The Long Paddock with Gerard Walsh

After our family has been on our property for more than 100 years, we have planted shade trees near the house for the first time.

I can’t guarantee what happened in 1907 but if my forebears did plant trees, they didn’t survive. And the trees don’t show up in any photos.

The one exception is a bottle tree which has taken 50 years to grow 3m high, a bird could have dropped a seed.

Our yard was predominately fruit trees which I don’t regard as shade trees, two orange trees, a mulberry, apricot and peach as well as two grape vines. There are two gum and one box tree east of the house but my guess is they just grew from saplings

Now there is another little gum tree about 30cm high which I am making sure we don’t slash.

We currently have five Ash trees growing and one (as pictured) was showing a few brown leaves a week ago.

The brown leaves don’t show up in the photo but it was in need of a drink.

What does show up is the bare ground behind the tree which is great if a fire threatens the area.

As we regularly slash the grass around the house and the cattle love the new grass after slashing, we are reasonably well protected.

What we haven’t done in planting more trees is planted them too close to the house.

Three are in a triangle as the track reaches the house and two on the hill between the mailbox and house, a distance of 400m.

Live sheep exports

Sheep producers in Western Australia are getting very upset about the impending closure of the live sheep trade.

The Labor Government seems committed to going ahead with what is an election promise but from my perspective, governments only worry about election promises when it suits.

The government hasn’t worried about changing the superannuation policy when it will only hurt the big end of town but have no thought of easing the pressure on our farmers.

The reality is the Middle

Warwick East Bowls Club’s “inclement” update

East countries want to slaughter the sheep in their own countries.

The exporters have really picked up their game after a horror TV program a few years ago. It could be more than 30 years ago since we sold our one mob of live sheep to the Middle East market.

At the time, we were dealing through Denis Ryan and Don McGinness at Elders and I suspect one of them inspected our sheep first before the live buyer turned up. The sheep had to be a certain minimum weight with not too much wool.

Queensland sheep were not always used for the live trade due to distance and cost to southern ports but they wanted ours to ship out of Portland in Victoria and a whole day was planned by the agents to inspect sheep

We had around 370 sheep in the yard when the buyer from the live sheep trade turned up and he took his position at the drafting gate and about 15 sheep didn’t make the cut. He was at our place for 10 minutes at the most.

There is a premium price for live sheep so there is no doubt the trade puts a lot of money into the Western Australian rural economy.

Sport briefs

Ed Diery

Contributed Due to the inclement weather last Sunday March 12, our open fours carnival had to be cancelled. It will now be held on

Sunday June 25. Consequently we have no results to report. There will be mixed social bowls on Saturday. Play starts at

1pm, with names to be in by 12.30. As usual there will be trophies to be won and a chance to try for the jackpot, which is