Having worked in the same industry all my life it is easy to highlight ‘The Year that Made Me’.
1977 was the year I was awarded an Anzac Fellowship to study the New Zealand system of Agricultural Education.
Australia had no formal structure for educating Farmers, Pastoralists and Farm Workers in the manual skills of farming until 1975.
Victoria had a Shearer training scheme as did New South Wales and South Australia. These three states also had a very good Wool Classer tuition scheme. There were other localized training systems including ‘Keeping Farm Accounts’, ‘Dairying Practices’, ‘Pig Raising’ and ‘Bee Keeping’. Industries such as Merck, Sharp and Dohne occasionally sponsored tuition afternoons and the Australian Wool Board/Australian Wool Corporation held discussion days. These were all very good educationally but were not endorsed by Education Department Technical School syllabus committees.
Benalla, being a rural town, had developed a course that incorporated all of the above activities and drawn upon curriculum from the Wangaratta Technical School.
Agricultural Colleges such as Dookie, Longrenong and Marcus Oldham in Victoria; Hawkesbury in New South Wales and Roseworthy in South Australia had served their states well. Tertiary Institutions around Australia were also making a huge contribution to Agricultural Education such as at Melbourne, Latrobe and Pastoral Industries in New South Wales.
Working at the time for Benalla Technical School/Dookie Agricultural College as a Sheep and Woolclassing Teacher, I was asked by the Principal of Benalla Technical School if I would act as Coordinator of the newly developed Farm Apprenticeship scheme recently introduced there.
My family and I had recently moved to Benalla to be near my wife’s parents who were farmers in the district. I negotiated with Carole’s parents for the Technical School to graze some sheep on their property at a nominal rate – and so the Bentec Dorset Sheep Stud was born.
Having been offered the job of Farm Apprenticeship Coordinator I subscribed to a periodical called ‘The New Zealand Farmer’ and any other magazines to see what the rest of the world was doing in this field.
One day, while searching through these publications, I found an application form for an Anzac Fellowship.
Anzac Fellowships are rather rare – they are awarded each year to persons who show exceptional prowess in their field of study. Mine was of course Post Secondary Agricultural Education.
I put the proposal to the Anzac Fellowship selection panel that what Australia needed in regards to Agricultural Education was to visit similar education providers New Zealand to obtain an overall picture of the New Zealand scene and implement accordingly. I asked for four months to tour New Zealand with my wife Carole and two adorable children, Luke and Marion.
Sir Thomas Ramsay, who awarded the Fellowship on behalf of the Australian and New Zealand Governments, wrote back to say he would authorize a six month visit. I later submitted a Report to Sir Thomas on my findings.
Three years later a job was created funded by the Federal Government called the Manpower Development Officer, Victorian Wool Industry Training Committee (VWPITC).
I held that position for a few years during which the VWPITC Committee and I developed the Regional Shearer Training Scheme; rewrote the Woolclassing Syllabus; assisted in the introduction of Self Paced Learning and assisted with Shed Hand Trainer Schemes.
So – 1977 is now ‘on the record’ as the year that made me, the year that acted as a catalyst for my ever increasing contribution to the Sheep and Woolclassing industry in Victoria, an industry I have thoroughly enjoyed being involved with.
(‘Off the record’… my wife has said she has heard this story so many times she is sick of it! …Such is life!)
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