Country Hour veteran reflects on $450,000 ram and decline of wool industry
Times were tough in 1989: mortgage interest rates were hovering around 17 per cent, and even Sydney's real estate market was feeling the pinch.
But someone still found $450,000 to spend on a single ram.
As the Country Hour gets ready to mark 80 years on air, the ABC picked the brains of former rural reporters about the stories they will never forget.
For Leigh Radford, the former head of ABC Rural, it was that day at the Royal Adelaide Show when a merino ram sold for a world-record price.
Leigh Radford will never forget the day a ram sold for $450,000. (Supplied)
"It's just extraordinary that that amount of money was paid for a single ram," he said.
"But it was right at the top of the ride for the Australian wool industry."
Riding on the sheep's back
Wool was once Australia's biggest export.
In 1950, the fibre was selling for $37 per kilogram, according to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, but by 1970–71 the price had fallen to just $0.60 per kilogram.
Wool was Australia's top export in the 1950s. (Supplied: Collinsville Stud)
The industry was propped up with a Wool Deficiency Payments Scheme in 1971, and then a Reserve Price Scheme for wool, which operated between 1974 and 1991 and kept profits artificially high.
In 1985, West Australian Neil Garnett paid $10.5 million for South Australia's Collinsville stud.
The world record sale price for a merino was broken six times under his ownership, with the run culminating in the ram called JC&S Lustre 53.
A record price of $47,000 for a ram was set in 1982 but beaten in 1989. (Supplied: Merino SA)
Tony Wetherall was the auctioneer for the record sale.
"The whole ram shed was absolutely packed, media everywhere; you could hear a pin drop," he recalled.
Mr Wetherall said overseas interest in Australian genetics helped to drive ram prices to record levels.
"Back in the day, Collinsville was selling a lot of semen, and that ram may have had a thousand orders at $50 a dose," he said.
A 1995 ABC 7.30 story on Collinsville reported that a third of the Australian wool clip had direct genetic links to the stud, making it the most influential in the country.
Wool crash
But just a couple of years after the auction, Leigh Radford was reporting on another turning point for the industry.
The Australian Wool Commission (AWC) was running the reserve price scheme, setting a minimum price for wool to smooth out fluctuations in prices for growers.
It would buy the wool that did not sell, store it, and sell it later when the market recovered.
But demand was softening and sometimes 90 per cent of the offering was being bought by the commission.
Mr Radford was soon reporting on the collapse of that scheme.
"It became like printing money, it became too good,"he said.
"Supply ran ahead of demand, prices got to 1,200c per kilogram on an average basis and the floor price was running at about 870c."
The Collinsville Stud went into receivership in 1991, owing $43 million.
By the end of the 1990s, it was reported Australian greasy wool production had fallen by 35 per cent.
What happened to the ram?
Paddy Handbury, a nephew of Rupert Murdoch, bought Collinsville in 1995 and Tim Della came on board as stud manager in 2008.
Mr Dalla was at the Adelaide Show that day as well, but he was just seven years old.
He is now Collinsville Stud's general manager and he said Lustre, the record-breaking ram, was put to work producing semen to sell for artificial insemination.
Tim Dalla (left) became manager of the Collinsville Stud and Tony Wetherall (middle) was the Elders auctioneer. (Supplied: Collinsville Stud)
"A lot of people used him through AI and he threw a lot of progeny," Mr Dalla said.
Lustre would sire three Adelaide Show supreme champions.
But the days of rams being worth more than houses appear to be over.
Mr Dalla said the top-priced ram since 1989 sold for $115,000 in 2022, a long way off the record price.
Seasonal conditions are affecting wool growers now, with Collinsville recording its lowest rainfall figures since it was established in 1889.
This season has been the worst since the Collinsville Stud was established. (Supplied: Collinsville Stud)
While the industry ponders how to deal with drought and increase demand for wool in the face of ongoing competition from artificial fibres, the Country Hour continues telling the stories of rural Australia.
Mr Radford is still broadcasting on the ABC and active in leadership roles in agricultural organisations around the world.
But he regards his career with the Country Hour as his finest work.
"It has been such a great privilege to meet people doing amazing things in very understated ways often,"he said.
The 80th anniversary of the first Country Hour broadcast is on December 3, a milestone that makes it the longest-running radio program in the Southern Hemisphere.