Shearing in the Riverina, New South Wales | Page 6

his sheep when shorn, where he remains in company with the others shorn by the same hand, until counted out. This being done by the overseer or manager supplies a check upon hasty or unskilful work. The body of the woolshed, floored with battens placed half an inch apart, is filled with the woolly victims. This enclosure is subdivided into minor pens, of which each fronts the place of two shearers, who catch from it until the pen is empty. When this takes place, a man for the purpose refills its. As there are local advantages, an equitable distribution of places for shearing has to be made by lot.
On every subdivision stands a shearer, as Mr Gordon walks, with an air of calm authority, down the long aisle. Seventy men, chiefly in their prime, the flower of the working-men of the colony, they are variously gathered. England, Ireland, and Scotland are represented in the proportion of one half of the number; the other half is composed of native-born Australians.
Among these last--of pure Anglo-Saxon or Anglo-Celtic descent--are to be seen some of the finest men, physically considered, the race is capable of producing. Taller than their British-born brethren, with softer voices and more regular features, they inherit the powerful frames and unequalled muscular development of the breed. Leading lives chiefly devoted to agricultural labour, they enjoy larger intervals of leisure than is permissible to the labouring classes of Europe. The climate is mild, and favourable to health. They have been accustomed from childhood to abundance of the best food; opportunities of intercolonial travel are frequent and common. Hence the Anglo-Australian labourer without, on the one hand, the sharpened eagerness which marks his Transatlantic cousin, has yet an air of independence and intelligence, combined with a natural grace of movement, unknown to the peasantry of Britain.
An idea is prevalent that the Australians are, as a race, physically inferior to the British. It is asserted that they grow too fast, tend to height and slenderness, and do not possess adequate stamina and muscle. The idea is erroneous. The men reared in the cities on the seaboard, living sedentary lives in shops, banks, or counting-houses, are doubtless more or less pale and slight of form. So are they who live under such conditions all over the world. But those youngsters who have followed the plough on the upland farms, or lived a wilder life on the stations of the far interior, who have had their fill of wheaten bread and beefsteaks since they could walk, and snuffed up the free bush breezes from infancy, they are MEN.--
Stout of heart and ready of hand, As e'er drove prey from Cumberland;
--a business, I may remark, at which many of them would have distinguished themselves.
Take Abraham Lawson as he stands there in a natural and unstudied attitude, 6 feet 4 inches in his stockings, wide-chested, stalwart, with a face like that of a Greek statue. Take Billy May, fair-haired, mild, insouciant, almost languid, till you see him at work. Then, again, Jack Windsor, handsome, saucy, and wiry as a bull-terrier and like him with strong natural inclination for the combat; good for any man of his weight, or a trifle over, with the gloves or without.
It is curious to note how the old English practice of settling disputes with nature's weapons has taken root in Australia. It would 'gladden the sullen souls' of the defunct gladiators to watch two lads, whose fathers had never trodden England's soil, pull off their jackets and go to work "hammer and tongs," with all the savage silence of the true island type.
It is now about seven o'clock. Mr Gordon moves forward. As he does so, every man leans towards the open door of the pen in front of which he stands. The bell sounds! With the first stroke each one of the seventy men has sprung upon a sheep--has drawn it out--placed its head across his knee--and is working his shears as if the "last man out" was to be flogged, or tarred and feathered at the least. Four minutes--James Steadman, who learned last year, has shorn down one side of his sheep; Jack Holmes and Gundagai Bill are well down the other sides of theirs; when Billy May raises himself with a jerking sigh, and releases his sheep, perfectly clean-shorn from the nose to the heels, through the aperture of his separate enclosure. With the same effort apparently he calls out 'Wool!' and darts upon another sheep. Drawing this second victim across his knee, he buries his shear-points in the long wool of its neck. A moment after a lithe and eager boy has gathered up fleece number one, and tossed it into the train-basket, the shearer is halfway down the sheep's side, the wool hanging in one fleece like