THE SHEEPDOG TRIAL

Bob grew up with a love of Banjo Paterson, thanks to his dad who recited Banjo’s poems to him from an early age.  As an only child, and with no kids on adjoining farms, his early years were spent in a mainly male environment listening to all the stories related by his neighbours and dad.  Those yarns would later be the subjects of some of his poems.  After escaping school he picked up a handpiece and went shearing for the next ten years as well as breeding fat lambs on the small family farm and began putting shearing shed yarns into verse to amuse his dad.  In his mid-twenties he purchased some adjoining land, built a dairy on the growing property and spent the next 17 years milking cows as well as breeding sheep.  When his sons chose not to join him on the farm Bob had amid-life meltdown and starting writing bush verse in the dairy.  To get him to regain his sanity his wife encouraged him to lease out the dairy part of the farm and pursue his dream of becoming a bush poet.

While distributing his first book in 1991 he discovered the Tamworth Country Music Festival and the fledging bush poet breakfasts at the Longyard.  Blown away by the poets who were performing their poems from memory,  Bob returned home from his first visit highly motivated to lift his game.

Twice winner of the prestigious Bronze Swagman award for written bush poetry at Winton.  Queensland, and collecting four Bush Laureate Awards for written and audio work at Tamworth, Bob is in demand for festivals and corporate work all over Australia.  Sheep dags and cow manure are a distant memory!