Wool Away, Boy!

by Alan Blunt

  Tojo Bush idiom for a Toyota LandCruiser

  tomahawking Shearing so rough and bloody it might have been done with a tomahawk

  troppo From ‘tropical’. Soldiers serving too long in tropical conditions were said to go troppo (crazy)

  tucker Food

  tumbling-tommy A cook’s large rubbish bin on two wheels, parked outside the kitchen door

  two-tooth A two-tooth wether is a sheep with its first adult teeth

  Two-Up A game in which people bet on whether two coins (tradionally pennies) will land Heads or Tails. The coins must be tossed cleanly and spin or a re-throw is called. Three coins could be used to speed up the game, bets being paid on a majority of two Heads or Tails

  wet-voter When it rains and sheep get wet shearers take a majority vote: a dry or even vote means you carry on, a wet vote means knock off

  wool pressing The heaviest work in the shed. The wool presser compresses the wool into a wool press making ‘bales’

  wowser A killjoy

  yakka Hard manual work

  Yowies Australia’s version of the Himalayan Abominable Snowman and America’s Big Foot

  AUTHOR’S NOTES

  Chapter 1

  Here ‘It was only the powerful young wool presser, Jim, who was kindly and understanding of a lad’s needs.’ Not many men were robust enough to take on the lever. A few pressers also worked cane-cutting and wheat lumping. These three contract jobs were recognised as the toughest occupations in the bush.

  Chapter 2

  Here ‘… it was a matter of pride among professional lever-men to keep the wool away within the bell hours’. Nearly all employees worked Pastoral Industry Award ‘bell’ hours. There were four two-hour ‘runs’, making eight hours per day. The only exception was the contract presser, who was allowed to work any time between the 7.30am Monday starting bell and the 5.30pm Friday knock-off bell, because the quantity of wool came unevenly. For example, while ten shearers might shear only fifteen bales a day off lambs, meaning the presser had to wait while the bales built up, they might manage forty or fifty bales a day off full-grown sheep and the presser might have to work outside bell hours to keep up.

  Here ‘Muscle-sore and dog-tired I plodded to the shed each night after tea with a carbide light and a proud can-and-will determination.’ Many workers joked that carbide lights were an explosive gas device masquerading as a lamp. In fact, if serviced correctly they gave a bright steady light until a surge of gas would ignite, exploding into frightening flashes of flame and loud bangs – which would send the uninitiated scampering.

  Here ‘He’s headed ’em twice but he can’t do it thrice …’ Often quoted folklore lines.

  Here ‘I love you in your negligee …’ Origin unknown. Certainly familiar to Tommies and Diggers in World War II and often heard among bush workers thereafter.

  Here ‘When he moved on to Banjo Paterson’s iconic ballad, with a few boozy voices harmonising to his mouth organ, Karl queried, “What is this ‘Waltzing Matilda’?”’ Banjo Paterson was an icon of Australian bush poetry and seminal national identity.

  Here ‘… he whipped into the fray like a southpaw whirlwind, weaved inside like a professional, and hammered me into a circling retreat.’ Right-handers learn to box with the left leg and hand (paw) forward. Their stance is called orthodox. Left-handers box with the right leg and hand forward, called southpaw.

  Here ‘Cop that young ’Arry!’ The phrase comes from comedy star Roy Rene’s sketches.

  Here ‘Anyway, ridgy-didge, where did you learn to box like Jimmy Carruthers?’ Jimmy Carruthers was Australia’s first universally recognised world boxing champion.

  Chapter 3

  Here ‘Talk about a Clive-bloody-Churchill tackle, Bluey! You’re a little ripper!’ Clive Churchill was a legendary rugby league fullback who played for New South Wales and was captain of the Kangaroos.

  Chapter 4

  Here ‘I reckoned the ringer looked old and brown enough to be an original de Satge offspring …’ Oscar John de Satge was born in England in 1836. He arrived in Melbourne in 1851 fresh from Rugby School, and became a clerk on the goldfields before heading to Queensland to become a drover, pioneer pastoralist and influential politician. In 1884 he took up Carandotta with two business partners, and entered into a liaison with an Indigenous woman who gave birth to two sons and a daughter. After drought in the early 1890s killed 90,000 sheep and 15,000 cattle on Carandotta, de Satge returned to England, where he married Beatrice Elizabeth Fletcher. The de Satge name lives on in the north-west through his descendants. A granddaughter, Ruby de Satge, became famous for droving cattle throughout the north-west and the Northern Territory.

  Chapter 6

  Here ‘Seeing a chance I couldn’t let slip, I bunged on a Dad and Dave drawl …’ Dad and Dave were humorous bush battlers in the popular radio serial of the same name, based on Steele Rudd’s (aka Arthur Hoey Davis) stories.

  Here ‘Who does he think he is? Herb Elliott?’ Herb Elliott was an Olympic champion and world record holder for 1500 metres and the mile. He was a household name.

  Chapter 7

  Here ‘You’re faster than Wild Bill Hickok, Wide Awake!’ Wild Bill Hickok was a household name in the 1950s, courtesy of his role as a hero in Hollywood westerns. The original Wild Bill, a retired town marshall and multiple man-killer, was murdered in a poker game in Deadwood in 1876, while holding aces and eights – still known as ‘the dead man’s hand’.

  Here ‘The song I’m going to sing you will not detain you long …’ This is an old Australian folk song called ‘The Station Cook’, which the American folk singer Burl Ives revived in 1952.

  Here ‘Darcy Dugan wears clobber like that when he holds up a bank.’ Darcy Dugan was a notorious bank robber and jail escapologist.

  Chapter 8

  Here ‘No thank you, Boss, I’d rather not …’ An oft-repeated quote from ‘The Stockman’s Tale’ (Anon.).

  Here ‘You can talk of your whisky, talk of your beer …’ From ‘Billy of Tea’, a traditional song.

  Chapter 9

  Here ‘Using fencing pliers he wired the exhaust pipe to the chassis of the Morris Minor with a Cobb and Co hitch.’ Named after the Cobb & Co coach line, this was the most common, secure and simple wire hitch.

  Chapter 12

  Here ‘Are you going to invest in the Bill Waterhouse retirement fund?’ Bill Waterhouse was the doyen of Sydney bookies. A colourful character and household name, he frequently made the headlines.

  Chapter 13

  Here ‘A fight draws spectators like a bush killing block draws flies and meat ants.’ All sheep stations and shearers’ quarters had an adjacent rectangle of concrete called a killing block and a gallows for suspending slaughtered sheep to be bled and skinned.

  Here ‘He wore grey slacks and shined Julius Marlow shoes.’ Julius Marlows were an expensive brand of shoes.

  Here ‘“It’s not the Black Arabian Pox,” he said quietly.’ The Black Arabian Pox was supposedly an incurable venereal disease brought back by soldiers from the Middle East. The yarn was used by old hands to terrorise young men: ‘You go blind, your cock falls off, and you’re dead in three weeks.’

  Chapter 14

  Here ‘Too correct, mate! And I was the picker-up when Jackie Howe tallied three hundred and twenty-one at Alice Downs in 1892.’ Jackie Howe was a legendary Australian shearing champion, and stalwart of Labor politics.

  Chapter 15

  Here ‘I’m no Don Athaldo …’ Don Athaldo was a famous Australian strongman. One of his most spectacular demonstrations of strength was carrying a pony up a ladder. He also sold body-building courses.

  Chapter 21

  Here ‘… a double for Dolly Dyer!’ Dolly Dyer was a TV personality and the wife of the famous performer Bob Dyer.

  Chapter 22

  Here ‘Around Hughenden and in the north-west, where I worked with Ritzy, they call a king brown or mulga snake a Downs tiger; but around Longreach it seems
a Collett’s snake is often dubbed a Downs tiger. Take yer pick!’ A Collett’s snake is often mistaken for a Downs tiger. Similar in appearance, a Collett’s snake can grow to seven feet in length, king browns to nine feet.

  Here ‘Yer kids will miss out on Christmas if you presser-starvers don’t fill the comb and push a bit harder.’ An essential part of good shearing is ‘filling the comb’; that is, using the full width of the comb to cut wool at each stroke, known as a ‘blow’. The more you fill the comb the less blows you have to make.

  Chapter 24

  Here The chapter title ‘The White Goddess’ is a reference to the pagan goddess inspired by the moon and lunar phases. Identified in Robert Graves fascinating book of the same name.

  Left to right: My sister Patty, Mum and me in 1939, when I was fourteen months old. Mum proudly referred to the tent behind us as a marquee. Made of canvas, it was incredibly heavy, so Dad bought a new green Oldsmobile one-ton truck and we went on an adventure to New South Wales.

  I took this photograph of Lorraine Crapp and Gary Winram in Townsville, June 1958, when they were training for the Empire Games.

  Dinner camp on the way to Lucknow, 1959. Nellie, Zulu and I admire the catch.

  Oxton Downs, 1959. Dad and Zulu are front left.

  Left to right: My bachelor uncles, Kevin and Gerald, 1959.

  Me, mounted to muster sheep, Julia Creek District, 1959.

  Giving a Sunday exhibition spar for the boys in Leeson, Winton, 1959. The Toowoomba rousie (right) soon wiped the smile from my face.

  From left: Me, Bob Macklin and Doug McMillan, aka the Laughing Kiwi, on the road from Eulolo to Cloncurry, 1960.

  Dad and me with Zulu, West End, Brisbane, Christmas 1960.

  From left: Spanner Hayes, Mum, Uncle Merv and Mabel (Dad’s siblings), West End, Brisbane, 1968.

  From left: My three daughters, Michelle, Helen and Jenny, on Michelle’s first day of school, 1972.

  With Mum and Dad, 1979.

  Demonstrating how to shear a sheep in Banjo’s Outback Theatre & Woolshed, 2001. I set up the theatre as a tourist attraction in Longreach, Queensland, and ran it successfully for twenty-one years.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Three cooees for Robert Macklin, still a bushie at heart, who urged me to write a book about ‘those fabulous Babblers of the Bush’, and provided endless encouragement from go to whoa. Thanks to Margaret Kennedy, who enthusiastically convinced me that I had produced a publishable work, and swiftly placed the book with Random House. Thanks also to all the team at Random House, who professionally ‘pressed up’ Wool Away, Boy!, especially Tamika Wood for publicity; and a huge thank you to commissioning editor Sophie Ambrose whose patience and care and warm personal touch permeated her wise advice and direction chapter by chapter. Last but not least, Wool Away, Boy! is a tribute to our wonderful wool industry, and the shearers, rousies, babblers, pressers, classers and overseers who combined to harvest the clip when Australia ‘rode on the sheep’s back’. They enriched my life with the values of hard work, mateship and laughter.

  For thirty years Alan Blunt worked the woolsheds in outback Queensland, starting as a rouseabout and eventually working his way up to wool presser. He was a keen observer of character, and in the evenings recorded the portraits of workmates by the light of a pressure lamp, filling one foolscap pad after another. Later he had stories published in the outback and metropolitan press. In 1993 he formed a theatre troupe based at Longreach called Banjo’s Outback Theatre & Woolshed, which he ran successfully for more than twenty years. Known as ‘Banjo’, he still performs one-man folklore and history shows, and makes guest appearances on ABC radio.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, including internet search engines or retailers, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including printing, photocopying (except under the statutory exceptions provisions of the Australian Copyright Act 1968), recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of Penguin Random House Australia. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  Version 1.0

  Wool Away, Boy!

  ePub ISBN – 9780143780373

  First published by Random House in 2016

  Copyright © Alan Blunt, 2016

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  A Random House book

  Published by Penguin Random House Australia Pty Ltd

  Level 3, 100 Pacific Highway, North Sydney NSW 2060

  www.penguin.com.au

  Addresses for the Penguin Random House group of companies can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com/offices.

  National Library of Australia

  Cataloguing-in-Publication entry

  Blunt, Alan, author

  Wool away, boy!: a ripping memoir of life in the shearing sheds/Alan Blunt

  ISBN 978 0 14378 037 3 (ebook)

  Blunt, Alan

  Sheep shearers (Persons) – Biography

  Sheep-shearing – Australia

  Shearing sheds – Australia

  Sheep farming – Australia

  Farm life – Australia

  636.3145092

  Cover image © Steve Bowman, courtesy of Folio

  Cover design by Blue Cork

  Map by Alicia Freile

  Ebook by Firstsource