 ANDY’S CATS
A farm in North Canterbury is home to an ever-growing collection of old crawler tractors. There are rusty machines waiting to be restored in the yard, while others are slowly brought back to life in the workshop. Many more have been returned to perfect working order, a testament to farmer Andy Abernethy’s patient skills as a mechanic. Rangiora based freelance journalist Kim Newth makes the journey to Okuku Farm.
Old iron fever. There’s no mistaking the symptoms and Andy Abernethy obviously has an advanced case of it.
There are many generations of tracked vehicles of every size, shape and configuration at his family farm in North Canterbury. Restoring rusty old hulks back to working condition is something that Andy thoroughly enjoys. It is more than a hobby: it is a pastime to which he devotes many hours a week. There is also a strong personal attachment to some of the machines.
Andy and Carolyn took over Okuku Farm in 1974, not long after they were married, from Andy’s parents Jack and Marion.
Prior to taking up farming, Andy’s father developed the Cheviot Lime Company, a cartage and lime business in Cheviot. When Andy was about six, his father bought a 1953 Caterpillar D4 bulldozer to use at the quarry. “A bulldozer was a pretty amazing thing to me at that time – it was like dad had bought a jet plane, or a tank!” Sometimes, Andy would sit with his dad while he worked and later, as a teenager, he drove the D4 a couple of times.
This D4 is where it all began for Andy, who remains fascinated with crawler tractors and just keeps on acquiring more. He still owns his dad’s old dozer, which looks as good as new and ready for many more years of hard work. After finding it in a wrecked condition in 1970, he painstakingly pieced it back together again, using serial numbers. “The transmission and back end were in Ashburton, the motor was in Gore, the parts had all been sold off…I finished restoring it three weeks before the Cheviot Show. My brother Jim drove it in the grand parade and we were all very thrilled.”
One of the other treasures from his father’s days at the lime works in the 1950s and 1960s is an old Bay City excavator used to load limestone. Andy’s brother, Bruce, restored that particular machine.
Andy also has his dad’s old Cheviot Lime Company Bedford truck, now restored. “He bought it in 1954. When it was delivered, there was a fridge on the back for mum! That truck worked for 30 years in Cheviot.”
Andy admires the strength and usefulness of crawler tractors. Although they are generally heavier and less manoeuvrable than wheeled tractors, they often can keep going in wet and heavy soil when normal wheels would bog down.
The name Caterpillar, endearingly called “CAT” has almost become a generic term for crawler tractors, similar to the way “Primus” is associated with almost any kind of camping stove, yet Caterpillar as a brand name has survived since its inception in the mid 1920s. Caterpillar became dominant in the construction, road-building and farming sectors and, after World War II, as a major player on the global market.
Among the other pioneering brands in the tracked vehicle market was Cletrac (The Cleveland Motor Plow Company), formed in 1916 in Cleveland, Ohio. Their machines had some unique innovations such as differential steering, but in 1945 the company was bought by the Oliver Corporation and by the mid 1960s the Cletrac name disappeared from the showrooms.
Another early American crawler tractor manufacturer was International Harvester, although this company remained better known for its wheeled tractors.
One of the first crawler tractors Andy bought for the farm was an International TD6. “We’d had a very wet year and had trouble cultivating, so I bought that bulldozer to cope with the wet conditions.”
Only problem was the TD6 kept breaking down. That’s when he got his first Caterpillar D2, …
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