IDEA FOR SCENE: It is 1928 in the office of H. V. McKay, farm machinery manufacturer. McKay and Taylor are talking about setting up a factory in Canada to make auto-headers, first developed in Australia in 1924, for North American buyers.

SAMPLE SCRIPT:

McKay: Our ‘Sunshine’ auto-header can do three-and-a-half miles an hour – that’s four acres or more every hour.

Taylor: You’re right, that ought to be enough to impress the American market – there’s no denying the auto-header has been a success here in Australia for five years. (Pauses for a moment to think.) Well, I suppose we should start packing!

McKay: We’ll set up in Canada, and invade America! I can see it now – it’ll be like 1920, when those terrible storms flattened crops everywhere and the factory was running day and night.

Taylor: Yes! How many was it? Over a thousand headers …

McKay: One thousand and twenty-four!

Taylor: … all with my special ‘crop lifters’.

McKay: Oh, what a brilliant inventor you are!

Taylor: Not bad for a self-taught engineer who left school at 14!

(Smithy, Ginger and Felix enter. McKay freezes. Taylor looks around, puzzled.)