 |
| Barcaldine Shearers Camp Library |
Women of the Bush
The bush wife's day was generally busy. She had to churn, hake bread, melt beeswax to mould candles, change the brine on the "salt junk., rub the bacon with saltpetre and sugar, smoke fish, gather eggs and scare the crows and hawks from the young poultry, besides cooking dinner and doing the ordinary housework. There are no statues erected to their honour, nor do their por-traits grace our national galleries, but memorials have been raised to many who deserved them less than the women of the bush.
Milestones and Foundations
The bush wife's day was generally busy. She had to churn, hake bread, melt beeswax to mould candles, change the brine on the "salt junk., rub the bacon with saltpetre and sugar, smoke fish, gather eggs and scare the crows and hawks from the young poultry, besides cooking dinner and doing the ordinary housework. There are no statues erected to their honour, nor do their por-traits grace our national galleries, but memorials have been raised to many who deserved them less than the women of the bush.
Milestones and Foundations
The London Dock Strike (1889) and the maritime upheaval (1890) were big factors in developing unionism in Queensland.
At the Shearers' meeting in Blackall (Q) in 1890, we discussed scheme for better organising, which the failure of the water siders had proved necessary.
Queensland, from the border to the Gulf, was mapped into divisions under the Australian Labor Federation proposals. Billy Lane was the author of the ambitious and comprehensive scheme, which would have been successful if the Shearers' Strike had not occurred in 1891 and if Lane had not evolved the idea of founding a new world in Paraguay, with good Australian unionists as his disciples.
He was at Blackall, but had not started to dream of Paraguay then. His "Organisation Manifesto" was read. The word "plebiscite" occurred in it a "newey" to us bushmen ... and when Bill Kewley, our Secretary, came to it, he pronounced it "plebiskite".
A Brisbane visitor whispered a correction and next time Bill made it "plebistick" and there was more whispering but good old Bill was as deaf as a post and called it "plebiscuit" for the rest of the day.
This was the first meeting at which I saw men carrying the works of Marx, Nordan, Gronlund, Henry George, Olive Schriener and the Fabians the literary leaven that was beginning to work "outback". I was one of the juveniles, having only recently "got my hands in wool" for the first time and was diffident about raising my voice amongst men who had handled fleeces long before I was born.
At the Shearers' meeting in Blackall (Q) in 1890, we discussed scheme for better organising, which the failure of the water siders had proved necessary.
Queensland, from the border to the Gulf, was mapped into divisions under the Australian Labor Federation proposals. Billy Lane was the author of the ambitious and comprehensive scheme, which would have been successful if the Shearers' Strike had not occurred in 1891 and if Lane had not evolved the idea of founding a new world in Paraguay, with good Australian unionists as his disciples.
He was at Blackall, but had not started to dream of Paraguay then. His "Organisation Manifesto" was read. The word "plebiscite" occurred in it a "newey" to us bushmen ... and when Bill Kewley, our Secretary, came to it, he pronounced it "plebiskite".
A Brisbane visitor whispered a correction and next time Bill made it "plebistick" and there was more whispering but good old Bill was as deaf as a post and called it "plebiscuit" for the rest of the day.
This was the first meeting at which I saw men carrying the works of Marx, Nordan, Gronlund, Henry George, Olive Schriener and the Fabians the literary leaven that was beginning to work "outback". I was one of the juveniles, having only recently "got my hands in wool" for the first time and was diffident about raising my voice amongst men who had handled fleeces long before I was born.
There were lots of simple things they did not know, but maybe they "builded better than they knew". I like to think that Time which tests all things and proves all men, proves that as the years go by. As we count the milestones on the road, it seems so to me, anyway.
Shearblade
I was supposed to ride the paddocks every day but after a while I went round them about once a week. The boss tumbled to my little game, though, saw the grass growing on the tracks along the fences, and gave me a hint about it. He said he paid me fifteen bob a week to watch the run, not to carve whip-handles and plait belts, or stay in the but reading Karl Marx and Edward Bellamy. I got level with him, though," said "Shearblade".
"After that, I mustered up a few old crocks that were in the paddocks and galloped them along the fences till they had worn a track like a Government road. You would have sworn I was riding it twice a day instead of about once a week.
Things went on fine for a while and I was about half way through 'Conventional Lies of Our Civilisation' when they laid the telephone from the head station to my hut. Of course I remembered not to answer it if it rang when I was supposed to be out on the run; but a fellow cannot always keep his brains brushed and I answered the call one day about 3 o'clock, and it was the boss himself, wanting to know what I was doing in the but at that hour of the day when I should have been on the fences. I did not wait for the sack. I left. I would not lower myself by working a day longer for a man who played such low-down tricks on me." "Shearblade" did not serve the whole of the last sentence impos-ed on him, a trifle of 14 years or so. The Duke of York (now King) was visiting us and he was released in order that he might join in the festivities . . . so he said.
No comments:
Post a Comment