Full load: Mr Arthur Bail standing near the last railway trucks of bagged wheat at the Kyabram railway station in January 1965.
Kyabram was once a large wheat-growing centre. Arthur Bail was one person who had a lot to do with this industry. He had been the wheat delivery agent responsible for storage and trucking away huge quantities of grain from the Kyabram railway station for many years.
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In 1944 Mr Arthur Bail advertised in the Free Press as a real estate agent, successor to Mr F. E. Holcombe. In this respect Arthur was not a newcomer to this business, but rather continued in what he had been doing for many years since a young lad.
The photo of the remains of the last stack of bagged wheat at the Kyabram railway station was taken circa 1963/64. The lumpers are loading the bagged wheat up onto S. Fitch’s truck with an elevator.
Lumpers were hard-working men who lumped and stacked bags of wheat for transportation until the advent of bulk handling of wheat. The bags were often up to 90kg.
The second photo shows Arthur Bail standing next to loaded railway trucks in January 1965. It was the last load of bagged wheat to leave the Kyabram Railway Station.
Arthur Bail, a well-respected citizen of Kyabram, died in 2001at the age of 100.
• Compiled by Eileen Sullivan, Kyabram Historical Society voluntary librarian.
Stack ’em high: Lumpers loading bags of wheat from the wheat stack to S. Fitch’s truck at the Kyabram railway station circa 1963/64.
