Ask Murray Hatch about goats and you’ll generally get an educated answer.
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The time the gyrocopter pilot spends in the air mustering them has taught him a lot about their nature.
“Goats are a lot harder on the machine than sheep, you have to work a lot harder on goats,” he said.
He said further west than Bourke you could muster 3000 to 4000 in four or five hours, but around Bourke 600 to 700 in the same time.
“West of here, that’s where there’s a lot of goats,” he said.
He said the country between Wanaaring to Tibooburra could be considered the goat capital of New South Wales.
“There’s a lot of sheep out there too, but it’s good goat country.”
Mr Hatch said mustering sheep and goats at the same time was hard work, “it just doesn’t seem to work out well”.
He said if you hung off goats at about 500 metres everything went fairly well, but if you put them under pressure they would panic and then it was anyone’s guess where they’d go.
He said mustering with the gyro was a lot easier than on a motorbike with dogs.
“You might think you’ve got them all, but then 100m away there could be another mob just as large as the one you’ve just gathered,” he said.
You might think you’ve got them all, but then 100m away there could be another mob just as large as the one you’ve just gathered
- Gyro pilot Murray Hatch on the advantages of being in the air
“And you wouldn’t even know they were there.”
Mr Hatch said he often guided people on bikes to within a couple of metres of goats and they still couldn’t see them.
There are seven gyros based within 100 kilometres of Bourke, he said.
He said he took his gyro to Newcastle for major services every 500 hours, but with a top speed of 220 kilometres an hour it didn’t take that long to get there.
“Gyros are more stable than a light plane and they can handle wind better, you’ll find a light plane can’t fly in strong winds, but a gyro can,” he said.
“And if you talk to blokes who have flown a helicopter, planes and a gyro, they’ll take the gyro every time, just because they’re safer.”
He said the only thing that made the top rotor blades on a gyro rotate, providing lift, was the wind flowing underneath them.
Mr Hatch charges about $150 an hour to muster and his costs are about $80 an hour.
“But then I wear all the maintenance costs and you only need a stick to fly up off the runway and damage the rotor and you’ve got a huge bill.”
He said mustering times were cut in half using a gyro.
