THE SHEEP ARE DOWN
Posted: Fri Dec 02, 2011 11:47 am
At the time this happened good sheep and ours were with Merryville genes - were selling for about $50 a head so this loss equated to about $5000 dollars - even poor sheep were worth about $20 a head then - they bottomed out by the end of the drought for about$1.76 a head...not worth transporting to the sale yards. But at the time this happened $5000 was a fortune to us because our yearly income during the drought was less than $15000 and a huge % of that was going on feed to keep the stock going
The sheep are down
It was grey and overcast, a bleak cold Stanthorpe day
but the cloud was high and didn’t look like rain.
We’d just shorn all the ewes and rams, and let the blighters go,
had knocked off for lunch ’fore starting up again.
The wind had started blowing, but thank God it wasn’t snowing
as we headed from the house back to the shed,
then a little drizzle started, just as we all departed
and we realized we had sheep down, some were dead.
The boss he yelled and shouted “get those fire drums started,
we’ll bring them in and put them in the shed”
Then he jumped into the Ute and really sank the boot
as over to the Currajong he sped.
“Come quick the sheep are down I think they’re dying”
And die they did one hundred head or more
We had sheep lying around everywhere,
in the pens and on the shearing floor.
We had fire drums in each corner, full of red hot coals
We used old sheets and sacks to try and dry them,
then we covered them with straw, while the men fetched in still more.
We could do no more than pray they’d be surviving.
The old wethers on the hill, had been shorn a week before,
but they were dropping on the hillside as we ran.
It was a sad and costly exercise to a farmer hit by drought
and one I hope to never see again.
We were new kids on the run and wondered what we’d done
But in the days to come we heard that many others
who’d been on the land for life had also had this strife,
and some had lost thousands of ewes and wethers.
So this is just another tale of Aussie rural life.
Something that city dwellers don’t perceive.
How in the blinking of an eye, your life can go awry
and there’s nothing to be done can you believe.
You just shrug and carry on...it’s just a bend along the road
Another hurdle that you just have to jump.
Tomorrow you rise again, and once more shoulder the load
Is it pig headedness or are you just a chump?
So when you read in your newspaper of another bank foreclosure
with yet another family forced by banks to vacate.
Take a minute, think on this, for it is just how it is.
It is not that they are bludgers - it is fate.
Do they deserve to be so treated, because fate their cash depleted,
and this year they cannot pay the interest bill
It is not that they’re not willing to give the bank its shilling
but it’s hard when Mother Nature seeks to kill.
All the dreams and wishes, the grain, the stock the riches
that the farmers worked so hard and long to make
And in blinking of an eye, he can loose all to flood or fire
you have to wonder how much more the man can take.
Maureen Clifford © 2007
The sheep are down
It was grey and overcast, a bleak cold Stanthorpe day
but the cloud was high and didn’t look like rain.
We’d just shorn all the ewes and rams, and let the blighters go,
had knocked off for lunch ’fore starting up again.
The wind had started blowing, but thank God it wasn’t snowing
as we headed from the house back to the shed,
then a little drizzle started, just as we all departed
and we realized we had sheep down, some were dead.
The boss he yelled and shouted “get those fire drums started,
we’ll bring them in and put them in the shed”
Then he jumped into the Ute and really sank the boot
as over to the Currajong he sped.
“Come quick the sheep are down I think they’re dying”
And die they did one hundred head or more
We had sheep lying around everywhere,
in the pens and on the shearing floor.
We had fire drums in each corner, full of red hot coals
We used old sheets and sacks to try and dry them,
then we covered them with straw, while the men fetched in still more.
We could do no more than pray they’d be surviving.
The old wethers on the hill, had been shorn a week before,
but they were dropping on the hillside as we ran.
It was a sad and costly exercise to a farmer hit by drought
and one I hope to never see again.
We were new kids on the run and wondered what we’d done
But in the days to come we heard that many others
who’d been on the land for life had also had this strife,
and some had lost thousands of ewes and wethers.
So this is just another tale of Aussie rural life.
Something that city dwellers don’t perceive.
How in the blinking of an eye, your life can go awry
and there’s nothing to be done can you believe.
You just shrug and carry on...it’s just a bend along the road
Another hurdle that you just have to jump.
Tomorrow you rise again, and once more shoulder the load
Is it pig headedness or are you just a chump?
So when you read in your newspaper of another bank foreclosure
with yet another family forced by banks to vacate.
Take a minute, think on this, for it is just how it is.
It is not that they are bludgers - it is fate.
Do they deserve to be so treated, because fate their cash depleted,
and this year they cannot pay the interest bill
It is not that they’re not willing to give the bank its shilling
but it’s hard when Mother Nature seeks to kill.
All the dreams and wishes, the grain, the stock the riches
that the farmers worked so hard and long to make
And in blinking of an eye, he can loose all to flood or fire
you have to wonder how much more the man can take.
Maureen Clifford © 2007
One bloke drove around town picking up all the injured birds, mainly magpies , there were a few too 