The Spelt Project 1, July 2014 | Page 7

This project has been made possible by the O’Bree family of Yanget, who have put up with me snapping pics and taking notes, and allowed me the experience of cropping and working with sheep on their land. They also managed to maintain civilities when I inadvertently sowed thirty metres of their main driveway with wheat — that’s what I call neighbourly. The experience of working with Bill Kerr, a man who has spent his life on the land, has been the inspiration for this magazine. As I worked with him I began to document his working life at Yanget, and along the way met many people involved in agriculture in the Midwest. Bill was born in station country, taught by his father and mentored by other long-time farmers and the Aboriginal people who lived and worked on Moorarie Station, WA. Bill has done a lot of cropping in his day, but is known as a stockman. Friend and fellow farmer Gary McCaugh once famously said: ‘Bill could fatten up a rocking horse and sell it to someone who didn’t want it’. This magazine, ostensibly about growing a crop of spelt in the Midwest, touches on some of the issues facing primary producers. 5