Meet the Manleys: central Victorian grain harvesting a family affair

For 40 years, Mr Manley has played an important role in the grain handling process, currently serving as site manager at GrainCorp's Elmore site.

"I've seen a few and they're all different," he said. "You never get one exactly the same.

"Sometimes you think back on the harvest and you think 'that's the last time I'm going to do that'... but you always get back up again to do the next one.

"The last three have been quite large, which is really good for the people in this area."

For Mr Manley, harvesting and handling grain was a family affair.

His son Kyle Manley is a third-generation grain operation worker and central Victorian area manager, meaning he was his dad's boss.

Kyle started working with his dad once he finished high school, climbing up and down bunkers in Mitiamo, where Mr Manley was site manager.

After studying sport and business management at university and taking a gap year, he found himself lured back to the world of harvesting.

"Once I finished uni, I took a break and got offered a full-time job at Dunolly," he said.

"I was lucky enough to get that and I ran that site for six years until the start of this year, now I'm the area manager.

"I sort of just stumbled into it and just kept progressing through the chain. I love working here and it's a good industry to be in."

Kyle said he learnt a lot of his site management skills from his dad.

"I spent a lot of time working underneath him, so I learned how he does the job and I instilled those skills when I was in charge of my own site," he said.

"I ran that very similar to the way he would run this site, which in general is pretty efficient and normally very safe.

"Since being his boss, he does what I ask him to, there's no job that's too hard or too difficult; he says yes to most things."

Kyle said he had seen several advancements in harvesting technology and facilities during his time, including an extra 80,000 to 100,000 tonnes of space being added to the Elmore site.

"Now we can accommodate for all growers in the area and not fill up and shut, maybe would've happened a couple of years ago," he said.

"And if the growers keep supporting GrainCorp in this area, then we can definitely keep pushing on and getting even bigger."

According to GrainCorp, Victoria was on track to receive three million tonnes of grain, including wheat, barley and canola.

In the central Victorian region, 350,000 tonnes of grain had been received as of Tuesday, December 12.

Mr Manley said growers couldn't have asked for better growing conditions this year, with high rainfall last year.

"They've had the rain at the right time and they've had a cool finish, which enabled the crops to reach their full potential," he said.

"What it hasn't done though is brought the protein out in the grain, but they're not worried about that, it's the yields that they're mainly focused on."

He said while rain events could make growers and harvesters "a little bit panicky", farmers accepted whatever mother nature threw at them.