GIVE IT A GO!

It’s 6am, and I’m at the Oroua Transport truck yard on the outskirts of Feilding, where three blue and white big rig stock trucks are lined up ready for action.

Owner-operator Simon Kennedy has offered me the chance to hitch along to give trucking a go.

It’s a sales day at the Feilding Livestock Saleyards, one of the largest stock yards in the Southern Hemisphere, where around 450,000 sheep are sold a year.

This morning we’re picking up a load of lambs from Kimbolton.

We take the highway north and turn down a windy road with pine trees growing up from a steep gully that drops off from the right hand edge of the road.

I’m dumbstruck by the massive proportions of the truck and that the wheels stay safely on course while the cab feels like its floating above the gully as we turn about the bends.

Foxgloves sit dew-covered below us and I try to ignore my fear of heights.

At the bottom of the hill we emerge into a valley of deep green farmland.

A herd of lambs cluster en masse watching us nervously.

We drive small groups of them through the muddy runs, chivvying them into moving by waving and flashing crisp white plastic shopping bags tied to black hose handles.

They move as a herd and once you get one spooked into running for the ramp the rest of the group rolls as one.

Kennedy keeps them moving inside the truck, to the back of each gated section, closing them

I’m dumbstruck by the massive proportions of the truck and that the wheels stay safely on course while the cab feels like its floating above the gully as we turn about the bends.

off and counting as he works.

‘‘They flowed like water,’’ he says after they’re loaded. ‘‘The job isn’t always this easy.’’

‘‘We do everything from sheep and cattle to horses and pigs... you have to have stock sense,’’ he says. ‘‘Everything is unpredictable.’’ I strongly suspect I don’t have stock sense, and I’m glad we’re not carting larger stock.

We haul away 515 ewe lambs and 300 male lambs.

The 5600 horse power engine builds up slowly and we bounce about on the springy cushioned seats as we wind up the track on the cliff-side of the gully.

Kennedy changes back to manual gears for the steep part, concentrating. ‘‘You wouldn’t put just anyone into a job like that, coming out of there,’’ he says.

Back at the stockyards there’s an expectant buzz and a handful of farmers stand among the rain-wet wooden pens watching the sheep run down the ramp.

I clearly don’t pass for a regular at the yards and draw puzzled stares while I navigate through the herd, but I had fun helping deliver the flock, and wonder where they’ll be trucked off to next.