Penniedarling

 Meet Susie, our first pet sheep, Nerys called her Susie, I don't know why, neither does she :-)

Way back in 1974 we went on a 3 month holiday in our Big Green Bus, we headed South from Sydney all the way through N.S.W. into Victoria and following the coast as much as possible to Wilson's Promontory, then along south east Victoria to Melbourne where BTW, the City doesn't really cater for Double Decker Buses.   Along the Great Ocean Road into South Australia and to Adelaide, back into NSW through Swan Hill then North through Mid West N.S.W. to Goulburn where David and I had met back in the 1960's.

After this lovely relaxing holiday, David was dreading having to get home and mow that enormous back paddock of ours at home and he had this brilliant idea!

We bought a sheep at the Goulburn Sale Yards...  Neither of us can remember how much we paid for this sheep, it is 40 years ago now...

We tethered Susie on the back platform, which at this stage was still open and watched the looks on the faces of people admiring the bus as we drove past... when they saw the sheep sitting quite contentedly on the platform they did a double take, such fun for the kids to watch out for.

 Susie did a brilliant job of keeping the grass down and David was a dab hand at shearing, I spun the wool and we had a little bit of country in our own back yard in the 'burbs'!    Except Susie used to escape and I'd get a phone call from a neighbour across the road saying, could I please come and get my sheep as she was in their garden eating the Petunia's.

After Briony was born we decided we wanted to go and live in England for a while, we rented our home and organized for a friend to come in and shear Susie while we were away so all was calm on the home front.  We were away for two years and in those last few months we got word to say that Susie had been mauled by a dog and the Pymble Police had to come to shoot Susie to put her out of her misery... Susie was buried just about where our Garage is now.  Thank goodness this didn't happen when the children were around.

Then in about 1980 Briony and I, along with Briony's godmother Carol and her young daughter  Melanie drove out to West Wylong to visit Carol's parents who lived on a Sheep Station. 

Now it just so happened that Carol's family had a Poddy Lamb that they were hand feeding and I immediately fell in love with this black, cream, brown and white lamb which I called Sooty!   Carol's father told me that he didn't know what he would do with Sooty because of her coloured wool and he thought Sooty was a twin because all his sheep had lambs and he had no missing sheep.

I was driving my station wagon so we tethered Sooty in the back, the two girls in their car seats and we headed back home.

Sooty was adored by us all and I really loved spinning her wool, she did a great job of keeping that back lawn down but she thought she was just one of my children... which did cause a few problems.

 Nerys meeting Sooty for the first time.

Briony and Sooty were best of friends.

Now here's a mystery, David and I both remember looking after a very old sheep for someone for a while, but for the life of us we cannot remember who owned this sheep or how long we had it before it's owner came and took it away again...  do you children remember?  Was it Pippy?

 We had to hand feed Sooty three times a day, with a powdered milk mix, an enormous teat and a beer bottle.  As Sooty got bigger and stronger the children couldn't keep hold of the bottle so I had to take over the feeding and I can tell you it was like a tug of war match every time, Poddy Lambs sure have a strong suck.

 As I've already mentioned Sooty thought she was my baby so when I left her  at home to go shopping or visiting or whatever she would bleat so loudly and consistently the neighbours kept complaining so for several months I had to take Sooty wherever I went.   I would tether her into the back of the station wagon where she was quite content watching things go by, she was even content when I left her in a car park for a little while, passers by thought Sooty was a lovely little dog until they did a double take. 

Sooty liked nothing more than to get into the house,  she would just blast her way through the back fly screen door of our old home, tear straight down the hallway, jump onto my side of the bed and settle down, till I shooed her out again.

Sooty loved to play Cricket, her favourite game, here she is playing wicker keeper with Tom and Briony.


 Susie became our local Sports Club Mascot...she was black and white after all and she was never any trouble, she quite happily let me lead her anywhere.

 David shearing Sooty...  quite a man of all trades is my David :-)
 A shorn Sooty!

Eventually Sooty had to go, we were building our new home on Sooty's back paddock, I was pregnant with Gwilym and she was getting a bit too big for me to handle easily so we were always watching out for her and as you can see in this photo, our old home was about to be demolished, that's the old red  bath on the veranda, about to be stripped and put into our new bathroom in our new home.

We had friends who had sheep on a small property at Gulgong and they willingly came and took Sooty away with them in their Station Wagon... but that was sad, we'd known Sooty almost all of her life and she was leaving us... very sad.

A couple of years later we visited Sooty at Gulgong, our friends told us that she'd taken a couple of months of hanging around their home but she did eventually join the others in the flock and she even had a couple of babies, one year she had Twins!  Just like we think she was, but all the lambs Sooty had were plain white.  She was the only one who was special.

On our visit to Gulgong, I saw Sooty on top of a small hill, I called her and she stopped, she looked at me and started coming my way but her flock started panicking and bleated furiously warning her not to come near me, she stopped and went back to flock, I kept walking and calling and despite her flocks opposition she came gently trotting to me, she looked at me, let me pat her but the protesters from the top of hill became too much for her and she headed back to her flock... looking back at me from afar.

Mmmm... I did get a bit carried away writing this didn't I, and I'm feeling a little teary now but it's been lovely remembering!

Labels: 6/15, Sheep