Obituary: Ian Rae AllenFarmer and InnovatorBorn: Atherton, Qld August 8 1929Died: Cairns, Qld, June 11 2013

Losing his left foot while trying to clear a blockage on a corn picking machine never slowed Ian Allen down. He once told how he took up ballroom dancing to improve his dexterity. Friend of 80 years, Joe Tomerini once said he thought it was so he could meet women, and whichever is true in the 1950s he met Joycephine Greenfield, a NZ dairy farmers daughter on a working holiday. The two become well known at dances across the north and were married in early 1956.

Born in Atherton at Nurse Austin's Clinic, to Margaret (nee Rae) and William Stephen Allen, Ian was the youngest son in a family of six children.

He grew up on the family farm near Tolga on the Atherton Tableland in North Queensland, and spent most of his life in the area, buying his own farm just across the road.

A bright student he went away from home to high school in Cairns where he seemed destined for a career in engineering. In 1944 however his father fell ill, and since his older brother Bill was away with the army during WWII, Ian had to return to Tolga to run the family farm.

This interruption to Ian's education didn't stifle his love of learning, and over the next 30 years all five of his and Joyce's children received tertiary educations at a time when such was uncommon in FNQ farming families.

In another era Ian may have been considered a Renaissance man, teaching his children to play chess, read Shakespeare, and tell the difference between a Whitworth thread and a British Standard Fine when taking the engine out of a tractor. While his educated children were more familiar with calculators, he could normally calculate volumes of silos or dams just as quickly with log tables and a slide rule.

An engineer trapped inside a farmer’s body, many of his contemporaries described him inventing and building shelling machines for velvet beans, pullers for peanut plants, and tree pushers for dozers. A number of farmers described him as the "go to guy" when they had mechanical problems they just couldn't work out for themselves, or which they felt needed a better solution.

In the 60s he opened his own machinery business, with Case self-propelled combine harvesters arriving in boxes and Ian assembling them on the floor of an old peanut factory. "It's just like Meccano" he said at the time "you just start putting the pieces together and eventually you will have a combine harvester".

Ian Allen always gave freely of himself and was a staunch advocate of farmer welfare. He

served on the Atherton Tableland Maize Marketing Board, the Peanut Board, and the Potato Growers Coop. He also served a term on the Queensland Agricultural Council. His vision for farm produce from the Tablelands saw: A $1 million sale of maize to a Japanese firm; Meeting the Shah of Iran at an Agricultural Council meeting in Sydney; and working on the marketing of potatoes to Singapore.

In later years he was disappointed with the deregulation of these farmer owned organisations. The destruction of the infrastructure such as silos and rail that these organisations had built up was also a sore point. Ian felt the losers were the farmers themselves.

Suffering from Alzheimer's and cancer, Ian died in Cairns Base Hospital of complications following a fall and a broken leg. He was buried in Atherton in the red Tableland soil he had given his life to. He is survived by his wife Joyce, children Rae, Owen, Kandie, Maureen and Michael, twelve grandchildren and one great-grandchild. He leaves behind a culture of innovation and a history of service .

APPENDIX A

Owen’s Eulogy for Dad“O Supreme Being, I have made death a messenger of Joy, wherefore dost thou grieve.” Baha’u’llahA friend, on hearing of my father’s passing asked “what three qualities did your Dad have that you loved?” The question gave me pause for a lot of thought. Things taken for granted don’t readily come bidden to mind. Yet, at the time of a loved one’s death, the answer lies behind all appreciation for anyone’s life.Of my father the three qualities that come to mind are:

1. He fully indulged his intelligence and skills. One of my earliest memories is as a 3 or 4 year old trailing behind Dad and Clive Shorey and, watching my father’s peg-legged walk, wondering that, when I grew big somehow my own foot will fall off. It didn’t occur to me to ask, ‘what happened to your foot’, as it just seemed normal. And Dad climbed up and down off farm machinery, and worked in his workshop, in a seemingly unhindered way. I remember he could climb the rock face down at the ‘Flying Fox swimming hole and dive in. He was very skilful at the engineering required to modify and repair farm machinery. He also did contract harvesting of maize and grass seed even down to Ingham. To carry the harvester down the coast he had a snub-nosed Leyland truck. I was with him on one trip to Ingham in the 1960s, and asleep in the passenger seat while we drove the Palmerstone Range Rd. I woke facing the open gorge in front of me. Thinking that we were driving off the range I let out a loud yell. As I was yelling the nose of the truck swept around to reveal the road ahead and Dad asking tersely, ‘What’s the matter!!’ when I said I thought he was driving off the range he was perfectly mystified.

2. He shared and gave freely of his knowledge and skills. While he ran a Farm Machinery business, he was always freely responding to a constant flow of farmers and family asking for technical assistance. Many recipients have since commented to me on his generosity. I myself remember him reconditioning a Morris 1100 that I used at University and I have a very long desk custom made to my home office that we made together when I had permanently moved back to Atherton in the late 1980s.

3. He had a vision bigger than himself. Working on the maize board and then the potato cooperative, I remember a few seminal moments in his vision to see the developments of farm produce from the Tablelands: A $1 million sale of maize to a Japanese firm; Meeting the Shah of Iran at an Agricultural Council meeting in Sydney; and working on the marketing of potatoes to Singapore.

There are dozens of stories we can tell and later there will be time for those. In many other ways, Dad was a solitary man, forgoing common socialisation. So I want to thank the many of his friends here today, and those who could not make it, who mostly met him at the farm, or probably functions to do with farming, that you were his life.

FINE