“Shearing commences to-morrow!” These
apparently simple words were spoken by Hugh Gordon,
the manager of Anabanco station, in the district of
Riverina, in the colony of New South Wales, one Monday
morning in the month of August. The utterance
had its importance to every member of a rather extensive
“Corps DRAMATIQUE” awaiting the industrial
drama about to be performed.
A low sand-hill a few years since had looked out over
a sea of grey plains, covered partly with grass, partly
with salsiferous bushes and herbs. Two or three
huts built of the trunks of the pine and roofed with
the bark of the box-tree, and a skeleton-looking cattle-yard
with its high “gallows” (a rude timber
stage whereon to hang slaughtered cattle) alone broke
the monotony of the plain-ocean. A comparatively
small herd of cattle, 2000 or 3000, found more than
sufficient pasturage during the short winter and spring,
but were always compelled to migrate to mountain pastures
when the swamps, which alone in those days formed
the water-stores of the run, were dried up. But
two or three, or at most half-a-dozen, stockmen were
ever needed for the purpose of managing the herd,
so inadequate in number and profitable occupation
to this vast tract of grazing country.
But, a little later, one of the great chiefs of the
wool-producing interest—a shepherd-king,
so to speak, of shrewdness, energy, and capital—had
seen, approved and purchased the lease of this waste
kingdom. Almost at once, as if by magic, the scene
changed. Great gangs of navvies appeared, wending
their way across the silent plain. Dams were
made, wells were dug. Tons of fencing wire were
dropped on the sand by the long line of teams which
seemed never tired of arriving. Sheep by thousands,
and tens of thousands, began to come, grazing and
cropping up to the lonely sandhill—now swarming
with blacksmiths, carpenters, engineers, fencers,
shepherds, bullock-drivers—till the place
looked like a fair on the borders of Tartary.
Meanwhile everything was moving with calculated force
and cost, under the “reign of law”.
The seeming expense was merely the economic truth
of doing all the necessary work at once, rather than
by instalments. One hundred men for one day rather
than one man for one hundred days. Results soon
began to demonstrate themselves. In twelve months
the dams were full, the wells sending up their far-fetched
priceless water, the wire fences erected, the shepherds
gone, and 17,000 sheep cropping the herbage of Anabanco.
Tuesday was the day fixed for the actual commencement
of the momentous, almost solemn transaction—the
pastoral Hegira, so to speak, as the time of most
station events is calculated with reference to it,
as happening before or after shearing. But before
the first shot is fired which tells of the battle begun,
what raids and skirmishes, what reconnoitring and vedette
duty must take place!
