STAN Wallace laughs when he talks about the first time he retired.
“Actually, it was pretty good,” Stan said. “I did get to have both the Saturday and Sunday off. I reckoned that wasn’t too bad for a livestock agent used to the phone ringing at any time during the day or night.”
As luck would have it, only hours after the then-58-year-old Brisbane manager of Dalgety walked out of the gates of the now long defunct Cannon Hill saleyards, Stan was back in harness. A quick yarn over a glass of red and by the Monday, Old Son was officially on the books as Queensland Country Life’s new markets analyst.
“It was just fantastic,” Stan said. “I wasn’t really sure what I was going to do after I left Dalgety – maybe keep buying and selling cattle for a few client mates. “But here was Queensland Country Life – the bible of the bush and in my humble opinion the greatest newspaper in the universe – offering me a chance to continue to be involved the industry I lived and breathed since I was a 16 year old.
“It took me a while to recognise just how big an opportunity it really was, but here I was not just talking with the people I knew through Dalgety but just about everyone involved in the industry. It opened up doors to people like nothing else I’d ever experienced before.”
Not that converting the countless phone conversations into readable and meaningful columns came easily. “For the first few years I would scrawl it all out in long hand and fax it into the QCL office,” Stan said.
“I don’t know what they thought about my first few efforts, but there was certainly some pretty heavy editing going on. When I saw the printed result there was no doubting I had a lot to learn if I was going to make a success of writing for a living.”
Stan said there had been plenty of major issues impact on the beef industry in the past 27 years. Probably the most damaging was the Gillard government’s decision to ban live exports to Indonesia in 2011.
“How many people and businesses were wrecked by (former senator) Joe Ludwig’s ill-informed decision,” Stan said. “Markets go up and down and droughts hit incredibly hard, but that decision just made no sense.”
However, he said his greatest enjoyment was to see boom times enjoyed by the cattle and sheep industries and more recently by wool. “We’ve gone through some pretty tough and even disastrous times,” Stan said. “It is just amazing how both the domestic and export markets have improved on the back of better livestock, far superior meat quality, and better markets.”
After 27 years, more than 1400 columns, and any number of overseas tours, Stan Wallace or Old Son, as he is also known, is signing off from Queensland Country Life.
In a remarkable transition from Queensland’s best known livestock agent to Queensland’s best known globe trotting rural journalist, Stan is credited with never missing a QCL column during the entire time.
“Sometimes it’s been pretty tricky, especially during the odd natural disaster or before the internet was commonplace,” Stan said.
“But fortunately wherever I’ve been the column has appeared no matter what, even if it has meant dictating words over a scratchy telephone line from out west or from some overseas hotel at 2am in the morning.”
Stan said while there was never any shortage of events and happening to write about, it has always been the people that have made the job so enjoyable.
“There’s mates and then there’s really good mates,” Stan said. “I’ve truly been blessed. How wonderful it is to know people like Jim Scully, Angus and Margie Adnam, Mike Gibson, Geoff Teys, Lex Heinemann, John Kilroy from Cha Cha Char, Rod and Pat Gilshenen who were originally from Charleville, and especially my wife Marg. Of course we’ve also lost a few like the wonderful Bill Rasmussen from Mackay, Bill McKirdy, John Dunnicliffe and Brisbane-based cattle dealer Rob Sentinella.”
Dubbed Queensland’s oldest teenager in the Brisbane media, Stan has plenty of fantastic experiences to look back on. Jim Scully said a special one was when Queensland won its first Sheffield Shield in 1995.
“Here’s Carl Rackemann – who’s just played a major role in winning the first ever Sheffield Shield for Queensland – and Stan’s out there invading the pitch at the end of the match wanting to shake the fast bowlers hand.
“Imagine Old Son’s surprise when Carl catches his eye and says ‘You’re Stan Wallace. I read your column in the Country Life!’.”
The role with QCL also enabled Stan to gather his mates and head off to all parts of the globe.
“The first trip to the US to look at the beef industry in Texas was a beauty," Stan said. “From that first trip we were able to go to South America, Canada, Mexico, back to the US, New Zealand, Africa, China, and even England and France. A really special one was a cruise from Darwin along the Kimberley coast.
“What I think everyone realised almost immediately was that wherever we went in the world was that people involved in the livestock industry are just terrific no matter which country they come from.”
Here’s to you Old Son.
