Hamish Rowe doesn’t throw a lot of full-blown tantrums – unless you tell him it’s time to get off the header and head home for a nap.
Then he can drum up decibels like you wouldn’t believe, and it’s become something of an issue of late.
Because this two-year-old appears to have his life mapped out already.
At least, he did have, until mum Rachel threw the proverbial spanner in the works and moved the family – husband Ash, Hamish and baby brother Luke (almost one) – from the family farm on the far side of Werrimull to the new family home in Koorlong, in downtown Mildura.
“We have been here about a year and it gives us access to daycare, to my job as an ambo, and Ash splits his time between here and the farm, as do we – especially Hamish,” Rachel says with a laugh.
“Hamish loves everything outside, especially anything with wheels – and the bigger the better,” she says.
“You might have trouble getting him to sit still for anything but pop him into the cab on the header or any other machinery and he won’t move until you drag him out at the end of the day – or nap time.”
In fact, Hamish’s obsession with machinery extends to naptime (and bedtime) with his favourite Case header, which tends to worry mum somewhat as it is all metal – whatever happened to soft, cuddly teddy bears?
“He is obsessed with machinery and he already knows all the colours and can tell you what each brand is, although most of the things on our place are red,” Rachel says.
“And he’s not fussy on the day: he’s happy if he is in a truck, helping with an auger or a front-end loader – if it has a motor, wheels, tracks, any form of propulsion, he’s the man (in 16-20 years; in the meantime he’s the boy).”
Rowe Farms, which Ash farms with his father Jack, covers 40,000 acres with cropping, lots of cropping, plus a couple of thousand sheep, specialising in the stubble from all that cropping – and it all attracts the farmer of the future.
In fact his mum is so convinced that’s where he is headed she would have no hesitation in plonking down the mortgage money on a bet she is right.
“It was a close-run thing as I recall as to whether his first word was ‘Mum’ or ‘Dad’ or ‘tractor’, but I’m pretty sure it was Mum and tractor the same day, and then Dad,” she laughs again.
Read all about our other joint winner of Junior on the Farm.
