Every year Lindsay, plus his wife Faith, work their way south from St George in southern Queensland to Lockhart in the Riverina, stripping 30,000 hectares of grain along the way.

Troubled about their fleet of up to seven rotary headers being able to handle increasing amounts of stubble, the decision was made to start looking at European machines which are seen as better-able to handle heavier loads of straw.

"We had to go back to 9-metre fronts because we couldn't effectively spread the amount of residue coming from the 10.8m fronts we were using," Mr Northcott said.

"Rotary machines suck up enormous amounts of horsepower and fuel and productivity goes out the window."

The upshot is a switch to German-made Claas Lexion 600 machines which sport 10-tonne grain bins, wide sieve boxes and powerful 16-litre 431-kilowatt engines.

Up there among the world's most powerful combine harvesters, they come with a three-stage processing system.

Essentially, this comprises an improved APS threshing mechanism, a Roto Plus secondary separator unit, plus Claas' new Jet Stream cleaning system.

* Extract from Machinery Matters in Stock Journal, April 2 issue.