by Tony Parsons
Catriona rang home to tell David and Moira that Angus was conscious and that he had swerved to avoid hitting two roos. David and Moira immediately left for Newcastle to see him.
‘I’m sorry about the ute, Dad. I tried to miss the roos and it skidded.’
‘Vehicles can be repaired or changed, Angus. That’s why we have insurance policies. Don’t worry about the ute. How are you feeling?’
‘Not as good as I could be,’ he said and grinned.
‘You’ll be as good as gold before long. Maybe I’ll order you a tank and you can drive that,’ David suggested.
‘Don’t make me laugh, Dad. It hurts too much,’ Angus said.
This accident kept Angus reasonably quiet for a couple of months, after which David sent him to Yeppoon for a holiday, and then arranged for him to spend some time with Don Morgan at Aberfeldy. But a week after Angus arrived at Aberfeldy David had a phone call from Don Morgan to tell him that Angus had a broken arm.
‘How in blazes did he manage that, Don?’ David asked.
‘Well, he, er, had a go at riding a buckjumper at the local rodeo. It threw him against the iron gate. I’m sorry, David. I know you said to watch him but I couldn’t watch him all the time. I didn’t know he was going to have a lash at the buckjumping until after it was over,’ Morgan said.
‘It’s all right, Don. I’d better come up and get him and bring someone to drive the utility home. I presume his arm is in a sling.’
‘It is, David.’
David put the phone down and looked into Cat’s anxious eyes. ‘It’s Angus?’
‘He’s got a broken arm, Cat. Tried to ride a buckjumper and it threw him against the iron gate. I suppose it could have been worse. We’ll have to go up and get him. You can drive the car and I’ll drive the utility home.’
He had been thinking he might keep Angus home for another year but this didn’t seem the right way to go in the light of recent events. The mad bugger would probably be better off being busy at college. It wouldn’t stop him getting into scrapes, but Longreach would keep him fairly well occupied. And there was always the chance that he might meet a really decent girl who might motivate him to behave himself. If Angus didn’t toe the line at Longreach, David would bring him home. So off to Longreach Angus went.
Chapter Nine
David MacLeod was a sheepman by breeding and inclination, while his father, Andrew, had been a sheepman first and foremost. Many people swore at sheep, but Andrew MacLeod swore by them. He had shorn at some of the top merino properties in the land, and knew how good merino wool could be. But he also recognised that it wasn’t wise to put all your eggs in one basket. He ran beef cattle as a sideline and would have increased his cattle holding, but High Peaks wasn’t suitable to finishing off any more cattle than could be run on the more congenial country surrounding the homestead.
David followed his father’s example. He graded up the beef herd on Poitrel and then, after he had established the Hereford stud, he used his own good bulls to upgrade all of his cattle. This was one reason for establishing the Hereford stud in the first place. Another reason was that he wanted to be able to sell stud and herd bulls to provide additional income. But the third reason for setting up the cattle stud was less obvious – David wanted it as a vehicle for promoting his children. Stud cattle breeding had more glamour to it than most rural enterprises, ranking second only to the breeding of thoroughbreds in prestige. However, David knew you could easily spend a million dollars on setting up a cattle stud and still not produce a Royal winner.
David was fiercely determined to stamp the MacLeod name on the Australian pastoral scene. The best way to do this was by having his children exhibit high-class sheep and cattle. They would then be asked to judge, and David wanted to see them judge at Royal and State sheep shows. He reckoned that he would be invited to judge and planned to take along Moira and Angus as associate judges to give them experience and put them in the limelight. And that was more or less how it happened. When Moira accompanied David, ageing stud masters sighed and wished they were young again.
Moira was philosophical about her effect on men. ‘I know when I’m judging sheep they’re more interested in checking me out than in my judging ability. It’s hardly fair though, is it? For a man, it’s how he judges and the decisions he makes that are important; it’s just not the same for a woman,’ Moira said.
‘The most important thing is that you are being asked to judge at shows, sweetheart,’ David answered. ‘And you are very attractive,’ he added. ‘I used to gaze at your mother quite a lot in the days when she thought I wasn’t interested in her.’
Moira slapped his hand playfully. ‘Now the secrets are coming out, Dad. From what I’ve gleaned from Mum, she was very concerned that you weren’t looking at her at all! Anyway, if they want to look at me, let them.’
‘That’s the stuff, sweetheart. Think positively. If you were three axe handles across the beam nobody would want to look twice,’ he said, and grinned.
‘You are a devil at times, Dad,’ Moira said, and hugged him.
Catriona viewed Moira’s closeness to David with deepening concern. Ordinary affection was one thing, but to be David’s shadow was quite another. If she and David went somewhere Moira nearly always wanted to join them. Catriona knew that Moira had always idolised her father and until some young man came along and claimed her daughter’s heart, he was the biggest thing in Moira’s life.
All three MacLeod children had a great eye for livestock. Even though Dougal seemed to lack real interest in High Peaks’ activities, he had little trouble selecting the pick of a herd of animals. Moira and Angus also demonstrated a flair in this area from an early age. Their father talked livestock continually and they would have had to have a few screws loose not to pick up a lot of what he said.
David’s huge advantage over most other people was his instinctive grasp of all things related to animals. He had transferred his exceptional ability with dogs and horses to his breeding of sheep and cattle. What he drilled into his children was the importance of having a mental picture of what a top animal should look like. Some people couldn’t do this, and these people never made top breeders.
There were some fundamental tenets that applied to the breeding of merino sheep that provided the foundation for all subsequent knowledge. David had learnt these fundamentals in the first instance from Hugh Pfeffer, Angus Campbell’s sheep classer, and later from other sheep classers and studmasters. The first consideration was structure, which included the feet and legs. A sheep had to be built correctly to carry a heavy fleece of wool. When merino sheep carried only three or four pounds of wool, structure had not mattered so much, but now that rams were carrying thirty pounds of wool and some ewes in excess of sixteen pounds, structure was very important. The second consideration was size – put simply, big sheep produce more wool than small sheep because the larger the area of skin, the more wool-producing follicles. Because wool production was determined not only by an animal’s genetic makeup but also by what went down its throat, diet was the third consideration. When he started to feed sheep in the shed David learnt that sheep needed a ration of about 12 per cent protein to fully capitalise on their genetic potential. Under paddock conditions sheep seldom had access to pastures providing this level of protein, so it was important to supplement the diet.
‘One of the big secrets to the merino business is finding out which strain of sheep suits your area or even your individual property,’ Hugh Pfeffer had advised David. ‘Some strains suit certain areas very well. For example, by and large Haddon Rig blood sheep do extra well in the Walgett district but might not do as well in other places. South Australian strains are big sheep but you need the nutrition to maintain a big sheep and to allow it to produce to its potential. It’s hard to be dogmatic, David. Some strains of sheep do no good at all in hill country and some thrive in it. What it comes down to is that a sheep needs to be able to thrive on what you give it, and some strains do better than o
thers in certain areas. Follow me?’
‘I understand,’ David replied.
‘It’s hard to produce sheep that will suit every condition. If you’re going to breed stud sheep, first get the structure right. Then try and pack on that structure as much wool of the type you want as you can get a sheep to efficiently carry. Bear in mind that different people have different ideas about sheep. Some people are looking for what are called “easy-care” sheep. These have little or no wool about the head. If one person is looking after 10 000 sheep, which is the go on some places, easy-care sheep appeal to them. If you’re on a smaller place you might be looking for a sheep with a lot more wool about the head and legs. On clean country you can run sheep with wool to the toes whereas in the bigger country this leg wool gets stripped off by burrs and bushes,’ the old classer advised.
David looked about a lot and studied old books and photographs before embarking on his big merino project. It seemed that having families of sheep was important because some strains, even within the same stud, exhibited superior quality for certain factors. It might be length of wool, crimping or softness. What David knew was that you could not select for a single characteristic because if you did, other important features suffered. Two factors which were receiving a lot of attention were crimp and softness. Crimp is the natural wave formation that exists to a greater or lesser extent in the wool of most breeds of sheep. Generally speaking, the closer these waves are, the finer the wool. Crimp is a factor in wool’s elasticity. The value of softness, although stated as a plus factor for wool, was receiving more attention than in the past because wool’s ‘prickle’ factor had long been a negative selling point for the fibre. Stud breeders were actively breeding for soft wool and virtually all fleece tests now gave details of the prickle factor. Because of the many traits necessary to make up a top sheep, it was very difficult to purchase sheep that had every desirable quality. When one such animal was offered at auction, it invariably made a big price.
With Catriona by his side, David made trips to virtually all the main sheep-breeding areas of eastern Australia. He concentrated his efforts on the studs producing the finer-woolled merinos. He bought enough ewes to register a stud and then added to this original fifty as he came across ewes he liked. He was taken aback to discover that some fine-wool breeders wouldn’t offer old fine-wool ewes on the open market but consigned them straight to abattoirs so that other studs couldn’t acquire their bloodlines. This wasn’t a universal practice but it did happen.
David used Glen Morrison as his sheep base. He built an annexe on the existing woolshed and started feeding the pick of his young crop of lambs. This was very much a learning experience, and David learnt an astonishing amount. Some rams looked good but didn’t sire well; other rams bred better progeny than themselves.
What David also learnt was that in chasing high-quality or elite wool, some stud breeders were allowing the structure of their sheep to fall away. This was evidenced in bad legs, goose rumps and shallow ribbing. With his usual foresight David sensed that if breeders kept chasing superior wools at the expense of structure it wouldn’t be long before there would be some very funny-looking sheep on properties. He also sensed that if he concentrated on big-girthed sheep, the kind of sheep that were in evidence at Sydney sheep shows after World War II, he would have a very valuable sheep to promote.
It was several years before David made his entry into show circles. His first show was at Merriwa, where he and his father had won so often with kelpies. There wasn’t a lot of competition except from one stud with a big name, that conducted an annual on-property sale. David won every major award on offer – a stunning entry into the stud merino business that resulted in a flood of enquiries for rams. He followed up this initial success by winning six successive Grand Champion Ram awards. The beautiful, richly crimped white wool attracted a lot of attention but to David’s surprise, not a single person had commented on the depth of his sheep. It seemed that the quality of the wool had blinded them to what he regarded as his major achievement, which was the improvement in girth.
Later, after they took the show team back to Glen Morrison and the sheep were in their pens feeding, David’s excitement over his success at the show boiled over and he turned to Catriona and took her in his arms. ‘Wow, we did it, Cat. Grand champion ram and grand champion ewe. It’s what we’ve been working for and now we’ve done it.’
‘You’ve done it, David,’ Catriona said. ‘I didn’t contribute anything to the sheep side of things. I know a little bit about Hereford cattle but not much about the finer points of merinos.’
‘Cat, you’ve helped in more ways than you can imagine. This isn’t just my operation, it’s ours. We’ve always worked as a team. You’re entitled to any success we achieve,’ David said.
‘It’s sweet of you to say so but you’ve done the work with the sheep. Now all the work and the money you’ve expended is starting to show results. Congratulations, darling.’
Once the merino stud had been established on Glen Morrison, David and Catriona began their search for a merino-breeding property.
‘What are you actually looking for in this merino property, darling?’ Catriona asked. She, Moira and David were sitting on the front verandah having afternoon tea. David had been commenting on various properties advertised in The Land newspaper.
David put down the newspaper and looked up at the ceiling while he collected his thoughts. He knew precisely what he wanted in a property but how to get this across to his wife and daughter without appearing long-winded and patronising concerned him quite a bit.
‘The thing is that there are certain districts that are recognised as being better sheep-growing areas than others. There’s the Macquarie country, the Riverina and north-western New South Wales, and they produce good-sized sheep though they’re mostly of the earlier-maturing Peppin strain. There are other places that also produce good sheep because they have reasonably assured rainfall and can grow improved pastures. The problem is that this inside country is pretty damned expensive. A lot of the bigger inside places that have been sold have been subdivided into smaller areas to attract city people to purchase properties, and these smaller areas attract more money than the land would if sold in a complete parcel. Any property with water rights is dearer again and a big whack of the best flatter country is being put under cotton – or is already growing the stuff,’ David said.
‘But there must be some suitable places left?’ Moira said.
‘Sure there are, Moy. Sometimes one will come on to the market out of the blue – like when the owners decide to retire. But if you can grow cotton on it, it puts the place out of our league, cotton giving such big returns.’
David wasn’t overly concerned as he reckoned he would find what he wanted sooner or later. One of the earliest pieces of information on land that had come his way was that the ideal property had a mix of red and black soils. Red country needed less rain than black to bring feed away but folded quicker. Black country needed more rain but held better. An old grazier and kelpie man from western New South Wales had vouchsafed this information to David’s father. The same man had said that the ideal country for breeding and finishing cattle should have long creek frontages and plenty of shade trees. These ‘gems’ from past days stuck in David’s head. Some were useful and some were not.
Catriona enjoyed the process of hunting out the right property. She and David looked at a lot of places together and met some fine people. In some cases properties were being sold because of an owner’s age or because the owner felt there was no future in the land. Inability to finance bank loans was another reason. Poor seasons were sometimes also a contributing factor in an owner’s decision to sell.
One of the reasons Catriona liked these visits was because she had David to herself – unless Moira had prevailed upon her father to allow her to accompany them. Moira was passionately interested in David’s objectives because he had made her part of his plans since she was a child. To now be a p
arty to her parents’ conversations as they discussed properties they had inspected removed the last traces of pure girlhood that had remained when she left boarding school. Moira was now in every sense an adult.
So the three of them, and sometimes just David and Moira, ranged far and wide looking at sheep properties. They went out as far as Nyngan and along the Lachlan country below Forbes. Some places they inspected were in flood country – lovely grazing country in dry weather because of countless inundations, but a different story when the river flooded.
All three were amazed just how much the countryside varied, not only from district to district but even within the same area. The old experienced landowners would speak of ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ country and of how sheep and cattle would do so much better on the former. One old flat-country grazier told David that when he saw hills, he saw sour country. It was generally felt that no hill country could approach the Macquarie and Riverina areas in sweetness and productivity.
Both David and Catriona felt privileged to meet and talk with graziers who had spent a lifetime breeding top-quality sheep and were only retiring, very reluctantly, because of advancing age. They shared their knowledge and love of the land. David was impressed by relatively poor country transformed and made more productive by the introduction of saltbush or lucerne. But what really astonished him was that people were running stock, both sheep and cattle, on widely different country. Some of it was heavily timbered and some of it hardly grew a tree at all.
Elders and other agents were continually phoning David with news of new properties being placed on the market. Cattle prices were down and high interest rates were creating big problems for farmers who had opted for the ‘get bigger or get out’ advice they had swallowed from rural consultants. Some interest rates were as high as 24 per cent, which was financial suicide with low commodity prices. Elders property rep Joe Morton had taken David and Catriona to several properties, but none he had seen appealed to David. It was Joe who rang and told David about Molonga, a property that was coming on the market. It hadn’t been advertised but Elders had the place to offer.