Norina Park celebrates 60th clip sold through Elders at Western Wool Centre

Mr Beecroft has made a go of raising Poll Merino sheep and producing bright white, soft handling wool for 60 years, winning five Elders' Supreme Clip of the Sale awards along the way.

He sold his 60th and final 74-bale wool clip through Elders Wool at Western Wool Centre (WWC) auctions this month.

As usual for the past 55 years - apart from during the pandemic when visitors to the WWC were not welcome - Mr Beecroft and wife Georgie were there to inspect their wool samples on the show floor and watch as veteran auctioneer Terry Winfield sold their clip.

"It's a privilege to be selling your last clip, I've sold plenty of them over the years," Mr Winfield told the Beecrofts before the auction.

Their broker and Elders' wool sales manager north, Tim Burgess, made a surprise presentation on the show floor of a framed certificate commemorating and thanking the Beecrofts for 60 consecutive wool clips sold through Elders.

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"This is on behalf of past and present Elders staff," Mr Burgess said as he made the presentation.

The Beecrofts can't remember the name of their first Elders broker, but Don Wood, whose advice had a big influence on where Mr Beecroft headed with his wool and its presentation, was their second.

He was followed by Ken Walker, who went on to be Elders wool manager in a 40-year career with the company, a wool judge at the Perth Royal Show and Royal Agricultural Society of WA councillor in charge of the royal show wool competition.

Tony Alosi was their next broker, until he retired in 2020 after a colourful 50-year, career in the wool industry and Mr Burgess has been their broker since then.

Mr Beecroft said he started wool classing at age 14 and always classed his own clips - learning from critical comments of his brokers during annual visits to the show floor to improve his classing and wool presentation.

His grandfather started the family sheep farm at Brookton in 1902 and his father joined him in 1944.

"I went out and worked for seven years after I left school and I came home when I was about 20 and dad took me into a partnership," he said.

"A little bit later my (younger) brother Rodney joined the partnership and we bought the farm off dad.

"Rodney and I farmed together for 30 years until we split the partnership in 1997."

In 1967, a year before he married Georgie, Mr Beecroft took up 540 hectares at West Brookton under the conditional purchase program and he and Rodney cleared it.

"It was all bush, no water, no power, no telephone," he said.

"We got a dozer in to knock it (bush) down and the brother and I cleared the first block by hand, it was a lot of hard work."

He and Georgie built a house and moved onto the new property and Rodney continued farming on the family farm at Brookton.

Early on Mr Beecroft bought some ewes that formed the basis of the flock he built up.

"When I first started classing, the mob I classed for had some very good sheep and when we were going to go farming for ourselves I asked if I could buy some ewes from them," he said.

"I got 130 ewes, from old crackers to two-tooths, they were East Bungaree bloodline and that's what got us started.

"I liked the look of them and they were good doers."

Mr Beecroft said he bought Merino rams from AD Barrett-Lennard & Co, Belhus stud, Beverley, for 50-odd years but never bought any more sheep.

"We just bred them and culled very hard for many years until we got what we wanted," he said.

"When he was alive we had Dacre (Barrett-Lennard) come in and class our sheep and then his son Gregory did it, but I'd have had a couple of goes beforehand.

"Crutching pre-shearing I'd get rid of anything I didn't like - no second best.

"If they haven't got good feet they can't walk for their tucker and if they haven't got a good mouth they can't eat enough, wool was the last thing we looked at.

"Originally the micron was a lot stronger, because the East Bungaree is a South Australian sheep and we had them up to 24 micron, but then you couldn't sell that sort of wool.

"The stud had to adjust and we just went along with the stud - I had my own ideas of what I wanted and I never changed my mind.

"The brother and I (also) did our own shearing for a time so we didn't want too much wrinkle on them.

"Mr Beecroft's last clip, mostly from a spring shearing last September and from lamb wethers shorn in March before they were sold for export, averaged 18 microns, 95-100 millimetres staple length, low vegetable matter (VM) and 71 per cent yield.

A seven-bale top line, which had measurements of 17.6 micron, 94mm, 0.5pc VM and 69.9pc yield as well as four other fleece lines, were bought by Melliwa Pty Ltd which supplies woollen mills in China.

The top line sold for 1331 cents per kilogram greasy and the 'sweep-the-floor' price for the whole clip was 1043c/kg greasy, both very good prices in the day's soft wool market.

Mr Beecroft said he and his brother gave up shearing their own sheep when the combined farm flock numbers became too great.

"Rodney and I had nearly 200 bales when we put our clips together," he said.

"I ended up with 3000 sheep - a bit over 3400 at times - and between us we got up to about 6000 and that was too many for us to shear so we got shearers in.

"We always hired individual shearers, we never had a team in.

"I've had some very good shearers and shed hands too - the women are the best by miles, they talk but they keep working while they're talking."

The Beecrofts will continue living at Norina Park, running it will be handed over to daughter and son-in-law, Christine and Paul Schilling.

They have their own flock and have taken 900 mature ewes from Mr Beecroft so he will be able to watch their progress.

Ewe lambs were sold to Rodney and the older sheep were culled.

When he is not checking on the sheep and doing odd jobs around the farm, Mr Beecroft intends to spend some time tinkering with his collection of old motorbikes.

"I've got six, including a 1925 Harley Davison, the rest are English bikes which was what I had when I was a young bloke," he said.

"I've got my original bike which I bought when I was 16, it's a Triumph 350 twin which I restored 30-odd years ago.

"I've also got a 650 (Triumph) Thunderbird with a sidecar on it - it was a superbike in the 1950s but I couldn't afford the 350 quid to buy one in those days."