Shearing in the Riverina, New South Wales | Page 9

Won't the shearers growl! No shearing to-day, and perhaps none tomorrow either." Truth to tell, Mr Bowles' sentiments are not confined to his ingenuous bosom. Some of the shearers grumble at being stopped "just as a man was earning a few shillings." Those who are in top pace and condition don't like it. But to many of the rank and file--working up to and a little beyond their strength--with whom swelled wrists and other protests of nature are becoming apparent, it is a relief, and they are glad of the respite. So at dinner-time all the sheep in the sheds, put in overnight in anticipation of such a contingency, are reported shorn. All hands are then idle for the rest of the day. The shearers dress and avail themselves of various resources. Some go to look at their horses, now in clover, or its equivalent, in the Riverina graminetum. Some play cards, others wash or mend their clothes. A large proportion of the Australians having armed themselves with paper, envelopes, and a shilling's worth of stamps from the store, bethink themselves of neglected or desirable correspondents. Many a letter for Mrs Leftalone, Wallaroo Creek, or Miss Jane Sweetapple, Honeysuckle Flat, as the case may be, will find its way into the post-bag tomorrow. A pair of youngsters are having a round or two with the gloves; while to complete the variety of recreations compatible with life at a woolshed, a selected troupe are busy in the comparative solitude of that building, at a rehearsal of a tragedy and a farce, with which they intend, the very next rainy day, to astonish the population of Anabanco.
At the home-station a truce to labour's "alarms" is proclaimed except in the case and person of Mr de Vere. So far is he from participation in the general holiday that he finds the store thronged with shearers, washers, and "knock-about men," who being let loose, think it would be nice to go and buy something "pour passer le temps." He therefore grumbles slightly at having no rest like other people.
"That's all very fine," says Mr Jack Bowles, who, seated on a case, is smoking a large meerschaum and mildly regarding all things, "but what have you got to do when we're all HARD AT WORK at the shed?" He speaks with an air of great importance and responsibility.
"That's right, Mr Bowles," chimes in one of the shearers, "stand up for the shed. I never see a young gentleman work as hard as you do."
"Bosh!" growls de Vere, "as if anybody couldn't gallop about from the shed to the washpen, and carry messages, and give half of them wrong! Why, Mr Gordon said the other day, he should have to take you off and put on a Chinaman--that he couldn't make more mistakes."
"All envy and malice, and t'other thing, de Vere, because you think I'm rising in the profession," returns the good-natured Bowles, "Mr Gordon's going to send 20,000 sheep, after shearing, to the Lik Lak paddock, and he said I should go in charge."
"Charge be hanged!" laughs de Vere, with two very bright-patterned Crimean shirts, one in each hand, which he offers to a tall young shearer for inspection. "There's a well there, and whenever either of the two men, of whom you'll have CHARGE, gets sick or runs away, you'll have to work the whim in his place, till another man's sent out, if it's a month."
This appalling view of station promotion rather startles Mr Jack, who applies himself to his meerschaum, amid the ironical comments of the shearers. However, not easily daunted or "shut up," according to the more familiar station phrase, he rejoins, after a brief interval of contemplation, "that accidents will happen, you know, de Vere, my boy-- apropos of which moral sentiment, I'll come and help you in your dry-goods business; and then, look here, if YOU get ill or run away, I'll have a profession to fall back upon."
This is held to be a Roland of sufficient pungency for de Vere's Oliver. Everyone laughed. And then the two youngsters betook themselves to a humorous puffing of the miscellaneous contents of the store: tulip-beds of gorgeous Crimean shirts, boots, books, tobacco, canvas slippers, pocket-knives, Epsom salts, pipes, pickles, painkillers, pocket handkerchiefs, pills, sardines, saddles, shears and sauces: in fact everything which every kind of man might want, and which apparently every man did want, for large and various were the purchases, and great the flow of conversation. Finally, everything was severely and accurately debited to the purchasers, and the store was cleared and locked up. A large store is a necessity of a large station; not by any means because of the profit upon goods sold, but it obviously would be bad economy for old Bill, the shepherd, or Barney,