Tales From the Bush

RECOLLECTIONS OF HUGH KING: FIRST-YEAR JACKAROO “BARRATTA”

Station Deniliquin, Nsw: 1946

Hi my name is Hugh I’m eighty years of age. After attending the Embracing your Life workshop a few weeks ago I decided to have a go at telling my story, here's the first chapter.

I Grew up in Manly NSW. Went to the bush at age seventeen and eventually had my own sheep station at Mungindi on the NSW/Qld border. Left the bush in 1970 after twenty four years and spent twelve years as a futures broker in Sydney. Since 1982 have farmed at Perthville, near Bathurst and now have only sixty acres to look after. My wife died of breast cancer in 1996.

In January 1946 I took a train from Central Station in Sydney for Finley in southern NSW. I had spent the last two years as a junior in the Sydney office of Australian Mercantile Land and Finance Company (AML&F) and was now to start as a first-year jackaroo on the company’s Barratta sheep station west of Deniliquin. World War II had finished five months earlier. I had just turned seventeen.

I was somewhat disappointed to be destined for Barratta as the company had originally said I was to go to Victoria River Downs in the Northern Territory, then the largest cattle station in the world—approximately the size of Belgium! Barratta was about 80000 acres (32400 hectares) and while not as exciting as Victoria River Downs it was still a great adventure for a city boy who had always dreamt of living in the outback.

I was to be paid the grand sum of one pound (two dollars) a week and keep. The working week included Saturday mornings but I quite often worked on Sunday, for which I was paid overtime. That sounded reasonable. However, in reality, for a full Sunday’s work I got eleven pence (ten cents)!

Jackaroos were not allowed to have their own motor vehicle, motor bike or horse on the station. We were taken to town for half a day every few months but otherwise we could not leave the station without permission. It was forbidden to bring alcohol onto the property, but we managed to smuggle a few bottles of beer each on our trips to town. We hid these under bushes at various parts of the run. We always had a bottle of blow-fly dressing hanging on our saddles and it was easy to substitute it for a bottle of beer on the way home at the end of the day.

Keeping the beer cool was another problem. Bottles from under the bushes were cool enough for drinking in winter but were too warm in summer. We solved this problem by placing a bottle in a sugar bag and hanging the bag in the underground rainwater tank at the house. This was a daring manoeuvre as the water tank was in the homestead courtyard with very little cover.
One of my early jobs was to help with shearing. We had about eight shearers and the same number of rouseabouts. Shearing was still done on Saturday morning but Saturday work was abolished not long after this. The shearers’ quarters had rooms with two wooden bunks, one above the other. The shearers were given a hessian palliasse which they filled with straw. In later years shearing industry workers were awarded more civilised conditions.

On the first day the wool presser died with a heart attack. He was a middle- aged man who had recently been discharged from the Army. Probably he was not used to such demanding physical work but he obviously had a pre-existing heart condition. The shearers stopped work for the rest of the day as a mark of respect.

On the second day the shearers sacked the cook. For breakfast the cook had made rolled oats. It was tough and rubbery and the men did not eat it. When they came in for lunch the cook had served up for dessert, the cold rolled oats left over from breakfast together with dried apricots. Shearers are keen on their food and this was too much.

The shearing contractor made a rushed trip to town for a replacement cook and returned with an old bloke whose appearance was, to say the least, not impressive. He had several days growth of beard, his clothing was dishevelled and his shoes almost worn out. But this old man was a real shearers’ cook. When standing in front of a wood stove he created magic.

The kitchen had a brick oven. From memory this had a brick floor, brick sides and a domed brick roof. I think there was an outer brick shell and between this and the oven was a thick layer of sand. A wood fire was lit inside the oven several hours before baking was to begin. When the oven was at the correct temperature (this must have been an art) the fire was raked out and the article to be cooked was placed in the oven and the door closed.

I have read that one method used to gauge when the correct heat had been reached was when you could not hold your closed fist in the centre of the oven past the count of six! Such delights came out of that oven—sponge cakes and puff pastry jam tarts, Anzac biscuits and baked custard. But the real gems were bread and bread rolls and yeast buns with sultanas and a shiny sweet glaze. The bread was light and soft with a hard crust and carried the smell of wood smoke. I ate in the shearers’ mess for the duration of shearing; I can still recall meals with bread fresh from the oven and still warm, spread with salty homemade butter and washed down with a mug of tea.

Hope you enjoy my story!

Hugh