“Don’t pick up the stick!” warned John Lolicato who farms with his wife Kerry between Wakool and Barham.
John’s dog Ned is a stickler for fetch and only the uninitiated are silly enough to start the game.
With grandson Vinny on his hip and Ned at his feet, John is very much at home with wheat and canola springing to life around him on Lolicato Lane.
Ned is a brown kelpie, who at seven years old maintains a level of intensity and energy shared by his boss.
“He was given to me by a family friend, the parents have a good blood line and temperament and are both excellent working dogs. Ned is one of the best sheep dogs I’ve had,” John said.
When Country News visited the Lolicato’s, Ned sat attentively, poised, awaiting instruction.
“He has the unusual ability to be good in the shed and good in the paddock. He probably doesn’t get enough sheep work which is why he has developed a passion for fetching sticks!” John said.
A tour of John’s house yard involves inspecting olive trees, ripe for the picking, tasting fennel plants and learning how to pick prickly pear without being prickled. All the while throwing the stick for his best mate.
A bank of prickly pear indicates that John’s grandfather, Sam Lolicato, settled here fresh from Sicily on what was a WWI soldier settlement block.
His ancestors brought out fennel seeds in their pockets, still flourishing along the irrigation channel today. But if John was to cross the globe to start a new life, you’d have to check his pockets for rice seeds.
Ned keeps John company as the family grow rice every summer, producing seed crops for Rice Growers Association. In winter they farm wheat and canola and fatten lambs on pastures.
The farm work never stops and while a good dog lives to work, that commitment can be the death of them.
“Last summer we’d scanned a thousand plus ewes in the heat of the day and we nearly lost Ned,” John said.
“He ended up at the vets in a critical condition due to water and dust in his lungs. It makes you realise that you have to make sure they have a break. Because they naturally don’t stop!”
Ned and John, colleagues, companions and best mates, were last seen inspecting some home-made calabrese sausage.
Words and pictures: Carly Marriott