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No.35. in my series of short stories.
FOR SALE. No.1723. $2000.00
Shut the flock up is one of three small works that I am presently painting in mixed media and framed.
Loving to paint these small handy sized paintings whilst listening to the idiot box for background noise, or listening to Jimmy Barnes as he is one who fires me up.
The paintings are reminders of my childhood days on the farm. I sit and think of the mischief and the things that we made and the fun that us 3 kids got up to. Now I have brought that fun into my Tasmanian scenery paintings.
Rounding up the sheep and bringing them into the shearing shed and running them through the sheep run, I would often sit up on the side of that sheep run so I could put my feet onto the sheep's back and feel the soft wool. We would watch the shearers shear the wool then it was thrown up onto the wool classing table where it was graded. It would then go into a huge wool press.
The shearers were great fun always a laugh, they slept on the verandah that went around the farm house. Most mornings after the shearers left for work my sister and I would make it onto the verandah to scrounge for the change (money) that hopefully fell out of their pockets the night before after they had a few beers, the money fell onto the verandah boards and then would fall through the cracks. Spending hours making up a contraption a bit like a parachute we would make it out of grandads handkerchief, tying a piece of string to each corner then join the four strings together with one main string to hold on to, then we would use a stick to poke the handkerchief between the boards it would fall to the dirt and we then would use 2 sticks to flatten it out on the ground and then flick the coins onto the hanky and raise it up again, it was very hard then to get the coin on an angle so that it would come back up through the verandah boards. Hours of something to do and maybe a bonus of an extra halfpenny, penny, threepence, sixpence, shilling or if we were really lucky a 2 bob coin, some extra money to spend next time we would go into town.
Time to go out and play.