ON THE SHEEPS BACK

Australia rides on the sheep’s back. Well, that’s what they used to say, but no more it seems! Once the first Merino hogget stepped off the boat in the early eighteen hundreds the vast open plains of inland Australia were, within a decade, covered with massive flocks the size of which had never been seen before. Talk about rabbits? Compared to the enclosed areas of England, it seemed so easy to send a drover away with large mobs, to wander for months on the long paddock. Eventually fences proved cheaper than shepherds.

For a hundred and fifty years wool was the finest fibre - the king of clothing. Europe couldn’t get enough of this warm luxuriant fibre. But now people climb to the top of Everest without wearing any wool, Ski fields are plastic fashion shows, no army in the world has a woollen uniform - the people of the industrialized world are wearing petrol and the third world finds wool too expensive. The future is anyone’s guess with the inland and its rivers being taken over by camels, cats, carp and cattle. Maybe cotton will poison them all.

The sorrow of it all is not just the loss of few old bare-bellies but what will happen to the spirits of the old men who went before us. The ghosts of old guns, who, from out of the night, would creep up to join us at the campfire and unseen, prompt us to boost our stories. Helping older men to spin yarns of their colourful past and the younger ones confessing their raw hopes. Many a tale was told after dinner, outdoors by the light of a mulga fire, that turned the drudgery of shearing tight combing wrinkly wethers into smiles and hopes that made tomorrow just another day towards the cut-out and the contactors promise of ewes and lambs forever. No wonder the swarm around the campfire at the shearer’s huts was called the University of the Bush. It’s that spirit of the men and it’s their place in our history and traditions, that we are loosing.

There are still enough old fellows out there with tales of the past that we should be trying to record before it’s too late. It’s the hope of this newsletter that we can unite some of that interest with the seeds we will sow. Hopefully this Newsletter, like a bugle call, will enlist the old guard with, all their yarns, to share their past with the future.

denis@milro.com.au