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Updated: June 23, 2025
Two of my puppets lay there a summer's day, hearkening to the shearers at work in riverside fields and to the drums of the gray old garrison upon the neighbouring hill. And this was, I think, done rightly: the place was rightly peopled and now belongs not to me but to my puppets for a time at least. There is another isle in my collection, the memory of which besieges me.
There are bonâ fide German names which no man of refinement cares about repeating, except in a shearers' hut or a gentlemen's smoking-room. "Shadowed you chaps," remarked Stevenson, replying to the bullock drivers' look of inquiry. And he also applied himself to the kindling of a small fire.
Swags were rolled up, saddle-bags packed, horses had been rounded up and driven in, the shearers' cook and his mate had had their fight, and about a hundred men shearers, rouseabouts, and wool-washers were waiting round the little iron office to get their cheques. We were about half through when one bushman said to another: "Stop your damned swearin', Jim. Here's Peter M'Laughlan!"
"You can't send a bloke up on th' say so of a Missin' Link," he said. "You can't put a monkey in the witness box t' swear a man's character away." "I don't know," said the Professor. "That's a delicate point of law, but we may as well have a word with the constable about it." The shearers didn't stay to take part in the consultation with the constable Professor Thunder had not expected them to.
The smaller ranches still shear by hand, for it does not pay to run a power plant unless you have large flocks." "I suppose a power plant does the work quicker," suggested Donald. "No, I think good shearers can clip the fleeces almost as fast. The chief advantage in machinery is that it takes the wool off closer, and you do not need such skilled men to do the work.
Some shearers would roughly call her "a squatter's girl". But she "drew"; she was handsome where women are scarce very handsome, thought a tall, melancholy-looking jackeroo, whose evil spirit had drawn him to Stiffner's and the last shilling out of his pocket.
But the sand of the little isle was sun-warm, the green plants gave us shelter for our heads, we had food and drink in plenty; and to crown all, we were within sight of safety. As soon as the shearers quit their work and the dusk began to fall, we waded ashore and struck for the Bridge of Stirling, keeping to the fields and under the field fences.
The messenger had therefore been sent to summon the Temecula shearers, and Senora had resigned herself to the inevitable; piously praying, however, morning and night, and at odd moments in the day, that the Father might arrive before the Indians did.
Shearing had finished the day before, but there was a black boy and a station-hand or two about the yards and six or eight shearers and rouseabouts, and a teamster camped in the men's huts they were staying over the holidays to shear stragglers and clean up generally. Old Peter and a jackaroo were out on the run watching a bush-fire across Sandy Creek.
Of other care they little reckoning make, Than how to scramble at the shearers' feast, And shove away the worthy bidden guest; Blind mouths! that scarce themselves know how to hold A sheep-hook, or have learn'd aught else, the least That to the faithful herdman's art belongs! What recks it them? What need they?
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