"Shearing commences to-morrow!" These apparently simple words werespoken by Hugh Gordon, the manager of Anabanco station, in the districtof Riverina, in the colony of New South Wales, one Monday morning inthe month of August. The utterance had its importance to every memberof a rather extensive "CORPS DRAMATIQUE" awaiting the industrial dramaabout to be performed.
A low sand-hill a few years since had looked out over a sea of greyplains, covered partly with grass, partly with salsiferous bushes andherbs. Two or three huts built of the trunks of the pine and roofedwith the bark of the box-tree, and a skeleton-looking cattle-yard withits high "gallows" (a rude timber stage whereon to hang slaughteredcattle) alone broke the monotony of the plain-ocean. A comparativelysmall herd of cattle, 2000 or 3000, found more than sufficientpasturage during the short winter and spring, but were always compelledto migrate to mountain pastures when the swamps, which alone in thosedays formed the water-stores of the run, were dried up. But two orthree, or at most half-a-dozen, stockmen were ever needed for thepurpose of managing the herd, so inadequate in number and profitableoccupation to this vast tract of grazing country.
But, a little later, one of the great chiefs of the wool-producinginterest—a shepherd-king, so to speak, of shrewdness, energy, andcapital—had seen, approved and purchased the lease of this wastekingdom. Almost at once, as if by magic, the scene changed. Great gangsof navvies appeared, wending their way across the silent plain. Damswere made, wells were dug. Tons of fencing wire were dropped on thesand by the long line of teams which seemed never tired of arriving.Sheep by thousands, and tens of thousands, began to come, grazing andcropping up to the lonely sandhill—now swarming with blacksmiths,carpenters, engineers, fencers, shepherds, bullock-drivers—till theplace looked like a fair on the borders of Tartary.
Meanwhile everything was moving with calculated force and cost, underthe "reign of law". The seeming expense was merely the economic truthof 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 damswere full, the wells sending up their far-fetched priceless water, thewire fences erected, the shepherds gone, and 17,000 sheep cropping theherbage of Anabanco. Tuesday was the day fixed for the actualcommencement of the momentous, almost solemn transaction—the pastoralHegira, so to speak, as the time of most station events iscalculated 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 musttake place!
First arrives the cook-in-chief to the shearers, with two assistants tolay in a few provisions for the week's consumption of 70 able-bodiedmen. I must here explain that the cook of a large shearing-shed is ahighly paid and tolerably irresponsible official. He is paid andprovided by the shearers. Payment is generally arranged on the scale ofhalf-a-crown a head weekly from each shearer. For this sum he mustprovide punctual and effective cooking, paying out of his own pocket asmany "marmitons" as may be needful for that end, and to satisfy histolerably exacting and fastidious employers.
In the present case he confers with