Images of Canberra - The Hackett Sheep

You know, there’s a fox living somewhere in the Mawson/Isaacs area, it wanders the streets at night.

The dead washing machine on the front porch is a nice touch too.

The washing machine is for sale for $60.

hey is that sheep wearing a wooly jumper ?

Thumper, he’s lucky to have been able to hold onto his breeders this long. The Goulburn graziers pretty much all gave up last year and sent them off to the abattoirs. And many of them drove themselves broke trying to hold onto them that long.
One grazier told me in early 2005 that he was discussing holding on with his wife. She said “Fine if that’s what you want to do, but I’m taking the kids and moving to the coast until the drought’s over.” So he said bugger it, sold all the stock while they still had some cash reserves, and went with her. Smart cookie. Sometimes farming is like going down the pokies all day every day…
It will take everyone decades and big $$$$s to rebuild their herds. Meanwhile the land is getting sooo empty.
And of course when it does finally rain and there is nothing out there to eat the new growth – lots of fuel come the next summer…we all know what that means.

I have been reliably informed (by the better half) that the sheep is a Suffolk. Black face and legs. Border Leicesters have a white face. I’m no expert though…

Ditto for cattegrowers.

Fairchild: many sheepgrowers will not bring agisted stock back onto their property – they just use the agistment as a holding pattern until they can get better prices (why when sheep are selling for 60c each are we still paying $24/kg for lamb?).
They don’t bring them back because they also spend years trying to get rid of weeds and pests like fluke on their properties, and they can’t guarantee what comes back with the agisted stock seed and pest-wise.

Think that’s the house, yeah there’s only one now.

There have been a couple of sheep there on the corner of Maitland and Madigan for years. They were there on and off when I lived in Hackett between 1997 and 2002.

This was the norm in Qbn in the 1960 – before there were proper blocks and fenclines – well so my mother told me.