Waltzing Matilda tells the story of a swagman and a jumbuck, but Lima East farmer Gary Oborne has his own yarn about a lamb, not a swaggie, who jumped into a dam trying to escape.
He was trying to round up his lambs for market recently, when one of them persistently hid from view.
“I was following a group of them around the paddock, when he broke away and took off.
“He jumped onto a floating fish shelter and hid there. When I pulled the shelter into the bank and tried to get to him, he jumped off into the dam and swam to the opposite bank.
“I found him hiding beside a log.”
The young wether may have realised he was being rounded up for his last journey, or he may have known about the Waltzing Matilda poem, where the swagman jumps into a billabong to escape the trooper.
(The floating fish shelter is designed to protect fish in the dam from bird predation.)