Good fat, bad fat and those guys with fat on the brain
Not for a minute do I profess to know it all.
Yet a lot of people seem to think that’s exactly what the Whacker does – they might think I am a deaf old coot but I hear them whispering and calling me a know-it-all.
It’s very flattering I suppose, but with it comes so much responsibility.
Which is why it comes as no surprise when I am besieged by the stud industry to conduct post mortems.
Not of recently deceased bulls and rams you clowns, post mortems of sales which stink even worse than a sheep that has been dead in the back paddock for a few days.
This is where the Whacker’s expertise comes into play. And the funniest thing here is most of these people know what I think about stud breeders and their smoke and mirrors.
But still if they want to rescue their next sale they know they need a good healthy dose of Dr Whacker and his prescription of common sense.
So last week for me went like this. An old mate had his bull sale earlier this month and it was a dog of an affair.
The would-be buyers stayed away in droves and those who did turn up seemed to have very short arms and very deep pockets.
I thought the poor auctioneer was going to blow a gasket he was trying so hard to squeeze blood out of a very stony-faced gallery.
Not as stony faced, though, as the principal (aka my mate) who looked as though he had just been caught with his fingers in the till.
After years of good sales, with the averages ever on the rise, this fixture had defied the odds.
Which in itself seemed pretty odd to me because he is a bastard of a bloke to deal with.
Unlike yours truly he really does think he knows it all and at every chance is shoving it down the throat of anyone who will listen – or is trapped in a corner.
So I took him aside in his kitchen so his missus would not see the shock on his face and said: “Forget about shoving all this crap about estimated breeding values down the throats of your clients mate. Try shoving a bit of good old lucerne hay down the throats of your young bulls and get a bit of condition on them.”
I would have said make them big and fat, with shiny hides, but fat is a no-no in the red meat industry these days.
For example, a lamb which is almost certainly fat really isn’t if you listen to the gurus in places such as Meat and Livestock Australia.
“No Whacker,” they would cry. “That is a prime lamb.”
Just as they would tell me “that’s not a stinking feral goat Whacker, you have to get with the program. That’s a beautiful rangeland goat, perfect for the domestic and/or expert market”.
So, I continued with my mate of questionable parenthood, telling him he is forgetting the key lesson about the stud industry.
“You are a salesman cobber,” I instructed him. “If you can’t sell, all of your fancy figures are just so much chaff being blown around by the wind.
“Most farmers I know got their fill of figures when they had to go to school. They haven’t come here for another lesson from you,” I advised.
“They don’t want you to tell them what they need, like any shoppers they need you to provide what they want.
“And that’s a bloody big bull looking set to burst out of its skin.”
There ended the lesson – and at no charge.
But as my dazed, know-it-all mate wandered across to his yards I could see the issue with fat was still going to be the biggest challenge here.
Because like most stud breeders he had way too much of it between his ears.
When bigger, obscenely bigger, is certainly not bestThe old Whacker had a spooky trip into the future last weekend when one of the daughters invited us to Adelaide as a treat.
She had bought tickets to see Dame Edna – and Barry Humphries – on stage for the last time.
And then we were going to have a picnic lunch in the city and watch the last day of the Tour Down Under cycling event.
All sounded tickety-boo. Of course being one of the children she did not throw in the airfares but she was picking up the tab for the rest.
So we packed up and headed off for what should have been a great weekend.
Fat chance.
And I mean fat.
We went to the shops with our daughter and grandchildren and I was sorely amazed at the sheer size of so many city folk.
Now I concede we all pick up a pound or two – alright, a kilogram or three – as we get a bit older and lead less active lives.
But so many of the people I saw had been picking up their shares, and the shares of everyone else in their street.
They were humungous.
It is a problem which has also afflicted farming in recent years as technology has taken the place of hard yakka in so many areas.
Most people I know don’t even walk down the drive to the mailbox anymore, they jump on the quad bike and zoom down there and zoom back.
When I was a bit younger I actually had an old pushbike for that trip. Now I am just old and we don’t collect the mail until someone is driving past the box.
So yes, I know a few cockies in the neighbourhood who are probably out to the last hole on their belts.
And yes, weight is becoming an issue in the farming community – crikey, these days you don’t even have to steer the tractor, a satellite and computer will do it for you.
The hardest part of the day will be emptying the big lunchbox the missus packed.
But none of that holds a candle to what awaited me at the Dame Edna show.
As we moved along the aisle to our seats in the second front row I was aghast.
Mine was next to one of the aforementioned blubber guts.
This guy was truly elephantine in proportion.
He filled his seat, was squeezing his wife and still spilling over into mine.
He was massive. A giant blancmange.
The night was on the verge of disaster long before the curtain went up on the show.
I literally had to squeeze myself into my seat but hey, the Whacker did not play centre half back for nothing.
Within minutes a few sharp elbows, and apologetic smiles, had done the trick and Mr Big had redirected his mass towards his hapless wife. Who should perhaps share some of the blame because I bet she does most of the cooking.
Once I was settled in my seat – all of my seat – I glanced across and saw Mr Big was now sitting almost sideways to try and contain his flubbery extremes.
Which worked for me but proved a serious challenge for people wanting to make their way along the aisle at half time.
He had become an immovable object and they were forced to go the other way.
And glancing around the theatre it was dreadfully obvious he wasn’t the lone ranger.
Or even the biggest out there on the range.
The show in the stalls was almost as good as the one on the stage.
If you have a taste for the freak show from the good old days on sideshow alley.
So as the Baby Boomer bubble continues to boom is this the future of the bronzed Aussie? To be a beached whale on our iconic beaches.
Which is why, when we got home, I said to the missus at our first breakfast: “No Coco Pops for breakfast today love. Have we got any All-Bran?”
