Located on the outskirts of Canberra there is a sheep farm known as Gold Creek Station that has recently had many challenges to overcome. At first, the farm had the government reclaim and pay for some of their land, then the sheep station’s main building burned down, and finally the family had to rebuild and diversify their business in order to stay afloat. Run by Craig Starr and his father on the outskirts of Canberra, this sheep station has shown it has a strong desire for success and full support of the community.
Being built on rather affordable land, it has meant there are a lot of people happy to live in this area. Craig explained that parts of the farm had been reclaimed/purchased by the government as Canberra had been spreading.
They had purchased the land from the family for market value and were now developing it into housing. He said they lost quite a few thousand acres as it had been a much bigger sheep farm some years ago. There was also a lot of land across the road that the government had taken/purchased from him and a road had been put right through what was once part of the farm but it still remained vacant land.
With the main shearing shed having burned down recently, they now only had three stations for shearing and just over 1,000 sheep. This had led Craig to diversity into the tourism market with his demonstrations of rounding up sheep, shearing, and sheep farming.
Craig said there had been a wedding one night at the main shed and he was staying not very far away when he looked out the window and saw the place on fire. The main sheep station building had been burned to the ground and nothing was left. The sheep station is currently being rebuilt and they have been working out of some other sheds on the property while the main building is being finished.
Part of his foray into tourism included a kelpie working dog named Digger who was trained to round up the sheep; Craig gave the order as soon as we arrived and Digger ran out and got behind the sheep, working them forward to the yard. The group of tourist visitors had been placed in the building adjacent to the yard and could clearly see Digger at work.
When Digger got all the sheep into the yard, Craig selected a sheep for shearing and a number of the ladies got a chance to hold the sheep on its back which was rather exciting.
In the shearing shed, he went through the equipment he was going to use and the safety items involved in shearing. One of the interesting pieces of equipment that he did show was a sort of U-shape swing which the shearer leaned in to, to help support his back while shearing. He explained how a shearer often sheared 200 sheep in a day and were paid about $2.80 for shearing a sheep. Craig explained it was very hard work and there would be a number of roustabouts on the floor who would have to clean up and sort the wool as the sheep were sheared. There would be fleece coming from different shearers every couple of minutes.
Craig went on to demonstrate how to throw fleece on to the wool classing table after it comes off the sheep and how to take the rubbishy bits from around the edges to get quality wool. He explained how to class the wool, showing us the strength of the different fleeces and the difference in price when it came to super AAA and AAA classes.
When the demonstration was over we all moved to the first shed where a number of staff were cooking a barbecue. A beautiful lunch of steak, salad and pudding was served, and we all had time to ask questions about the station and enjoy the fresh country air.
When the new building is finished Craig plans to hold weddings, conventions, demonstrations and other functions as part of his tourism business. It is only his friendships in the town and his drive for success, that have pulled him through the tough times, and challenged him to diversify into tourism and other areas in order to survive.