Tony Whitehead is 90 years old, still on the block he's held since he was a child, and still letting sheep out at trials across NSW and Victoria. This one's a sit-down with a bloke who's seen more of the working dog world from the yards than most of us will ever see from the arena.
Tony grew up at Urana in the NSW Riverina, was a jackaroo on Tubbo Station on the Murrumbidgee during the 1956 floods, spent four years as a ringer north of Winton in Western Queensland, and tossed a coin to decide between coming home and getting his pilot's licence in Cairns. He's carted grain, built tunnels at the Williamstown naval dockyard, owned a £35 racehorse that won 22 races, and came to sheepdog trials in his sixties because his wife reckoned he'd work himself to death on the farm otherwise.
What you'll hear:
- Life on a Riverina station in the 1950s, with two full-time rabbiters running 30 dogs each
- How Tony went from helping in the yards at the Supremes to trialling his own dogs, and the dogs that got him there: Hamish, Horace and Bear
- The put-away dog he refused to sell, no matter the money
- Tony's let-out method: ropes, a white rock at 20 metres, proper side barriers, and why "prevention is better than cure" in the yards
- The best run he's ever seen: a small white bitch of Greg Prince's that got attacked 23 times by sick sheep and still penned
- Why he thinks more women in the sport has been good for stock handling
- Narrandera, Koroit, and what makes a well-run trial
- His advice to a 20-year-old: never be in a hurry, do it right, do it once
