Colour photograph showing an outdoor group portrait of people seated and standing on the deck of a shearing shed, with blue sky above and gravel road below. Handwritten text in black ink is shown on the back. back: [handwritten] Shearing Team Puckapunyal army Base Seymour / 75,000 Sheep, 21 Shearers plus shed staff Yard staff / and cooks / Started Shearing for Jim Walker / Sep 8th 1986shearing, agriculture, wool, workers, army base, seymour, victoria, rural life, people, portrait, working life, puckapunyal

Part of the Kevin John Herdman No. 397661 Collection. Service details: *National Service Training - Puckapunyal 6.1.1954 to 6.4.1954 *CMF - 38th Battalion to the end of 1964. *Vietnam visit - 18.2.1970 to 4.3.1970. *RAASC with the rank of Captain - 1974 to 1975. Royal Australian Corps of Transport with the rank of Major. Retired 30.6.1988.Framed black and white photograph of a group of soldiers in uniform. Soldiers are arranged in five rows. Caption at the bottom lists the names of the soldiers in the photograph, relevant dates and the location where the photograph was taken. Frame is made of metal with a stand attached to the back.Photograph lists: '14 Platoon D Company 15 National Service Battalion, 6/1/1954, 6/4/1954, Puckpunyal' plus names.photograph, national service, puckapunyal, keving john herdman

Refer to Cat 5547, Matheson.This is a large map, printed in colour on one side only. Scale 1:25,999. The grid squares are 1000 x 1000 metres. it shows the camp, ranges and bush areas used by the military.This map is covered in a large number of added colour shadings, nav lines, airstrips and circles.puckapunyal army base, military training, map

Banjo Paterson once wrote, ‘The musterers are fetching them a hundred thousand strong’. Well, not quite 100,000 strong, but there are 75,172 mixed age Riverina-bred merino wethers in this mob mustered for shearing on January 22, 1988. The sheep were owned by the Mountjoy family from Geelong Victoria and were running on Puckapunyal Army Base near Seymour in Central Victoria on which the family held the grazing lease. Contractor for the shearing, Jim Walker, Avenel, Victoria, former Australian shearing team captain in 1974-75 and 1978-79, recalls there were up to 21 shearers in his team waiting for the red eyes to arrive despite the mid-summer heat of up to 38°C and the blinding dust on windy days. Jim Walker thinks there may also have been some sheep in the mob from Portland Downs and Isis Downs near Isisford in Central Queensland. The biggest shearing he did at ‘Pucka’ was 87,087 shorn in 1988. The ‘Pucka’ base was established during WW1. During the Second World War the Second Australian Imperial Force trained there as well as the US Army 41st Infantry Division. It was also home to the 1st Armoured Regiment from 1949 until 1995. During the 1950s up to 4000 national servicemen at any given time were training there. In the 1980s the Army undertook a major 60,000-acre land rehabilitation programme as decades of heavy use had led to serious degradation. By 1988 when the photo was taken, further land acquisition had increased the area to just under 100,000 acres, 43,000 of which is still bush country. There are no sheep there now, and the old shed was bulldozed and burnt. There are thousands of kangaroos which of course don’t need to be shorn and would be hard to muster and hold for a similar photo. Colour photograph, 75,172 merino wethers, mustered for shearing at Puckapunyal in 1988.shearing merino sheep, mountjoy, mr dale - worungalla pastoral co., shearing, merino sheep