Uardry 0.1 - the shilling ram
Krista Schade
The following story of the infamous Uardry Ram was written by Stephen Burn and published in the 2013-2014 Top Sire, the NSW Merino Breeders Association yearbook.
“In 1932 at the Sydney Sheep Show a Merino ram from Uardry, Hay, was judged the grand champion of the premier event of its kind in the world. Uardry 0.1 was considered by all who viewed him as the most beautiful sheep seen up until that time. Variously described as having “all the characteristics of greatness in his splendidly-modelled body, his strong head and horns, and his beautiful, soft, richly-crimped fleece”, the pristine promise of scientific expectation was recognised in his vernacular balance.
The Australian Merino, of which Uardry 0.1 is only one of many, is a perfect example of the challenging forces of nature, continually being adapted to better suit the contemporary environment.
Specifically bred by Neilson Mills, studmaster at Uardry, to be both beautiful and productive his archetypal image was impressed upon the reverse of the shilling issued as part of the new coinage to acknowledge the assumption to the British throne by George VI in 1938. By coincidence, the new coinage also celebrated the sesquicentenary of European settlement in New South Wales.
In Uardry 0.1, Neilson Mills had concentrated millennia of sheep evolution, creating a masterpiece as vital as any Rodin sculpture or Picasso expression. In turn, George Kruger Gray, an English artisan, mostly known for his designs of stained-glass cathedral windows, designed an exquisite image for the 1938 shilling. His simple and idealised image of the Merino ram neatly connected the most recent minting of coins with those that were originally struck around 640 BCE.
The Australian issue is directly descended from those coins minted by the authority of Croesus. The origin of coins is wrapped in as much mystery as the origin of the fine wool sheep. In this narrow view of the evolution of coins and the Merino sheep, I have attempted to connect the 1938 Australian issue with all the myth and romance that has gone into this Arcadian illusion. It was right that the matriarchal Bengali-Spanish sheep grazing the saltbush steppes were seen to be descended from the Biblical flocks of the patriarchs. It was right that their significance should be represented on the national coinage. Fine Merino wool had proven itself Australia’s most faithful commodity.
For a century and a half, the nation had ridden to economic and political independence on the back of the Merino sheep. The wool from those great flocks that grazed the western slopes and plains ensured the financial stability necessary for the social growth of equality in a new nation.
It was fitting, that almost at the end of the wonderful ‘golden age of wool’, it should be ultimately commemorated with what was once, a splendid coin.”
This story was originally published in The Riverine Grazier on September 29, 2021.
