Keeping up family traditions which spanned decades was a part of the Christmas school holiday period for a well known stud stock specialist, who remembers vividly the week long journey of walking 2000 Merino sheep by horseback up to the Snowy Plains on the Monaro.
Richard “Rick” Power, entered the agency game with Landmark 16 years ago after his early years working on his grandparents’ farm “Tallawa”, at Dalgety, led him to find his strengths and passion within the Merino sheep industry.
His hands-on sheep knowledge came from grandfather, Reg Suthern, a well known Monaro stockman with big wool cutting Merinos, who mentored Rick as a teenager.
“Grandpa did things on the farm just as great poppy did – it did not matter what was going on at the time or whether school had broken up, on December 15 every year we would walk the sheep to the mountains,” he said.
“We would walk them from Dalgety to the highest freehold land in Australia - Grandpa owned that land.
“The date never changed – when I was about 15, I desperately needed a hair cut, but I wasn’t allowed to because it clashed with moving the sheep.
“My mum had to cut it and she gave me a ‘Lego’ hair cut; so I wore a hat all summer – it was the worst hair cut of my life.”
He said an uncle, his sister and a cousin, Phillip, would all be on horses and his grandfather would generally go out the front with the car and flashing lights.
“He would tell off anyone who was making the stock walk too fast,” Rick said.
“My eldest sister used to always help on the farm – she wasn’t a bad labourer – she used to put the blue singlet on and everything; always wanted to look the part.”
Labelling it a “pretty big event”, Rick looks back on the time with fondness because of what the journey with his family entailed.
“It was a good experience - it was definitely something we looked forward too – we used to have to do it in April again to get them down before Anzac Day,” he said.
“People would pull-up and talk to us while we rested at places along the way – sometimes we would ride until dark in one day but we made fun along the way too.
“There was a dare every year to touch the electric fence on the edge of Berridale – I only ever touched it once.”
Rick has maintained memories of his childhood on the farm as far back as a six-year-old boy during the 1981 drought.
He remembers opening the door on the family home to a metre high sea of dust, blown in by the drought, but he also recalls a later memory which left even more of a lasting impression.
“In about 1988 we had a mob 3000 sheep half way across the Dalgety bridge, which is about 100 metres long, a van came through while we had them on there - what my grandfather said that day I had never heard before and I have never forgotten it – let’s just say the van had to reverse and turn around,” he said.
The long journey up to the Snowy Plains was not the only event when the youthful energy of Mr Power and his eldest sister were utilised on the farm.
With the feed cart non-existent, livestock were fed by lugging feed bags of corn and nuts to them, along with spraying tussocks on the first four-wheel quad bike to arrive on the Monaro.
“It was a pretty big deal when Grandpa Reg brought home the four-wheel quad – he was the first farmer to get one in our area and that was a great toy for us kids,” Rick recalls.
“We did a few jobs a bit different on the farm – one in particular was rugging the sheep with jute bags – I look back now and the only reason why anyone would shear in July on the Monaro was because they had kid labour,” he said.
“After shearing, my job was to always to do the old Clout down the back for lice and put the rug on - I had to coat three thousand sheep for many years.”
It was not all hard work and no play at “Tallawa”, with Grandpa Reg a keen trout fisherman treating his grandchildren to a big fishing trip reward at the end of walking the sheep.
The family would return to the mountains again and to Bobundara Creek to learn the skill of fly fishing and landing trout.
“It was a great reward – he would give lots of advice while we were out fishing so it’s a really great memory,” Rick said.
Now settled in Boorowa as one of the top stud stock specialists in the region, Rick’s farm life experiences, good or bad, have taken him across the country from Western Australia to Tamworth.
“I love my job because I can jump in a car and look at other clients’ sheep and your’e not doing the same thing everyday,” he said. “I feel pretty privileged to have been on the farm because to be honest I wasn’t a Rhodes scholar.”
“I am fortunate that I had mentoring from both of my grandfather’s and also while I worked at Haddon Rig (Warren) as a jackaroo.
“I see a lot of younger people coming through now and they haven’t had the opportunity to learn from a sheep man and that practical knowledge is such an important part.”
