A ram sold for a world record price of $450,000 back in 1989, but a Country Hour reporter remembers it as the peak before the fall for Australia's wool industry.
As the Country Hour gets ready to mark 80 years on air, the ABCFor Leigh Radford , the former head of ABC Rural, Leigh Radford will never forget the day a ram sold for $450,000."It's just extraordinary that that amount of money was paid for a single ram," he said.
Riding on the sheep's backIn 1950, the fibre was selling for $37 per kilogram, according to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, but by 1970–71 the price had fallen to just $0.60 per kilogram.The industry was propped up with a Wool Deficiency Payments Scheme in 1971, and then a Reserve Price Scheme for wool, which operated between 1974 and 1991 and kept profits artificially high.The world record sale price for a merino was broken six times under his ownership, with the run culminating in the ram called JC&S Lustre 53.Tony Wetherall was the auctioneer for the record sale. "The whole ram shed was absolutely packed, media everywhere; you could hear a pin drop," he recalled. Mr Wetherall said overseas interest in Australian genetics helped to drive ram prices to record levels. "Back in the day, Collinsville was selling a lot of semen, and that ram may have had a thousand orders at $50 a dose," he said. A 1995 ABC 7.30 story on Collinsville reported that a third of the Australian wool clip had direct genetic links to the stud, making it the most influential in the country.But just a couple of years after the auction, Leigh Radford was reporting on another turning point for the industry.Wool production is forecast to drop to its lowest level in 100 years, but young farmers remain optimistic about the future. The Australian Wool Commission was running the reserve price scheme, setting a minimum price for wool to smooth out fluctuations in prices for growers.But demand was softening and sometimes 90 per cent of the offering was being bought by the commission."It became like printing money, it became too good,""Supply ran ahead of demand, prices got to 1,200c per kilogram on an average basis and the floor price was running at about 870c."By the end of the 1990s, it was reported Australian greasy wool production had fallen by 35 per cent.Paddy Handbury, a nephew of Rupert Murdoch, bought Collinsville in 1995 and Tim Della came on board as stud manager in 2008.He is now Collinsville Stud's general manager and he said Lustre, the record-breaking ram, was put to work producing semen to sell for artificial insemination. Tim Dalla became manager of the Collinsville Stud and Tony Wetherall was the Elders auctioneer."A lot of people used him through AI and he threw a lot of progeny," Mr Dalla said.But the days of rams being worth more than houses appear to be over., a long way off the record price. Seasonal conditions are affecting wool growers now, with Collinsville recording its lowest rainfall figures since it was established in 1889.Supplied: Collinsville StudWhile the industry ponders how to deal with drought and increase demand for wool in the face of ongoing competition from artificial fibres, the Country Hour continues telling the stories of rural Australia. Mr Radford is still broadcasting on the ABC and active in leadership roles in agricultural organisations around the world."It has been such a great privilege to meet people doing amazing things in very understated ways often,"The 80th anniversary of the first Country Hour broadcast is on December 3, a milestone that makes it the longest-running radio program in the Southern Hemisphere.Stories from farms and country towns across Australia, delivered each Friday.
Leigh Radford Tony Wetherall Ram Wool Sheep Adelaide Show Lustre $450000 Record Price Country Hour Merino Ram
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