Frontier and pioneer life -- Australia -- Queensland
His whip is a terrible long plaited thong with a strip of green hide
attached, and a handle like a flail, with it he wakes the echoes and his
oxen at the same time. The crack of the whip is accompanied by a voice
as deep and hoarse as the bellow of one of his own long-suffering
yoked-up slaves, and his lurid language makes even his bullocks shudder.
To see the "bullocky" at his best is only given to those who travel with
him for a whole trip, and observe his style of getting out of
difficulties that would dishearten many another man. He is full of
resource, and not lacking in energy, and when his team is bogged in a
creek in a seemingly hopeless mess, and beyond all appearance of ever
being extricated, after exhausting his ample stock of dire profanity, he
proceeds in a methodical manner to dig under his wheels and corduroy
the track with branches and limbs of trees, weeds out his jibbing
bullocks, and with renewed energy and awful voice, he calls on his
patient and weary team for a big effort, and out they walk with their
load on to the bank. The "bullocky" was a great factor in the early days
of settlement, where there were no roads and loading had to be dragged
over mountains and through steep creeks and over all obstacles. His
bodily strength, great experience, and energy, came in to help in no
small degree to keep settlement alive. The arrival of the bullock teams
was quite an event, perhaps after being months on the road, and when all
supplies had run short--not that the fact of supplies being short on the
station would induce them to hasten their progress, for no bullock
driver was ever known to hurry or go out of his slow, crawling pace for
any inducement whatever. The "bullocky" could drink rum in buckets, and
was always given to use his fists. Take him all round, he was about as
rough a specimen of a bush artist as could be found; but he was
hospitable in his camp; it was always "Come and have a pot of tea,
mate," to any traveller. The quicker-moving horse teams and the
railways, are elbowing the bullock driver out into the never-never,
where there are still opportunities for his special faculties, and it is
not often that bullock teams, with their wood and iron yokes, and dusty,
hairy drivers, are seen on any roads coming into railway stations. To
ask a bullock driver where he got his beef from was not always a safe or
prudent question; it was looked upon as a piece of wanton impertinence
that would require suppression. After putting down so much on the debit
side, something should be said to the credit of the carrier. He must
have been hard-working and thrifty to have acquired the necessary
capital to purchase his waggon and team. Physically, he must be
exceptionally strong to stand the life he leads. Mentally, he must be
full of resource to overcome the obstacles he meets with on unformed and
often uncleared roads. Morally, he must be passing honest, for he often
carries loads of great value, for the safety of which he alone is
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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