Extract from ABC News
Tony Forrest is a farmer and vintage tractor collector from Victoria's Gippsland region. (Supplied: Tony Forrest Junior)
Tony Forrest farms at Ripplebrook in Victoria's Gippsland region, where his cows share paddocks with more than 200 vintage tractors.
"As a kid I gravitated towards everything from tractors, stationary engines, cars, trucks, petrol bowsers," he said.
"Anything that was older than me, pretty much."
Tony Forrest Sr collected vintage tractors for 40 years. (Supplied: Tony Forrest Junior)
Mr Forrest shared his passion with his father, the late Tony Sr, for decades.
"My dad mainly worked on bulldozers, so he'd buy a bunch of them, use them for a few months and then flog them off," Mr Forrest said.
"By the 1980s he had 150-odd bulldozers scattered around the place."
Tony Forrest has been busy preparing his vintage tractors for sale. (ABC Rural: Faith Tabalujan)
Tractor trove
For more than four decades the father-and-son team sourced tractors from around Victoria, New South Wales, South Australia and Western Australia.
"Dad and I used to travel all over Australia, buying and selling machines from John Deere, Massey Ferguson, Ford etc, so I caught the collecting bug pretty quickly," he said.
"When I got a bit too serious, I started importing them from America, England, Belgium, Germany, Holland — all over really."
Mr Forrest says Lanz Bulldog tractors are some of his favourites. (ABC Rural: Faith Tabalujan)
Mr Forrest said there was strong overseas demand for his vehicles.
"I'm sending three tractors — a Lanz Bulldog, a Fordson P5 crawler and a Mercedes-Benz 800 — to someone in the Netherlands and they send other machines back to me in containers," he said.
Mr Forrest said he preferred older tractors.
"For starters, the antique models don't have computers, so you don't have to be a tech whiz to fix the darn things and they tend to be more reliable too," he said.
A Mercedes-Benz tractor sits in Mr Forrest's paddock. (ABC Rural: Faith Tabalujan)
But Mr Forrest said there was a fine line between collecting and accumulating.
"I've lost count of how many I have," he said.
"I've sold a dozen in this first auction and only plan to keep about 50.
"I've got a little 1954 Ferrari tractor which is extremely rare, because Enzo and his cousin only built 13 of them.
"And there's also my 1937 Vierzon, which is a French copy of a Lanz Bulldog, although I love all my Bulldogs."
Tony Forrest has been collecting antique machinery for decades. (Supplied: Tony Forrest)
Saying goodbye
Mr Forrest said collecting went on the backburner after his father's death in 2018.
"After he passed away, life changed a whole lot," Mr Forrest said.
He took over the family's dairy farm and decided to sell some of his father's tractors.
"We've only got 226 acres, which is not enough room for cows and a whole tractor collection," Mr Forrest said.
"But I also realised there's no point them rusting away when someone else could repair, restore and actually enjoy them."
Tony Forrest and his late father collected various tractor brands, including Fordson. (ABC Rural: Faith Tabalujan)
Mr Forrest said selling the tractors would take time and tug at the heartstrings.
"I'm planning a bigger auction around May 2026, but I expect I'll still be sifting through the collection for another couple years," he said.
"Dad loved his tractors, so it's definitely difficult to let them go.
"The ones I'm most sentimental about are still tucked away in the shed under covers because I haven't even thought of getting rid of them — but you just can't keep them all."
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