There are two men who could tell you, in their own words, the absolute truth of how Damara sheep first arrived in Australia. Until this very week, the rest of us have just been piecing their stories together secondhand.

 

But things just changed.

 

We have finally uncovered both of their accounts, in their own voices. What they’ve given us completely sets the record straight on this whole episode.

 

Let’s look at the Aussie side first. In 1996, Tim Coakley—CEO of Wescorp Holdings in Perth—did something almost nobody has ever heard of. He personally got on a plane and flew with a shipment of 11,450 embryos from Johannesburg to Perth. The entire story is fascinating. The embryos spanned five breeds, and Tim believes it might still be the largest single movement of livestock genetics ever achieved. Tim was also Australia’s lead at SAABCO.

 

Out of that shipment, 2,819 were Damara embryos, collected at a purpose-built quarantine station at Colesberg in the Great Karoo region in Northern Cape and structured through a joint venture called SAABCO. Following the success of that genetic transfer, Tim chaired the inaugural meeting to officially form the Damara Sheep Breeders’ Society of Australia on the 3rd May 1997, before handing over to David Thorn, the inaugural President of the Damara Sheep Breeders Society of Australia, right in the Wescorp boardroom in Fremantle WA.

 

Then there’s the South African side of the puzzle. Clynton Collett was one of the actual Damara breeders whose genetics went onto that historic flight and an advocate of the breed being propagated in Australia, working alongside SAABCO’s South African lead, Andries Pienaar. Clynton went on to develop the Meatmaster breed using the Damara genetics, the Meatmaster is now South Africa’s most prominent sheep breed.

 

This week, Clynton handed us a total goldmine we didn’t even know existed: a wealth of detailed documentation, alongside the actual itinerary and photographs from his very first trip to Australia in 1997. He and fellow breeder Ernest Connan flew out, were hosted by Tim Coakley’s family, and immediately hit the road.

 

They loaded Damara, Dorper, and South African Mutton Merino (SAMM) sheep – born from the embryos received in 1996, into a trailer and drove deep into Western Australia to introduce local farmers to breeds almost none of them had ever laid eyes on. They travelled all the way up past Carnarvon WA. Clynton expanded this education to most of the other states in Australia on his subsequent visits Down Under.

 

One man flew the embryos into the country. The other hitched up a trailer and drove the livestock straight into the outback to prove they were worth the trouble. Between Tim’s written account and the information and photos Clynton provided, we now officially have both ends of the story, told straight by the two men who actually lived it.

 

There is plenty more still to come as we work through everything both of them have shared with us. Stay tuned.

 

 

Photographs © Courtesy of Clynton Collett, Collett Farming – Superior Genetics