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For the love of harvest

FOR 73 years, Philip ‘PK’ Templeton has watched the Mallee change and grow from the seat of his header.

Now 88 years old, PK drives a header that’s a far cry from the stripper he worked with the help of a team of horses in 1940.

He and fellow grain grower Rob Allen – who just completed his 64th consecutive harvest – tell a story of droughts, mouse plagues and kerosene tractors.

They recall hunting rabbits to buy a tractor and shoveling dust from the house during wild dust storms.

It’s the story of more than six decades and 140 harvests.

For more on this story, pick up a copy of Friday’s Guardian (December 12).

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