Some people celebrate Corowa as the birthplace of Australian
Federation. A rare few honour it as the birthplace of the
legendary Upton tractor.
Yeah it's unique to say the least.
In fact, so unique and so highly esteemed by vintage tractor
enthusiasts, that some journey from overseas to this little New
South Wales town, especially to see one of these rare machines.
You know there's people all over the world to come to look at
them and, you know, people are still amazed by them.
So for tractor tragics it doesn't get any better than
this. Five Upton tractors in a row.
The Henty Field Days in southern New South Wales, this year
marked its 60th anniversary in style. The organisers tracked
down these machines and their devoted owners. This headline
attraction was the first time there's been so many Uptons
assembled in one spot.
So what makes this tractor so special? There's a range of
reasons - it's rarity for a start. No more than three dozen
tractors were ever made. No one's quite sure exactly how
many.
Somewhere around that. They obviously didn't have the book
keeping up to scratch I don't think.
But it was a world beater. well ahead of its time. Decades after
the final machine rolled out of the workshop. It still punches -
or at least pulls - well above its weight.
The Upton story began with Arthur Upton, who started the
family engineering business in Corowa in 1944. The Second World
War finished and there was disposals. They were disposing
of used military equipment.
Arthur was a wheeler and dealer with an uncanny knack at
repurposing machinery, especially army wartime surplus.
His skill was he could see a use for something that no one else
could. So that was his forte.
Especially armoured vehicles.
Initially, he just cut off all the armour that wasn't required,
and they had two diesel engines so he'd pull one engine out and
just leave one engine in there and built a big scrub rake on
the front to clear Mallee scrub down there.
And then he'd use the other engine - and attach a water pump
on a skid - and sell it as an irrigation pump.
With materials still in short supply in post World War Two
Australia, this bush engineering works became skilled at
improvising, inventing and manufacturing. In 1962. Arthur
Upton built a prototype tractor, the Upton 180, which arose from
a simple need.
Everyone wanted to be able to cultivate more or quicker or
easier, or whatever.
the
The very first tractor it was cobbled together over a number
of years, they would work on that when they had not much else
to do. It wasn't a priority.
Those initial 180 horsepower tractors showed Arthur Upton's
entrepreneurial flair with spare parts.
He had a brainwave. Let's put some of this stuff together and
use it up and get a tractor out of it and away she went.
Amazing things to look at. The big back end on it was unreal.
These are early model Uptons, the 180, manufactured from the
mid 1960s. They're made of armoured plate because
incredibly, the gearbox and the rear end were taken from army
tanks.
There was variations of the Sherman, the Grant and the Lees
tanks. Had the same final drive and gearbox parts all made by
Mack in America.
Well, I counted one day 32 Grant tanks in the yard. He decided
these big four tonne transmissions there wasn't much
use for them. So he decided to start building a few tractors,
just to get rid of the tank diffs, that was the main thing.
And he fitted them with the UD engines that he bought from
Japan.
The UD was a far superior two stroke diesel, and the robust
military parts proved to be perfect.
Ones that would tolerate the type of horsepower and the wheel
sizes that we wanted to put on. You've still got to bear in mind
economies. These parts were there, they were cheap. So we
could make the first of the 180 horsepower tractors. We could
sell for around 14,000 pounds.
And then they only ever built them when someone wanted them.
It wasn't, 'we want to take over the world'. It was just, he'd
build them as required.
Those early models had extra wide wheels, and were a
distinctive shade of pink.
Bill Keynes was mixing up some paint in the shed one day in the
paint shop. And that's what turned out. And we knew of
nothing else that was that colour. So it went on.
The business grew and diversified from the 1960s
making irrigators, notably a travelling type, propelled by
the water it was emitting. The firm invented and made every
type of rural machinery.
At one stage he was the biggest employer in Corowa next to the
Corowa Hospital. And he nearly always had about 30 men
employed. And they were all sort of bush mechanics and each and
every one of them had a forte of some description.
In 1973, a 225 horsepower model emerged, which still had some
tank parts, along with some cutting edge components. By
then, Carl Upton had joined the firm, designing and building
ever bigger, more powerful tractors of great appeal to
large scale grain growers.
They were probably three times the size of anything on the
market at the time. For example, the most popular tractor was a
Chamberlain, a 98 horsepower Chamberlain. In 1977 I'd built
to HT series, which was 350 horsepower. So here you have a
tractor that might weigh eight tonne, and I've got a tractor
that could weigh 20 tonne.
Many thought these distinctive yellow machines - Karl changed
the colour scheme - would be a flop because they were simply
too big.
It was such a big tractor at the time that not a lot of people,
they just thought 'oh, well, it's just too big. It's just
unmaneuverable, just too big for the farm'. Because it was going
out when people had little grey Fergie's and here's this about a
10 or 12 tractor.
The Upton was a big banger for open country and probably, well
there would have been a lot more around if they circumstances
just sort of stopped them making them.
Only eight H2 models were ever made. Production ceased in 1981.
By then, similar tractors were being imported at a cheaper
price. And the rural economy was going through some tough times.
The last one rolled out 43 years ago. The Upton still stands
apart, especially the HT model.
Well the last one is still is the biggest two-wheel drive
tractor in the world.
It's a big name if you're a tractor aficionado?
Oh yeah, well it did cause a stir because no one's ever done
it and still today, there is no production built, factory built
tractor, that is 350 horse two-wheel drive. Yes, there are
big four wheel drives, but not two-wheel drive.
It still holds world records for its capacity to pull. Karl Upton
says it's a case of fundamental physics.
You see it's very simple, an elephant can pull more than a
horse. Because it's bigger and a trcator's the same. The bigger
and heavier you make them, the more they're going to pull. And
of course, you have to take into consideration all the
efficiencies of the traction of the tyres and so forth and on
our machine, it all worked very well.
Over time, most of these tractors sometimes rediscovered
gathering dust in a farm shed or stalled in the scrub have been
tracked down and restored by keen new owners. This one still
in use on a farm was driven here especially for the Henty
display.
The MT 855 model. 1980 this particular one.
This is another the Upton family tracked down and purchased with
a plan to restore it, but it will need a lot of love. Some
Bush mechanic has made some crude post-factory
modifications.
Tractor enthusiasts are a passionate type. Invariably
older blokes, retired farmers - grain growers to be precise -
weather-beaten by exposure to the elements, and decades of
diesel fumes and dust. On the outskirts of town, a couple of
dozen such folk gather every Wednesday.
Officially the Corowa Vintage Machinery Club, it's mostly
called 'the tractor club', because everyone here seems
besotted with them. It's a kind of Men's Shed with machinery.
So
So that's a lot of brains of people who invented them
originally. Started from scratch, whereas now they just
improve everything. And that's part of it. And you've got to be
a bit silly to I think. It's good fun.
'technical adjustments'
Bill Pesce owns dozens of old tractors, but his rare
locally-made Upton is perhaps his favourite.
Mines a 180 horsepower one with a four cylindar UD. Still in its
pink colours.
Karl Upton stepped out of the business a decade ago to let
sons Paul and Mark take the reins.
I have very fond memories of tractors, in parades down the
main street on Australia Day and things like that. And you know
we are, I'm very proud of my family history in those
tractors, yeah.
Upton Engineering still fabricates all manner of things,
but irrigation equipment remains the company's mainstay. In the
late 80s, the firm built the world's first purpose-built
racecourse irrigator.
This family has long believed that to engineer its own future,
technology is vital.
I've always felt that without technology, really, we are a
glorified blacksmith's shop. So we've always pushed to be, you
know, at least up to speed or better than everyone else in the
world, you know. So you know, we have phone apps and the machines
can be fully controlled from your phone anywhere in the
world. And they can give reports on how much water you're using
on a crop and things like that.
But in times of drought, when water is scarce, business can
dry up quite
Like when the Millennium drought gripped eastern Australia,
forcing the Uptons to venture further afield.
So literally, myself and one of the salesmen hopped a plane and
went over there and door knocked the entire coast of Western
Australia. We did get a lot of work out of that. And that ended
up we do have a depot now in Broome. We have one in Darwin.
We have spares in Perth, and we service Cairns. Yeah, we do
literally do jobs every day Australia wide. So you know it's
it has taken me to every state in Australia. And you know, we
have hundreds and hundreds of these machines all over the
country.
The firm makes irrigators up to 800 metres in length. The ethos
of this third generation business remains the same, give
anything a red hot go.
There's just this common myth that people say, 'well, we can't
do that in Australia'. And to my father's credit, I would have to
say, you know, we were never told that you can't do anything.
We were probably fed the opposite. So there's a workshop,
you can build whatever the hell you want to build, go and do it.
And we did you know, so we never had that barrier in front of us.
And I never had that mentality that we couldn't do anything.
Uptons built tractors to meet a market. That factor remains the
same.
People think that you invent something and then go back to
the public and sell it but it's probably driven the other way.
We just respond to what customers ask for. So if someone
wants something, yeah, we'll build it.