A TRIP to Western Australia for three days to sell wool proved a timely interlude for Elders auctioneer Matt Tattersall recently.
Mr Tattersall flew out of Melbourne just as the latest community COVID-19 cases were coming to light and compulsory wearing of face masks was being reintroduced there.
Normally Elders' auctioneer and technical co-ordinator at the National Wool Selling Centre in Brooklyn, Melbourne, for much of the past 12 months Mr Tattersall and auctioneering colleague Samantha Wan have been conducting live auctions there wearing face masks.
The buyers have also been wearing masks, making it more difficult for the auctioneers to pick who is calling a bid at the open-cry auctions and to understand what prices they are calling, when they cannot see buyers' lips moving.
"Before COVID we had some country auctioneers who came in to help us with the auctions, but COVID stopped that, so it has just been Sam and I doing all of the auction catalogues for about the last year," said Mr Tattersall at the Western Wool Centre (WWC).
"At the national centre there's two sale rooms operating, anywhere from 100 to 300 lots to sell in each catalogue, 18 or 19 buyers in each room and all wearing masks - it's definitely been an experience.
"But it's been good in that I've personally gained a lot of (auctioneering) experience from it," he said.
Mr Tattersall said he enjoyed the relaxed atmosphere at the WWC with one sale room and 43 oddment lots and 151 fleece lots to sell, compared to a total of 952 Elders lots auctioned in Melbourne last week.
"No masks was the best part," he said, after having no trouble picking up who was calling, despite it being his first time in the WWC's sale room and being unfamiliar with the buyers and where they sit in the room.
Raised on a farm in Tasmania, Mr Tattersall worked as a wool classer for 11 years and has been a master classer for the past two years.
He joined Elders in 2018 and on a trip to WA as a wool handling judge for a Sports Shear Australia Association competition that year, called in to introduce himself to Elders wool staff at the WWC.
Mr Tattersall has also auctioned wool for Elders on occasion at the Sydney wool selling centre.
The Elders WA wool team has been down an auctioneer while Alice Wilsdon is on maternity leave.