HE is confident, a handsome brick on legs, looking like a bloke who’s done a full day’s work, and for the girls around him, a little like Brad Pitt.
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George, bred by Graham and Mary Wells of One Oak at Jerilderie is a six-year-old Merino, and the 2013 National Grand Champion Merino ram.
“His brother’s down there, too,” owner and Kurrajong Park Merino stud owner Rod Kent said.
He and his assistant, Jade Lane, handily snaffled the powerful animal running with his ewes that, once caught, stood like an old show ring pro.
The flashy ram caught Rod’s eye at the Nationals that year. He bought George despite the high pricetag attached, that might have bought somebody a nice mid-sized sedan.
“He’s a pretty calm-natured sort of fellow,” Rod said. “We’ve got enough semen, or straws out of him to last us five or six years now.”
George is not the first or last costly investment the Kent family have made to ensure the ongoing legacy of their 100-year bloodlines and breeding philosophy.
“We try to improve the stud; you improve as you go, so you’ve got to buy rams,” Rod said. “They have never found a perfect ram or sheep yet, right? Because there’s always something wrong with a sheep.
“I just like a good upstanding sheep, plenty of wool on it, good bit of nice skin on it, it’s got the least amount of faults you possibly can get.”
Though the conformation and expectations of Merinos on the now 3000 head Kurrajong Park has evolved, the property, once called Forest Lodge Pastoral Company, has not budged far from its foundation at Koloona.
Dad went back when all his brothers were still alive and said, can you remember?’ and that’s where we wrote them.
- Rod Kent
Rod’s view from the back veranda is just as it was when he was a boy, learning the industry by living it.
The farm was established by Rodney's grandfather, Charles Nathan Kent. Charles took root on his soldier's settlement block after his World War I return with a damaged arm.
The history of Kurrajong Park can be found in the shearing shed where the stud averaged about six kilos of wool per sheep and lambs last shearing.
Rod pointed up along the old wool press in the spacious shed, where the names of every shearer who bent over for a day’s work on Kurrajong was recorded.
“Dad went back when all his brothers were still alive and said, can you remember?’ and that’s where we wrote them,” Rod said, studying the long list of scrawled names.
The stud itself was registered in 1935 and now spreads over four properties.
Rodney unfurled a pure silk ribbon awarded the Kents in 1914 by the Warialda Pastoralists and Agricultural Association for the Champion Selector’s Ewe.
The family farmhouse lounge and kitchen display the gentle lustre of decades of collected silver trophies Rodney’s mother Claire keeps well-polished, and the walls hold a visual history of ring winners over half a century.
