Ky’s outback connection

There is a Kyabram connection to the action ABC TV series Outback Ringer.

Kyabram schoolteacher Greg Ross taught one of the stars of the current show, Clarry Shadforth, when he was teaching at Borroloola in the Gulf of Carpentaria in the Northern Territory in the early 1970s.

Greg recalls Clarry as a likeable, observant young First Nations student, who came from a lovely family.

Clarry’s father, Frank Shadforth, owns and has worked the Gulf property Seven Emu all his life.

The Shadforth family are Garawa people and Seven Emu is on their traditional lands.

Clarrie’s grandfather Willie Shadforth was a cattle drover and horse trader who worked and saved hard and bought the station – for cash – in 1953.

He was one of the first known First Nations people to buy a pastoral lease.

Willie passed the property on to his son, and in turn Frank has now handed the management of the farm to his son Clarry.

Clarry’s children – the fourth Shadforth generation – now help him run the station.

Outback Ringer is about a hardy lot of people, men and women, who risk life and limb chasing and catching feral cattle and buffalo for a living in remote areas of the Territory.

It goes to air on ABC TV at 8pm on Tuesdays.