Armidale at last

After considerable time travelling I have finally reached Armidale, NSW, Australia and had my first fact finding meeting at the University of New England.

The long flight was not the most enjoyable with a considerable amount of turbulence from Dubai to Sydney, The very short amount of time to change flights in Dubai also caused a little stress and panic. Luckily there were a number of us on the flight that were doing the same change over and the airport staff were very helpful showing us the way and getting us to jump ques. I could get used to that.
When I finally reached Sydney I was glad to reach the hotel and go straight to sleep, as it was evening it helped me get straight in to the Sydney time zone. After an enjoyable day in Sydney I got on the road to start the long drive to Armidale.
I decided to have a stop over at Newcastle to break the 6.5hr drive. Having done over 2 hrs driving on long straight roads I thought I would have time for some sight seeing on my way to Armidale to break the remaining 4.5hr drive the next day. However with a few stops and a few scenic routes it seemed to take me nearly 6hrs from Newscastle to Armidale passing very few cars, few towns and few farms I often wondered if I was on the correct road.

After spending a few days on the plane and in the city this seemed extreme and I was very excited to see cattle and sheep. It was obvious that Cattle are the dominant species in the areas I was driving through. It was only as I got nearer Armidale I started to see Sheep.
Then when I finally arrived at my B&B in Armidale I was pleased to see it was an alpaca farm, a very friendly country B&B.
Moving on to my first meeting at the University of New England it was interesting to see the considerable focus agriculture has in the university and the support students get to study agricultural courses, which highlighted the importance of agriculture in Australia. I found it very interesting to see degrees such as Agriculture Biosecurity, Managing change and a combined degree in Agriculture and Law available for students.

When I was directed to the Wool shed I was wondering if I was being directed to where some practical research was going on. However the Wool shed is in fact an office block with a display of an old wool shed in the foyer.
The main objective of the meeting was to discuss the Information Nucleus with the Sheep CRC (Co-operative Research Centre).  The Information Nucleus consists of a series of flocks located at 8 research sites in widely differing environments across Australia. The information nucleus provides new information about traits and their genetic makeup. New traits include the horn-poll prediction, dressing percentage, lean meat yield and eating quality (intramuscular fat). The traits have been assigned Research breeding values (RBV's) which support the Australian Sheep Breeding Values (ASBV's). It was also interesting to hear about other selection parameters such as lamb survival.
Discussing this project led to wider discussion about the Australian Sheep Industry and its changing times with the focus moving from wool to meat and wool preferably without loosing the quality wool. Many farmers are now using crosses such as Blueface Leicester, South Down, Dorper, Hampshire etc
Other research discussed included the CARLA test to identify the animals immunity to parasites and work looking at other causes of parasite systems e.g. scouring, dags and ill thrift.
To conclude my first meeting I felt there is a lot that can be learnt from Australia but there are some things that Welsh farmers are very good at and Australia could learn some things from Wales.
I also found it interesting to see a commercial advert for a wormer randomly appearing while watching the TV this evening. I wonder what the general public in the UK would think of this appearing in the middle of their favourite soap. Again this highlights the importance of Agriculture in Australia.