The Deshons
Article by Alice Armitage Photography by Stephanie Moore
Nick Deshon is the definition of a larrikin, but he’s also tough as nails, sharp as a whip and an incredibly savvy businessman. King of the goats, before goats were cool. With his wife Cath, Nick is fostering a new era of dare-devil Deshons.
“The day I turned up at the Deshon’s there might have been a little miscommunication. The gate was locked, the boys were nowhere to be seen and Steph [ our marvelous photographer and Walgett local ] had taken a shortcut in the other direction. But it wasn’t long before Nick came screaming down the road in a dusty old paddock basher, ready for his close up. Nick Deshon has been a fixture in my life since my childhood. As an old school friend of my parents, tales of Nick’s mischievous but also very entrepreneurial nature were often re-lived and admired. While many would struggle to consider a goat trader from Lightning Ridge to be at the forefront of progressive thinking I knew I wanted to share a little about Nick’s story, the legacy he’s building for his three boys; Tom, Harry and Jack and the rest of the Deshon clan. Nick is now the last of five brothers living on the family place between Lightning Ridge and Walgett in the far North West of NSW but with the help of his brother Simon, their merch brand ‘Deshon Goat Depot’ continues to be a way for the rest of the Deshon family to stay connected to their roots, while reminding the rest of us how cool life can be out in the county. “
You came straight home after school? I came home and just sort of poked around, looking for a bit of a gap year and then the gap year turned into a big gap year. I’m still here!
You’re known for your goat empire, but has it always been about the goats out here? When I was young we mainly ran sheep and a few cows. There has always been goats around but we just caught them wild when the opportunity arose. Nothing like the numbers we run now.
The market for goats has really taken off in Australia over the last couple of years and you seem to have seen that coming. I remember as kids you’d sell a goat for four dollars, most people would treat them as a pest. Now we farm them and put them behind a fence. Now you can get ten dollars a kilo for your goats. As the international demand for goat meat continues to grow it seems to be a no-brainer to back the industry.
How many goats do you have on the farm here now? Between five and six thousand nannies. We also trade up to eight thousand goats a year.
Do you think over this last drought goats have kept a lot of people out west afloat? For sure. Bourke is the capital of the goat country and a lot of people have always run a few goats out the back. Then they realised how lucrative it could be for their business. It kept them going when times were tough! Parents are sending their kids off to boarding school with the money they’re making off a few stray goats. They’re so low maintenance, just leave them alone and let them breed! Even if you’re not farming them, all you need is an old bike and a good dog and you can muster up enough feral goats out here to bring in some decent coin.
Let’s talk about climate change. We’re experiencing undeniably severe peaks and troughs in weather patterns. Have you seen a change over your lifetime out here? I have. The seasons will come and go but farming is about making the most of what’s in front of you. When you get that bit of a season break, you’ve just got to be ready to roll with it. In a drought here we are forever feeding sheep, we sold our cattle. The goats, I just opened gates and gave them plenty of room and they survived. Now we’re having a few great seasons and you’ve really got to keep your breeding numbers up. You ride it out through the drought, and when it’s good you store grain and hay and prepare for the next dry spell.
That’s the key, people are going to have to be way more adaptable and just be so aggressive at changing the way that they farm depending on the season. Exactly, these days all the weather predictions are pretty accurate. You know it’s going to get dry so you start to sell off surplus stock, hold your core and when you have your good seasons put a bit of feed away. We’re all learning faster, everyone gets a bit wiser each time they go through a dry patch, a tough time and as the climate keeps changing we’ll keep learning, adapting.
You’ve got two of your three boys back at home now. Is it the dream to have all the boys home?
Like everyone, we’ve got a huge shortage of workers here. The best way you can get them is to breed them! I get my nieces and nephews out here as well from time to time and it’s really handy.
All of your boys are working off farm as well. Do you think it takes the pressure off of the core farming operation when you know that the boys have got something to fall back on? Does it make it more realistic for all of the boys to come home? Jack is working as a shearer as well as working on the farm, Harry is learning to fly and Tom’s working as a Jackaroo in Western Australia at the moment but he’s also driving trucks. Anyone with any kind of trade will always be able to find work in the bush and lean on that when things get a bit tough on the farm. It’s a bit of a drought proofer.
Do you think in this region there is a bit of a generational shift happening at the moment? In Moree I think there are definitely a lot of young people all coming home. It’s a real resurgence in the community. For sure Alice, and that’s happening in Walgett and a lot of country towns out here. They’ve sort of been away and done a bit and now they’re starting to come back and realise it’s not a bad place to be so yeah, it is good.
How did the goat depot merch come about? My brother Sig is a graphic artist and it all started out as a bit of fun. Everyone seemed to like it so we just kept making it!
I think your merch has done a great job of reminding us how cool life in the country can be. Not everyones cut out for the bush, but everyone should give it a go and it would be great if we were inspiring someone to have a crack at being out in the bush. You don’t have to be from the bush to work in the bush. You can be from the city, there’s no harm in trying and if it doesn’t work out there’s always work in the city, but it will be an eye opener for sure. That’s right through the rural industry, from up North to the West to everywhere in between. Once people get out here they often realise that it is a fairly good social life, good work lifestyle. You can really make some good friendships and you can earn a dollar at it. You’ll learn something new, for sure it’s the way to do it.
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