It was by driving this tractor that I learned how to drive.”                                                                                                                                                                                    The family went on to use this tractor for 12 years on their farm.
“A few years back I said to Sandra, my wife, I’d love to get one of them [Fordson e27n] built back to working order,” he said.
“I had to buy three tractors to make it happen but I’ve got one in the shed now that’s all back in working order, it’s painted up and has its decals.
“I can even fire it up with no trouble.”
He may be only a few years into his tractor hobby but that hasn’t stopped him from accumulating quite a collection.
Hearing the roar of an old engine coming back to life after decades of hard work is somewhat of a rush for Norm.
“Since then I’ve acquired a fair few,” he said of the Fordson e27n he restored three years ago.
“I’ve always had a love for farming machinery in my blood, and you must have tractors if you’re farming.
“I’ve always loved machinery in general, I suppose. “
He said the reason he collected Ford tractors and not International, John Deere or Fiat was because his dad was part of a farm share in lower Mt Walker for the manager of the Ford Motor Company, Alan Cornwall.                                                                                                                                                                                                  “Whenever Ford came out with a new tractor, and we are talking of old steel wheel petrol kerosene tractors because those were the new tractors back in the mid-40s, they would bring it up to the farm for dad to try out,” he said.
“It was a natural progression that when he decided he wanted a tractor, for him to buy a new Ford one.
Norm said after restoring the first Fordson e27n, he was addicted.
“I’ve just acquired, and there is another one coming, an [Fordson] 8401 and that’s an Australian built Ford tractor and there was only about 700 of them made,” he said.
“Most of them went across to Western Australia and I’ve just acquired two of them.”
Quite a few Ford tractors are now parked up on his sprawling Mt Walker property. The ‘bodies’ are in various states of disrepair and await remedy by the enthusiastic owner.
“Some of the old ones, the ‘E27’ and the ‘N’ are fairly tidy and complete but not going yet as I’ve not had time to work on it, and likewise with the old ‘F’,” he said.
“They have magnetos and there are very few auto electricians who can repair those.
“And of course, they have a right hand clutch, whereas every other tractor has a left hand one, and no brakes.”
The passion for Fordson tractors has passed from father to son.
“They never had fancy assembly lines like we have today and they had hundreds of thousands of tractors built and exported,” he said.
He has around 13 Fordson tractors in his collection as well as “half a dozen wrecks up the paddock”.
Tell him he has an addiction to tractors and he says “it’s a hobby with healthy outcomes”.
“A lot of people ask, ‘how much did you spend there?’ and I say ‘too much’,” he said.
“But there are a lot of fellows who spend more money than that through drink, on poker machines or on horses who lose races.
“I’ve got something to show for the money I’ve spent.”