Haeusler’s John Deere Sea Lake service technician Lachlan Corridan was named Australian Agriculture & Turf Service Technician of the Year at an awards ceremony in Brisbane last night.
John Deere Australia and New Zealand managing director, Luke Chandler, says “Lachlan has demonstrated exemplary performance among a high calibre field of finalists and should be incredibly proud of his efforts in taking home the award tonight”.
Lachlan, working in the heart of Victoria’s Mallee wheatbelt region, has become a specialist in John Deere’s combine harvesters and self-propelled sprayers and said he was ecstatic to win his category.
“It’s been an honour to have been nominated and then selected as a finalist, let alone winning,” Lachlan says.
“I love being a John Deere tech and dealing with customers each day and keeping their machines going is what I love most about my job,” he says.
Employed by Hausler’s in Sea Lake, Lachlan grew up in Swan Hill and had his sights set on working in the agriculture industry from a young age.
He says when he made the move to a new role as a service technician in the broadacre business with Haeusler’s, he first had to go on a harvest crash course – without any crashes.
He managed to pull that off, and soon found himself a finalist in the 2023 John Deere Technician of the Year Awards in the agriculture and turf section, going up against technicians from NSW, South Australia and Queensland.
But not before, he confesses, Haeusler’s got him a gig driving a header for an entire harvest so he knew what he would be dealing with in his new role.
“I didn’t come from a farming background, although I have a couple of uncles who are on the land, and being in Swan Hill, I knew plenty of others who did come from farming, so I always had a bit of an interest in general and in machinery in particular,” Lachlan says.
“After completing some work experience locally, I was hooked on a future as a service technician, and started my apprenticeship in 2016,” he says.
“It’s been a great decision, it’s a great job and industry and I love it all.”
