Liz and Gary Murray, her husband, have lived at Trilby since they married in 1981. They have 4 children, the eldest being 30. Gary is a fifth generation Murray who settled on the Darling River in 1860. Liz first came to the area as a Jilleroo/Governess in 1978 and never left. 3 of their children have left home and the youngest is in his last year of school.
Liz loves adventure travel. She hiked the Kokoda Track in 2009. In 2011 she spent a month in Africa - 2 weeks living with a local family in a fishing village in Senegal, where there were no tourists and no English speakers. From the village she then went to Tanzania and climbed Mt Kilimanjaro, before doing a week's safari around the Serengeti area. In 2012 Liz walked the Larapinta Trail from Alice Springs. In 2013 she and her daughter, Alex, went to Morocco for 2 weeks, followed by 3 weeks in Senegal with the family she had spent time with in 2011. At the end of this year she will spend 2 weeks hiking in the Simien Mountains of Ethiopia and back to the family in Senegal for 2 weeks. Liz is certainly an amazing woman. She has home-schooled their 4 children till they went away to boarding school for high school, as well as running the property. And now they have people staying here, which she manages in conjunction with continuing to run the property.
They currently have around 16,000 merino sheep, down 4,000 from last year. Shearing begins in mid May for about a month. They got around 400 bales of wool, a bale weighing around 186kg (about 32 grown sheep) and they hoped to achieve $1,200 per bale.
Shearing shed near homestead - one of 4 on property
It costs around $12/sheep to shear. $7 goes to contractor (he brings 6 shearers, shed hands, woolpresser, wool classer, pen-er-uppers (person who pens the sheep), cook and all groceries. Trilby provide clean bed with mattress cover and pillow per shearer and a clean set of quarters. The shearers move from shed to shed on the property. Women are also on shearing teams these days - as roustabouts, cooks and occasionally shearers.
The 4 kids were all capable of driving on their own by age 7 and were given a small motorbike at about 3 to begin helping with mustering. On outgrowing that, they moved straight to the 4 wheeler motorbike. By age 5 they were towing a trailer behind the bike and could reverse it without any trouble.
Enough about the family for the moment. I cooked a slice this morning. It was a yummy Cranberry, Banana and Walnut slice. It turned out well. I also got some sewing done.
After afternoon tea, we went for another walk on the property. Saw a good size Red Kangaroo. It is a lovely property to walk around in the vicinity of the river.
No comments:
Post a Comment