Leonard Sheahan focused on helping the community

LEONARD Francis Sheahan is the seventh of seven children. The children were all born at the Wycheproof hospital as his parents engaged in broad acre farming near the town, focused on wheat and sheep. It was a hard way to make a living as it’s a dry area.

Leonard commented that it was particularly difficult for his father as he had lived “through the Great Depression, followed by drought, followed by war, followed by another drought, followed by good years, and the tide turned and things went good from there.

“They had huge struggles. I can remember that in the early 40s, I was born in 1939, dad and his brother-in-law, that’s Mum’s brother, taking the sheep down south to Daylesford area on the long paddock,” he said.

The ‘long paddock’ is the wide roads that have very little traffic where farmers graze their sheep.

Meanwhile, his mother was at home looking after seven kids. Leonard regrets never asking her how she coped.

The family are Irish Catholic, and church was one of three things that were never missed. The other two were the Rosary prayer every day and sport on Saturdays. “No matter what happened, the family was bundled into the car and we went up for sports somewhere,” Leonard said.

His favourite sport was cricket, but “I liked them all, I suppose. I was reasonable but not top class.”

He also performed well in his schooling. He attended the Dumosa State School, which was a one teacher state school in the middle of a wheat paddock. He explained, “An unfortunate teacher came from Melbourne. perhaps 18 or 19 years old with one year of training to teach 16 to 20 children from grades one to eight.”

He then attended a boarding school in Ballarat, Saint Patrick’s College, the same school that all of his brothers attended. His sisters went to Sacred Heart, also in Ballarat. They usually..