STOP
PRESS: The Dag is back! They even won an award
What kind of
bloke would call his tourist destination "The Dag"? Meet James
"Howie" Howarth, city boy made good.
The Dag, a whimsically
named sheep station and popular farmstay attraction, is located sixty
kilometres from the Country Music capital of Tamworth, NSW, and the arrival
point for most visitors. James and partner Anika were waiting for us as
we disembarked the CountryLink train from Sydney and gave us the low-down
on the way back to Nundle.
James, as I quickly
discovered, is not your average country lad. His easy, almost boyish charm
and quick wit belie an astute business sense inherited, no doubt, from
several generations of very successful Howarths. A relative newcomer to
the country, James' father Peter brought the clan out to Nundle in the
late eighties after years of lucrative property developing in Sydney.
With the aim of developing the magnificent Simmental cattle from Switzerland,
Peter chose the Nundle area because of its favourable rainfall and climatic
conditions and acquired the historic Wombramurra property, near Nundle,
for that purpose.
Stocked
predominantly with sheep, six thousand to be precise, the Howarths initially
found the woolly side of the business hard going with fleece prices at
historic lows in the early nineties. And they weren't the only ones. Many
of the local businesses in the idyllic Nundle township were also doing
it tough, and to reinforce their commitment to regional tourism, the family
found themselves acquiring some of the town's struggling small enterprises
in an attempt to keep the community together.
While Dad was finding
his feet on the new property, young James stuffed his new Bachelor of
Economics into a backpack and spent the next few years "ski-bumming"
in Canada. Not content with the simple life of a young Aussie playboy
in the Rocky Mountain ski fields, James flexed his entrepreneurial muscles
by developing a snow clearing business.
"We called it
'Snow Ejectors' and really showed the Canadians how to shovel snow,"
reminisces James, "we had several strata contracts and used other
'ski-bums' like myself as labour. As it turned out, we got too successful
for our own good."
Back home in Nundle,
James was beginning to wonder what a former ski-bumming economics graduate
does on a huge sheep farm in rural New South Wales. Then, together with
mates Neil Geddes and Graham Warring, The Dag concept was hatched in late
1995.
"Of course it
was always a fun idea to give young travellers a close-up of Aussie farm
life," reveals Howie with trademark grin.
Then in a quick code-shift;" … but because of the many changes
in sheep farming we really needed to better utilise that part of the property's
assets."
Primed
with that valuable entrepreneurial experience and considerable "market
research", James and his mates developed the almost dormant sheep
property into a country escape for "working holidaymakers".
The reputation of
The Dag as a fun place to stay and work soon grew and before long, busloads
of 'young independent travellers' were enjoying a stopover or even a few
days or weeks at the burgeoning retreat.
The station itself
is disarmingly simple. A shearing shed, a homestead and two sizeable shearers'
quarters all nestled comfortably in the picture-postcard scenery of the
Great Dividing Range. A rush of country air, tinged slightly with the
aroma of a log fire, greets us as we pile out of the F100. Our quarters,
in the shearers' digs, are homely and unpretentious and immediately set
the mood for our country getaway.
We're soon grafted
into a throng of new arrivals and led out into the paddock for a quick
sheep-mustering demo. A small "volunteer" flock is run around
in circles by a couple of lively dogs and it seems that the bemused crowd
of on-lookers is also being unwittingly mustered as the flock presses
closer to us. Perhaps a bit contrived for one who's seen the real thing,
but clearly a thrill for the many visitors fresh off the bus.
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