Life in the Australian Backblocks by Edward S Sorenson
THE STOCKMAN
“‘Twas merry ‘mid the blackwoods when we spied the station roofs,
To wheel the wild scrub cattle at the yard,
With a running fire of stockwhips, and a fiery run of hoofs—
Oh! the hardest day was never then too hard.”
Adam Lindsay Gordon.
The stockman holds the same place in Australia as the cowboy in the western plains of America, and in Old World eyes no picture of Australia is complete without him. He is every whit as wild and reckless, as daring among wild horses and cattle, as his cousin of the ranch, and has proved himself a more skilled artist in buckjump riding. He has never adopted the lasso, the bowie-knife, or the six-shooter (except when scrub-running and buffalo-hunting), though in the early days, when the native’s spear and boomerang waited for him on his bush rides, he was seldom without the necessary equipment for a battle royal; but with the stockwhip and tomahawk he is a master.
One of his pastimes when waiting on a cattle camp is ‘tomahawk-throwing’ at a small mark on a tree. The mark is about three inches in diameter, and the object is to bury the blade in it from a distance of twenty to forty feet while galloping. Another and more dangerous feat is for two to stand a few yards apart and engage in a tomahawk duel, each catching the weapon by the handle as it revolves rapidly towards him. A slight slip would mean a nasty cut, and a miss would probably result in his head being split open. One of his favourite feats with the stockwhip is the whipping of a sixpence into the air and catching it while riding along. At times stockmen have been known to stand in front of a tree and cut out their names or the station brand on the smooth bark with their whipthongs. I have heard of the man, too, who could
cut the eye out of a flying mosquito without touching his eyelash
but I never met him. Like the drover, the stockman is a prominent feature in country life, and the most important in the personnel of the cattle station. He is a happy-go-lucky, devil-may-care individual. His god is his horse; without that noble animal he is like the domestic duck that has no waterhole. He may be unemployed and penniless, but as long as he has a horse and saddle—and he’ll have them somehow—he won’t lose any sleep through worry. Having grown up and lived most of his waking life in the pigskin, he considers himself disgraced if compelled to travel on foot; if he has to go to a place half a mile away, he will walk a mile to catch a horse to ride there. More than that, if the horse is a hard one to catch, he is likely to spend half a day chasing him round the paddock, and with running and walking and dodging cover a good twenty miles in the time. I remember asking a stockman, who was idling at a wayside hotel, if he was going to the sports—a grass-fed meeting that was being held in the locality. “I wanted to go badly,” he said, “but blessed if I can rake up a prad ‘horse’ anywhere. I humped my bridle and saddle over to Murphy’s this morning, thinking to get one of his young uns, but they were all turned out. So I’m stuck.” Murphy’s was two miles away, the racecourse was one mile. But it wasn’t etiquette for a well-known stockman like him to go to the meeting on foot!
The finest riders and the wildest spirits are found in the backblocks. Their most favoured rig-out consists of snow-white, tight-fitting mole-skins, coloured shirt, black coat, light cossacks, and a gaudily-coloured silk neckerchief. Leggings, once universally worn, have pretty well gone out of fashion, but the long-necked spurs are inseparable from the stockman’s heels. They jingle him to dinner, and they keep time to his pirouetting in the dance-room. When he removes his boots at night the spurs are still strapped on them; if he is camping out, he very often sleeps in them. The thinking end of him is decked with an expansive cabbage-tree or a broad-leafed felt hat, something like the sombrero of the cowboy. He is a picturesque fellow, and not a bad sort, with all his whims and fancies. He is good-hearted and hospitable, and, though he has a mild contempt for a man who cannot ride a bucking horse down a precipice, he is at all times generous enough to give assistance and advice to a novice, especially to lads who are beginning a station career.
On many of the big cattle stations more than half the stockmen are aborigines. They make excellent horse-men, are marvellously quick in a yard, keen-sighted, and are at home in any part of the bush. These supple-jointed, nimble-fingered gentry can pick up the smallest objects from the ground while riding at full speed. They fraternise like brothers with the whites, though sometimes they have separate quarters.
The first thing one hears at daylight in the morning on any big cattle station is the thundering clatter of hoofs as the horse-boy comes racing in with the big mob of horses. Immediately after breakfast the boss and the head stockman appear, and the men follow to the yard, each with a bridle on his arm. Every man has six or eight horses, which are practically his own property for the time being. No man may put a bridle on another man’s horse without permission, and this applies to all, from the overseer down to the horse-boy. They swop among themselves, often giving something to boot, which may take the form of money, a pair of spurs, tobacco, or other commodity. Some peculiarity in the action of a horse may be distasteful to one rider, while being appreciated by another, and so the exchange is agreeable to both. In the case of a slow, a rough-paced, or a nasty-tempered horse, the temporary owner has considerable difficulty in trading it for a more satisfactory animal. He may, however, possess a good stockwhip, fancy pipe, pocket-knife, patent spurs, or even a nice-shaped cabbage-tree hat, which has taken the other’s fancy, and by throwing in one or more of these items the deal is brought about. The inclusion of bridles or saddles in the deal also at times bridges the gulf between the values of two horses. I have known new chums, learning to ride, pay away a good portion of their wages to get rid of bucking horses, or in tobacco, as fees to good riders to take the rough edge off their mounts in the mornings by giving them a rooting round the yard.
When a draft of lately-broken colts is brought in from the spelling paddock they are distributed among the men, and are schooled in slack times and ridden on “short days.” The catching and mounting in the mornings is at all times attractive to the stranger. The horse-yards are generally two large squares, connected by a little catching-yard, which has a gate at each end. The horses are run through it from one square to the other, while the stockmen stand by with their bridles. Each one calls out “Block” as the particular horse he wants is run in, and both gates are closed. Even the little native boy, whose head shows just above the bottom rail, has the privilege of choosing for himself, so far as his own batch of horses is concerned. As the horses are ridden in turn and spelled in batches for three or four months every year, they are always fresh. Consequently a morning seldom passes without two or three brisk sets-to at the stables. Some of them are vicious brutes, and can be depended on to buck into the days of their old age, having a fly every time a saddle is put on them. Quiet old stagers are rare. Every year a fresh batch of young ones is broken in, and the old, slow, and defective animals are fattened and sold off; so the station always has a supply of rough mounts on hand that require skilled riders to deal with.
Between the general musterings the work at the head station is not hard. Though the stockmen start out early in the mornings, they are often back early in the afternoon, and can then amuse themselves as they please till next day. It is common to see the whole troop, marching down to the river with towels for a bogey after their day’s ride. The home run is subdivided into many paddocks—as the house-paddock, horse-paddock, bull-paddock, and stud-paddock; and there are separate paddocks for heifers, weaners, bullocks, fats, and pig-meaters or culls. There is always something to do among these different herds, and in summer-time the creeks, lagoons, and waterholes have to be watched, and bogged cattle pulled out.
With the fences, or any job not connected with stock, they have nothing to do; there are men kept specially for that purpose. The personnel of the average station comprises, apart from stockmen, a gardener, cook, bullock-driver, carpenter, blacksmith, ploughman, groom, and a couple of fencers. But the stockmen have to join forces when bush fires break out, which occur pretty frequently in summer. For days and nights, for a week at a stretch, these fires are sometimes fought, every available hand doing battle against the annual foe of the pastures. You will see fifty men retreating before a long line of flame, belting at it with bags and bushes whenever a chance offers in short grass; boys follow with the horses, or ride to and fro with buckets and bags of water for the men; whilst others follow the fences, chopping burning portions off posts and rails and removing lighted timber.
Moya Sharp
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