The Dag

By Rod Eime

What kind of bloke would call his tourist destination "The Dag"? Meet James "Howie" Howarth, city boy made good.

The Dag, a whimsically named sheep station and popular farmstay attraction, is located sixty kilometres from the Country Music capital of Tamworth, NSW, and the arrival point for most visitors.

James and partner Anika were waiting for us as we disembarked the CountryLink train from Sydney and gave us the low-down on the way back to Nundle.

James, as I quickly discovered, is not your average country lad. His easy, almost boyish charm and quick wit belie an astute business sense inherited, no doubt, from several generations of very successful Howarths.

A relative newcomer to the country, James' father Peter brought the clan out to Nundle in the late eighties after years of lucrative property developing in Sydney. With the aim of developing the magnificent Simmental cattle from Switzerland, Peter chose the Nundle area because of its favourable rainfall and climatic conditions and acquired the historic Wombramurra property, near Nundle, for that purpose.

Stocked predominantly with sheep, six thousand to be precise, the Howarths initially found the woolly side of the business hard going with fleece prices at historic lows in the early nineties. And they weren't the only ones.

Many of the local businesses in the idyllic Nundle township were also doing it tough, and to reinforce their commitment to regional tourism, the family found themselves acquiring some of the town's struggling small enterprises in an attempt to keep the community together.

While Dad was finding his feet on the new property, young James stuffed his new Bachelor of Economics into a backpack and spent the next few years "ski-bumming" in Canada. Not content with the simple life of a young Aussie playboy in the Rocky Mountain ski fields, James flexed his entrepreneurial muscles by developing a snow clearing business.

"We called it 'Snow Ejectors' and really showed the Canadians how to shovel snow," reminisces James, "we had several strata contracts and used other 'ski-bums' like myself as labour. As it turned out, we got too successful for our own good."

Back home in Nundle, James was beginning to wonder what a former ski-bumming economics graduate does on a huge sheep farm in rural New South Wales. Then, together with mates Neil Geddes and Graham Warring, The Dag concept was hatched in late 1995.

"Of course it was always a fun idea to give young travellers a close-up of Aussie farm life," reveals Howie with trademark grin.

Then in a quick code-shift; " … but because of the many changes in sheep farming we really needed to better utilise that part of the property's assets."

Primed with that valuable entrepreneurial experience and considerable "market research", James and his mates developed the almost dormant sheep property into a country escape for "working holidaymakers".

The reputation of The Dag as a fun place to stay and work soon grew and before long, busloads of 'young independent travellers' were enjoying a stopover or even a few days or weeks at the burgeoning retreat.

The station itself is disarmingly simple. A shearing shed, a homestead and two sizeable shearers' quarters all nestled comfortably in the picture-postcard scenery of the Great Dividing Range. A rush of country air, tinged slightly with the aroma of a log fire, greets us as we pile out of the F100. Our quarters, in the shearers' digs, are homely and unpretentious and immediately set the mood for our country getaway.

We're soon grafted into a throng of new arrivals and led out into the paddock for a quick sheep-mustering demo. A small "volunteer" flock is run around in circles by a couple of lively dogs and it seems that the bemused crowd of onlookers is also being unwittingly mustered as the flock presses closer to us. Perhaps a bit contrived for one who's seen the real thing, but clearly a thrill for the many visitors fresh off the bus.

The bewildered sheep are lead away and we are mustered into the adjacent shed to meet Mickey, a fair-dinkum shearer of some forty years' experience, who regales us in authentic style with tales of yore and wild times on the shearers circuit.

Stiffened by years of back-breaking work and aided by yet more volunteer sheep, Mickey takes us through the exhausting process. In his heyday, Mickey and his mates would shear 300 sheep a day for weeks on end, then move on to the next property and start all over.

To demonstrate the effectiveness of the equipment, I become the first subject and stepped forward for a haircut. Mickey quickly has my ragged growth strewn around the floor and I run my hand across the toothbrush texture of my scalp with satisfaction.

"That'll do yer fer a month or so," Mickey observes wryly, "an notter 'air outta place! Y'know I never spent a penny on an 'aircut all me life."

Next it's the sheep's turn and Mickey shows the assembled voyeurs the intricacies of removing nine months of wool growth without puncturing the animal's vitals. We all have a go and, for a man of Mickey's years, he shows remarkable patience with a clumsy crowd of no-hopers.

The sheep isn't consulted, yet weathers the over-handling with little complaint.

Dinner is a boots'n'all affair of camp oven roast meat and vegetables served in the suitably rustic mess hall. To offset any possible Samsonian effect, I take an extra serve of the flavoursome offerings. Howie had promised us an early start, so I left the merrymaking to the other guests and hit the sack early.

The Dag is a "work in progress" station, so any day's itinerary can vary from one to the next depending on what has to be done.

This day began at 0600 when the 4WD arrived to take me on a personalised tour of the immediate vicinity and we made a beeline for the nearest hill for a sunrise view of the station. Howie described the apparently verdant outlook as "green drought" and only a few weeks before the view would have been quite different.

Even so, with the fluffy veil of early morning cloud creeping over the adjacent range and the golden rays gradually filling the valley below, it's hard to imagine anything other than the sort of landscape sought out by a Drysdale or Streeton. Way down by the almost dry creek, Anika and Nathan were already bringing in the first flock of the day.

After breakfast, it was time to get amongst the horses. I'm a regular rider, once every ten years, so there was some remedial work to do first of all. That aside, it soon became a pleasant ride in the brisk country air, so long as I stayed away from the sheep.

The Dag is one of those stations where you could ride all day and still not come to the end, so our little exploration barely scratched the surface, although we did visit Howie's herd of Simmental down by the river for lunch.

Just when I thought I was getting the hang of it, Anika, an equestrian champion in her native Germany, would trot, canter and gallop her steed each and every which way, just to remind me I was no Man From Snowy River.

We detoured slightly on the return to trip to observe the royal sport of ferreting. Frank, the senior station hand, is a keen (no, expert) ferreter and proudly introduced us to "Poppa Smurf" who would fearlessly plumb the depths of the rabbit warrens, flushing out the furry prey, usually after a nip on the butt. After fifteen minutes or so we had two bunnies in the bag.

Our visit was coming to an end, but before we headed back to Sydney, there was time to look around the town. There's the pub, a Sport and Rec club, the historic Lantern Store and Gallery as well the new old-fashioned Woollen Mill that turns out stylish knits on one-hundred-year-old machinery brought in especially for the task.

It should also come as no surprise that most of these busy little enterprises are part of the Howarth tourism portfolio!