All That Sweat And Pride Wasn't Spent In Vain
Sydney Morning Herald
Friday October 3, 1997
An old sheep property is saved from tourism at the last minute to once again support a family.
THE call I had been dreading came through a couple of months ago. The news from my father in the bush was that the real estate agent had been around (whatever happened to stock and station agents?) and listed the property. The young bloke had cast his eye around the vast hills, shimmering blue-green in the eucalyptus haze, and made his decision.
It was the depths of winter and the country was well below its peak. Feed was sparse, the dams were low and wool prices were down. It was hardly the best time to sell a wool-growing property, he said.
The place should be advertised on the Internet as a game-hunting ranch. Germans would be interested. Apparently they are attracted to countries like Australia where they can get out in the bush in four-wheel drives, shoot feral animals and discover the inner German.
I felt profoundly depressed at the thought. Through drought, floods, bushfires, booms and busts for nearly 100 years, this property, bought at the turn of the century by my great-grandfather, had nurtured three generations of my family. My grandfather, the wiry young man who used to ride for days into town to court my grandmother, the doctor's daughter, carved a working property from the rough country that was, back then, a string of small free selectors' holdings. He cleared acres of land, built fences, dams, stockyards, the shearing shed and the shearers' quarters. He built the home my parents now live in, the tennis court which once echoed to the thwack of rubber on catgut on mellow summer afternoons, the garden full of old-fashioned roses which still bloom in scented profusion every Christmas. His letters to my grandmother, when she was still living in town with her parents, waiting to be married, were full of the detail of these tasks. One day, he had explained to her, he had kalsomined the internal walls of the house a nice shade of cream. The next day, he demolished an old shepherd's hut.
Over the decades, my grandparents and my parents ploughed profits from the wool booms back into the land, not on overseas trips or imported cars. They kept it clean of feral pests, both animal and vegetable. When I was old enough to ride, I joined Dad on boundary rides, mending the holes in the fences made by roos. I helped him spread the lines of poisoned carrots to eradicate the rabbits. On musters, his eagle eye would spot a patch of Nogoora burr, and we'd dismount, grub them out with the heels of our boots and burn them. In recent years, a few wild goats and pigs invaded from the north. My father, an excellent shot, kept them at bay.
German hunters on holiday would surely change all this. The generations of fine-fleeced merinos which fed, clothed and educated us would be gone, sold at the saleyard auctions. The paddocks would quickly revert to their feral state, swallowed up by burrs and scrub, fences would fall under the weight of mobs of kangaroos, dams would foul and the rabbits, pigs and goats would breed like flies.
Before the sale, I will return to say goodbye. This Christmas we are all gathering from up and down the eastern States to celebrate the last family Christmas on the old place that gave us a civilised, good life. I'll take my children to the places I loved as a child, the cool, green gullies where my brother and sister and I caught tadpoles, the grassy bank of the dam down which we'd roll every afternoon, the blacksmith's shed where we'd watch Dad shoe the horses. I'll take them to the paddock where, at the age of about 10, my horse and I got lost while we were supposed to be helping with a muster.
We'll trek down to the creek, and take one last swim in the huge waterhole where, Aboriginal legend has it, a bunyip lurks in its tannin-stained depths. It was always a heart-thumping dare to swim there, I swear I could feel its fingers trailing at my legs like long strands of waterweed.
I will not simply be saying goodbye to my childhood home, but to an era, when all Australia rode on the sheep's back. When the great golden fleece brought good livelihoods to small landholders and large ones. My grandfather, a tough, proud man who was an activist in the wool politics of the times, instilled into us the attitude that we did something that was real and superior. We grew wool. Wool made Australia great.
Now, thanks to a family who still believes it does, the Germans may have to wait. Not long ago they turned up at the real estate office, looking for a working sheep property. They saw the place at its worst, before the spring rain tinged the paddocks with green, but they loved it and want to buy. They have a strapping young son who will keep the fences intact, the dams clean and dig out the sharp burrs. They plan to run sheep and grow wool. Perhaps one day the homestead will even ring again with the sound of children's voices.
© 1997 Sydney Morning Herald