Early Days in North Queensland

by Edward Palmer

There were never lacking men ready for the enterprise and hardship of pioneering when there was such a field of profitable work open before them, work that was for those trained in bush experience, hardy and acclimatised as they were. The life, in spite of hardships, was not without attraction and satisfaction to many who took part in it. There was a kind of fascination to many bushmen in the idea of being the first to enter upon new and unknown scenes; to note the surprise of native game beholding for the first time the presence of the stranger, and to observe the terrified astonishment of the aborigines when first they saw the white intruders; all this tended to add to the romance and interest of helping to open a new district. But outside pioneer life in early days had a reverse side; there was little or nothing of comfort or relaxation; there was always hardship and exposure; there was no Sunday for rest, no holiday, no Eight Hour Day, nothing but constant movement and watching. The duties were shared by all alike; each had to take a turn at anything and everything, cooking one time, driving a team another, shepherding sheep occasionally, herding cattle sometimes, cutting timber, making bough-yards for sheep, lambing down a flock of ewes, shifting hurdles, and poisoning dingoes, killing and salting beef, ear-marking, washing and shearing sheep, looking for stragglers, yoking bullocks, building huts, tracking and hunting stock, all little duties that made up the routine life of the outside grazier. They all took their turn, and generally there was one dish and one table. Where the ways and customs consequent on the life brought all on a partial level, the man who could turn his hand to anything from shoeing a horse to weighing out a dose of quinine or driving a bullock team, was the most valuable.

THE STOCKMAN, OR STOCKRIDER.

He was native to the soil and bred, Merely a cowboy he; A nomad’s life was what he led. And all he wished to be.

He is a class of his own, and is a man of some importance in the daily life of a station. The term may mean to many any man who can climb into a saddle; but a good stockman is not so easily picked up, nor is he made out of any material to hand. A good and experienced stockman, one who knows his work thoroughly, is active, and can ride well, can command wages all the year round. His work is not by any means easy; there are long hours, in fact all hours, hard fare, and often no lodging but the bare ground; he must endure hunger and thirst, cold, heat, and wet, and often has to take a watch at night. When at work in the yard branding and drafting, he has either to endure tremendous dust, or else he is covered with mud. But the trained stockrider makes light of all these discomforts, in fact he looks on them as all in the bill of fare, and belonging to the day’s work. He is hardy, wiry, as well as possessed of a good deal of endurance and pluck, and like all men who ride much, is nearly always lean in condition. He is generally the owner of a couple of horses and an outfit of saddle, swag, stock whip, and spurs, and takes an interest in all racing and sporting matters. As a rule, he is not a saving man, although some may lay up enough money to start a small store. The native youth makes the best all-round stockman; many follow horse-breaking at times, or take a turn at droving. To draft on horseback in the cattle yard, or in the yard on foot, to castrate and brand horses and calves, to ride a young horse, to make a leg or head rope out of green hide, or a pair of hobbles, to counterline a saddle, to cook a damper, all comes within the province of the stockman. Towns and townspeople are not much in his way, any more than the customs of the city are congenial to his free-and-easy style of associations. Moleskin trousers, Crimean shirt, cossack boots, and felt hat, are his rig out. The modern type is less pronounced than he of the ancient school, the flash, hard-riding, tearing, loud-swearing, rowdy stockman of olden days, with a stockwhip sixteen feet long, sporting breeches and leggings, and a loud red shirt. Stockmen have very little to do with unions, but are seldom without employment on stations or on the road.

THE COOK.

Bush cooks are of every shade of colour, complexion, and social standing, from the foreign count who has been expatriated for political leanings, to the squalid shuffling Chinee, or the wily, treacherous Cingalee. Hut keeper was the term employed in the olden days when two shepherds had each a flock of sheep folded for the night inside a yard made of movable hurdles, and a hut keeper was joined to them to do a bit of cooking, as well as to shift one set of hurdles each day. He was supposed also to watch at night against native dogs, strychnine not being so much in use then to reduce the numbers of these pests. They were men of dirty, lazy habits; their cooking was fearful, consisting simply of boiling a bit of beef or mutton, making a damper, and rinsing out a tin pannikin. Greasy-looking, growling, and drunken they were, with scarcely energy enough to fetch a little wood or water; to wash their clothes was an unheard-of thing. Those who cook for drovers on the road have to be more alert; a good man on the road is a great consideration, and it is no sinecure to cater for a party while travelling with stock. The cook is exempt from watching, as he has to be up during the night to get breakfast ready by daylight for the men to start on with their cattle. Some good cooks will provide hot suppers for the men in all weathers. The shearers’ cook is quite another variety. He is often a boss man employs one or two others under him, and gets top wages, but he has to be up to the mark, for our shearer is a fine specimen of an inflated growler, and will have nothing but of the best, and up to time, tea and cake between meals, duff and all the luxuries for dinner; in any case he comes in for a full share of the shearer’s arrogance and abuse. Station cooks comprise all sorts, good, bad, and indifferent, clean and unclean; but one who can make real good bread is a rarity, and all are self-taught. They frequently get good wages, but soon become lazy and dirty, and often a Chinaman has to be put on to do the kitchen cooking. About the towns it is notorious that European cooks cannot be relied on for any time on account of their drinking habits, and once again the Chinaman has to be resorted to.

THE SHEARER.

This class of labourer has been very much in evidence of late years in Queensland on account of the numerous strikes that have taken place, brought about by them or their leaders, although it is the best paid of all unskilled work in the colony. The Shearers’ Union attempted to rule all labour and labour interests throughout the whole colony, and succeeded for a long time in keeping things in a very disorganised state. There is nothing in shearing that any man could not master in a few days, although the work may be laborious when long continued. The money earned is out of all proportion to what other classes of labour receive, nevertheless the shearer is the most discontented and turbulent of all classes, and very decidedly aggressive. He can earn in a few months enough to keep him for the rest of the year without work, he is gregarious in his habits, and travels about in mounted groups, generally armed. He may be said to be a flash man, given to gambling, dicing, and other sports, and a good deal of his money is spent at roadside shanties. When at work, however, he is sober and industrious, as most of them are desirous of making a good tally at the end of the shearing, and the rules of the shed forbid any latitude for loafing or mischief. Shearing by machine instead of by hand will tend to modify the aspects of the work, and allow more men to learn the art. Shearers travel from shed to shed during the season, and sometimes earn from four to six pounds a week. They live on the best that can be got. Instances are common of men shearing over two hundred sheep per day for days running. Amongst the shearers will be found many respectable men, who have homes or selections of their own on which their families reside, and who travel round a few large sheds to earn enough money to carry on with and support their homes.

THE BULLOCK DRIVER.

The man of strong body, and of stronger language, the old “bull-puncher,” is going out. He was an institution of early days when the pole-dray was in vogue, a fearful kind of vehicle that tipped up going out of a steep creek with a load on, and going down would bear on the polers fit to break their necks. The four-wheeled waggon has for a long time superseded the old bullock-killing dray, but the driver remains much the same. Instead of driving ten bullocks in a pole-dray, he yokes up eighteen or twenty to a waggon and draws instead of three and a half tons, about seven or eight tons.