“I’m a drover, right? I move the cattle from A to B. Allright, I work on commission. No man hires me; no man fires me. Everything I own I can fit in my saddlebag, which is the way I like it.” So spoke The Drover, the character portrayed by Hugh Jackman in the film Australia. His words conjured up a staunchly independent spirit befitting the image of men whose long-distance droves of cattle and sheep were instrumental in opening up the outback for European settlement.1
The first drove over a distance of more than 300 miles took place in 1838, when Joseph Hawdon and his men drove 340 bullocks from Howlong, New South Wales to Adelaide, South Australia, an overland distance of about 750 miles.2 Before the trip, Hawdon wrote: “Towards the end of last year (1837) I determined on making the arduous experiment of driving cattle, for the first time since the colonization of New Holland, from Eastern to Southern Australia, an undertaking which, for a private individual relying upon his own resources, was generally considered rash and Quixotic. But so strongly was I impressed with the conviction of the inestimable advantages which an overland intercourse must secure to both Colonies, that I resolved to brave the toil and danger, formidable as they appeared, of ascertaining whether such an intercourse was practicable.”3
Canning Stock Route in Western Australia (© Vilis Nams)
The literate Hawdon discovered that it was indeed ‘practicable’ to move stock overland for great distances, and thus began the legendary Australian droves comparable to the long-distance cattle-drives of western North America. Stock routes were established, the most famous being the Canning Stock Route in Western Australia, the Murranji Track connecting Western Australia with Queensland, and the Birdsville Track linking Queensland with South Australia.4 Of these, the Canning Stock Route – part of which ran through Cunyu Station, where Vilis and Janis assisted in a biodiversity study in May and June – was reputed to be the most dangerous and loneliest.5 It was certainly the longest and, at 1781 kilometres, is the world’s longest historical route for droving livestock.6
Drovers typically began their careers by apprenticing as teenagers with an established drover until they acquired the necessary knowledge, experience, and money to buy their own ‘droving plant.’7 This consisted of 20 to 30 horses, saddles, and a drover’s cart – a four-wheeled wagonette equipped with tents, cooking equipment and supplies, swags, horse-shoeing equipment, and pegs and calico strips for making a ‘brake’ or impoundment for sheep.8 A boss drover hired a cook, a horse-tailer whose job it was to care for the horses, and about five riders to move the stock.9 The crew slept in tents while on the trail, took cut lunches and tea billies with them for the midday meal,10 and linked up at the night camp, the cook and horse-tailer having travelled independently of the stock.10 They endured heat, rain, dust storms, electrical storms, and the dangers of crossing rivers or stopping a ‘rush’ or stampede.11 They crossed deserts and tea tree swamps, spending weeks or months – sometimes a year12 – drovinig stock to market, to the property of a new owner, or to better grazing in times of drought.13 “Droving is a rough life and your meals are mostly meat and damper with an occasional brownie,” Nat Fazulla is quoted as saying in Douglas Harris’s slim book Drovers of the Outback.14
When droving sheep, a drover was paid an agreed-upon amount per day, whereas cattle drovers signed contracts agreeing to deliver a specified number of stock to a specific destination for a specified price. Both were required to pay for lost animals or show the tagged ears of stock that had died on the trip.15
At night camps, both sheep and cattle were guarded, with the sheep always held in a brake – an impoundment constructed by pounding pegs into the ground and stringing a calico strip around the pegs.15 A mob of cattle was soothed and watched over by drovers who circled the mob in shifts during the dark hours.15 Night was the time when dingoes, wild pigs or even kangaroos could cause pandemonium in the brake and incite the sheep to go ‘hell, west and crooked.’16 And night was the time when fearful cattle could most easily be spooked into a rush, perhaps by the cries of awakened cockatoos, a horse’s sudden movement, or the sight of sparks from the campfire.17
With the advent of railways, trucks, and road trains, droving declined greatly by the 1960’s, but the drover is not entirely gone from the Australian landscape. In times of drought, stock may be overlanded along the Travelling Stock Route (TSR), which is essentially an outback road having fences set farther back from the road than usual and extra-wide grassy verges for stock to graze.18
While researching this topic, which was inspired by the movie Australia and its handsome hero, I particularly enjoyed reading snippets related by drovers interviewed by Douglas Harris for his book. Take for example Lawrence Jones, who commenced his career at the age of twelve by droving eighty turkeys for ten days with his cousin, his droving cart a little wagon pulled by goats.19 Or consider Dave Burnett, who once overlanded a mob of cattle that included a car-chasing bull, and who possessed a pet swan that rode beside him in his truck.20 And then there was Roy Finch, who traded jobs with the cook for a few days, but got fed up with the cook’s carpet python, which rode under the wagon seat during the day in a sugar bag and slithered over the drovers’ beds during the night. One morning, he cut the snake’s head off and used a stick to push the entire length of that python down a rabbit burrow, afterward feigning innocence and telling the cook the snake had escaped from its bag.21
References:
1. H.M. Barker. Droving Days. 1994. Hesperian Press, Carlisle, Western Australia, p. 1; 2. Ibid, pp. 8-10.
3. Quoted in: H.M. Barker. Droving Days. 1994. Hesperian Press, Carlisle, Western Australia, p. 6.
4. Douglas Harris. Drovers of the Outback. 1982. Globe Press, Brunswick, Victoria, Appendix; Wikipedia. Drover (Australian). Updated 1-Aug-2010. Accessed 19-Aug-2010. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drover_(Australian)
5. Wikipedia. Drover (Australian). Updated 1-Aug-2010. Accessed 19-Aug-2010. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drover_(Australian)
6. Wikipedia. Canning Stock Route. Updated 1-Aug-2010. Accessed 19-Aug-2010. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canning_Stock_Route
7. Harris, Introduction.
8. Barker, p. 1; 9. Ibid, pp. 1-2.
10. Harris, p.15; 11. Ibid, pp. 2, Introduction; 12. Ibid, pp. 1,2, 17, 24.
13. Wikipedia. Drover (Australian). Updated 1-Aug-2010. Accessed 19-Aug-2010. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drover_(Australian)
14. Harris, p. 82; 15. Ibid, Introduction; 16. Ibid, Introduction and pp. 26-28; 17. Ibid, Introduction and p. 17.
18. Wikipedia. Drover (Australian). Updated 1-Aug-2010. Accessed 19-Aug-2010. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drover_(Australian); Wikipedia. Stock route. Updated 28-Jul-2010. Accessed 19-Aug-2010. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stock_route
19. Harris, p. 1; 20. Ibid, p. 74; 21. Ibid, pp. 61-62.
