Doug, as we will call him, was known as Tom at school and Technical College, but as he had an uncle Thomas, to save confusion he became known as Doug.

They had been carting wheat using the bulk bag method (full bags were either skewered or bulk sown) so they could be emptied quickly into the bulk elevator at the Grain Elevators Board (GEB) silos.

To speed up harvest and save lifting and loading of bags (three bushels or 81kg) it was decided to convert the harvest and do away with bags in the 1946 harvest.

They owned a 1924 Sunshine Header. To this they added an extension bin at the side of the header.

This was a seven foot square, four foot deep inverted pyramid which held 25 bags or approximately two tons, and added another wheel to carry the extra load.

At this point they needed an auger to empty the bin and no augers of the type needed had been made.

Doug designed the flight needed for the auger while at school out of cardboard. He then made the flight out of 14 gauge flat steel, (six inch circles with two and a half inch centres) cut out and then heated and stretched until, by joining them all together he was able to make a spiral. This was then put into a six inch tube, with a one inch pipe in the centre of the spiral to drive the auger.

When the header was ready for action a bulk truck was needed.

They constructed a two ton tipping body on an A Model Ford truck purchased at Wauchope.

As this was before hydraulics were available, Doug had to make a hand driven winch to lift up the front of the tipping body.

This was duly proven to work and so they headed to Westdale Silo to deliver the first bulk load of wheat in the North West.

Doug had expected trouble with the unionised bag unloading gang but as luck would have it, a friend, Mr Harrison (known as Cactus) said they could unload if he (Cactus) could wind up the winch. This was okayed and bulk handling was underway. 

At this time, headers were driven from the ground wheel, and geared to operate at 2.8 miles per hour (the walking speed of a horse).

Doug, being Doug, decided he wanted to harvest faster than 2.8 MPH so converted the header to be driven by Power Take Off (PTO) from his 10/20 McCormick tractor.

The speed of the header mechanism could not be increased so it had to be driven as though it was still only going 2.8 MPH.

To achieve this Doug had to build right-angled gearboxes and shaft with universal joints to transmit the power to the header.

Steering extensions were also needed as the operator needed to sit on the header and still steer the tractor. Added to this, the unloading auger had to be driven separately from the header mechanism or the header would have been damaged running at full speed and empty of crop.

A separate drive had to be constructed so the mechanism could be put out of gear and another drive engaged to drive the auger.

Eventually it was realised that the header could be emptied into the truck on the move which saved even more time.

Doug’s tractor was a McCormick 10/20 which meant it was 10 horsepower on the drawbar and 20HP on the belt drive. Doug found this was a bit under-powered for what he needed and managed to upgrade the tractor to about a 15/30 machine Doug and his father had built a grain shed on their farm several years before (1941) they converted to bulk handling.

They made the vertical elevator with leather belting and Doug made the metal cups using 16 gauge flat iron.

The elevator housing was made of timber with masonite for all the rounded parts.

Stan Hodson, later to be the CEO of the GEB, forerunner to Graincorp dropped in regularly to study the progress and inventiveness of the Goddards as did the Sunshine

Harvester designers, but Doug said they did not get as much information out of him as did Stan Hodson.

Max Ridd and Don Barwick, also later luminaries of the northern wheat industry and Tamworth district residents were also very interested and kept a keen eye on Doug’s ideas.

In 1953 the biggest swing to bulk handling in the Tamworth district was seen.

With this change a huge demand grew for augers and bins and many of Doug’s fellow farmers asked him to build for them which he did.

Tom expanded his business, later moving it to the industrial area of Tamworth, Taminda, later building nine and 12 inch augers. He later designed 13 inch vertical augers for John and Neil Uebergang and Don Quast of Crooble to install in their bulk sheds.

These are still operating to this day, setting them many years ahead of other locals. These growers delivered their wheat to Milguy.

This silo was of the Mushroom design, (designed in Italy), and held 22,000 tons.

This silo did not completely fill until the 1958 harvest, meaning Tamworth was in the early post war years a larger producer of grain than Moree. By this time Jack Shuttlewood, who was a boiler maker had purchased a machine to roll out the tubing required to make an auger.

As he was in competition with Doug he would not sell the tubing that Doug needed. So, Doug set to and designed and built a machine to roll his own tubing.

At the end of the war period, as Doug was expanding into making Bulk Bins, he found there was a large number of surplus wheels from DC3 aircraft available.

These he purchased as fast as he could afford and they became the wheels for the Goddard Field Bin, which although small by today’s standards (approximately 100 bags or eight to nine tons) are still found on many North West farms.

Doug thinks he built 600 to 700 over the years.

Much has changed in the 68 years since Doug led the grain industry into mechanisation, but he can surely be credited with leading the industry and saving much sweat and hard work.