What is your favorite animal?

Coming from a farming background I have to say that of all the animals in the world, my favourite animal is the humble sheep.

My father had fine wooded merino sheep on our farm and took great pride in the quality of the fleece the sheep produced.

Luck’s a fortune in respect of my Father’s sheep. My Father had bought a new farm in 1949. He had about 1200 sheep and had to shear them all himself with a single-stand shearing plant.

The farm at that stage had not been developed to have full shearing facilities.

I well remember my Father having to shear the sheep on the floorboard section of the machinery shed. He had to bale all the wool by hand.

Bales of wool then had to be manually manhandled onto the back of his truck and taken to the siding for train transport to the Fremantle wool stores in Perth.

I guess one of the reasons that sheep are my favourite animals quite apart from the fact that they have lovely natures, is the fact that my father’s first wool clip hit the best wool sale of all time.

Wool was in critically short supply after the Second World War and my father‘s clip went for so much money that he was able to pay the farm down in 12 months.

I am also a great admirer of the sheep in northern Scotland.

When visiting Scotland in 1996 we found that some of the sheep were very intelligent but they burrowed into the walls or embankments at the sides of the roads, to keep out of the freezing wind.

They were well protected. I thought that these sheep had amazing common sense.

Yes, I like sheep. They are my favourite animals.