Australia

Life out back

Wyn: "The Overflow homestead was all really quite tickety-boo: hot and cold running water, gas in every room to provide heat (more than I had at Eton), and full sewerage facilitated by a septic tank. The owners provided everything we workers needed - food, furniture, linen, glass, cutlery etc. They also paid the wages of several maids and the all-important cook. Vegetables were grown in an acre of garden and six months’ worth of provisions to cater for about 40 people were always kept in store - commodities such as flour, dry goods and canned foods, mosquito nets, spare harness sets, saddles, stockwhips and tobacco in great quantities. We had use of a challenging earthen tennis court, a cricket club, open air gym (boxing gloves, punch ball, horizontal and parallel bars, Roman rings), rifles and guns for a bit of shooting practice, a piano and gramophone, and thank the Lord, an impressive library of many thousands of books. There was a telephone, but wireless was fast being adopted and the Boss took delivery of his own sending set whilst I was in his employ. This changed our lives for the better as boring evenings could be spent listening to news bulletins and entertainment broadcast from the main cities. It was like being back at school but more comfortable!

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The pay was 10/- a week and all found including suitable work wear. All station work was done from horseback so a new Jackeroo’s first visit was to the horse yard with the Overseer to be allocated my horses. The first thing that happened of course was to play a trick on the new chump which consisted of putting a triangular thorn under my saddle blanket. My horse bucked and reared with gusto but being in an Australian-type saddle with wings over the thighs, and having learnt to ride properly at Woolwich, it wasn’t much trouble to stay on. As soon as the blokes were convinced I was a ‘bonzer’ rider they took to me and I never had any trouble being accepted.

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There were thousands of wallabies and kangaroos which one was tasked to kill as they ate the grass needed to feed the sheep. I know there were 250,000 sheep on the station and in poorer parts it took 20 odd acres to support just one of the blighters. The Overflow was about 250 miles long by 60 miles wide and paddocks ranged from 5,000 to 35,000 acres so if you were thrown and broke a leg or something you ran a good chance of not being found for some time. And in the summer the temperature could get up to 130°F in the shade so you’d soon be a goner. I once saw 140°F in the shade on the veranda of the Fitzgerald Hotel in Bourke.

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If it was your turn to bring in the horses within the home paddock the day started at 5 am. The home paddock was about 5 miles by 3 miles and to find the horses (there were perhaps 50 in the herd) one used a stallion which very quickly found the mares. Then having got them in, breakfast was at 6 am - mutton chops, the sheep having been killed at 5am - and then off to your assigned jobs for the day which could be mending fences, rounding up sheep and bringing them in for treatment, dipping etc. Luckily for me, due to my pretty good knowledge of army engineering, many of the jobs I had to do were mechanical. Dismantling and transporting windmills, overhauling the car engines, as well as acting as chauffeur for the General Manager of the company which took me all over New South Wales and a lot of Queensland.

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Castrating the young rams was a horrible job. One bloke grabbed a ram and sat it up on a rail. Then another had to cut off the end of its sack with a sharp knife, push out the balls, catch the balls with bare teeth (they just slipped back in if you tried to grab them with fingers), pull them and spit them out, put a dab of tar on the open sack and let the poor bleating beast go. All this took about 30 seconds, and a good Jackeroo should be able to castrate perhaps 2,500 in a day."

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The professional shearers were a rowdy lot of toughs who earned a lot of money and lived especially well. One ringer I remember arrived in his Buick with a manservant who set up a tent, and cooked for him etc. He mounted the shearing platform immaculately dressed and in polished hunting boots and calmly earned £7 10/- in a day – over £500 in today’s money. And he’d work all year long! After shearing was over, some of them would go to the local town of Bourke or Cobar with several hundred pounds in their pocket. They would give it to the likes of Paddy Condon, the landlord of the pub at Cobar, and ask him to let them know when it’s cut out, and there they’d stay dead drunk, paying for drinks for everyone, until the money was exhausted. Australian law stated the pub-keeper had to look after the man’s horse and keep enough cash to start him on his way when he sobered up. They were a rum lot.