After walking about a mile, I came upon a sheep station at Bullock creek, and got engaged to assist in sheep shearing. The station being only about ten miles from Bendigo where I had been digging, it was plain I had not come as the crow flies, nor by the beaten road. A portion of the building was in use as a tavern called “The Albert,” appropriately fronting which, at a distance of two or three hundred yards, was a small police station, where the few who would not suffer the many to get drunk quietly were taken care of—a great convenience to the landlord. The few shearers who had been collected meeting with old friends in one another, and in certain of the general company, seemed fast making themselves eligible for the lock-up, when I first made their acquaintance. Till they sobered, I was employed in a generally useful way in the garden and the horse paddock. The first of my service, however, was with a wheelbarrow, in the removal of broken bottles from the open space in front of the tap room door, thrown there by the frequenters of the place, in brick-bat practice at the trees, the skill thus learnt to be exercised when occasion came upon the constables. Before I left, a mounted trooper in attempting to lay hold of a suspected horse-stealer, had his head cut open by a heavy champaign bottle thrown by the thief, who was enabled thereby to remount the stolen animal and get away. The circumstance for a time put me off the notion of becoming a policeman, having an impression, the result of certain small casualties, that my skull was rather delicate, and hardly round enough for maximum resistance to flying bodies.

The shearers being quartered in a hut by the side of the creek, about a stone throw from the main buildings, I took up my abode there with them. The hut was roomy; the walls were formed of hard-wood slabs, split like huge laths from logs, and having been framed together when yet green, they had shrunk so much that the hand might have been passed edge-ways between any two of them. The roof was composed of great sheets of bark, and happily was rain-proof; there was no need of a window, and no shutting of the door could keep the draught out. Along the walls was a sparred bench of rude construction, on which the first comers had made their beds, the later arrivals having to be content with sheep skins on the floor. The fire-place was big enough to accommodate a sitter on each side within when the fire was low. There was a man to cook, and to attend to the house wants of the company.

Being among strange people, whose manner of living I had yet to get acquainted with, I sat up later than was agreeable to me waiting and wearying for my fellow-lodgers to come home, that I might see how they did about the sleeping. About midnight they came—a noisy multitude, full of brandy and “Old Tom.” Their coming freed me from a tedious and apparently endless recital of rheumatic and other ailments, under which the old cook—toothless, and bald, and bowed, was suffering: the poor man’s eyes watery and dim with age, seemed to brighten at the sympathy that notwithstanding a certain dulness in the subject, I could not help feeling for him. He had no home, and had wandered here like a thing driven by the wind, to die some day, and be reproached for the trouble he would give to those in whose hands he left his wasted body. About an hour or so after their arrival, the men prepared their beds, and I did mine on a bare place near the door, but was kept long awake on account of a few who restlessly kept staggering out and in, their heavy-booted limbs not always careful about where my legs were. I was too tired however to keep awake until the danger was quite past, and awakened in the morning with a great beef bone lying across my neck, thrown there by him who had been last gnawing it. These were the grosser inconveniences, there was another that I did not quite understand at the time I was first feeling it; however, on spreading my blankets in the morning on the fence, I got to know the secret—fleas. There was no use trying to catch them, even had I been inclined, so I contented myself with quietly looking on as they scoured away through the woolly fibres on being exposed to the light and the cool air, and I wondered whether instinct would guide them back to their kindred inside among the sheepskins and the dust.

On the morning of the third day the sheep shearing commenced, and the packing of the wool in bales became my work. The press consisted of a large box set on end, and without either top or bottom; the sides were detachable, and were merely clamped together when the pressing was being done. A strong coarse canvas bag, exactly fitting the inside of the box, was placed in it; the flaps that were to enclose the top end of the bale were turned over the sides and secured there, so that the bottom barely rested on the ground within. Throwing a few fleeces in and armed with a spade, I kept stuffing the wool that lay along the sides down between the bagging and the mass I stood on, until I made it somewhat solid, then more fleeces, and more stuffing, till I reached the top, which, on the flaps being sewn together, was packed by means of a short staff. I did feel proud when I managed to turn out a bale that had no soft spots in it, but my specimens on this first day were few, the shearers were out of condition, their wrists grew feeble, and their backs grew sore, and they adjourned to the tap-room for “a stiffener,” and I saw them no more till late at night, when they came down in a body to the hut bringing disorder and two strangers with them, also some liquor, which however, lasting but a short time, and their fierce humour inclining them to make “a night of it,” a select few were despatched to procure, if at all possible, no matter by what means, a five gallon keg of rum, as they could no longer satisfy themselves with drops in bottles; but the proprietor having an eye to his flocks, which before the public-house was started, had been his main stay, gave them instead a certain warning of police proceedings were the shearing any longer delayed on their account. Shearers were scarce, and consequently were disposed to stand upon their dignity, but these having been made debtors for “slop” goods, and for liquor supplied to them at the rate of twenty shillings a bottle, felt themselves on the wrong side of the law for showing airs, having no money to pay off the score, besides present thirst making them like very Esaus, they gladly for the sake of two bottles more agreed to the terms he now imposed on them. These bottles were soon drained dry as the others, on which the yet unsatisfied began to quarrel among themselves. One sang while the dispute was going on, and another, too drunk to stand, sat on the floor reciting doggrel verse, which he appeared to make as he went on, every now and again stopping to say that he was Fraser of Kilbarchan, and that everybody knew him.

I sat for about an hour by the side of the singer, his hands clasping mine, and his drunken breath blowing full in my face. I was delivered from him ultimately by a commotion taking place in the far end of the hut. During my distress, I had observed one of the shearers paying much attention to the elder of the two strangers, who were both becoming stupid with the liquor that had been given them, and had noticed him lead the man into a little place partitioned off from the main room, and containing bed benches. In a few minutes the shearer came gliding out, and passed through the open doorway into the outer darkness. The other followed with only his shirt on, and loudly muttering to himself, but in a few minutes returned, and, apparently more sober than before, commenced to gather his boots and clothes together. While so engaged he said something that appeared to touch the honour of the company, and raised a clamour of indignation at himself, an Edinburgh man called Jack, being so much overcome by it that he staggered out, and made his way to the police to complain of unjust accusation. I had gone outside, and stood leaning against the fence gratefully enjoying the cool night air, and the solemn quiet of the forest scene, when I heard a rustling of feet among the dry grass of the enclosure, and saw two figures stealthily approaching. I moved away, they came on then at a run, and leaped the fence, and were up with me before I reached the door—two constables. Shoving me roughly to one side, they entered with pistols cocked and ready in their hands, and asked for the man who had the complaint to make. The wrangling din was on the instant hushed to a dead stillness; the man was sitting by the fire with his face hidden in his hands. Some one pointed to him on the question being repeated, but as all he could be got to say, was simply “he knew,” the constables angrily turned him out of doors and left us. I then gathered from the hints that were dropped that his pocket had been picked of £40. The ill-looking rascal who had shown him so much attention, and who went by the name of “Brummie,” had returned during my absence at the fence, and was now standing with his back to the fire, but with his outer blue shirt off, no doubt with a view to prevent his victim recognising him. From the talk that followed I learnt that nearly all the company had been “Government men,” as convicts style themselves, and that the stranger in declining to inform the police of his loss, had but shown himself to be a good man and true, according to the notions of trueness held in common by his class—to regard the police as the common enemy, and to settle all private differences to the unwritten law of the fraternity. Jack was blamed for having brought the enemy upon them, but Brummie afforded him an opportunity of redeeming his character in this respect some few weeks after, by eloping with £5 belonging to him. He was very angry, called Brummie a mean sneak, declared he would never speak to him again, and then let the matter rest. Jack being a fellow countryman of mine, I made free to speak to him about what I had observed of Brummie, but got for reply a discreet hint to see as little as I could of what happened, and to keep my own counsel when I did see, as being a “square head,” that is one outside of their community, I would readily be suspected were tales told out of school.

During one of their drinking days I had found one of them, a Yorkshire man, asleep on the banks of the creek, close to the water’s edge, and had gathered him up, and taken him home to bed, and in the act of doing so I seemed to have roused him sufficiently to recognise me, and know what I was doing with him. After that, to the end of my stay among them, he never got warm with liquor but he retold the story to his mates, and hugged me in his arms, with vows that he would make a man of me after shearing was done, by taking me with him to the diggings; but “Philip drunk and Philip sober” appearing each to forget what the other had been doing, I formed my own plans for the future, and left him out. Philip drunk said that his wife Nancy—an old “government lady” I had every reason to believe—would be as good as a mother to me. I felt quite safe in agreeing to become her son, for I knew that Philip sober would put the matter right for me again next morning.

When I had been about three weeks at the shed, the men learnt from some passing travellers that shearers were in great demand at neighbouring stations—stations that had no public house attached to them—and that the rates of pay offered were far beyond what they were now receiving. Making application and being refused a rise on present rates, they left off working and adjourned to the tap-room, there to enjoy themselves and await the consequences. They were paid at so much the hundred fleeces, whereas my pay was fixed, thirty shillings a week with rations, much work or little. I did not think myself directly interested in the strike till Jack on coming down in the evening to the hut, rather unsteady on his legs, began to question me about what I meant to do. Recollecting I was a square head, I replied “Nothing.” He rose, called me a cur and nob, and said it was me and the like of me who were ruining the country, by playing into the hands of the masters; then seizing an empty bottle by the neck, he raised it and advanced a step to strike. A pang of fear shot through me, my heart beat quick, for I had seen the effects of a blow made with such a weapon, and I had just nerve enough and no more to retain my hands behind me, my back being to the fire, and fix my eye steadily on his. For a few moments we stood thus balanced. I could not have borne the suspense long, but held to it when I observed his arm relax a little. He could not hit me thus, the arm dropped by his side, and throwing the bottle from him with a muttered curse he staggered out of doors, and I heard no more of it. It was the only instance of personal violence offered to me, during the whole of my mixed wanderings in the colony, and the sorry impressions left upon my mind, became lost in gratitude some few months later, when seeking shelter from a storm, at an out station where the same man happened to be cook and hutkeeper.

Changes were frequently occurring in the working party. The high wages earned by the better classes induced many who had never shorn a sheep to offer their services, hoping that their unskilfulness would be winked at in the dearth of high-class hands. A hundred and twenty fleeces a day was reckoned good work for one pair of shears. We had several who shore sixty, a few eighty, and one or two a hundred, but the latter were often brought to task for “tomahawking,” or leaving ridge-and-furrow shear-marks. The learners—old government men like the others—seldom reached higher in the count than from fifteen to twenty, and let the poor animals go spotted sometimes from neck to tail with shear wounds. The superintendent was a humane man, but the flocks were sorely afflicted with the scab, and humanity had to choose between allowing the animals to linger with disease, or letting them smart for a short time with tarred holes in their pelts. The accidents of unskilfulness were overlooked, but when the bad workers, vexed with their own unhandiness, and the jeers of their abler comrades, began to let loose their passion on the wretched, restless animals by furtively digging the shear-points into their sides, and knocking their horns loose, it was thought high time to part with them. Thus dismissed, they might go no farther than the next station, get a little more practice there, and perhaps have learnt sufficiently before the season ended to make a fair start in the next. The talk in the shed and hut ran much in boasting about what each had been able to do in shearing before the diggings put their hands out of practice. It was good to see their pride honestly interested in this direction, but I fear there were many great lies told. After the shearing had been fairly commenced, I was much attracted by the appearance of two new-comers, who, during the rudely animated discussion in the hut, sat quietly smoking their pipes, seldom joining in with more than a chance comment, or a brief reply when asked to verify any assertion, more than usually extraordinary. The undisguised and avowed rascality of many of the others required but little study to understand, but those silent ones—hard-featured, sullen, with eyes ever stealing searching glances at the speakers—seemed undefinable. In the others, a kindly trait would now and again flash out in their outspoken lawlessness, but in these there seemed ever a dark spirit of evil brooding, all the more terrible because unknown.

Of the tales of old-hand doings that they told, I may briefly mention two. One was related as a piece of confidence from an absent comrade, the circumstance happening on “the Sydney side.” He had been for a year serving as shepherd at an out-station in the interior, and as such, was held responsible for the full number of sheep committed to his care. When the pay-day at the year’s end came, his employer deducted the value of two or three sheep he could give no account of except that they must have been killed and eaten by wild dogs. Muttering vengeance, he took his leave and stole by night to a fold in a distant station, where the sheep were under treatment for catarrh, killed one, cut its head off, and, under cover of darkness, returned to his late master’s, and threw it into the midst of the flock he had recently been tending. The sheep, after their first alarm was over, gathered about it with down-stretched necks to sniff and feel it with their noses. The disease was contagious, and the savage design took full effect, but before the discovery was made, the miscreant had taken himself out of reach. I could not detect any particular impression the story made upon the hearers, except in the case of one who appeared to have some old grudge festering in his heart, and who jerked out that “it would serve them bloody right if a lot more could have sheep’s heads thrown at them.” The other story, however, was the occasion of much laughter, being given by one of the actors in it. He was travelling with a comrade from Bendigo to Tarrangower. They were beginning to be foot-sore, when they overtook a “new chum” with a cart laden with stores for Bendigo. He had missed his way, and was going in the wrong direction. O’Brien, for so the man who told the tale was named, seeing his advantage at once on the youth making inquiries about the road, informed him that he also was bound for Bendigo, and would guide him there to the very spot he wanted, if he would give himself and comrade a lift for a few miles inside the cart. The offer was readily accepted. O’Brien had a bottle of strong brandy with him, and the young man was plied with it so well that when three hams that formed part of the lading were pitched out one by one down a bushy bank he neither saw nor heard. The two got out when about a mile from Tarrangower, pointed to some tents at a distance as his destination, then struck off through the bush, and towards dark, with the hams wrapped in the blankets at their backs, arrived among their comrades at the other end of the diggings from that the cart would reach. The story was well and circumstantially told. The youth’s simplicity, and the art used in ensnaring his attention when the hams were being thrown out, were declared by the company to be “as good as a play.” The transaction was looked upon not as a robbery, but as a first-rate practical joke, marred only by the two jokers having to absent themselves from the locality for a few weeks, on account of “the noise” the victim had made about it to the police.