Turtle Crosby is making an eagle. He’s made two Clydesdales as well.
The farmers hobby all started with a cheeky beer-drinking emu called Eric,
who turned out to be Erica. I was
in the front bar of the Darke Peak pub and it was absolutely packed in there and a bloke
called Stony out at Darke Peak had a pet emu. The emu came into the pub, weaved his way around
all the people in there and then stuck his head in a schooner of the bloke that I was talking to.
He had his back to it. He never even seen the emu come in.
And he stuck his head, spilt half his schooner and he reached around to grab
it and he said 'Oh who drank me beer?'. And everybody bar him saw the emu,
and the emu just walked out. I said 'No, an emu came in and drank it' and
he, to this day, wouldn't believe it. And so that was the funniest thing I'd ever seen
so when they had the Darke Peak Legends weekend out there
they wanted me to make an emu so I made one out there and that's still out there
by the pub and I've got the original one in under our verandah there.
Turtle uses tools and bits of old farm machinery.
A lot of farmers have said 'Come up and help yourself to our scrap heap'.
And there's lots of old fence droppers they've pulled out and they've given me a lot of them.
Some things I buy but a lot of things are just given to me from other farmers.
I look at tools and things different to what everyone else does at clearing sales
because I'm trying to picture it as part of an animal and they all want it for tools and just
recently at clearing sales they're getting dearer and dearer because people want to buy the tools
and I want them for body parts for animals. I made that first horse just for
our driveway at our block in at Cleve, just for something there, and I got a bit carried away
with it and then that led to making another one and that ended up in Cleve on the main street.
I've always liked welding because I think
when I was growing up on the farm we broke a lot of things and had to learn to weld to fix it.
Never had, never been taught, it's just self-taught by learning by your mistakes.
You can cut it off and start again.
I've always just liked eagles and I thought I'd make a wedgie for a bit of a challenge.
This eagle, he won't be able to fly. He'll probably weigh half a tonne by the time
I've finished it all because it's going to be on a branch and then a nest and all that adds to it.
I like the antique stuff so I keep the real old ones separate.
I've got kind of a little museum inside with old tools and that
so anything a bit special I'll keep. I won't weld that on there but yeah,
there's probably a lot of really good tools welded to this eagle there, Sidchrome spanners and
good tin snips and that but I don't need them so
I'll weld them there. He’s hoping to exhibit Regie the Wedgie
but for now it’s back to farming for this fledgling artist.