AROUND THE TRAPS

‘‘Everything is falling into place and we are really happy to be staging it again after missing out last year through COVID (the first time in 76 years that the rodeo has not been held),’’ she said.

Janelle revealed the cost of stock being supplied by the McPhee Rodeo Company to run the rodeo was $25,000 so her committee was looking to the public for support to make ends meet but was confident that support would be forthcoming.

Garry’s lifestyle choice

When Garry Lyon, one of the guest speakers at Kyabram’s Men’s Longest Lunch last Friday, was asked by compere Roger Oldridge why he had turned his back on an AFL coaching career Lyon’s initial answer was prompt and simple: ‘‘money’’.

Lyon did go on, however, to explain that his decision to remain in the media was also influenced by lifestyle.

‘‘AFL coaches virtually get no time off but in the football media you do get have welcome breaks between seasons,’’ the former Kyabram junior and Melbourne Football Club megastar told the capacity audience.

A dry February

The last month of summer was particularly dry.

Up to Monday — the last day of the month — Kyabram had received just 0.6mm of rain, with 10mm to 20mm predicted for the start of March yesterday.

While maximum temperatures have sat in the low to mid 30s for the greater part of 2022, no days of 40°C or above have been experienced over the summer months. This is in contrast to the 2020-21 summer when the mercury topped 40°C on three occasions.

Ky’s outback connection

There is a Kyabram connection to the action ABC TV series Outback Ringer.

Kyabram schoolteacher Greg Ross taught one of the stars of the current show, Clarry Shadforth, when he was teaching at Borroloola in the Gulf of Carpentaria in the Northern Territory in the early 1970s.

Greg recalls Clarry as a likeable, observant young First Nations student, who came from a lovely family.

Clarry’s father, Frank Shadforth, owns and has worked the Gulf property Seven Emu all his life.

The Shadforth family are Garawa people and Seven Emu is on their traditional lands.

Clarrie’s grandfather Willie Shadforth was a cattle drover and horse trader who worked and saved hard and bought the station – for cash – in 1953.

He was one of the first known First Nations people to buy a pastoral lease.

Willie passed the property on to his son, and in turn Frank has now handed the management of the farm to his son Clarry.

Clarry’s children – the fourth Shadforth generation – now assist him with running the station.

Outback Ringer is about a hardy lot of people, men and women, who risk life and limb chasing and catching feral cattle and buffalo for a living in remote areas of the Territory.

It goes to air on ABC TV at 8pm on Tuesdays.

Wrong fuel

It can all go wrong at times, even for all those meticulous men in their ‘flying’ machines, as one well known bikie recently found out.

This bikie enjoyed a nice meal at the Barmah Hotel and on his way home topped up his machine with juice at Moama.

Unfortunately the juice he topped up with was diesel and not petrol, a happening his rather inconsiderate so-called good mates keep reminding him of.

Don’t take it too hard, Nexo, we think it’s been done before but we don’t know when.

Alison catches the ‘Cod Father’

The odds were astronomical but it happened.

The main lure for the 900 anglers who took part in the recent Deniliquin Fishing Classic was a $25,000 windfall if they could land a tagged cod that goes by the apt name of ‘the Cod Father’.

Allison Thrumble, who claims a lot of her time is spent trying to free her bait off snags, hooked the tagged cod using cheese for bait.

She had caught tagged cod before but it wasn’t until she had the fish checked out by the competition judges that she knew she had hit the jackpot with her catch.

It was the first time the tagged cod prize, which was introduced at the competition in 2016, had been claimed.

Most anglers landed a fish, with 700 legal sized fish, both cod and yellowbelly, caught over the two days of competition.

While on Murray cod, the Big Fish on the Tocumwal Foreshore has undergone a makeover.

It was 12 years since the impressive statue of the iconic Murray Cod had had a repaint and it’s looking a million dollars again.

Up in smoke

Excuse the pun but it has all gone up in smoke, courtesy of the police.

A raid on an illegal tobacco crop at Koraleigh, north of Swan Hill, led to a bust valued at $42 million.

Putting the haul into perspective, it weighed more than 250,000kg — the equivalent of 13 bulldozers — and was being grown on a 10-hectare site.

Mad Max hits the road

There’s plenty of movement in the movie scene not far from here — near Hay in NSW and near Benalla a little closer to home.

A sea of tents has sprung up at One Tree, north of Hay on the road to Booligal, for the production of Mad Max Furiosa.

The claim is it will be the biggest film ever made in Australia, with heavyweight actors such as Australian heart-throb Chris Hemsworth among the cast.

Near Benalla, the Winton Wetlands is the backdrop for Amazon Studios’ thriller movie Foe.

It’s not the first production filmed at the eerie site, but it’s the biggest.

Among the star-studded cast are Saoirse Ronan (Little Women, Brooklyn), Paul Mescal (Normal People) and Aaron Pierre (The Underground Railway).

Century celebrations

There seem to be a lot of centuries being celebrated of late – and not only on cricket grounds.

Finley Golf Club has just held its 100-year celebrations and St Joseph’s schools at Nagambie and Cobram have also just celebrated the memorable milestone.

Square Dinkum

G’day

I was recently in a supermarket in Queensland and, as usual, I was having trouble finding things.

I asked a worker, ‘‘Where do you keep the canned peaches?’’ He replied, ‘‘I’ll see.’’ Then he walked away. I waited for ages but he never came back.

So, I asked another worker the same question. He replied, ‘’I’ll see.’’ And walked away. He didn’t come back either.

I got tired of waiting, so I started looking up and down every aisle. I finally found them. They were in aisle C.

Hooroo!