GROWING up on her family’s farm in Marnoo inspired a career in agriculture for Shannon Crowe, who is about to hit her five-year anniversary as Landmark Dalgety Wool show-floor coordinator.
The 25 year-old, who is based at the Melbourne wool stores, said she was always eager to get into the shearing shed when she was growing up.
“I grew up on a sheep and wool farm, and Dad was a shearer, and one day needed someone to help, and said to me ‘you’ll do’, so I took a few days off school and did some roustabouting in the shed,” Ms Crowe said.
“I started doing more and more work, and it ended up becoming a part-time job I did while on school holidays.”
While she knew she wanted to pursue a career in the industry, she wasn’t entirely sure how to do it.
“We had a family friend that worked at Viterra Wool Exports, and she asked if I wanted to come and do some work placement there,” she said.
“I was there for three weeks, and it really cemented my interest in the industry, I thought ‘how am I going to get into this industry?’, it really opened my eyes to what I could actually do.”
In the meantime, she had started studying an agriculture science degree at La Trobe University, Melbourne, but said it wasn’t up her alley.
“Uni wasn’t going well, I was there for a year and a half, and got my results as I finished my placement at Viterra, and was like ‘this isn’t working’, so deferred for six months, and never went back,” she said.
She was offered a full-time position at Viterra, but said she wasn’t ready at that point to take it.
“I went back and worked in shearing sheds for six months, but towards the end of the year, knew my time was probably running out to take up Viterra’s offer,” she said.
“I knew I had to get a real job sooner or later, so I decided to take up the offer.”
The job at Viterra involved relocating to Adelaide, SA, but it wasn’t long before she moved back to Victoria.
“I joined in 2013, which was the year Landmark bought Viterra, and by mid-June it had become Dalgety Wool, and by October, I was offered a position at the Melbourne show floor doing show floor stuff, and I’ve been here ever since,” she said.
“The first couple of months were pretty hectic, learning basic store work, how to lot wool, how to mark bales, and then the shipping side to things, but once I moved to Melbourne that’s where I learned a lot more about the brokering side of things.”
She said day-to-day, things are busy at the wool store, as they prepare to sell 45 weeks a year.
“By the end of the week, you’re trying to finalise the next week’s sale, while also dealing with post-sale jobs from the current week’s sale,” she said.
She also does the bookwork during each of the sales, and said learning to auctioneer might be the next thing she tackles.
“It’s probably something I should learn, but it’s so quick, I sometimes can barely keep up doing the bookwork,” she said.
She said so long as there is work in the industry, she would love to stay in agriculture, but at this point isn’t entirely sure where it will take her.