Economist: AFTER 17 years, Tony and Michelle McManus are preparing for their last sheep-shearing season on Toorale, a sprawling outback property near Bourke in western New South Wales (NSW). By Christmas, Toorale’s 30,000 sheep, 1,200 cattle and irrigation machinery will all be sold, ending a way of life on the ranch begun by the region’s European pioneers in the 1870s. Last month Australia’s federal and NSW state governments bought Toorale for almost A$24m ($17m), not to run it as a farm but to take …