Rebekah’s ark

A love of animals and a commercial spirit combine for young Queenslander Rebekah Watt.

Story By Bruce McMahon

The Pied Piper of Pittsworth strides across the manicured ridge, past Feathers the peafowl chick of unknown gender, across to the pens behind the cream shed. Here wait half a dozen dogs. There are the border collies Mia and young Heidi, plus a pair of Japanese spitz, Meesha and Lilly. In the next pen sit a patient Kirra, another black and white collie, plus Sammy, the third of the spitz.
“Sit!” And the bright-eyed dogs sit on haunches and wait for their mistress to open the gates, itching to run free in blurs of tumbling black and whites across Shiloh Ridge. “They have to be obedient,” Rebekah Watt says. “They must sit before I’ll open the gate.”
A pack of dogs trailing, she walks on to her pair of adult peacocks. Behind here sits a coop of chooks, pen of ducks and a gaggle of geese. These are the assets of Rebekah Leah Watt,
21 years of age. Her business cards announce: ‘Backyard Breeder of Border Collies, Chickens, Ducks and Geese’.