“I become momentarily conscious about daylight. The flies on the track got me into that habit, I think; they start at day-break—when the mosquitoes give over.
“The cook rings a bullock bell.
“The cook is fire-proof. He is as a fiend from the nethermost sheol and needs to be. No man sees him sleep, for he makes bread—or worse, brownie—at night, and he rings a bullock bell loudly at half-past five in the morning to rouse us from our animal torpors. Others, the sheep-ho's or the engine-drivers at the shed or wool-wash, call him, if he does sleep. They manage it in shifts, somehow, and sleep somewhere, sometime. We haven't time to know. The cook rings the bullock bell and yells the time. It was the same time five minutes ago—or a year ago. No time to decide which. I dash water over my head and face and slap handfuls on my eyelids—gummed over aching eyes—still blighted by the yolk o' wool—grey, greasy-feeling water from a cut-down kerosene tin which I sneaked from the cook and hid under my bunk and had the foresight to refill from the cask last night, under cover of warm, still, suffocating darkness. Or was it the night before last? Anyhow, it will be sneaked from me to-day, and from the crawler who will collar it to-morrow, and 'touched' and 'lifted' and 'collared' and recovered by the cook, and sneaked back again, and cause foul language, and fights, maybe, till we 'cut-out'.
“No; we didn't have sweet dreams of home and mother, gentle poet—nor yet of babbling brooks and sweethearts, and love's young dream. We are too dirty and dog-tired when we tumble down, and have too little time to sleep it off. We don't want to dream those dreams out here—they'd only be nightmares for us, and we'd wake to remember. We MUSTN'T remember here.
“At the edge of the timber a great galvanised-iron shed, nearly all roof, coming down to within 6ft. 6in. of the 'board' over the 'shoots'. Cloud of red dust in the dead timber behind, going up—noon-day dust. Fence covered with skins; carcases being burned; blue smoke going straight up as in noonday. Great glossy (greasy-glossy) black crows 'flopping' around.
“The first syren has gone. We hurry in single files from opposite ends of rouseabouts' and shearers' huts (as the paths happen to run to the shed) gulping hot tea or coffee from a pint-pot in one hand and biting at a junk of brownie in the other.
“Shed of forty hands. Shearers rush the pens and yank out sheep and throw them like demons; grip them with their knees, take up machines, jerk the strings; and with a rattling whirring roar the great machine-shed starts for the day.
“'Go it, you——tigers!' yells a tar-boy. 'Wool away!' 'Tar!' 'Sheep Ho!' We rush through with a whirring roar till breakfast time.
“We seize our tin plate from the pile, knife and fork from the candle-box, and crowd round the camp-oven to jab out lean chops, dry as chips, boiled in fat. Chops or curry-and-rice. There is some growling and cursing. We slip into our places without removing our hats. There's no time to hunt for mislaid hats when the whistle goes. Row of hat brims, level, drawn over eyes, or thrust back—according to characters or temperaments. Thrust back denotes a lucky absence of brains, I fancy. Row of forks going up, or jabbing, or poised, loaded, waiting for last mouthful to be bolted.
“We pick up, sweep, tar, sew wounds, catch sheep that break from the pens, jump down and pick up those that can't rise at the bottom of the shoots, 'bring-my-combs-from-the-grinder-will-yer,' laugh at dirty jokes, and swear—and, in short, are the 'will-yer' slaves, body and soul, of seven, six, five, or four shearers, according to the distance from the rolling tables.