U3A Writing: A Sheepish Experience
Imagine five hundred sheep, scuffling and disturbing fogs of red dust which hung for hours in the still, hot air... Astra Warren, writing with humour and a keen eye for detail, brings us a wonderful account of her first experience of mustering sheep.
We can look forwards to more reading treats. Astra will be bringing us further episodes of her life as a governess on a remote Australian sheep station.
I was working on a sheep station. My official position was governess, but station life being a community effort, my activities included anything from assistant cook to watering the garden or nursemaiding orphaned lambs and kangaroos.
Major events or crises meant that everyone was recruited: local
aboriginal families, children, dogs, and even the governess.
One of the regular happenings was moving sheep, either to new
grazing paddocks, or for shearing, or drenching, or crutching, and the more bodies to help, the better.
As new recruit to the game, I usually had the job of walking up
behind the mob and closing the gates. The dogs had the rearguard, chivvying and snapping at laggard sheep, and I was the rear rearguard.
Besides, that was the lowliest place: you have to imagine perhaps five hundred sheep scuffling and disturbing fogs of red dust which hung for hours in the still, hot air. It must have been entertaining to see this lady of a certain age trying to retain some dignity while red dust thickly coated her sweat and sunblock soaked skin from hair
to boots.
One particularly hot afternoon, we almost had the sheep safely in the yards after a trying slog across the paddocks. The dogs were patrolling the back of the mob squeezing the last rank of woolly bodies through the opening.
I was waiting, poised to close the gate, when an old wether turned and
looked at me balefully.
Now, one of the gems of wisdom I had picked up, was that when a
sheep made eye contact, it was going to break away and charge. So I braced myself. This was my chance, my redeeming moment, my
opportunity to display a fearlessness that would immortalize my
name as the byword for courage.
The sheep charged for the wild blue yonder.
I leapt, hooked my fingers into the neck wool and felt as though I had hit a brick wall.
I was dragged through the dust perhaps thirty metres before the dogs came back, turned the runaway and effortlessly put it through the fence.
Painfully I picked myself up and closed the gate.
Nobody cheered or applauded or waved an Akubra. Not even a "Good on yer, mate."
Later, in the shower, I discovered that I was black and blue down one side of my body.
At dinner, as I wincingly eased into my chair, still nobody said a word.
But ever after that, whenever a sheep broke away, there would be a laconic call. "Here's another one for you, teacher!"
