THE SHEEP ARE DOWN

[Maureen K Clifford]

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

[Robyn]

I can see the scene Maureen, and understand the pain. We had something similar around shearing this year, not as bad as yours, but enough to set the heart athumping.
Regards
Robyn

[Maureen K Clifford]

You see the picture Robyn - nothing new to it sadly.

I always felt sorry for ours Marty when they were shorn in August as it was bitterly cold then and our shearers didn't use snow combs there - we eventually pushed our shearing back to the end of October just before lambing so the ewes were clean for that and they certainly seemed a lot happier, and I personally think they were healthier as well..Had good big lambs for the most part

[Neville Briggs]

That's an insight into a hard part of life on the land. We had a big hail storm through Singleton in December of 1996 , we had to call together the local emergency management team. The local MLA was there and he said to me " My mate had a crop of acres of cabbages ready for market, it's now coleslaw ".

[Maureen K Clifford]

How do you pick coleslaw Neville? One would have to be suitably dressed.

[Neville Briggs]

You just have to plough it in and start again,Maureen One bloke drove around town picking up all the injured birds, mainly magpies , there were a few too

[noelcauser]

Maureen. Took several rotary Volunteers out west a couple of weeks ago to do fencing .Whilst there i thought I'd show them how i could shear.After forty years I wasn't that good and farmer said the next night at a barbecue to thank us, that if they had a cold snap last night, my lamb would have been the only to survive. Not sure if it was a compliment or not.?

[Maureen K Clifford]

Maybe a back handed one Noel but the lamb would sure thank you