“A CHARACTER building experience” is how Hughenden’s John Wearing described his situation as he stood in his sheepyards last week, surrounded by stock that have to be sold.
Although growing up at Elabe, south of Hughenden, he has spent a large part of his adult life operating Wearing’s Diesel Engine Service in Townsville, with a vision of returning home always in his mind.
In 2011 John and his wife Janene made the move, leasing the property from John’s parents Arthur and Lyn.
Thanks to a small body of feed, one of his first moves was to buy 260 trade heifers for 160c/kg.
“Everyone said that’s the way to go,” John recalled.
When the season collapsed in the summer of 2012/13, they were sent to Blackall for sale.
“I asked what would happen if they didn’t sell but I was told not to worry, they’d all sell.
“Next thing, the agent rings – they didn’t get a bid. It was that combination of drought and the live-export suspension.”
The Wearings eventually got 90 cents for them.
“They say this sort of thing is character building. Well, as far as that goes, we’re getting built.”
More morale buffeting came as they embarked on feeding animals for most of the three years they’ve been back at Elabe, which included bottle-feeding 78 hungry lambs last year.
As predators began picking off their remaining flock, John and Janene mounted a defensive campaign, putting all their sheep in a paddock near the homestead and rolling their swags out in the shearing shed to fend off wild dogs, but they were still finding dead sheep.
“It’s been a task and a half,” John said.
“We had crows picking at lambs’ tongues and weaners with puncture marks in their sides from hawks.
“We went from 1100 ewes scanned in lamb to 460 surviving.”
John said they would like to stay in sheep, believing they were better for their country and helped keep Prickly Acacia numbers down.
“We’ve spent money on sheep infrastructure but it’s a scary thing trying to get enough numbers.”
Those numbers decreased even more this month when all the male sheep on the property were sold for $60/head as hopes for drought-breaking rain faded away yet again.
“At least with that money we can buy something later, and we save what grass we have left for our lambing ewes,” John said.
Major banks have just released quarterly agribusiness survey results, one from NAB showing a rebound in confidence for the post-farmgate sector thanks to improved seasonal conditions in some areas and a falling Australian dollar.
The level of confidence in protein was a survey standout, beef up considerably to +33, while confidence in sheep meat was down slightly to a still very optimistic +31.
Rabobank’s rural confidence survey was more subdued, showing north Queensland’s producers were almost evenly split in their outlook, with 34 per cent expecting conditions to improve, 33 per cent expecting them to worsen, and 32 per cent having a stable outlook.
John said he was definitely in the camp lacking confidence in the short term.
“If we get a storm, that might help, but I don’t expect it to rain now until next January.
“I want to come out of this with a little grass, a little stock and a little money, rather than no grass, no stock and all my money blown.”
Sally Cripps
Journalist
Journalist
