On the farm there was a resident mob of kangaroos, beautiful creatures. In the town there was this beautiful pure bred English Pointer dog called Naustar Belson, we called him RIP because that's all he seemed to do. When he came to the farm, he and the farm dogs got on well, but RIP didn't understand the idea of work or the command to stay. He spotted his first kangaroo and took off after it. He could easily out pace it, but would stay back just playing with it. When the roo paused for breath, so would RIP. He came back at lunchtime not looking at all worse for wear. The roo must have been exhausted.

Roos did a lot of damage to the fences. You’d think they would just jump them. Many did, but it was a real risk because of their poor eyesight. Normally the fence was rabbit proof mesh topped with two strands of wire, the one generally barbed. When jumping the roos occasionally got fatally caught in these top strands. Many would rip up the mesh and crawl under.

When the mob got to about forty roos we had to cull them. Shooters would form a shallow U shape line in the bush and others, on horseback, would scare the roos towards them. Once my brother and I were being driven to join the scarers by this excitable Italian. We saw a smaller mob in the gully below us. The driver got so excited, jumped out of the ute, grabbed his shotgun, broke it open, reached into a lunch paper bag and shoved a frankfurt up the barrel. He then threatened us if we ever told anyone, well I think he did, we couldn't stop laughing.

Bye the bye, RIP stood nearly as tall as a Great Dane and weighed four and a half stone.


Merv Beamish
June 2026

I had a trip out with the girls recently to watch ‘The Sheep Detectives’.  I like Hugh Jackman, and had read a bit about his latest film.

We agreed to meet early, as it appeared to be a children’s movie. Luckily we did, the cinema was packed. I counted fivechildren, the rest were mostly people aged seventy and over. Wow, had we got it wrong. I don’t think you could put an age to it.

It was a wonderful film, and it brought back memories of my life on the farm. I found it quite emotional. The sheep helped the local policeman find the murderer of their shepherd.

My story is about two baby lambs, Schweppes and Fanta, named after the bottles used to feed them. They were born at the end of lambing season, and their mothers had both died giving birth. The weather had turned cold, so they spent endless days in front of our wood stove in the kitchen.

They became very tame, not only with us, but with our cats and dogs too. As they got older, they slept together in a dog basket in our laundry. Returning to the flock was not for them. In fact, when John and the boys moved the flock from paddock to paddock, Schweppes and Fanta ran alongside the dogs.

One particular Saturday afternoon, after coaching badminton, we were sitting in the lounge, enjoying a D.V.D. movie, before dinner. The front door was open, and we heard a lamb bleating, and it was getting louder and louder.
 
I asked the boys to check.  No-one moved, so I switched the TV off, saying ‘O.K. Let’s go, something must be wrong’.
 
As we approached the house gate, Fanta took off down the hill.  He kept turning around to make sure we were all still following. Mum and Dad, the boys, John and I, three cats, and three dogs. All trotting down to the horse paddock.
 
As we arrived, we could see something was caught in the fence.

Schweppes was hanging upside down, his bleat hardly audible.  The other animals reached him before the men, and they licked his face as John and dad released him from the wires.
 
Just in time, as the crows were ready to pounce as soon as he was unconscious. It’s not a pleasant sight seeing an animal still alive, with their eyes pecked out.
 
This story has a happy ending. Fanta was made a fuss of. He had saved his friend from a terrible death, and it made our family aware that animals that are loved and cared for, become more human.
​
Maybe the movie ‘The Sheep Detectives’ wasn’t so far fetched after all!
​
 
Jan Nicholls
June 2026

​My favourite times when living on our farm were shearing and lambing.

Shearing time was a hive of activity.  We inherited two Kelpies from the previous farmer, and one named Butch was renowned for being one of the best in the district.  The other, Ned, was the opposite.  He generally just followed Butch.  However Butch had a bad habit of biting sheep, so he had to wear a muzzle when rounding them up and when in the shearing, shed.  He lived to a ripe old age but became deaf and would go wandering.  He was buried under the shearing shed where he was always in charge.  Unfortunately, Ned was bitten by a snake.

​I soon learnt that the shearers had specific dietary needs.  Sandwiches for morning tea, hot meal for lunch, usually a roast and afternoon tea cakes.  Lunch was served in our kitchen which always smelt of lanolin afterwards.  Our first shearing experience was with 400 Merino wethers which we bought from the previous farmer.  They produced 13 bales of fine AAA wool.  Wethers don’t have the stress of pregnancy like breeders, so they produce heavier and higher micron than ewes. Shearing took quite a few days and on the evening of the last day I went into labour and early next morning my daughter was born by caesarean section.

We sold the wethers not long after for less than we paid, but we received a very nice wool cheque.

In addition, we bought 700 maiden Merino ewes.  These were crutched and started lambing the following year.  Being maiden ewes many of them just wandered off leaving their lambs.  I had lots of lambs to raise.  Their first night was in the kitchen and if not responding to a hot water bottle, a teaspoon of brandy did the trick.  Our local dairy farmer supplied me with lots of colostrum, and this gave the lambs a great start to life.  Even though I had lots of pets, unfortunately we had a terrible birth rate that year, with foxes being the greatest culprit.

​Our neighbour, a renowned Poll Dorset breeder, advised us to go into that breed for fat lambs rather than Merinos for wool.  We bought some of his pure-bred stock and had a much better lambing rate. The Poll Dorset Ewes have a superior mothering instinct; they produce more milk and raise faster growing lambs that reach market rate quicker.   We also bought some Suffolk sheep, and my daughter had great delight in winning first prize at the Wangaratta Show with her twin lambs.

​Besides the pet lambs I had as pets, we bought some poddy calves from the local dairy farmer.  We had great fun rearing them and they were fed in the shearing shed.

Owning a farm is a unique hands-on lifestyle that builds self-sufficiency, a strong worth ethic, and a profound connection to the land and animals.


Robyn Desmier.
June 2026

​​The entertainment one afternoon on our recent trip to New Zealand is a shearing demonstration. There’s an audible gasp as a shearer reaches through swinging doors and drags a sheep out on its bottom, the underbelly in view and its front legs held firmly in place under its armpits. The shearer explains to the audience that it is the safest hold for the animal and its human handler. I recover from being astounded by the audience’s ignorance and enjoy the nostalgic experience of watching a familiar task.

Days later, while I'm chatting with the tour guide, we discover a shared skill from our past; fleece throwing.

We reinforce each other's delight in recalling the steps involved:

Handling the fleece and sweeping the floors was a job for the roustabout in the bigger sheds, but on smaller properties kids like us often helped out at shearing time.  

​Farmers with smaller acreages in areas around the north east of Victoria often went shearing themselves as well as employing shearers. One of my earliest memories is battling a wave of nausea. The air hostess offers a paper bag that looks too thin for the purpose. It is just before my fourth birthday and my mother, baby brother and I are flying to Tasmania. Dad is already there shearing .

​As I prise open a door to the abandoned shearing shed, a whiff of lanolin takes me back in time. Ghostly and derelict, there is a drift of wool piled in one corner, the swinging door through which the sheep were hauled is unhinged. The slatted wooden skirting table went in the clearing sale, along with two wool presses.

​A dust covered hand piece rests silent on the floor but I can hear the buzzing sound it would make.

​I recall that down in the house fresh scones are cooling on a rack, the cast iron kettle steams on the wood stove. As the buzzing ceases at 9.30am for morning smoko, Mum is frantically packing scones, biscuits, sugar and cups into a basket. Then a large pot of tea and a billy of steaming water is prepared. Someone appears to help take the morning tea up to the hungry and thirsty shearers.

​There’s no time to rest down in the kitchen as lunch has to be on the table by 12.30 when Dad and the shearers come down to the house. They would be served either a lamb roast
or corned beef and vegetables. A steam pudding usually completed the meal.

​While the men were finishing their lunch, the farmer’s wife was usually mixing up a cake for afternoon smoko at 3.30 pm. Dad and his mate, John (also a farmer), went shearing around the district when they were young and would chuckle over their culinary experiences. They were especially amused by the housewife who provided delicious meals but while mixing the batter for the afternoon smoko, regularly gave the dog a lick of the mixing spoon. The shearers settled for ‘just a cuppa’ that afternoon.

Anne Stewart
June 2026

Back in my youth in Gippsland, I owned five very nice Jersey cows. Their dam was registered as pure bred with the Australian Jersey Society whose slogan is, “If it’s not a Jersey, it’s just a cow!”
 
Unfortunately in this case, my father, who liked nice looking animals, had bought the cow ‘Stylish Lotus’ for her looks and she turned out to be a ‘backfatter.’ Preserving her own condition, she put all her nutrition into her own body. 'Lotie’ was a very poor milker, but her progeny were very good.
 
I milked one cow for the house and with the milk from the others, I raised calves. They looked so fat and healthy that no one believed they were bucket fed poddys. It was thought they were still being fed by their mothers. The secret formula was just under half a bucket of a mixture of one third rich full cream milk and two thirds water, twice daily.
 
Disaster struck when two cows slipped their calves prematurely. The local Vet said there was a chance that it could have been brucellosis, but they hadn’t been off the property to become infected.
 
Late one afternoon, I was surprised to find a man wandering happily around amongst my cows with a syringe in his hand!  He was a young Government Vet who had been vaccinating the local dairy herds with Strain 19 for the prevention of brucellosis and had some left over. There was no need to catch or confine the cows. They liked him and were happy to stand quietly while they were jabbed.
 
After that, I often found him in the paddock with the cows and would go down excitedly to ask, “What are they having today?” They were TB tested and vaccinated for the prevention of many diseases. Always with the left-over vaccines from his sessions with the surrounding dairy herds. He said, “It’s just in case they end up on a dairy farm.”
 
Fast forward a few years to when we were farming here in North-East Victoria.  At this time there was a vet who was known by reputation to have a very short fuse. My brother was with him in the cattle yards when he was vaccinating the Hereford cows for the prevention of brucellosis.  Brucellosis is a zoonotic disease and Strain 19 is a live vaccine that is not safe to handle.
 
An unfortunate train of events happened. A cow kicked the vet, he threw the glass syringe containing strain 19 onto the ground where it struck a stone and broke. My brother, not wanting a cow to step on it picked up the broken glass and it cut his hand
 
Sometime later, he became very ill and spent some weeks in the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne. The diagnosis was inconclusive, but I have always suspected a link to the strain 19 vaccine which causes undulant fever in humans.

Bev Morton
September 2024

This story was written as an opener to a Q & A session on Brucellosis with group member John Archer, an Animal Welfare Officer from 1973 to 1996 during the Bovine Brucellosis Eradication Program, as part of the 'Stock and Land' class on Tuesday 3 September 2024.  

"A story about Poddy, Shepp, Nigger and Bonny Bess, and numerous other characters" 

One of the enduring memories of life on the land, especially when there is a lack of human companionship, is a deep interest in the animals.
 
It was not a good idea to become attached to the geese ducks or chickens, as their life expectancy could come to an abrupt end. I found it distressing to see the execution and almost as disturbing to have to pluck the feathers prior to cooking.
 
The other regular execution was of a sheep, usually a two tooth or older. I only saw Dad butcher a sheep once. It was an image that I will not forget.  I was not fond of eating meat, but obliged so that the starving children in China did not have to put up with it! 
 
I usually volunteered to bottle feed any orphaned lambs, and my favourite was Poddy.     He was unfortunate to be born a male, as on a sheep property, it meant his potential was limited.
 
Poddy was unusually intelligent for a sheep. He was quite chubby and had a ferocious appetite.  It was essential to always secure the storeroom door, as he would find a way in to get in to open the lid of the sugar bin. On one attempt to satisfy his sweet tooth, he managed to tip over the bin and was found lying in a carpet of sugar with the evidence all over his face.
 
Eventually, one Sunday lunch, when we had a roast, I commented on the meat, being more tender than usual.  “It should be,” said Dad. “It’s Poddy”.
 
I was in my 30s before I was able to eat lamb again.
 
Second only to Poddy in intelligence was Nigger, our small Shetland pony. He was not deterred by any gate closure or screen door. He could open the garden gate, eat anything that looked interesting .on his list of challenges was the kitchen door. The clip clop of his hooves on the verandah were a giveaway. When Mum or Annie (our cook for some years). heard him coming, there would be a race to slam the door shut, as Nigger had no shame, and would force his way in if he got the chance to sample any food he could reach. He came to a sad end, however, as one day he ate something he should not have, and we found him dead in his yard. Bloat was a painful end for a greedy but endearing character.
 
Bonny Bess was a part Arab pony with a mind of her own. It was necessary to be strong willed when mounting her. She had a tactic of shifting at a crucial moment and I swear she would turn her head and laugh. Bonny arrived after my brother and I were at boarding school. I was about 12, and from form 2 onwards, I did not always come home for holidays, so Gordon had a better relationship with her.
 
Two other pets we shared were two greyhounds that we named Bruce and Basil. They
were not the usual gift for preschool age kids. I think they were dumped on us after their retirement from racing. Dad confined them to the garage after they were caught dining out on new born baby lambs. I knew they had no appeal as pets. They disappeared shortly afterwards.
 
Dad had a horse called Red and a loyal Border Collie called Shepp. Both would wait faithfully by the garden gate until he came out. I can still picture Shepp when he was too old and unwell to help Dad round up sheep. He sat patiently on the drive while Dad lined up his rifle to put Shepp out of his misery. Amazingly, the shot rang out and in a split second, Shepp remembered he had reflexes. He ducked in time, and lived a few more years in retirement, until a snake ended his life.
 
We had numerous dogs and a stray cat called Whiskey, who was employed on a mice catching contract. He was motivated to keep up his score as apart from mice, he would sometimes present us with a dead bird. This was not appreciated, however.
 
There were several milking cows, but one of the best was Bella, who was particular about who milked her. This was the job of the gardener, Mr. Tulen, a Dutch migrant who was with us for many years. It took him many attempts at first to come to a truce with Bella. Having a bucket kicked over and milk wasted on the cowshed floor was too much for Mr. Tulen, who had such a repertoire of foreign swear words we suspect Bella got the idea that it might be safer to behave!!
 
All the animals had a function. Dad kept all the people on “Marong” supplied with meat, milk and Mr.Tulen was proud of his vegetable garden and orchard. We had enough for everyone, but they were not allowed to keep their own animals. I suspect the mysterious appearance of the occasional stray cat came from the Tulens’ or Mathews’ cottages.
 
 
Val Dunin
August 2021

“Why is there a white horse tied up in our front garden?”  Mysteriously, our neighbour who owns the horse is hurrying down the driveway on foot carrying a stockwhip with one arm in a sling!
​
My father tells me that our neighbours were getting cattle into the yard when a Hereford cow went mad and attacked Jim’s stockhorse and threw it onto the air. When the horse hit the ground Jim dislocated his shoulder. “He’s left the horse for you to get the cow into the yard.” He says, “Be a good girl and go and get the cow in for them.”

Australian mateship required that if your neighbour has had an accident and requests help from your teenage daughter she is willingly sent into the lion’s den.  

The horse, Gary, is a narrow weedy specimen with a ewe neck and a small weak head. With the weight of a large crazed beef animal hitting him amidships he would have sailed through the air! This horse has already had an accident; he’s not going to be a willing participant.

When I approach Gary he looks at me with piggy little eyes. It’s obvious that he has a shirt full of sore ribs! The solution would be to take my own horse but I don’t want it hurt as well. “Sorry Gary, it’s just you and me.”

When Jim offers me the stockwhip I decline. It was most likely the cause of the trouble. I don’t want to heap fuel on the fire. 

This cow is a heavy mean looking brute with large forward curved horns. She is frothing at the mouth and her eyes are glowering red. When she sees the horse she lets out an enraged bellow and attacks again. Gary is not going to be in this, he’s not stupid. Every time I force him back to the cow she charges him and he whips around and bolts in the opposite direction! There is no way this horse is going near that cow. This is hilarious. I feel like a Spanish picador at the bullfights, but there’s no crowd cheering us on.

Jim has had enough of watching this circus of the cow and his horse diving in all directions around the paddock.  With only one useful arm he goes to get the caterpillar bulldozer. The cow attacks the dozer. The blade towers above her but she fights it all the way up the paddock. Together we manage to push her into the yard with the other cattle and slam the gate shut.

What happened to the cow? No idea. Jim is driven to the Doctors to have his shoulder realigned. Gary is nursing his wounds in the paddock and the peace of a warm spring afternoon settles down on the farm across the road once more!  

Beverley Morton
​August 2021

 “Australia rides on the sheep’s back,” was the catch cry in the nineteen fifties and wool was bringing record prices.

On Phillip Island we changed our sheep flock from crossbreds to plain bodied merinos. As its heavy carrying country we graze four to six sheep to the acre. We have other paddocks leased across the Island and it’s my job to drive the sheep to their current pastures and keep an eye on them.
​
Spring arrives later down on the coast than to inland Australia. It brings sunshine, less wind and a sparkling blue sea. In the paddocks bees buzz around at ankle height pollinating strawberry clover flowers. Yellow flowers bloom on gorse bush hedges. Horses and cattle are losing their rough winter coats. A light breeze blows across the land, rustling through the tops of the tall rye grass that is coming to seed in the paddocks that have been locked up to be cut for hay.
 
Shearing and hay time always seem to coincide for us and it’s the busiest time of the year.    I bring the sheep from the paddocks to the shearing shed. The bleating of sheep and the frantic rattle of their cloven hoofs on the wooden slats of the floor as they are forced into the catching pen, blend with the thump of the generator and the whine of the shearing machine as the shearers push the combs and cutters through the thick fleeces. The smell of wool grease permeates the air.

My sister is doing the picking up; gathering the fleece and throwing it on the wool table and carefully skirting it of any stained or coarser wool. Father works on the wool press and Mother runs a tight ship at the nerve centre, the farm kitchen, preparing baskets of morning and afternoon tea for the wool shed and the hay crew out in the paddock and cooking the midday dinner for the shearers.

I am also on the hay crew and drive the tractor pulling the ancient hay rake. It’s the harvest, and for me, watching the swathe of rye grass and thick mat of clover curl away from the tynes of the rake is almost spiritual. There is nothing like the sweet smell of perfectly cured hay. The sun seems to be smiling on us and we hope it will continue to do so until the baled hay is safely in the shelter of the hayshed.

Stud Poll Herefords have been added to the farm menagerie. They are a delight; except for Brewarrina Cora who is bloody minded at the best of times.

We have a great crop of young bulls to prepare for the Stud Bull sales. Cora’s life never goes smoothly; her calf has a black patch on his neck! He will not make a stud bull.  Brother John and I train the surrounding hair towards the patch to make it look a bit smaller. This bull is sold separately at the Dandenong sale for unregistered bulls. John leads him around the sale ring and he brings a good price. But Dad looking down from the stand can see what we have done and is irate and in front of the other cattle breeders he accuses us of being crooks!  Regardless, “Black Patch” is voted best beef sire in the Mildura district for several successive years.

The Ventnor Park Poll Hereford show team is proudly added to the horse truck for the Gippsland shows and wins many Championships in individual classes and beef cattle groups and a senior champion bull at Melbourne Royal Show.

At Korumburra Show, a tall thin old man sits on a rail fence nearby watching our cattle being prepared for the show ring. The washing of white tails and white legs, oiling hoofs, grooming and putting rows of curls in their thick red coats. When I finish he says, “I love to watch you working with the cattle. Are you coming to Mirboo North Show next week?  If you do you’ll win.  You have the best cattle and I’m judging.” We find that he is also the judge that day at Korumburra!

With John home from school we need more acres and Father has always wanted to get back over the Great Dividing Range, “One mouthful of grass there is worth more in stock feed than four in Gippsland,” he always says. The search for land brings us to Borambola in Goomalibee. It’s fathers dream that we will all live there together, but fate always has other plans.

In a café in Melbourne, a young woman I have never seen before sits down at the table beside me and says, “Your name is Beverley, isn’t it?” 

I’m surprised! “How do you know that?”  She says “I’m guessing. Have you ever thought about going nursing?  I tell her that I will think about it.  Although farming will always hold a piece of my heart, times are changing and I know it’s time for me to move on.
 

Bev Morton
August 2021

Growing up I spent many holidays on my Aunt’s large sheep farm near Romsey. There we rode horses and occasionally mustered sheep and went rabbit hunting at night. There was usually a group of cousins and we all got on well, so life was good.  I also devoured The Billabong books by Mary Grant Bruce, so had this romanticised view of farming life.

In 1978 my husband, four children and I bought a house on forty acres close to Benalla. We were lucky to have a woolshed and a machinery shed plus sheep yards included. We started off our farming adventure slowly with a couple of lambs we bottle fed. These were called Bonnie and Curly. These two grew up and were a great help when we increased the flock, as Bonnie would follow us and the rest followed her.

Our next addition was a cow in calf.  Unfortunately, after giving birth to the calf, Rosie, she died from Grass Tetany.  A couple of years later we found Rosie was infertile so sadly she was sent to the sale yards.  We then invested in a beautiful Jersey cow. The kids named her Goldie. She was a gentle soul who allowed me to milk her. We set up a bail in one of the sheds and she used to follow me from the paddock to the bail every morning. We then bought another cow, whose family had named Veranda. She was a different temperament. When I would open the gate, I had to run towards the shed with her racing behind me.

With all the milk being produced I learned to make butter and even branched out into ice cream making. At one stage we bought a couple of piglets which delighted the kids, but they grew quite big and were sent to the abattoir. We were given a goat to help keep the grass down, but he seemed to think the house was his and would wander into the lounge room to watch the Television.​

We were very fortunate in our neighbours, who went out of their way to show us the way to do things such as cutting sheep toenails and putting marking rings on the male lambs.  One family allowed us to share an Angus Bull with them, so we had newborn calves. We had also bought the kids a calf each which they hand reared and named. To the cattle and sheep, a horse and a donkey were added, as well as various dogs.  All in all, life was chaotic but enjoyable.

Then came the drought of 1982 - 83. Suddenly, life became a pattern of hand feeding stock and anxiously watching the sky for any black cloud. As my husband was employed, we were not reliant on income from the land, unlike full time farmers. Thus, my romantic view of farming life took a battering, but I learned empathy for farmers.

I still feel life on the land is the ideal lifestyle, but one needs a certain temperament to cope with Nature's moods.


Margaret McCrohan
August 2021
 
 
 

From the time I was five years old I spent my school holidays on a sheep and wheat farm owned by my Uncle Ned and Aunty Mary.  The farm was at Swanwater, about 14 miles north of St. Arnaud, in the Wimmera district of Victoria. I kept going there until I was 16 years old and my uncle died. I then spent school holidays at various other uncles’ properties.
 
As I grew older, and a little bigger, my chores varied.
 
The very first task was to gather the eggs.  After some few years I milked the cows. Then, when harvesting and haymaking came along, I would help build hay ‘stooks’, which were heaps of sheathed hay.
 
Following that, I would help load the wagon with these sheaths. We would then transport the hay to the farmyard from the paddocks, where we would build haystacks. Enough hay was cut to provide the stock with hay for 18 months to 2 years. We would also cut chaff to provide for the horses.
 
My next duty was to sew the bags of wheat which had been stripped by the harvester. In the early days, before the introduction of wheat silos, the sewing had to be very tight. We used a fine type of sewing twine with the loops close together and utilised a ‘bag filler’ to get as close to 3 bushels as possible.
 
The bags of wheat were loaded onto the wagon by utilising a horse and a ‘bag loader’. This loader was affixed to the side of the wagon, and as the horse tugged forward, the bag would rise and could be stacked by a person on the wagon. My duty was to lead and direct the horse. We would then tow the wagon with the tractor, a W30 McCormack Deering steel wheeled machine, to the Swanwater rail station, a trip of 3 or 4 miles.
 
At the station, the wagon and its load would be weighed.  It would then be moved onto the wheat ‘stack’, where men were unloading wagons and motor trucks into a huge wheat ‘stack’ in readiness to load onto the railway trucks. The wagon was then weighed again, only empty at this stage, so as to ascertain the weight of the wheat delivered. We would then proceed home to get another load.
 
When wheat silos were erected some years later the same procedure was gone through, with the exception that the bags were not sewn as tightly.  They were sewn with baling twine, just enough to stop the wheat from spilling. Consequently, a bag, then, did not truly represent 3 bushels. At the railway station we had to cut the twine so that the bags could be spilled into the pit ready for the elevator to carry the grain into the silo. Bulk railway trucks would later be filled from the silos and transported to the depot.
 
My next duty was to drive the tractor which towed the H. V. McKay Massey Harris 10 ft. comb harvester. To many this would appear to be a monotonous deal, but I would have to be on the alert in case the wheat tusks clogged the comb.  One day I was manouvering the tractor and harvester to get all the grain from the headlands. This resulted in me driving to the heap from the opposite direction. I only realised why my uncle was yelling when I was abruptly stopped by hitting the heaped wheat bags with the comb. My uncle then took the steering wheel from me and reversed out of trouble. The damage was easily rectified.
 
Once I had learned to drive the tractor my duties varied to harrowing, ploughing, sowing wheat and barley and general use.
 
1945 was a drought year and as there was no grass in the paddocks we had to feed wheat to the sheep. This involved placing several bags of wheat in the spring cart, going down the paddock, slitting each bag of wheat so that the grain fell to the ground. The sheep followed behind the spring cart eating the grain.
 
Also, in this drought year there were many dust storms, restricting vision. To get from one paddock to another, I would have to follow the fence line. It was not possible to ride through a paddock without getting lost.  Which brings me to horse riding.  Aunty Mary owned a paddock six or seven miles from their home and I had occasion to go to this paddock frequently.  My transport was my horse, Denny.  His real name was Dennis Boy, named after a Melbourne Cup winner.  Denny was normally a flighty animal, but with drought conditions and lack of good food Denny quietened down. However, he regained some of his vigour as the season improved and used to endeavour to bite my leg as I mounted. To overcome this I would lead him to a gate and I would climb up the gate from the opposite side. This action overcame the bites.
 
Uncle Ned contracted cancer in 1948 and was very ill.   His only child, Des, (who was about 12 years older than me), and I were making little headway with the December 1948 stripping when a group of five or six local district farmers, with their tractors, headers and harvesters arrived  on the farm, completing the job in no time.
 
Uncle Ned died in January 1949, and thereafter I spent school holidays spread around other uncles.
 
The last uncle I stayed with, Uncle Tom, while having wheat crops, was more interested in sheep trading. He went to a sheep sale in Donald and purchased some sheep. He also scouted around to see if he could get a job for me with a stock agent.  The sheep had to be driven from Donald to Swanwater and this was my job. He had an old utility, either a Rugby or an Overland.  It often wouldn’t start, but I had the happy knack of fiddling with the spark plugs and the carburetta and getting it to go.  Anyway, I acted as drover, droving the sheep to Uncle Tom’s home at the Swanwater Homestead.
 
This was possibly my last farming experience before starting work with a Stock and Station Agent.
​
 
Ray O’Shannessy
March 2017