The power of friendship evident leading into Hereford National show and sale
No matter the breed, no matter the location, the cattle showing community comes together with camaraderie and support in times of need.
What was supposed to be their normal annual trip to the Hereford National show and sale last week, soon took an unexpected turn for the Reid family.
The young Roslyn-based family was getting ready to head down to Wodonga, however, an accident last Monday resulted in the JTR Cattle Company stud co-principal, Jemma, being airlifted to Canberra hospital.
With a team of five bulls entered for the show and sale, a team of close friends and family pulled together to still make the plan go ahead, resulting in all five bulls being sold at auction.
"Just the support from people has been unbelievable," Mrs Reid said.
"We had Tim's dad drive the bulls over to the Crokers and they organised a semi for all 12 bulls to go down together."
Not having planned on attending the sale at all, Hayden Green, Roslyn, came down for three days to help the team, while Lee and Claire White left the bar they run in Bathurst to also stay for a few days.
Brittany Jones and Jono Nicholls jumped in to help unload bulls and maintain the team.
After deciding to still attend the sale, Mrs Reid said her husband rang her in disbelief about how much support the family had received throughout the duration of the show.
"Tim said the support we've had is amazing," she said.
"He's like 'we've had so many people come past the beds and look at the bulls'."
Knowing what the season in the southern areas of the country had been, the couple, like many, were unsure of how the sale would go.
"Lying here in this hospital bed and watching the livestream of the sale and just seeing like every single one of our bulls sell was amazing," she said.
"It makes us proud that we're putting a good product forward.
"We didn't care for big prices or anything, we just wanted to sell our bulls."
There was no questions asked from the team that stepped in to help the family.
"That's the great thing in the shed, if you get a phone call from anyone that needs you, it's never can I do it? How can we do this?" Mr Green said.
"That passion and that interest of showing cattle is what forms a special kind of friendship that you have.
"You pick up the phone to see how each other are going and it turns into cow speak pretty quickly.
"You spend huge amounts of time with them doing the things we love for in excess of 25 years, so we are family."
Mrs White says, although in the show ring it may be all business, outside of it, these people are family.
"These are the people that were in our bridal party, these are the people that we have our fun Christmas' with, we go away with and now our kids are all growing up together," she said.
