Dear all, Anybody got any idea what this is?Yesterday we visited a sheep station on Lake Wakitipu called Warren Peak opposite Queenstown.
Now as far as I can tell it's always been a sheep station but sat on the beach alongside the steamer wharf is this machine. It appears to be a threshing drum but...
Why would you need a threshing drum on a sheep station? The maker's transfer is very faded but I could see that it was made in America. Strangely it has an all galvanised sheet metal body and some very large pipework which is not normal for a threshing drum.
I have more photographs which may help when we get back but in the meantime can anybody confirm the machine's use?
We've also found a museum of sock machines! There are over 50 vintage machines in the collection plus they actually make new ones - I think we will be alright if we need spares (or even instructions) for ours.
Today we visited the Lakes District Museum at Arrowtown and found within a Codd bottle filler similar to ours - only the second I've seen. Also there they spell the word "waggon" with two "g"s like we do. I tried to find out if it was a local spelling to Southland but they weren't able to tell me though they did admit that, like us, they had visitors telling them they'd made spelling mistakes in their interpretation!
See you all soon, Chris -- Chris Shepheard writing from the Plusnet webmail interface
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