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Updated: June 1, 2025
They enter the shed white and flossy as newly combed poodles to emerge, on the way back to their pasturage, slim, delicate, agile, with a bright black A legibly branded with tar on their paper-white skins. The Anabanco world stiffish but undaunted is turning out of bed one morning. Ha! what sounds are these? And why does the room look so dark? Rain, as I'm alive.
In twelve months the dams were full, the wells sending up their far-fetched priceless water, the wire fences erected, the shepherds gone, and 17,000 sheep cropping the herbage of Anabanco.
Let us give a glance at the small army of working-men assembled at Anabanco one out of hundreds of stations in the colony of New South Wales, ranging from 100,000 sheep downwards.
Lest the reader should imagine that the role of Mr Gordon at Anabanco was a reign of luxury and that waste which tendeth to penury, let him be aware that all shearers in Riverina are paid at a certain rate, usually that of ONE pound per hundred sheep shorn. They agree, on the other hand, to pay for all supplies consumed by them at certain prices fixed before the shearing agreement is signed.
The 1400 bales, averaging three and a half hundredweight, are distributed, slow journeying, along the road, which they mark from afar, standing huge and columnar like guide tumuli, from Anabanco to the waters of the Murray. Between the two points there is neither a hill nor a stone.
It may easily be gathered from this outline what an 'army with banners' is arrayed at Anabanco. Carriage of wool 1500 pounds. Other hands from 30 pounds to 40 pounds per week. All of which disbursements take place within from eight to twelve weeks after the shears are in the first sheep. Tuesday comes "big with fate."
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.
All is the vast monotonous sea of plain at this season a prairie-meadow exuberant with vegetation; in the late summer, or in the occasional and dreaded phenomenon of a DRY WINTER, dusty, and herbless as a brickfield, for hundreds of miles. Silence falls on the plains and waters of Anabanco for the next six months.
Billy May has shorn 142, and he puts his hand on the five-foot paling fence of the yard and vaults over it like a deer, preparatory to a swim in the creek. At dinner you will see them all with fresh Crimeans and Jerseys, clean, comfortable, and in grand spirits. Next morning is settling-day. The book-keeping departments at Anabanco being severely correct, all is in readiness.
"Shearing commences to-morrow!" These apparently simple words were spoken by Hugh Gordon, the manager of Anabanco station, in the district of Riverina, in the colony of New South Wales, one Monday morning in the month of August. The utterance had its importance to every member of a rather extensive "CORPS DRAMATIQUE" awaiting the industrial drama about to be performed.
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