Steel reflects on farming legacy
• Don Steel in his flourishing garden, reflecting on 90 years of wonderful life.
By Daisy Baker
August 19, 2020
Much of Don Steel’s life has been spent farming and it quickly became second nature to him.
He was born in St Helens in 1930 and grew up as one of five children at Ansons Bay.
“My father had taken a 30-year lease on the boarding house, which was mainly for keen fishermen and that’s where they were living when I was born in 1930,” he said.
When he was nearly 18, his family left Ansons Bay and relocated to a dairy farm at Winnaleah.
“I was always interested in sheep up until that age and thought I would become a sheep farmer and I learned to shear with blades,” he recalled.
“I remember my uncle saying to me when I was learning to shear with blades, ‘don’t try and go fast, learn to do the job properly and speed will come itself’.
“Well I learned to do the job properly but the speed never turned up,” he laughed.
“I still did quite a bit of shearing for farmers in the Winnaleah district. I was a good shearer but not a gun shearer.”
He met the love of his life, Elvie the old-fashioned way, at a Saturday night dance.
The girl from Branxholm stole his heart and they got married in 1954 at the old Methodist church in Branxholm.
Mr Steel was still working on the family farm at this stage and in 1960 his parents set the couple up on a dairy farm, which was one of the properties they’d acquired after coming to Winnaleah.
The Steels milked around 130 cows and grew potatoes commercially which were sent to Sydney and later were supplied to markets in Hobart.
When it became harder to have the ground to keep on producing the potatoes they started growing canning beans for Dew Crisp, which Mr Steel said fitted in nicely with their rotation.
All in all Mr Steel spent more than 60 years on their dairy farm, during which time he saw some major changes in the industry.
“We started off producing cream and then along the way we changed over from cream to whole milk and that was a big change in the industry,” he said.
“I was on the board of directors of North-Eastern co-op at Legerwood through the factory amalgamation and that was another change.”
When Mr Steel was 58, he and his wife decided to hand over the reins, having accomplished what they’d set out to achieve and leased the farms out to their sons Craig and Gavin.
“I knocked off paying the bills and making the decisions but I never really retired, I don’t suppose - I worked for them for 30 or 35 years after I retired,” he said.
“I never regretted leasing the farms and later selling to our sons. I think we’re put on earth to hand over to the next generation and don’t leave it too late.
“That’s what we did, we had to build a second dairy so we could split the herd up and away they went on their own.”
During semi-retirement Mr and Mrs Steel enjoyed many trips to their shack at Policeman’s Point with their eight grandchildren in tow.
The land had been handed down through Mr Steel’s family, originally given to his grandfather as a returned serviceman’s land grant.
On one particularly memorable trip to the shack, Mr Steel decided to teach the grandkids how to live off the land and they had a weekend of catching rabbits, wallabies and fish.
“They did all that and then when it came to eating the game, there was only one who wanted to eat the rabbit,” he laughed.
“They were wonderful days with our little grandchildren,” Mrs Steel said.
“The children tell us now they are the best memories.”
Mr Steel was a keen sportsman, playing football and cricket in his youth and golf into his later years, although it was fishing that has always had his heart.
He said much of his fishing was done at Ansons Bay, and although he can’t do much of it these days, he remains tight-lipped about his favourite spots.
Mr and Mrs Steel relocated to Northbourne around five and a half years ago, where Mr Steel now spends much of his time pottering in the garden.
They enjoy regular visits from their children Craig, Gavin, Chris and Julie, and their many grandchildren, great grandchildren and great-great grandchildren.
Mr Steel celebrated his 90th birthday with a gathering of around 100 relatives on Saturday, followed by a more intimate party with his immediate family and Northbourne friends on Tuesday.