At Elfinvale Kelpie Stud, seven decades of breeding have produced working dogs designed for one thing: to get the job done.
Fog has swallowed Elfin near Coleraine in western Victoria, and majestic red gums appear across the sheep grazing property as merely suggestions. It’s unusual for autumn and the air is bitterly cold, but bad weather never stopped anyone doing jobs that need doing. “Larry, come—Winnie, come,” Tom Austin beckons to his kelpies who pile onto the back of a four-wheeler, teeth chattering from the chill and anticipation of the work ahead.
Tom and son George set off towards the paddocks. Joining is over and it’s time to pull rams off two mobs of ewes. Normally, it’s a one-man, one-dog job, but young Whinnie needs the miles, and George is home for the weekend, keen to put his own kelpie to work.
There are a thousand merinos somewhere in the soupy air, and the dogs can smell them even if we can’t see them. “Larry, behind—Winnie, here,” Tom shouts, a command to cast out around the sheep. The mob swirls like a school of fish, twisting and reshaping as the kelpies circle them. Larry, the more experienced of the two, adjusts his position constantly. A shift to the left to hold a drifting ewe; a quick burst to head off another that breaks. After a few minutes, the last of the mob filters into the laneway.
Now in its 70th year, Elfinvale Kelpies is one of the country’s oldest studs, with more than 9,000 dogs carrying its genetics across Australia and beyond. But it remains deeply embedded in the farm—and every dog is bred to work. “Eighty per cent of it is genetic and twenty per cent training,” Tom says. “You’ve got to get the breeding right.”
The mob settles into the three-kilometre walk back to the yards, moving at the pace of the slowest sheep, with George's dog Maverick stalking quietly behind. The fog lifts in patches, revealing the yards ahead where Tom's wife Pip and the girls are waiting. Peppa the family pug is somewhere among them, not quite a working dog, but no one's game to tell her.
In the yards, the family begins drafting through the front pens, while the dogs hold the mob in place—stepping in to turn one back, then easing off again. “The ‘eye’ is the power of the dog to control the sheep,” Tom explains. “They walk up quietly, hold their line and wait for one to break. That’s not training, it’s instinct.”
"We do work well as a team," Pip says, casting her husband a sideways glance. “We’re gradually educating Tom that there are many ways of doing a job, not just one." Tom concedes the point. "There's been a generational change,” he smiles. “The kids are on the draft gates now. That's their time to shine."
All three children, Millie, Poppy and George, live away now but step back into the work when they're home. Millie's back more often now since becoming her parent’s wool rep, a title she wears with pride. ”I grew up in the shed," she says. "So being able to market that wool and get Mum and Dad the best possible price—it’s a full circle moment.”
Four years ago, Tom and Pip bought back a large portion of Elfin from a blue gum forestry company and set about reshaping it for the way they work. They cleared stumps and returned the land to grazing—with central laneways, practical paddock design and stock-proof fencing. They built new yards with man gates and dog flaps so dogs and people could move freely between pens. It’s taken everything they have. "Why? Because we love farming," Tom says. "And we love farming right here.”
With Tom often working away, the day-to-day running of the property falls to Pip. That’s meant loading the ute with feed and heading out to the ewes, Larry riding on the tray behind her. During lambing, keeping the nutrition up to them is non-negotiable. "I've basically dragged a feed cart around behind me every day during the drought,” Pip says, “feeding sheep, feeding dogs…"
"I get fed a little bit every now and again," Tom interjects.
"And then sometimes, I'll feed Tom and our children," Pip laughs. "If they're very nice to me."
Kit The Crew
