MY GARAGE
■ Anthony Wason with a portable steam engine (England). This engine was owned by The Kelly family in Glenrowan, circa 1880 Picture: Ivan Kemp
New life for old treasures ANTHONY WASON’S Portarlington farm is like a miniature old-time museum. He speaks to JUSTIN FLYNN about his love of old machinery.
BY JUSTIN FLYNN
“I’m like a bowerbird, I have to have it. I’m like the graveyard for things nobody wants.”
If it’s old and dusty, chances are Anthony Wason has something like it on his 150-acre Portarlington farm.
An impressive array of vintage steam engines, cars and all sorts of hidden treasures have lovingly been picked up and transported to the farm where, one day, they will be restored.
Anthony has packed a lot into his 50 years. He is a qualified chef, served with the army as a peacekeeper in Somalia, was in the police force for 19 years, including 13 with the critical response unit, and is now working with Telstra’s NBN and dabbles as a farmer. But it’s the old machinery on his property that is his pride and joy. It’s almost like a mini old-time museum. “If it’s old and dusty, I can’t help myself,” he says.
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One of the steam engines was owned by the Kelly family from Glenrowan. “That’s an 1880s steam engine, one of the first ones probably even imported into Victoria,” Anthony says. “It was owned and run by the Kelly family and it used to sit outside the Ned Kelly Museum in Glenrowan. “Councils being councils 20 years ago told them that it was a hazard or a safety concern and they had to remove it, so it was sitting in a
paddock for God knows how long and I couldn’t help myself, just because of the history behind it, and I picked it up and brought it home. “I’ll try and restore it but it has a lot of cast iron and it’s very hard to repair cast. We might be able to do something with it at some stage, but it’s missing a lot of pieces, so it might be more a story to tell or something that sits there and looks good. Nobody wanted it.” Anthony says the precision in which vintage engines were made is one of their most fascinating aspects. “The Ned Kelly steam engine when I started doing that up, I had a fitter and turner come out to remove the tubes that ran down the centre of it and he said he couldn’t manufacture the tubes that we cut out with today’s technology with the precision that they did in the 1880s,” he says.
SUMMER 2021
