STATE LIBRARY OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA J. D. SOMERVILLE ORAL HISTORY COLLECTION

OH 456/19

Full transcript of an interview with

EDDY GRAHAM

on 20 August 1997

by Rob Linn

Recording available on CD

Access for research: Unrestricted

Right to photocopy: Copies may be made for research and study

Right to quote or publish: Publication only with written permission from the State Library

OH 456/19 EDDY GRAHAM

NOTES TO THE TRANSCRIPT

This transcript was donated to the State Library. It was not created by the J.D. Somerville Oral History Collection and does not necessarily conform to the Somerville Collection's policies for transcription.

Readers of this oral history transcript should bear in mind that it is a record of the spoken word and reflects the informal, conversational style that is inherent in such historical sources. The State Library is not responsible for the factual accuracy of the interview, nor for the views expressed therein. As with any historical source, these are for the reader to judge.

This transcript had not been proofread prior to donation to the State Library and has not yet been proofread since. Researchers are cautioned not to accept the spelling of proper names and unusual words and can expect to find typographical errors as well.

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TAPE 1 - SIDE A

AUSTRALIAN RURAL HISTORY PROJECT. Interview with Eddy Graham at Lockhart on 20th August, 1997. Interviewer: Rob Linn.

Eddy, where and when were you born?

EG: 1923 in Wagga.

And what did your parents do?

EG: They were on the property we're on now.

And whereabouts is that, Eddy?

EG: About ten mile from here. On the Sturt Highway. It was selected. It wasn't bought. They selected it back in 1884 when they came from Collingullie - Yarragundry. That's a little place between Wagga and Collingullie. And they used to have a roadside pub there, where Cobb & Co used to pull up and change their horses and whatnot. Then the place wasn't big enough to maintain the family, and when they grew up the boys selected country out of a selection - I think it was under what they called the Robinson scheme -

Yes, Robinson's Land Act Scheme.

EG: Yes, where all the squatters had to give up so much land for a selection. And that's how they came - they all selected pieces off Berry Gerry station. One was, like, on the creek and the other lot were on the river.

Berry Gerry, where was that?

EG: It's up near Collingullie. That's about 20 mile from here. It was a very big - see, there was Berry Gerry, Biwarana(?), and Brookong. Brookong came right through here. Biwarana(?) came up to Berry Gerry, and Berry Gerry went on from our country on up through to Collingullie.

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So big runs?

EG: Oh, yes. Big runs. No surveyors about. They were just, 'I'll have from that tree to that hill over there', in the first place.

So when the Selection Acts came in your parents came in at that time basically?

EG: Yeah. That's when they came in onto the property.

It was all virgin land at that time - well, pastoral country?

EG: No, it was all just timber. Just grazing country. Odd patches had been rung out over the years but not much of it. Where our actual house is now, where they left the track to come up to the house, they had to take half the team off to get through the trees. That's how thick the timber was.

Bullock team, do you mean?

EG: Bullocks teams and horse team. They were log haulers for the mills. They used to log haul to the mills. And then even after they came to home, they still log hauling to the mills. There was one down at Sandigo which is half way between here and Narrandera. And they used to log haul to there during the week and then go and work on the farm to -

This is your parents?

EG: Yeah. Clear a bit of ground -

What type of timber were they getting out to the mill?

EG: Pine. All pine timber.

Which they'd make into matchboard and all that?

EG: Oh, no. It'd be just all sawn into big timber. Like, 4 by 2's, and lining boards. And the first lot of lining boards, of course, they didn't have the tongue and grooves. They were just a board and you sat them edge to edge. They did that for quite a few years. Because you can imagine how country that's had

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trees on it that thick that you had a job to ride a horse through it. Wouldn't be very productive as far as grass was concerned. The first paddock they ploughed, they ploughed it with a bullock team and a single furrow plough, and harrowed it with one horse and one harrow. (Laughter) This is the first - 25 acres just up above the house. I reckon ploughing it with one single furrow plough - (Laughter in voice)

Pretty hard going.

EG: And walk behind it. But they had the pub at Collingullie. There's still a Kurrajong tree there and a old bricks where the old pub was.

Right.

EG: Oh, they didn't call them pubs. What did they call them? Halfway houses, or something. (Laughter in voice)

They were still pubs.

EG: Yeah, they were still pubs, yes.

What are your earliest memories, Eddy, of the place?

EG: I think the earliest memories would be carting wheat from home to Boree Creek. I can just remember that.

Was there a mill at Boree Creek?

EG: No, there were silos there.

Silos.

EG: Yeah. That was where the railway line - that was the closest railway line. Wouldn't have been silos either probably. They'd have been all bagged wheat then. But they used to leave home - they'd load the waggon this afternoon and then they'd get up about 2 o'clock in the morning, and they'd take - see, it was 18 mile to Boree - and they'd take off with the waggon. They'd get to Boree, and back about four mile the back home side, and they'd take the horses off, give them a drink and stay the night. Then they'd come home next morning,

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load up, give the horses a spell, and 2 o'clock the next morning they'd be off again. But of course, those days the harvest was done - you did your harvest, stacked your wheat or whatever in the paddock. Then after the header had finished, they'd get those same horses and put them in the waggon and start carting the wheat off to Boree Creek.

Were they using harvesters here by that time?

EG: Yeah. Five foot wide.

So they'd gone from the stripper days into the -

EG: Yes, they had used the stripper. I don't ever remember that. But I can just remember the old harvester. But the stripper and the winnower are still there on the place, or were. Where they used to strip it with an old stripper and then put it through the winnower and turn it by hand.

By hand, yes.

EG: There's one of them down here in the shed, an old winnower. It's still here.

So that would be your first memories. Did you go on any of those trips?

EG: No, I didn't. I'd probably have been four or five, but I can remember the old waggons coming back. And they used to grease them every time before they left. And they used to use mutton fat and lamp black. I don't know what the lamp black did but, anyway, that made the grease. And by the time they got back from Boree Creek all this black stuff would be running out the end of the axle. And me and my sister - she was twelve months older than me - got out around the waggon, and we saw all this nice black grease coming out, and of course we had to play in it. And then we started putting - and the reckon we went in like a couple of little black fellows. Had it all over our face. (Laughter) Over our clothes. One heck of a mess.

And did you do your schooling locally?

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EG: Yeah. Went to school in a little tin shed, you could call it. Little hut about half the size of this. Not half the size of this. Fourteen kids used to go there. A little subsidised school. About 200 in the shade in the summertime, and cold as anything in the winter time.

So that would be what? Fifteen square yards?

EG: Oh, no, it wouldn't be that. It'd be about 10 by 12. Ten feet by twelve feet.

One teacher?

EG: One teacher, yes. She was a local girl, the first one we went to. She was a local. We used to drive three mile to there. And most other kids walked. And then from there they shifted her into up under a big shed on - near the railway line. And they moved the school. Got a bit bigger and the people wanted them off the place that was there. I suppose we got too much trouble as kids. And they shifted up there and that's where I finished there. Went to sixth class and then did correspondence to Intermediate or Leaving Certificate. That was where it finished.

Was it pretty unusual for anybody to go that high in those days?

EG: Oh, well, I started school fairly young. I was right on five when I started. See, I was only eleven by the time I got to what they called the QC, and I was too young to do any work at home. Then they got correspondence from the correspondence, and the teacher used to overlook them, and we'd send them back to Sydney and get them corrected, and got to Leaving Certificate standard. Not that I ever went and got my Leaving Certificate but that's where I - I could have went and got it if I'd had enough brains to get it. Don't know whether I would or not, but anyway -

A lot of people left school at the QC stage, didn't they?

EG: Oh, yeah. Yeah, well, I know there were other kids that were in this class with me but they were a couple of years older. Because the school hadn't started. There was no school to go to. And that's what they did. See, they

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were 8 and 9. By the time they got to QC standard they were 14 or 15. Well, they just left and went to work.

Eddy, was there a strong local community at that stage?

EG: Very strong. Like, there was a tennis club, a cricket club. They'd have a Ball every week. There'd be a dance in the hall every -

This is down here, is it?

EG: Down Galore, yeah. There'd be a dance - the hall was built in about 1920/21, and it was all built out of voluntary labour. They bought the iron. That's the only thing they bought. They sawed the timber out of - different ones had mills of their own, and they'd all get together and cut their pine down and saw it up, and it was just like a big tin shed. And over the years they lined it up about half way. Made it a bit warmer and a bit more comfortable. Then that was - and the tennis courts were alongside it. Then later on - it was after -

Just out of interest, what were the tennis courts made from?

EG: Just dirt. Had a big high netting fence around them. It was that hard clay sort of stuff, and they graded it down and -

Did you have to water it before you played?

EG: No, oh, no. They used to get a bit dusty but that didn't matter. (Laughter in voice) There was no water there.

They'd stick the line on?

EG: Yeah. They'd sweep it to get the line. Sweep the dust off and put the line on. But it didn't cut up that much just the same. Because they were pretty particular as regards anyone playing on them with anything but tennis shoes. Like, there was a notice on the fence to that you had to use your tennis shoes. 'Please do not play on the courts without tennis shoes'. Because they used to cut up. I can remember them being there but I don't remember playing on them.

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But then they, after the War - no, prior to that, they shifted the tennis courts first. When the railway line went through Galore there was a - it was surveyed into town allotments, and there was a recreation ground left, and there was room for tennis courts and what-have-you on the recreation ground. So they shifted the tennis courts up there and the hall was still down near the creek, which was about three-quarters of a mile away, and after the War they all got together and they shifted the hall then up onto the recreation ground, so the whole community thing was altogether. There was the tennis courts, the cricket ground, the hall was all in one thing.

Well, those years you were growing up though, Eddy, must have been pretty tough years financially, and yet you had a very strong community there.

EG: Oh, yes, because there was a lot more community spirit up here in those days. Like, if you wanted something done - you might want to go and mark lambs or chase cattle or something, you'd come over and say, 'What are you doing tomorrow?' 'Oh, nothing much'. 'Oh, come over and give us a hand to mark these lambs, or chase these cattle, or do this or that'. And people used to just move backwards and forwards. 'Thanks very much for the hand'. That was that. There was no money changed hands. They just moved in and out. Whereas today, you can get a young bloke today and if he walks in the door and you say gooday to him, he'd say, 'That'll cost you ten bob'. (Laughter) But in those days there was a tremendous amount of work done by people for other people for no monetary gain whatsoever. But it worked out. You'd be in the position today that you'd want a hand, and I'd be in tomorrow, so just went back and forwards. No problem.

Have you got any idea when that changed at all?

EG: After the War. Up until the War, it was slowly changing but the big change came after the War. That's when it sort of changed. Then as it went on, money got easy to make, and everyone could get a job. You could go and get a job here today and if you didn't like it you could change it and get somewhere else tomorrow. And that's when the fun started. (Laughter in voice)

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Did you go into Service yourself, Eddy? You would have been pretty young at the time of the War.

EG: No, I was going to. Me and a mate - next door neighbour - we decided we were going to go in. We weren't going to walk in - oh, we got called up, that's right. During the War our call-up came - 18. And went in, and I said to Merv, 'What are we going to do?' And he said, 'We're going. That's what we're doing. Just hanging around here's no good'. So we went in. We were going alright. We passed our medical and everything else, and you had to write out sort of a resume of what you did and what your parents did and all this. And we both did that and we made the fatal mistake of being honest. (Laughter in voice) And when they read it, it was just at the stage when they thought there was too many young fellows going, and who was going to feed them. And because my Dad was - he was fairly old when he was married, and when the War was on he was 74, and I was 18/19. And when they read that they reckoned he couldn't work the farm, so I stayed home and worked the farm and grew tucker for the blokes who were going. And the other fellow, he had two brothers in the War and he was the only one left home. So they rubbed him out, too. So we thought, 'Oh, well, that's that'. And then, later on, there was a troop train came through Wagga - it was the Air Force. So, 'We'll go and join the Air Force. The Army blokes don't want us'. So went into the Air Force, got into this training and all the garbage, what-have- you. Told them all about it. We were a bit cunning. We didn't tell them we had a father of 74 and we had 1500 acres of country to work. We left that out. (Laughter in voice) And everything was going fine, and the fellow said, 'Were you in the call-up?' 'Oh, yeah, we were in the call-up'. Anyway, he goes over to a big tin file and pulls it out and flicks through it. Pulls it out, 'Graham?' 'Oh, yeah'. As soon as he started flicking through it, across the - stamped on the outside of it in big letters was Manpower. And of course, then he started to read, and he said, 'Sorry, mate. Go back and do what you've been doing'. (Laughter) Got rubbed again.

Both of you got rubbed again?

EG: Yeah. And that was that. (Laughter) And during the War there was a shortage of plant, there was a shortage of blokes to do anything. They had shearers - they were zoned. They could

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shear, say, for a month in this area out here but as soon as that month was up they moved on, say, to up around The Rock or Wagga, and they had to do a month there and then they'd move on further east. Like, they started out west and moved along. And that's the way it operated. And with machinery, they had an inventory of all your machinery. We got a call-up to go to Gunnedah cutting hay. And the fellow come out, and he said, 'Oh, you've got to go to Gunnedah and cut hay'. And I said, 'When?' And he said, 'We'll let you know'. I said to him, 'How the heck am I going to get a binder and horses and everything up there?' He said, 'Don't worry about it. The Army will come and shift you if that so happens'. Anyway, we were on call but we never got called up. One bloke from over the other side of the river, he got called up. And they come and - Army trucks picked him up. Horses and holus bolus and carted him up to Gunnedah, cutting hay.

So how much hay were you cutting on your own place?

EG: Oh, we used to cut probably 100 ton a year.

All sheaf?

EG: All sheaf hay, yes. Stack it. Poke it through the chaff cutter. Oh, I don't know, it was something you did. I wouldn't like to do it now but it was something you did.

You say you had a mower, horse rake, binder?

EG: Had a reaper and binder, and we'd just cut it and stook it. There was two of us used to work together. We had - Dad bought a new binder and the other fellow didn't have a good binder so he did - we worked together in the cutting and the stooking, and then he was a good stack builder. He used to come and build our stacks, and we'd go and cart hay for him. It was pretty laborious sort of a job but, anyway, we got it done. You didn't move as quickly then as they do now, of course.

You were saying that after the War, Eddy, the community spirit started to change a bit. Did the farming methods also start to change?

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EG: Yes. See, up until the War there was very few tractors around here. It was all horse teams. But after the War, it become mechanised very quickly. Because people couldn't keep up with the work, mainly. There was no fellows around that wanted to drive a horse team because they could get better money for less work than that. So you couldn't get anyone. So to keep your job going, the horse team just couldn't handle the amount of work you wanted done. So people went into tractors, and so it went on. The old horse team gradually faded right out completely.

And it happened quite quickly, didn't it?

EG: Yes. In a period I suppose of ten years.

So by the time the wool boom's coming, most people are into tractors and out of horses.

EG: Yeah. Into tractors and out of horses. We got our first tractor in '47 but there was a lot of them, you know, who got their tractors straight after the War in the early '45/46.

Well, were things still in short supply through the area until the late 40's?

EG: Oh, yes. You were still on ration tickets I think until '50. Then they banned them. But everything was in short supply. Like, you couldn't buy iron. You couldn't buy machinery. You couldn't buy steel posts, fencing material. They brought fencing material in from Japan - steel posts in from Japan - and you'd drive them in the ground and they'd be a bit crooked and you'd give them a pull and they'd snap off level with the ground. (Laughter in voice) They were made out of some cast alloy or something. Little light things. Oh, they'd just snap off like carrots. So when you'd go to buy steel posts, you'd make sure they weren't Japanese.

Were they pretty good years for you though, those early 50's?

EG: They were. There was money to be made in the 50's. That's when - like, a lot of Kywong country down here was cut up for closer settlement - in the 50's. A lot of the fellows that went onto it weren't farmers. But it didn't matter what you did. You could go and buy a mob of sheep up the road down there

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and come down the road and sell them to his neighbour at probably be ten bob a head more than you gave for them. That's how things were sort of bouncing along. Well, they got in there - it was a bit like winning the lottery to them. Had they worked it and looked after it - but of course they didn't know what they were doing. Easy come, easy go. And of course when the early 60's come, things started to dry up a bit. Then they started to get into a bit of trouble. The net result was that there's none of them left now. They gradually drifted off it. Mainly because they couldn't keep up with it - the money part of it.

How did you fare in those droughts of the early 60's?

EG: Oh, we had a lot of fodder, stacked. The old man was a great believer, if you've got stock you've got to feed them. And the only way to feed them, you've got to store it. And we had a lot of hay and that stored, and we used to cut it up into chaff.

So were you baling by then, or still -

EG: No, no. We were still chaff cutting. Sheaf hay. We'd cart it out to them in sheaves and we'd have self feeders in the paddocks with chaff in them. Towards the end of the 40's when the tucker run out on the farm, we started feeding potatoes and carrots and spuds and pumpkins. They'd come down on the train. We'd get it - between Kywong and a few of the other fellows around - Kywong station, they had a lot of sheep - we'd get a train load of spuds and pumpkins. Probably be 20 or 30 trucks of them.

Are you telling me sheep eat pumpkins and spuds?

EG: Yeah. Did no good on spuds. Pumpkins weren't much better. But carrots, they loved carrots, and they did like steam on carrots.

Get out!

EG: But the trouble of feeding it to sheep - like, cattle and that, you'd throw out a pumpkin and they'd chomp them up. You didn't have to bust them up even. But sheep, you had to sort of cut them up. That was a laborious sort of a pastime. But carrots, they'd run a mile to get a carrot.

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And old horses. We used to have two horses and a lorry to cart them out and they were the same horses that we fed every time. As soon as you'd get a bag of carrots and start to cut them up, they'd be whinnying and they wouldn't stop whinnying until you gave them a carrot. They'd chomp away on a carrot. (Laughter in voice) As soon as they got that down they'd start to whinny again, and you'd go and give them another one. But they were beautiful carrots. Like, Mum used to stick them in the ground. They were carrots that long and about that size round, some of them.

So, a couple of inches across - two or three inches across.

EG: They'd be two or three inches across the top and -

And a foot long, by the looks.

EG: Yeah. Be a foot long, yes. Somebody told her they'd keep for ages if you put them in the ground and keep them moist. And this is what she used to do. When we'd get a load of carrots she'd put probably ten or a dozen, or fifteen, in the ground. They used to keep there. When she wanted a carrot she'd just go and pull one up. Course, a lot of people didn't feed to any great extent, but they lost most of them. They just died. I know the station alongside us, on the eastern side, the old bloke used to say, 'Oh, well, soon be skinning again', when it started to get a bit dry. (Laughter in voice)

Yeah?

EG: They died there, you know, in hundreds. But, oh, she was a tough year. Few tough years. Money wasn't very plentiful. You didn't spend much. You didn't make much either.

Had you bought any other land in the 50's or is it still your original -

EG: No. We just about doubled our area in my lifetime. The old man, he had 1200 acres and we've got just on 2500 now. We bought it in bits and pieces, you know. We'd get it - somebody would sell out and we'd get two or three hundred acres, and three and four hundred acres, and gradually got it a bit bigger.

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Eddy, what are the biggest changes that you reckon you've seen in your life time?

EG: Oh, well, I'd say from the horse age to the mechanical age. That's when the big change was. Everything started to move faster. There was more cars around - to the detriment of small communities. Like, you could get in a car - when I was a young bloke, if you wanted to go to cricket, you rode a push bike. Well, you might ride a push bike five or six mile. But then, after the War, cars became plentiful. If they wanted to go somewhere, they'd go fifty mile. So the little community sort of spread away like that and there was no-one left in the middle. Bigger ones got bigger and the smaller ones just sort of disappeared.

So the Narranderas and the Waggas grew in size and the small places just faded out.

EG: Disintegrated. Well, I know when I first started playing tennis, between Wagga and Narrandera - 60 mile - I suppose there would have been fifteen tennis clubs. Down at Sandigo they had two. There was two at Galore. And then there was Brookdale and Yarragundry and Balgary. Every little community had a tennis club. Cricket wasn't so plentiful, although there'd have been - every community had a cricket club.

Did each of these places have a Church or were the churches just in the bigger centres?

EG: No, they had a church. The church used to be in the hall. The Minister used to come to the hall - the local hall. And they have built churches since then in - oh, what would it be? 25/30 years ago. They built a Catholic Church and a Church of England - Anglican at Galore. The Anglican one's closed down because everyone's drifted away and just not enough people to keep it going. And the Catholic one is still going but under fairly hard conditions. Like, they say that money's tight. Not enough people supporting it. Mainly, there again, because they can drift away too easily.

Eddy, one of the things I wanted to ask you was, have you always felt there's a distinction between city people and country people?

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EG: Yeah. Yeah. Probably not so much now as go back a while. Like, I can remember when I used to go to Sydney a bit. I'd have been middle 20's. You know, 26/27. We used to go down to Sydney Show and that sort of thing. But then there was them and us. Like, you'd go out to the Show and you'd see all the old cockies, and they'd be all hanging around together. But all the city people, they'd be sort of drifting in and out and not mixing. I don't know whether they didn't want to or the cocky didn't want to mix with them. I think it was probably both ways. But there wasn't - but I think over the last ten years, it's probably started to come back a bit where the country are more able to mix, or think they should, and city are the same. Like, there is a bit of an overlap now. But before, they were just sort of split down the middle. Well, I had a mate in Sydney, and we used to go up to the snow, and I got to know him fairly well and he came down home. He'd never been any further than the Blue Mountains, and he was a bloke in his 20's. And he got out here, and we were playing cricket, and I went out - there happened to be a match out here at Widgiewa, which is out on the edge of the plain. We went out there and he just couldn't get - we were driving out, and he said, 'Gee, look! You can see so far. There's (couldn't decipher words) ' Anyway, went out there and played cricket all day, and coming home it was dark, and he couldn't get over how many stars there were. He looked up, 'Look at the stars. Never see them down in Sydney', which you don't. And, like, he sort of made - well, he's been coming up home now ever since. He's married and he's got a family and they're grown up, too. And he sort of comes up home fairly often. And he still laughs about that. About how he couldn't get over how far you could see, and no-one there. (Laughter in voice)

And, Eddy, have you always felt that city based governments have probably not understood rural people very well?

EG: Yeah. I don't think they do. It's a bit like the fellow - this orange business that's going on now. I don't think they know what they're talking about. Yet they subsidise all this Californian juices and whatever, and the poor cows down here on the irrigation area, they're tipping them out by the thousands. I suppose you've seen them on TV where they've been tipping out truckloads of them.

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Yes, I have. This is all the juicing oranges?

EG: Yes. No, it's - but anyway, I see they've got on to Mr (sounds like, Yaden) and sorted him out as far as the water jobs concerned. He's re-thought his - he was going to have what? A 50% cap on the water in the Murrumbidgee and the Murray. Not that I think - there's got to be something done there but I don't think it's a cap on the water that's in the Murray. It's what flows into the Murray and what they tip into it before ever it comes down. I think that's the problem.

TAPE 1 - SIDE B

You were saying, Eddy, you don't think there's a lot of understanding with politicians and the rural people. But I guess, if you had your life over again, would you change things much?

EG: No. I'd still be here. As far as - I never ever liked the city. Like, even when I was a young bloke. I used to go down and go to the Show, and I'd go down for holidays for a fortnight or three weeks and we'd have a pretty good time, but at the end of that fortnight or three weeks I was always looking to get back out again. It's the same - when we went away up through the Territory here four years ago, on a bus trip. We enjoyed every minute of it. Yet there were people out of the city on the same bus trip, 'Oh, how boring. Nothing different. You know, just trees, and sand and nothing. Trees and sand and nothing'. They didn't seem to be able to grasp that there was something there if you looked. They'd curl up in the seat and go to sleep. And then when it'd get dark at night, they'd want to go down the street shopping or something.

Have you always felt a very close affinity with the land?

EG: Yeah. Land and stock. And dogs. I like me dog. No, I've always - course, the old man was the same. Like, he always had a great affinity with his horses. Never knocked them about. If a horse got a sore shoulder from the collar rubbing or something like that, he'd be turned out until it got right. And he'd dress it and everything else. He would never knock his horses about.

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They always had to be knocked off early enough so they dried before the sun went down of an evening, and all this sort of thing.

What've the challenges been for you with stock, Eddy?

EG: Getting them a bit better all the time. We've been breeding Merino sheep now for years. You always seem to be breeding them a bit better, or trying to. We've succeeded to a point I think. But we're still not there.

What sort of bloodlines have you been using, Eddy?

EG: Oh, Wood Park blood line. They're good sheep. We get a - he's a good stud master in as much as when you go there, if you want four rams, you don't get five to pick from. You go out and say, 'I want four rams', and you'll probably get 200 to pick from. But anyway, we have got somewhere I think.

What type of dogs have you kept?

EG: Kelpies. Mainly kelpies. We don't breed our own dogs. We generally get them off someone. Had a real good one. Got given to me but got killed. Had to go and buy another one. Had to pay $1,000 for it, too.

True?

EG: Yeah. But she's a really whizzer. Like, she'll back sheep the full length of the yards. Just say, 'Get up', and away she goes. Up to the front of them and chases them few up and then comes back. She's as good as two or three men.

Just coming to a closer - you said earlier that you think rural communities have changed a lot over your life time and become perhaps a little less close, if that's the way of putting it, or a bit further apart. Where do you see it going yourself? For people in rural communities.

EG: Well, I think possibly there's been a bit of a reversal over the last, say, ten years. There seems to be more community spirit getting around. Now, whether people have started to wake up that we just can't keep doing this - like, take, take, take, off the land all the time and then rush off to Sydney and spend all our money there, or Melbourne, or wherever, and I think it's getting to the

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stage now with land care groups and what-have-you starting to wake up that we've got to look after this place or it's not going to be here for our kids. I think that's where the change is coming. I think possibly over another period of, say, ten years it might revert back to - not what it used to be way back but a lot better than it was, say, five or six years ago - ten years ago.

So, Eddy, you're saying that all the move towards sustainable agriculture and looking after the land has really got people to sit up and think, ' Hey, we might not even be here if we don't watch it'.

EG: Yeah. That's what - I think it's got a lot to do with it. You know, well, you know yourself, if you're doing something and you think, 'Oh, gee, this is going to be down the tube if I keep doing this'. Then you start to change your way of thinking, and I think that's what's happened now. People are starting to change their way of thinking. Well, like drilling and that sort of thing. Think, 'By gee, we've got to look after this place'. Like little Thomas out there, who's not one, he won't have a farm to look after.

Well, thanks very much for talking to me, Eddy.

EG: Oh, no problem.

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