Using what's at hand - granite sheepyards
By Judy Evans
@JudyEv (357891)
Rockingham, Australia
July 9, 2025 4:03am CST
While travelling, we took a ten kms detour out to some old sheep yards. It was a gravel road and quite rough but that’s okay.
We were heading for an area of land at Mt Marshall that was taken up by Edward Pergande around 1910. By 1920, he had built a homestead for him and his wife, and had also constructed sheep yards for his flock. The yards are made of vertical slabs of granite. There is a massive granite slab to the west of the yards. Fires would be lit on the slab then rapidly cooled by throwing water on the rock, causing slabs to break off. The house was also made of granite rocks rather than the flat slabs.
The photo shows the drafting race, a narrow alley where sheep would be run through in single file. A swinging gate at the end would allow sheep to be drafted to the left or the right.
8 people like this
9 responses
@wolfgirl569 (118932)
• Marion, Ohio
7h
It looks like it will last a long time too
3 people like this
@DaddyEvil (152758)
• United States
10h
Our farm grew more rocks than anything else... I remember corner "posts" made of stacks of rocks wound about with fencing to anchor a gate or the corner of a fence line.
2 people like this
@DaddyEvil (152758)
• United States
5h
@JudyEv When I was a kid, we all would go out in the spring and carry rocks that had pushed up into the fields during the winter to rock piles in the gulleys and pile the new rocks on the old piles of rocks to clear the field so we could clear the brush and the cattle and horses could graze that year... Every year we carried the new rocks to the piles... It was tiresome but effective.
@BarBaraPrz (49979)
• St. Catharines, Ontario
6h
I don't know whether to say 'hmmm' or 'interesting'.
