Story #42: 🐑 Wish ewe were here

Why so serious?

One of my favourite Tasmanian road signs simply says “Kempton Sheep Race.” It’s hand-lettered, black block letters on a white sign. No date, no URL, no QR code. I imagine it’s a bit like Brigadoon—the sign, I mean—in that it just shows up a few weeks before the races, and then disappears into some farmer’s shed for the next 11.5 months.

Google tells me that in 2022, the Kempton Sheep Race was held in late February. Which lines up with history, because we’d usually visit in January or early February, just missing the races.

I hope to attend the Kempton Sheep Race in 2023. I’ll report back when I do.

This is the thing about living in Tasmania. It’s known for its merino wool and lamb chops are cheap. Sheep are plenty—and so are the sheep jokes.

The story

Here’s exhibit A, spotted mere weeks upon our arrival outside our local butcher’s shop. I like to gauge the mood of our local butcher based on the sign outside. If it’s witty and punny, they’re in a good mood. If it’s more straightforward—for a week we had torrential rain and the sign simply said BONES—then I know to minimize the chit chat.

Forthwith, exhibit B. This is from The Mercury, which we looked at last week as an exemplar of puntastic headlines. I loved this story for its pure embrace of the sheep joke genre.

There’s the headline: US TRIP SHEAR DELIGHT is the rare case where an adjective is essential for the sentence, and where a tired phrase (sheer delight) gets spun into something new. And it doesn’t stop there! The first sentence jumps off the punny headline and adds to it: “A Tassie farmer is heading to the EWE-SA to talk all things ‘agritourism.’” The all-caps EWE-SA are a nice touch, just in case you’d missed the joke.

And not exactly an Australian example, but Exhibit C from New Zealand. I bought a merino neck tube because winter in Hobart is COLD (and I say this as a Canadian who has lived through -40 winters), and appreciated this little graphic from Icebreaker, sharing the myriad ways you can wear said neck tube. Because why not?

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Why it works

For ages, Tasmania has not been a cool place to live. It had a reputation as an uncouth, backwards place. The joke was that everyone from Tassie had two heads because of interbreeding.

In the past 5-10 years, it’s suddenly become cool. Partly because of MONA, the Museum of Old and New Art, and partly because people realized that small-town island living isn’t so bad. The quality of food and culture has gone up dramatically since I first visited in 2011, and the population—at least in Hobart—is more diverse than it used to be. Throw in COVID and the ability to work remotely, and there’s been a huge influx of people from mainland Australia making the move and bringing their big-city cool with them.

But there’s still this shadow of the old Tassie, and the farming and sheep jokes linger. And in typical Australian (and New Zealand) fashion, people are leaning into it. Why wait for someone to make a sheep joke at your expense? Better to beat them to it—and own it while you’re doing it.

So why not make punny sheep jokes? They’re objectively bad. They’re groaners. But make enough of them, and deliver them with confidence and they start to become actually funny.

What we can learn from it

There’s something refreshing about taking something that could be perceived as negative (being an island of inbreds that’s overrun with sheep) and not just acknowledging it, but owning it.

Listen, when you’re surrounded by sheep, people are going to make sheep jokes. And they might direct them at you. So why not go first, with the groaniest, punniest sheep joke you can muster?

Life is short. Laugh at yourself first: because it’s more fun, and because it takes the power away from those who would laugh at you. And well, because sheep jokes might actually be kind of funny.

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