1. GENESIS - IN THE BEGINNING

Once upon a time, (around 1985) an orphan lamb was bequeathed to our neighbours over the road, Roz & Steve, by some “friends” of theirs who were departing for Darkest Africa. This was Lambsy. Being kind hearted people, they let Lambsy loose on their recently purchased property to feed, frolic, & do other lambish things, but their fences at that time left a little to be desired. As every one knows, a fence is a series of holes joined together by wire. Unfortunately, some of their fence holes were larger than Lambsy, who, being an adventurous little beast, decided to go exploring.

We had also purchased this property at the same time, & I was moving in while Kathy & our children were visiting Australia. One spring morning, I was surprised to see a trail of small brown messages at the bottom of the stairs leading up to our house. On following them I discovered a small lamb contentedly devastating the flowers in our garden while depositing more little messages for me to follow. Not being into animal husbandry, and not having any New Zealand ancestry, I was somewhat bemused at what to do with this, our first guest. A piece of rope was found, and after carrying out a full inspection of all our flowers, Lambsy dragged me back to Steve, who was apologetic, & put Lambsy back in her paddock.

The next morning, Lambsy was back.

By the third morning, Steve was running out of wire to make his fence holes smaller than Lambsy, so after serious negotiation over a few stubbies, Lambsy was relocated to our front paddock where the fence was marginally better, until such time as either

    (a) Steve made his fence holes smaller than Lambsy, or,

    (b) Lambsy grew bigger than the fence holes.

This deal was conditional on Steve retaining all management responsibility for The Beast, especially as we were not residing full time at Barnes Bay at that time.

2. GROWING UP - THE TRIALS OF PUBERTY

As time passed, Lambsy grew, but not quick enough to to keep the grass in our paddock under full control. We entered into an arrangement with Tom Mulchay, the then owner of Kirkby Lodge, to run a few sheep in the paddock from time to time to keep the grass down. We arrived one Friday night from Hobart to find that Tom had placed about twenty rams in the paddock, with very large horns and other similar sized accoutrements. We were immediately highly concerned for Lambsy's virtue! Our fears were groundless, as Lambsy was in the middle of the paddock, and all the rams were huddled up in one corner, scared to death of this half grown ewe which refused to acknowledge that it it was a member of the sheep family!. This was a trait that continued all her life, and to the best of our knowledge her virtue was never in doubt.

Around this time, I took some long service leave to convert what used to be the shop into our one and only holiday unit. (the ‘s’ was added to our business name of ‘Barnes Bay Villas’ in case we wanted to add additional units later, but this has not proven warranted). With my family in Hobart during the week, Lambsy and I became good friends after a hard day digging holes or splashing paint about. She enjoyed and demanded lots of scratching on the head and behind the ears like any good dog, and if one was a little slow in giving attention, a gentle butt behind the knees or any other handy surface was given as a reminder.

As she grew older, the gentle butt became a running jump, and anything but gentle for the uninitiated. This was not helped by our kids thinking it was a great game to provoke Lambsy into attack mode.

3. LAMBSY THE DOG

The shearing of Lambsy was an event not to be missed in Barnes Bay.

At that time, Steve & Roz. had a few old sheep that he inherited when they purchased the property. Naturally these had to be shorn, crotched etc., and arrangements were made with Lee Davis, a near by farmer, to round them up, and drive them up to his shearing shed for appropriate attention. Lambsy was taken over to their paddock to receive the same treatment.

That is when the problems started.

Lambsy refused to run with the real sheep, propped & confronted the sheep dogs (throwing them into chaos at such un-sheepish behaviour), and then followed the dogs as they rounded up the real sheep. Lee gave up in disgust, and when the flock was on the road, he opened the door of his utility to give an old dog a lift. Lambsy immediately jumped up into the cabin of the ute, propped her hooves up on the dash board, piddled & pooped on the seat, and waited to be taken ta-ta’s. A rather bemused Lee shut the car door, took Lambsy up to his shed, gave her a hair cut. and delivered her back by the same mode of transport.

This became the accepted method of shearing Lambsy. It did however become more difficult as Lambsy developed into a fat ill tempered ewe. One of the best performances was helping Steve wedge fat smelly Lambsy into the back seat of his fairly new Ford Fairlaine sedan. The canvas sheet used for protection was not entirely satisfactory, and the car smelled like a shearing shed for weeks later. On arrival at Lee’s shearing shed, we found that the ramp was missing. Fat Lambsy had to be “encouraged” up about 4 ft. to the shed floor level. Steve attacked her from behind, lifted her front hooves onto the door ledge, and forced her to jump up using rather obscene body movements. We were a big help falling about laughing at the performance. Kathy took lots of photos, but then found that there was no film in the camera. This was a great shame, as the potential for blackmailing Steve was enormous! We did however, get a couple of shots later.

4.  EXODUS

By 1990 Lambsy’s increasingly bad temper and vast increase in weight got too much for everyone, and resulted in more in depth negotiation with Steve, who seemed to have developed a severe lack of memory on who was the true custodian of The Beast Of Barnes Bay. After numerous stubbies he acknowledged that his fences were now in an adequate condition, and seizing this moment of weakness, several of us dragged Lambsy over the road to terrorise Roz’ horses.

Lambsy the bad tempered, dog sheep, passed away on a stinking hot day around Christmas 1993. She is now interned under the old eucalypt that shades the horses she once tormented...

Dunky

Barnes Bay, Bruny Island Tasmania