Bolt family, Claypans stud, Corrigin, to miss more Wagin Wooloramas

The first Monday in February marked one year since fire decimated theirs and other properties in the Corrigin area destroying all their show sheep and infrastructure and shifting their priorities for years into the future.

Mr Bolt said there would be no show this year and he didn't know when he will prepare sheep again.

"We have been showing at Woolorama every year for nearly 40 years and this will be the first one we have missed," Mr Bolt said.

"We have always had a show team and even if it was a small one it was at least half a dozen animals.

Claypans started showing in 1986 and during its career won the rare honour of supreme grand champion in 2015.

On Australia Day, Mr Bolt was Corrigin's Citizen of the Year, an honour bestowed for his early action during the fire and his advocacy during the past 12 months pushing for a government investigation to bring changes to ensure a fire, that should never have happened, never does.

He is among a group effected by the blaze who have launched a class action against those responsible.

Reflecting on the day, Mr Bolt said with the fire's size and intensity it was fortunate everyone survived and stock losses were minimal.

He considers himself lucky to have saved all his breeding ewes, saying they had been mustered into small paddocks by the sheds ready for pregnancy scanning the next day.

The quick action to yard them ensured they survived.

The fire swept through his two adjoining properties destroying the main homestead, two four-stand shearing sheds, machinery sheds, machinery, yards and fencing.

Immediately after the fire he was inundated with support and help from people volunteering to transport or agist stock and help with shearing, all donating their time freely.

Their generosity has been ongoing through the past 12 months during which time the rebuilding progress has been slow.

Mr Bolt said the complexity of their business with an emphasis on livestock as a big part of it, has made it especially difficult every time he wants to do something stock related.

"Losing everything has created so many challenges and I have to thank Uncle Vernon (Bolt) who has been so good in allowing us to use his facilities," Mr Bolt said.

Like others, his rebuilding is with deliberate slowness with time to reflect on what happened and envisage what the future in farming will look like.

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To date they have concentrated on refencing and are taking a considered approach to ensure how they design everything which will take them towards a more efficient future.

It has been disruptive and ongoing and he feels it will be a five-year project to get back to some sort of normality.

He is considering the options in building a new shearing shed and how it can encompass the changes he foresees in wool harvesting in the future and how he can build a shed that will give him the best return on his investment.

Through his involvement with the Stud Merino Breeders Association of WA, Mr Bolt acknowledges the issues of getting people to go to rural areas and complete the physical work that is every farmer's number one challenge.

From a shearing perspective, he said it was concerning there were problems with delays, pricing and the quality of job.

"Merinos have always been part of our business and we need to look at how we adapt to the shortage of shearers in the medium and long-term," he said.

"I think the Merino still has a future as we all know about the profitability of a high-fertility, efficient wool-cutting sheep and knowing how the financial benefits flow back through the industry and into rural communities is a key part of why live export is such an important part of WA's sheep industry."

Mr Bolt will be at Woolorama 2023, maybe not as a ring competitor but certainly as a community fighter and a Merino promoter.