Racing around merino sheep on his quad bike, working two dogs and penning up the mob, Hallam looks much like he did as a 16 year-old who couldn’t get out of school fast enough to join his father on the land.

Later he vowed he would never linger on the farm, only to find today at age 72, he is brimming with more energy than ever for growing fine wool.

“I used to say years ago, I’m not working as long as Dad did.

He worked until he was 86.

I’d say I’m getting out of here before I get that old.

But I haven’t, and I’m loving it,’’ Mr Hallam said.

He married Trish in 1966 and together they battled through droughts, recovered in bumper seasons and together faced everything in between.

Fifteen years ago, at a time in life most people consider slowing down, they switched to a more scientific breeding program for their fine wool.

They farm today with the passion of newcomers.

They have made Springfield, their 800- hectare farm more profitable after adopting veterinarian and former CSIRO scientist Dr Jim Watts’ Soft Rolling Skins breeding system.

They left their smallerframed sheep with crinkly fleeces and began producing a dual purpose merino, which is longer, plainer bodied and suitable for meat production as well as wool.

It has a higher lambing rate and does not need mulesing, a controversial practice of cutting strips of skins from sheep to avoid fly strike.

The sheep produce more wool and are shorn three times every two years.

In the early days with his father Oswald, Hallam was wrapped up in the sheep industry.

“I just followed Dad, until I got to a stage I knew we were going nowhere,” he said.

“I started to break out. I went shearing for a while, I learned more by getting away from our own place and having a look at someone else’s place.

That was the start of the best education I had with sheep.

’I changed bloodlines, Dad used to source rams from local studs, all of them daughter studs of Merryville Stud.

I wasn’t terribly impressed with them.

As soon as I was on my own we started to change our bloodlines, then we started seeing things happening, didn’t we,’’ he says, looking at his wife who nods in agreement.

Hallam will shear when the need arises, and has organised his farm to avoid wearing out his body.

‘’I can drench sheep, the only thing I have given up on is the crutching of the sheep and the shearing,” he said.

“Everything else I can handle. I still do some [shearing], we get caught sometimes, blokes want a mob [finished] before dark, or before rain, I can do a few, if there is a spare stand.’’

Previously the farm’s most demanding tasks, shearing and lambing are more manageable.

Under the SRS breeding program the Hallams shear every eight months, and the mobs are smaller, so there is rarely more than a week’s shearing at any one time.

Under the old regime the farmers had to check the ewes and lambs morning and afternoon, to keep up their survival rate.

Under their new regime the sheep and pastures are in better condition.

“I can’t stop having a look around the sheep from time to time, but we don’t spend the time there we used to,’’ Hallam says.

‘’The only really stressful times come if you run into a real rough patch of weather at lambing, or during shearing, or after shearing, they are the real worrying times.’’

He employs two people to catch lambs which he vaccinates, castrates and docks their tails.

He jokes the most demanding work these days is splitting wood, until his wife says even that is handled with a mechanical splitter.

Dipping sheep used to be back-breaking, when farmers wrestled their sheep into a plunge dip. 

These days it is done with a machine and conveyor used for turning sheep upside down clipping hooves to treat footrot.

The disease has long gone but the machine has hit its straps.

“I was watching television and saw one rigged up to take sheep into the dip,’’ the farmer says.

‘’I thought, that’s not a bad idea, so I rigged mine up to do the same.

We still have to feed the sheep into the conveyor, but the conveyor does the hard work, it brings the sheep along and drops them into the dip.

Physically that part of the job is not hard.’’

Hallam says sorting through mobs of sheep, culling ones he doesn’t like and keeping the ones he does is the best part of his role.

“This breeding system, I am just wrapped in it. We just love it,’’ he says.

Trish Hallam adds: “It keeps your mind active.

All the research which is going into it, it keeps you active.’’

Handling sheep can leave him with stiffness, but as a regular golfer he soon bounces back.

He enjoys getting together with other players for a drink after the game on Thursdays.