General News
3 March, 2026
Probus Club guest speaker features Austin Grace
On Monday, February 2, a regular meeting of the Combined Probus Club of Hopetoun was held at the Hopetoun Co-operative Church Hall.
President Alan Malcolm welcomed us all back after the Christmas break.
14 members attended five apologies were noted and three guests Leona Baker, Kerry and Graham Cardell and one guest speaker Austin Grace.
The three guests today all come from Beulah and have purchased property here to retire.
Brenda Naylor read the Probus prayer.
Entertainment Officer Gwen Malcolm introduced this month's Guest Speaker Mr Austin Grace who spoke about his life in the Mallee and the family farm at Turriff West.
In March 2026, it will be 100 years since Austin’s father, Mr John McCarthy Grace, purchased two 800-acre blocks of the Crown Land off the Victorian Government at Turriff West.
The homestead house still stands tall at Carinya (which means peaceful place) where now the third generation of Grace family have been farming the land for cropping and grazing stock.
Mr Grace senior cleared the land with teams of horses for cropping; he even used horse teams to help get the mallee dirt out of the channels, using a scoop for the local water authorities, for whom he had a contract to complete for more than 16 years.
This practice of using the horse team was last used in 1957.
When Austin himself joined his father at 14, he used bulldozers and tractors to clear the remaining land.
Soil conservation and the mallee dust storms.
One of Austin earliest memory as a 4–5 year-old, was his parents telling the children to come inside as a dust storm arrived.
They lit the lights and father said the dust storm was so dark, “that the chooks have gone to roost”.
Such severe storms from the land erosion played havoc with the train lines; Austin remembers teams of men scraping the dirt off the train lines to prevent derailments for trains, and also has fond memories of the steam trains passing to Mildura through the region.
Austin’s father John during the 1940’s won the prestigious Harold Hanslow Cup for soil conservation in the Mallee.
There’s no ploughing of the crops straight after the completion of harvest anymore and the stubble of crops is left on until just before the planting of crops for the next season.
Natural springs on the farm were sources of water for the farm, as well as the local channels.
Now water authorities are using pipelines to stop evaporation, and farmers have licences to tap into the water supply.
Over Austin’s lifetime he has been involved with a variety of transportation and farming equipment.
Starting with Horse teams to a kerosine Fordson, Chamberlain and a Mercedes Benz tractor of which Austin utilized for more than 40 years.
The Mercedes Benz tractor was purchased by a German collector and shipped to Germany.
Today Austin’s son Micheal, uses a Caterpillar tractor, direct drilling equipment, air spraying and boom spraying for cropping.
In 2000, Austin retired to Hopetoun.
This lasted a whole six weeks.
He then spent eight years working on the Shire and then six years as the maintenance man at the Hopetoun Hospital.
The Mallee has provided Austin’s family with a lifestyle of no regrets, making great friendships and he loves being a part of the community.
The last words from Austin “Through the many challenges that this country shares with us; be they drifting sands, bush fires that continued for weeks, droughts and floods that surprise us, mice, rabbits, kangaroos or grasshoppers that test our farming produce, we have made our own choices, and it is still the best place to live”.
Ken Healey thanked Austin and presented him with a Probus pen.
The Annual General Meeting of the Combined Probus Club of Hopetoun will be held at Hopetoun Co-operative Church Hall at 9.30am on Monday, March 2.