At a time when few women graced the saleyards, let alone worked in one, Heather Laursen is celebrating 40 years as one of Victoria’s longest standing female booking clerks.
Now a familiar face at the Swan Hill saleyards, in northwest Victoria, Heather was first employed in 1978 as office staff in the prodominently real estate business of W (Bill) Kennedy & Son before Mr Kennedy and the late Steve Mortlock formed Kennedy Mortlock.
Through Steve’s encouragement, in 1981 Heather picked up the agents’ pencil and check card to keep tabs on the mens’ activities on sale day.
“They’re a breed of their own” Heather said of her agent colleagues.
“But I love them and I love working with them in the sale yards.
“There is never a dull moment as there is always a lot going on.”
Heather said, in her early days of working “down at the yards”, the processing of sales was made much easier when you followed the stock from the unloading race through the sale pens to the delivery yards.
“Initially the balancing of yard books, and the processing of the accounts and distribution of the funds was all completed by hand. To have that firsthand knowledge of what happened in the yards made the task of processing sales so much easier and ultimately less mistakes were made.”
Raised on a dairy farm at Myall, between Koondrook and Murrabit, Heather said she would help her father milked the family dairy cows before attending school each day in Kerang.
And she said her work in the saleyards was supported by two of her uncles, Ron McNeill and Jim McLeish who each worked at the Kerang saleyards until both were well into their 80s.
But the mother of two, who recently became a grandmother, said she wasn’t sure “she’d last that long”.
Heather travels these days from Murrabit to Swan Hill to work with BRC Agents.
Her employment in agency has rolled through various mergers and acquisitions initially made by Brian Rodwell of the KM business, then Rodwells and now Ruralco in the BRC Agents franchise.
BRC Livestock manager, Joe O’Reilly said Heather is well trained in the “old-school”.
“She might be little but she is a pocket-rocket. She is first there, last to leave and is meticulous at balancing the books and keeping us under control,” he said.
On particular day in the Kerang yards however is firmly etched in her memory. “It was the day lightening struck a tree in the middle of the yards and I was standing closest. How anyone wasn’t killed with all that steel was amazing” she said.
