Harden resident Steve Carter has restored a 90-year-old cream separator to its original glory.
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The cream separator, a RS8 Lister, was made in Dursley, Gloucestershire in England approximately 1930.
The process to restore the cream separator took about 30 hours.
It was pulled apart, old metal and old flaking paint was cleaned off with a wire brush, put back together, repainted, restickered and completed with a stunning chrome finish.
"It takes hours to rub them down. You have to take all the old metal off, all the old paint off and start again, repaint them, resticker them. It takes ages. It probably took me three weeks off and on. Probably 30 hours all up. And if you go to pull a screw out and it breaks off, you got to drill it out, retap another thread, and find another screw or make one," Steve explained.
Steve travels the country visiting various Field Days and events to show his collection of cream separators, butter churners, old milk bottle caps, bottle openers, spoons, handmade milk buckets and more.
He founded the Cream Separator Collectors Association of Australia and is a member of Young's Old Machinery and Fine Junk.
He said people are fascinated by vintage cream separators.
"They're just awesome. You could look at them all day," he said.
"People love them. People love looking at them, they enjoy it. People say 'I remember turning these, I hated cleaning them'."
He'll be restoring more and more items he's collected during the past 40 years, and putting them on display at events across the region like the Cherry Festival and Wombat's Australia Day.
He can't recall how he got into collecting.
"I milked cows for 40 years. It just happened. I bought my first cream separator at the second-hand place here in Harden. A long time ago. I restored it and it's all gone ahead since then. I used to put an ad on the radio saying I'm looking for one to buy. I find them all over the place."
He encourages people to join the Cream Separator Collectors Association of Australia.
"A lot of people out there collect stuff and don't tell you. We got members all over Australia. I know people with a lot more than me," he said.
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