On the Wallaby Through Victoria

by Elinor Mordaunt

What has not been so clearly put before the people is the question as to whether the small farmers—who are to occupy the improved holdings on the alienated land, 200 acres or so—and who will be straining every nerve to meet the half-yearly payments, all the immigrants and townspeople will, in the future, be as beneficial to the working-man—whom the tax is supposed to benefit, who in any case has the pleasure of seeing others squirm beneath its weight—as the large landowners have been in the past. After all, these landowners have not stood alone. They have employed an enormous number of men, in an enormous number of ways, from the shearers who clip their sheep to the stevedores who ship their wool, the people who transfer it by railway or bullock waggon, the people who buy it—English, French, and Flemish wool-buyers, who live in Melbourne for two or three months each year, and spend money there; the tradespeople, servants, and artisans.

A big station is like a camp of soldiers; the store-room alone would amaze any English housekeeper, resembling, as it does, a shop, stocked with all the necessities of life in immense quantities. There have been an enormous number of people employed in Australia in growing, making, and packing most of these supplies; and the revenue has been swelled by the importation of the rest. In the shearing season the place is like a hive, and the whole country is alive with men flocking from one station to another, and carts and waggons with supplies—relatively alive, of course, for in these vast distances an army would have as little effect as a swarm of ants. Still, the big stations are the arteries of the back blocks, keeping vital tracts of country which, except for them and except for the sheep which find a living there, would lie uncared for and untouched.

The small cockies do most of their shearing themselves, all the family being called upon to help: the girls in carrying away the fleeces, and even clipping the belly-wool for their brothers; while sundry neighbours will drop in to give a hand, the wool-shed usually consisting of an extempore tent or canopy of hessian.

In other places the cockies shear in a neighbouring squatter’s wool-shed, after his flocks are finished with, keeping on some of the regular shearers if the wool-clip seems large enough to warrant it; while from many small selections all the men go off at shearing-time to make a bit of extra money on the neighbouring stations. It is upon co-operation such as this, both in the matter of wool-sheds, shearers, and stud rams, that—if all the large estates are to be cut up—the small selectors will have to depend in the future; unless the sheep is completely “taboo,” though the enormous tracts of country which are necessary to support the flocks will prevent this pastoral co-operation ever being so successful as in the matter of central butter, cheese, and bacon factories.

Hand-shears have been so completely replaced with machinery nowadays that only a minority of the younger men can clip by hand at all, and are often completely at a loss in the smaller flocks, where there are no machines in use.

A big shearing-shed is a tremendously inspiring sight, as every place is—even a match factory—where work is being done quickly and well. But, apart from this, there are the various marked characteristics of the men, the play of muscle in the sunburnt arms and necks, and the colour of the weather-worn clothes, the shimmer of heat and dust, and the silky gleam of the wool as it falls upon the boards, swathe upon swathe of it, exquisitely creamy-tinted and fine, the product of intensest care and cultivation, the result of breeding being shown in the fact that fifty years ago a fleece from a full-grown sheep averaged 3 to 4 pounds, whereas now it averages 8 or 9, from some flocks even 15, pounds.

The shearers live—that is, sleep and eat—in what is known as “the hut,” a long narrow structure with bunks at either side, in two tiers, each bunk just long enough to hold a man. The table, which runs pretty well the whole length of the hut, is made of sheet-iron tacked on to a rough frame, with benches at either side, and there is little else, save the atmosphere, which is thick and portentous, an intermingling of tobacco, wool, beer, spirits, clothes, boots, blankets, and men.

The better sort of shearers declare that the noise and the stench, the constant fidgeting and stirring all night, the snoring, coughing, spitting, and swearing, make it impossible for anyone to get a decent night’s sleep in these huts, and many pitch a tent for themselves and a pal, or build a mia-mia of boughs as far from the rest of their companions as possible.

The shearers have one chronic grievance, and that is the food and the cook. They have another constantly recurring grievance, and that is wet sheep, over which they are in a perpetual state of insurrection; and little wonder, considering that the labour and the menace to health incurred in shearing wet sheep is hardly to be overestimated. No squatter can make his men shear wet sheep since the formation of the “Shearers’ Union,” and rightly enough too, though he is bound to pay them all the time that they are in the sheds waiting for the sheep to dry. A really wet sheep can be picked out in a moment by the lank, dark look of the wool; but when the wetness is not so distinctly shown, the question between the shearers and the squatter—who naturally wants to get his sheep finished—becomes a vexed one. Often, too, the back is quite dry, while the neck and belly of the sheep is wringing wet; while the argument so often used in courts of law that no rain has fallen for weeks is absolutely futile. Anyone who is used to shearing in Australia is not likely to doubt the Scriptural story of the wet fleece, whether it was on the sheep’s back or off it, for the yoke of the wool will absorb moisture to any extent from fog, dew, or even from an atmosphere that is not palpably the least damp.