Finding Hamish

Whilst at my family’s gathering during the Christmas break, my sister Erica and her husband Stephen, who had recently come back from a site seeing trip through England, Scotland and Wales, meant the main topic of conversation was of course their trip along with the viewing of the photos taken.

Steve is an avid photographer, he’s always enticed to photograph all that he finds interesting, so as you may imagine, when he is travelling his back pack is loaded up with the essentials. These are two laptops and two cameras, one of which is small and handy, and one of which is the good camera, but a rather heavy camera, but it can take still pictures and can film. All this gear has to have spare batteries for each device, as well as the different chargers and cables, leaving little room for anything else.

One of the photos I was shown that piqued my interest, was of a highland cattle bull named Hamish.

“We’d come across Hamish quite by accident. The signage in Scotland is very poor, I’m sure they expect everyone to know where they are going, the paddock he was in was just off the main road heading to Fort William,” Steve explained.

“Our encounter with Hamish was a serendipitous one; we were to stay at Callander for a night, we didn’t see the hotel and drove past Callander, the roads being so narrow, the Woollen Mill, around five kilometers along the road, was the only place where we could do a U-turn enabling us to go back. So, finding Hamish whilst parked on the lay-by was a discovery.

“Once we had stopped, he came towards us, I suppose he was expecting to be fed, he let us get as close as we wanted all the while seeming happy for us to be there.

“We photographed Hamish in early October, thinking our encounter was something special, only later we discovered Hamish was quite famous.

“Then, a few weeks after taking the photo we heard Hamish had suddenly died.”

Below are notes taken from an article which was published in the ‘Daily Record’, a Scottish Newspaper, which was issued on 21st November, 2024.

‘Hamish the Highland Bull, the oldest of his kind in Scotland and the second oldest in the world, died peacefully on Tuesday 19th November 2024 at the age of almost twenty-three. A good age for highland cattle is around fourteen years.

Hamish, whose full name is ‘Hamish McKay Denovan’, had resided at the Woollen Mill for almost 20 years, on a property about five miles north of Callander at Kilmahog, in Scotland.

The gentle giant first came into the spotlight in 1996 when he joined Stirling Smith to help promote a centenary art exhibition of the work of Cambuskenneth animal artist Joseph Denovan Adam (1841-1896).

The BSE, better known as Mad Cow Disease, crisis hit the farming industry when the exhibition opened and Hamish faced the prospect of slaughter, along with every other cow aged three years and over.

However, a ‘Save Hamish’ campaign succeeded, and a home was found for him at the Wollen Mill, a favourite stopping off point for visitors to the Trossachs. There, he became a popular draw in more ways than one.

As well as posing with thousands of visitors for photographs, he was also the muse for many artists, with one even dubbing him the ‘Kate Moss of the Highland cow world, who always looks good even on a bad hair day’.

Hamish’s work as a model for photographs taken by visitors will now be carried on by the Trossachs Woollen Mills’ other Highland cattle, Honey and Hamish Dubh, a black Highland Bull. Honey and Hamish Dubh have spent the past couple of years learning how to pose for pictures from the great master Hamish, they have also picked up a lot of his traits and attitude.’

Steve managed to take hundreds of photographs during their trip, taking Erica to unexpected places, only to spend time having to wait for the right light, or one time having to wait for hours for the Jacobite Train, the Hogwarts train used in the Harry Potter films, to appear billowing smoke, hissing steam and chugging through and in to the picturesque Scottish backdrop of hills and gullies along the curved viaduct with its many supporting arches.

The sore knees Steve got from lugging all the heavy gear around is quickly forgotten when telling the stories behind the photographs.