Animal Magnetism
Sun Herald
Sunday August 13, 2006
With an oink-oink here and a baa-baa there, Fairfield City Farm will captivate the kids till the cows come home.
THE KIDS swarm across Fairfield City Farm like plagues of red and navy blue ants, scurrying tirelessly from pigpen to cattle yard, chook shed to koala cage, picking up gigantic lumps of facts and figures to carry home.A giant hairy pig called Tiny lies on his side, eyes closed, pretending to sleep while a host of blue-uniformed munchkins scream at him: "Wake up, wake up, oink, oink, oink."A sign on the pen says pigs are generally sold for meat at 18 weeks. "Eighteen weeks?" thinks Tiny. "What did I do to get five years? Get me on that meat truck!" From there it's on to the cow milking, where a farm worker keeps children behind the yellow line by turning a teat sideways and firing a squirt of full cream at transgressors. It's like turning a water cannon on rioters.The working-dog show gets off to a bad start. The short-sighted hound can't find the sheep (though they're in plain view at the other end of the paddock) and the farmhand has to go and point him in the right direction. Where's Babe, the sheep-wrangling pig, when you need him?"I coulda been a contender," thinks Tiny. "I coulda been somebody, instead of a bum. Or a pork bun."To his credit, the dog recovers and puts on an otherwise flawless display. He's not the only one. Farmer Ron turns out to be a deft sheep shearer.He's a hit with the kids. He opens with comedy: "OK, we're here to milk a hippopotamus." And then turns to trickery: "Hands up if you're not here." Can't believe I fell for it.The little 'uns lap it up, though their attention starts to wander during the shearing of Baaabara. Perhaps it's because Farmer Ron takes so long - at about 10 minutes he is 91/2 minutes outside the world record.The kids start practising their moos and cock-a-doodle-doos. Tough crowd.You'd have to practise hard to shear a sheep in anything like world record time (36 seconds), but with the going rate being $2.10 a sheep there's lots of incentive to get the job done quickly.It looks like back-breaking work. A real man's work. Personally, I'd be trying to convince the sheep that the bald look is out, the afro is in and maybe they'd just like a shampoo and set this year.Farmer Ron is also an expert whip man, showing off the stockman's crack (not a low-slung pair of jeans, but a flick of the whip in front of the body) and the cattleman's crack (off to the side for when you're on horseback). He then warns about the tourist's crack (in front of your face, splitting you open from eye to mouth with the whip you've just bought from the souvenir shop). It's a brutal story for the nippers, but they tell it how it is here: the kids learn that these animals aren't just for cuddling, they're for meat.The farm begins where suburbia ends. One minute you're in lifeless streets, cruising past McMansions with double garages, the next you've fallen off the end of the world and landed on 240 hectares of outback. It should be heritage listed before someone turns it into housing estates. The kids love it, the grown-ups love it, deep down even the pigs love it. Though they'd love it a lot more without all the shouting.TRIP NOTESFairfield City Farm is open from 9am to 4.30pm every day except Christmas Day, Boxing Day, New Year's Day and Good Friday. Admission is $16 adults, $12 concession, $10 kids, $45 families. Darling Street, Abbotsbury. Phone 9823 3222. See www.cityfarm.com.au.
© 2006 Sun Herald
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