Watch that tall shearer half-way down the line. A native-born Australian, probably of the second or third generation, he stands six feet and half an inch, good measurement, in his stockings. His brawny fore-arm is bare to the elbow. Broad-shouldered, deep-chested, light-flanked, he would have delighted the eye of Guy Livingstone. You cannot find any man out of Australia who can shear a hundred and fifty full-grown sheep in a day—as he can—closely, evenly, with wonderful seeming ease and rapidity. Like his horsemanship—a marvel in its way—it has been practised from boyhood, and, as with arts learned early in life, a perfection almost instinctive has resulted.
The shearers proper are all white men. The pickers-up and sorters of the fleece are a trifle mixed, the former being chiefly aboriginal blacks, some of the latter Chinamen. In the pressing demand for labour which obtains when a thousand sheds are at work, or preparing to shear, in the early spring months, over the length and breadth of the land, the inferior races find their opportunity.
A pound a week, lodging, and a liberal diet-scale, render the shearing season a kind of carnival for the proletariat, from the first fierce gleam of the desert sun in July, till the mountain snow-plains are cleared in January and February.
There are eight men at the wool-table—a broad, battened platform—on which the fleeces are spread, skirted, rolled up, and self-tied by an ingenious infolding knack, thrown into the wool-sorter's narrow pathway, and by him transferred to the separate bins of first and second combing, clothing, super, etc. The next stage carries them to the wool-presses, which somewhat complicated machinery, aided by skilled and experienced labourers, turns out daily fifty to sixty neatest, compactest bales. Thence on trucks propelled to the dumping-press, an hydraulic ram-driven monster, which reduces them to less than half their former size, and hoops them with iron bands.
Waggon teams are in attendance at the dumping-sheds, and before sundown much of the wool that was on the sheep's backs at sunrise will be loaded up, or on the road to the railway terminus.
Even that bourne of the weary wayfarer by coach, and the dusty, bearded teamster, is shifting its position nearer and nearer annually to the great central wilderness. As I ride homeward, the tents of navvy gangs appear suddenly through the darkening twilight, in the midst of pine-wood and wilgah brakes. The muffled thunder of blasts is borne ever and anon through the rarely-vexed atmosphere, as the sandstone hills are riven. But the central plain once reached, no work but the shallow trench and the low embankment will be required for hundreds of miles.
In a few years the great pastoral estates will have their own railway platforms, within easy distance of the 'shed,' when possibly a tramway thence to the dumping-room will be a recognised and necessary 'improvement.' When that day comes, shearers and washers will arrive by train from the coast-range, or the 'Never Never' country; King Cobb will be deposed or exiled; 'Sundowners' will be abolished; and much of the romance and adventure of pastoral life will have fled for ever.
NEW YEAR'S DAY 1886
In the list of rambles, possible in the event of certain undefined conditions coming to pass, one fairly-original project has always commended itself to me. An overland tramp from Sydney to Melbourne in the garb and character of a swagman seemed to offer special inducements. Inexpensive as to wearing apparel and including a position not difficult to keep up, the idea suggested health, variety, and adventure. From such a standpoint all grades of society might be observed in new and striking lights.
Circumstances prevented me, during the present holiday season, from carrying out this plan in its entirety. Nevertheless I found myself, in company with the usual midsummer contingent of strangers and pilgrims, in the metropolis of the southern colony; like them in quest of the rare anodyne which deadens care and allays regret. And what a blessed and salutary change is this from the inner wastes, the sun-scorched deserts, whence some of us have emerged but recently! I am not going to cry down the Bush, the good land of spur and saddle, of manly endeavour and steadfast endurance, which has done so much for many of us; but after a long cruise it is conceded that every sailor-man, from foremost Jack to the Captain bold, needs a 'run ashore.' His health demands it; his morale is, in the long run, not deteriorated thereby. For analogous reasons those of us who dwell afar from the green coast-fringe, having perhaps more than our share of sunshine, require a sea change. Every bushman, gentle or simple, should compass an annual holiday, which I recommend him to pass, if possible, in the colony where he does not habitually reside.