Underground room as a cool retreat and store room.

If I were a sheep what would I think of my life on Gol Gol Station with black bluebush (sic) as far as the eye could see in a god-forsaken landscape, forty degrees C in summer and minus C in winter, sand and red soil with little water and amazing endless cloudless azure skies above.

With up to 50 000 others in a season, in dust, flies and barking dogs our mob trotted and leapt into capitivity in the shearing shed to be chosen for one of the 30 shearing stands and the hand shears, shorn then pushed down a shute into the talley pens. Later we were alarmed by the steam engines that powered the shears and the stands were reduced to 18. Next it was only 5 with the introduction of diesel power.

We were overstocked at times and trampled the fragile environment, never meant for our hooves, and tried to survive drought and the harsh landscape.

Our boss had a beautiful wife and a flash car and got out of here for the day or retreated to a cool underground room at the height of summer.

After all that, demand for wool growing changed....declined....ceased....our lands have returned to the kangaroo and emu, to anthropology and tourist nature lovers and the new boss is the Lake Mungo National Park.