Local lad Gone Under.

Colin Wheeler-James.

The fact that I was going overseas with Project Trust surprised nobody more than me. It all happened incredibly quickly starting with the initial idea, to actually passing the selection course. After many begging letters and grovelling to different companies and charities, I managed to raise the neccesary £1850 sponsorship money. Then, following a final briefing in July, I was off to Australia on the 4th. August.

I had known for some time that I was travelling out to Australia courtesy of P & 0 on the container ship Remuera Bay. This was something I found incredibly exciting; the idea of sailing round the world was mind-boggling.

We sailed from Tilbury, London on 6th. August and after thirty days at sea, with stops in Rotterdam, Cape Town and Adelaide, we finally disembarked in Melbourne. I must admit to being rather surpised when I arrived in Melbourne. The journey had seemed so quick. I think it was chiefly because of the daily work routine and the dull cloudy weather that we had as a constant companion from Portugal onward.

There I was in Melbourne with my fellow Project Trust volunteer, Ben Lawson, thinking, 'Wow! I'm actually here; here in Australia!'

We had a couple of days in Melbourne and then it was the long coach ride north through Victoria and into the flat plains of south western New South Wales, finally arriving at the town of Hay in the heart of Merino country. We were then met by our hosts and I was driven north about another 100km to Booligal on the Lachlan river.

My initial reaction to the sights of the saltbush plains was awe at the sheer scale. The flat, predominanatly treeless plains of grass and saltbush stretch for millions of acres in every direction, melting into a haze on every horizon.

I arrived after dark at Greenvale following l9kms of dirt road. Totally disoriented, leaving the car, I was assaulted by the sweet smell of gum and box trees not to mention the physical assault by the local mosquitoes. The first few days I went around in a daze, learning to ride motorbikes and getting to know the family and the property - as well as trying to get over my phobia of snakes!

The sheer scale of the property was a bit terrifying to start with, mainly because of the lack of landmarks which made it very easy to become disoriented when riding around on a motorbike.

However, it only took a couple of weeks to really find my way about and really begin to enjoy the many exciting and varied jobs I was doing. During the firts few months I was mainly doing firebreaks around the boundaries and roads before the bushfire season began. As the weather became hotter with the onset of summer and the temperatures were more often than not in the upper thirties, we began to concentrate on looking after the stock of 7,500 Merino sheep and 300 head of Hereford cattle. The sheep needed the most atention, with grass seed infestation and blowfly strike being the main problems. As the year wore on I started doing a bit of fencing as well as a lot of pest control, i.e. ripping up rabbit warrens and poisoning, as well as shooting, feral goats.

After Christmas we sold a lot of stock and started to prepare the stock for shearing in March. The ground by now was really dry and rain, however badly needed, was only 13%" per year and that fell mainly in bursts in the winter.

Most of the stock water was pumped from the river at Booligal, along a series of channels to large holding tanks in each paddock. In the areas furthest from the river, windmills, bores and troughs were used and in some areas creeks from the river which had a controlled twice-yearly flow, were used.

March was shearing time, undoubtedly the busiest time of the year. The entire flock of sheep was sheared by a team of contract shearers in fifteen days. Although I sheared a few sheep myself, I was very busy dipping, marking and drenching the sheep as they were shorn, as well as moving the sheep before and after shearing.

Following shearing it was sometines hard for us all at Greenvale to motivate ourselves as the biggest job of the year was done. May saw lambing, very different from here as it was standard practice not to go near the sheep for fear of mis-mothering. Lamb marking took place in early June when we employed another contracter and his team to muelse, castrate, dock the tails and mark the ears whilst I vaccinated and Bruce brought the sheep into the yards.

Following lamb marking, the main jobs I did were erecting fencing and building another set of cattle yards.

The social life was rather limited but I did have a lot of good friends in Hay and got at weekends, on average a couple of times a month. Also in the Booligal area, we had pistol shooting and clay pigeon shooting, with tennis parties and barbeques also common.

In general, the year out was tremendous. The varied and exciting but demanding work made sure that I was not often bored, - only really on my days off!

Australia is a vast and beautiful country, but unfortunately I had neither the time nor the money to see it all.

Who knows, one day I may go back