Ram Beau

No Reason To Feel Sheepish

Photographs copyright: DAVID McMAHON

You reckon I've been rolling around in the slush, photographing livestock, right? Er, not quite. Yes, this is a merino, the famous drought-resistant breed of Australian sheep that is synonymous with top-grade wool. But there's more to it than meets the eye .....

I’m pretty observant, for a bloke. But don’t let that mislead you. It’s a well established fact among members of my clan that I cannot find things in a drawer, on a desk, on a table, in a cupboard, on a shelf, in a shopping bag, in a suitcase or in a supermarket aisle. But let me loose with a camera and I’ll see things that no one else can see.

Ya get my drift, right?


So when we recently went to Sydney for Easter, I had a bit of explaining to do. We pulled into a service station at Goulburn, a picturesque New South Wales town. Apart from the fact that the service station has plenty of bowsers, there is also a bakery across the street and plenty of other restaurants and outlets in a tight radius.

But as I drove towards the service station, we all noticed (some of us, ahem, more quickly than others) the huge merino that dominated the horizon. Yes, it’s the well-known Big Merino, a famous Australian tourist attraction. But here’s the problem. How come none of us had noticed it on previous trips, when we pulled in for a quick refuelling stop at the same place?

I went for the obvious option and said I must have been concentrating on a) traffic, b) pedestrians and c) speed limit signs. Spotting big merinos, I stuttered, was surely the responsibility of Mrs Authorblog and the Authorbloglets. Especially a merino that stands more than 15 metres tall.


Then, as I sat down to write this post, I did a bit of research and discovered that there’s nothing wrong with my eyesight. The mammoth figure of the Big Merino was actually constructed elsewhere in Goulburn. Then, when a highway bypass was built and the tourist traffic to the merino took a huge dip, the giant figure was moved, lock, stock and barrel to its present location.

I’m so clever I should take my bar exam. Or my baaaaa exam.


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