#The Australian Stockmen

[sandboxworld]

Checking out Jack’s Saloon Vaudreuil, Billy K’s and Time Out Market for LeBurger Week

By Mike Cohen and Tony Medeiros Le Burger Week concludes its 13th edition on September 8. Mtlrestop visited three locations for tastings: Jack Saloon in Vaudreuil, and Billy K’s on Ste. Catherine Street East, and the Time Out Market Montreal at Eaton Centre downtown. Each year, Le Burger Week brings together restaurants from coast to coast to celebrate Canada’s dynamic culinary landscape.…

[whats-in-a-sentence]

In The Cry for the Dead, her fine, early account of the squatter invasion, the poet Judith Wright wrote of whites driven mad for revenge by Hornet Bank and by the fear that it marked the start of a general uprising:

Arrivals from English families . . . rode out beside their own stockmen and shepherds in days and nights of bloodshed which spared no Aboriginal camp. It was not . . . a very long war, but it was a thorough one, though it went largely unrecorded. In scraps of reminiscence written down long years later, men recalled the great bottle-tree around whose trunk dozens of Aborigines were handcuffed, to be killed off at leisure; the swamps into which others were driven, the mountains where they stood at bay to be killed. Pearse Serocold and his party roped together a dozen or more men, led them into open country, and let them loose to run as moving targets for the carbines.

"Killing for Country: A Family History" - David Marr

[connectparanormal]

Ghosts in the Australian Outback

There are many mysteries and legends about the Australian Outback, which has huge, rough landscapes. One of the most common is about ghosts. Ghost stories and stories about spirits, passed down through generations, thrive in the haunting beauty of the outback. These stories include both Aboriginal and modern folklore, making for a rich tapestry of supernatural lore. Outback ghost stories are based on Aboriginal people's stories. The stories of Indigenous Australians reveal a strong cultural bond with the land. A lot of Aboriginal stories are about ancestral ghosts that roam the land. These are called dreamtime beings. People often perceive these spirits as protectors of sacred sites, and their manifestation demonstrates the interconnection between the spiritual and physical realms. In some stories, ghosts guide and protect their children and grandchildren, while in others, evil beings bring adverse luck to people who don't respect the land.

One of these stories is about the Min Min lights, which are strange balls of light that show up out of the blue in the night sky. Many people believe that these lights represent the spirits of ancestors helping the living or warning them of danger. Aboriginal people and non-Indigenous locals have both seen the Min Min lights, which adds to their status as a cross-cultural event. People who have seen the lights are filled with awe and wonder because they are difficult to catch on camera and disappear quickly. For example, stories of ghostly meetings in the outback continue to change over time, combining old beliefs with new experiences. Each story about a haunted farm, a ghostly stockman, or a ghostly traveler has its own twist. The outback's loneliness and emptiness make these stories seem even more real, and the wide, empty spaces let the mind run wild. Harold Lasseter is believed to have discovered the ghost of Lasseter's Reef, a lost gold mine, in the early 1900s, according to a well-known modern myth. Lasseter said he had found a lot of gold in the desert, but he died before he could say where it was. In the years since, many treasure hunters have gone into the bush to find the legendary reef, but they have all come back empty-handed. Some people say they saw Lasseter's ghost wandering the desert looking for his lost money. People say the ghost serves as a warning of the harshness of the outback. The ghost of the stockman, often seen riding at night and feeling his presence in the cool desert air, is another old story. People think that these ghostly stockmen are the spirits of drovers who died while pulling cattle across the rough terrain. People say their ghosts continue to travel through time, symbolizing the resilience of those who once lived in the outback.

Ghost stories from both the past and the present show how the bush is a unique mix of beauty and danger. Because the land is so big and isolated, it's hard to tell the difference between the living and the dead, which makes for interesting and strange stories. People tell these stories to stay connected to the land and to each other, as well as to keep alive the cultural traditions of those who have traveled the vast outback. The ghosts of the Australian bush, whether they are ancient spirits or modern phantoms, show how appealing this remote area still is. They capture the imagination by telling a story that goes beyond culture and time, reminding us of the mysteries we still don't fully understand. The outback will always be an untamed wilderness, and its ghost stories will continue to scare and excite people who go there.

[panukkie2]

hm so a few months ago o had this idea for a merlin au loosely based of the man from snowy river (1982) where camelot is a small town in the australian bush and uther is the owner of a large ranch and merlin is an apprentice horse doctor studying under gauis (who works for uther). morgana lives with uther and arthur (i havent decided if its revealed that shes his sister or not yet) ,, gwens father is a farrier so shes around the ranch a lot but she doesnt directly work for the pendragon household :]

this was basically just an excuse to everyone as aussie victorian stockmen,,

also i thought about giving everyone aussie nicknames bc it would be cute ,, like arthur -> artie , merlin -> murray or merrie ,,, mostly bc i always see people use merls as a nickname for merlin (idk i just dont find it rolls off the tongue that well sorry xx)

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"Despite Stephen’s rhetoric advocating impartiality, he already had a history of strong bias when it came to proposing how to treat Aborigines in the Australian penal colonies. Born in the West Indies on 20 August 1802, Stephen was educated in England where he read law. He set sail for Van Diemen’s Land in 1824 where he took up the position of Solicitor General. Stephen’s arrival in Van Diemen’s Land coincided with a marked increase in conflict between Aboriginal people and colonists known as ‘the Black War’ (1824–31). In 1830, Lieutenant Governor George Arthur approved a quasi-military operation, ‘the Black Line’, to round up all the remaining Aboriginal people in Van Diemen’s Land and corral them down Tasman’s Peninsula.

At a public meeting held in Hobart Town on the eve of the Black Line, Solicitor General Stephen made an extraordinary statement regarding the island colony’s original inhabitants. Prefacing his remarks by claiming that he was speaking as a private citizen, Stephen reasoned that as Aborigines were waging war upon the colonists:

you are bound to put them down. I say that you are bound to do, in reference to the class of individuals who have been involuntarily sent here, and compelled to be in the most advanced position [convict stockmen in remote areas], where they are exposed to the hourly loss of their lives. I say … that you are bound upon every principle of justice and humanity, to protect this particular class of individuals, and if you cannot do so without extermination, then I say boldly and broadly, exterminate!

It is remarkable that a man in Stephen’s profession and position in colonial society was willing to go on the public record, albeit as a private citizen, advocating the extermination of Aboriginal people.

While Stephen was Solicitor General in Van Diemen’s Land, an Aboriginal woman was murdered at Emu Bay while being pursued by some colonists. When Lieutenant Governor George Arthur sought Stephen’s advice about whether to prosecute, the Solicitor General claimed that there was confusion over whether common law or martial law prevailed at the time. He opined a trial ought not to be held because it could ‘result in indiscriminate murders under Martial Law, or, if Common Law were held to run, colonists would hesitate before going out in Capture-Parties, when a death might very well bring them to the gallows’. The alleged murderers were never brought to trial.

Stephen’s opinions on how to treat Aboriginal people extended beyond Van Diemen’s Land. In the mid-1840s, an Aboriginal prisoner Koort Kirrup was in Melbourne Gaol for sixteen months. He was charged with murdering station owner Donald McKenzie and his shepherd at the Portland Bay district in 1842. The man was unable to stand trial because of the lack of an interpreter. The Chief Protector of Aborigines for the Port Phillip District George Augustus Robinson and Assistant Protector William Thomas raised concerns in relation to Kirrup’s lengthy incarceration. Colonial officials in Melbourne were also worried, as it was illegal to hold prisoners for lengthy periods without trial. Stephen proposed a solution to the dilemma: hang Koort Kirrup! Stephen showed no compunction in advocating the extermination of an Aboriginal man allegedly involved in attacking colonists. However, his advice was ignored and Kirrup was released from gaol.

How then, would the Aboriginal inmates in Maitland Gaol fare under a colonial judge with a history of proposing extermination as a solution to colonists’ ‘Aboriginal problem’? At the time of the Aboriginal defendants’ trials, the circuit courts were newly constituted in New South Wales. Circuit courts were expected to deliver considerable benefits to outlying regions. It would take far less time and money to access justice. Landowners would no longer have to send their servants to the cities to bear witness where they could be tempted by vice. Local juries could better appreciate local contexts. And punishments delivered locally were thought to have a great impact on local populations who could view the events rather than hearing about them days later.

Most of these anticipated benefits did not apply to Her Majesty’s Aboriginal subjects. Appearing before local juries in situations charged with emotional intensity and heightened by frontier conflict further disadvantaged Aboriginal defendants. When the seven Aboriginal defendants were put on trial in Maitland in September 1843, rumours were circulating that twelve or thirteen white men had been massacred by Aborigines. At the same time, an abundant harvest was on the verge of being reaped. With a heightened fear of potential losses of life and property, local settlers were unlikely to form an unbiased jury."

- Kristyn Harman, Aboriginal Convicts: Australian, Khoisan and Māori Exiles. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2012. p. 88-92.

[dato-georgia-caucasus]

Damper is a thick homemade bread traditionally prepared by early European settlers in Australia. It is a bread made from wheat-based dough. Flour, salt and water, with some butter if available, is lightly kneaded and baked in the coals of a campfire, either directly or within a camp oven.

Damper was utilised by stockmen who travelled in remote areas for long periods, with only basic rations of flour, sugar and tea, supplemented by whatever meat was available. It was also a basic provision of squatters. The basic ingredients of damper were flour, salt, and water. Baking soda or beer could be used for leavening if available, but traditionally it was an unleavened bread. Damper was eaten with dried or cooked meat or golden syrup.

Damper is an iconic Australian dish. Other cultures have similar versions of hearth breads, and versions of soda breads are made in camping situations in many parts of the world, including New Zealand and the United Kingdom.

The bread is different from bush bread, which has been made by Indigenous Australians for thousands of years and was traditionally made by crushing a variety of native seeds, nuts and roots, mixing them into a dough, and then baking the dough in the coals of a fire.

[newsbites]

News from Australia, 11 June.

Saturday saw the anniversary of the massacre at Myall Creek. The massacre was the most infamous atrocity of the frontier wars, in which 11 stockmen killed at least 28 Wirrayaraay people, including women and children.

The massacre led to the first convictions and executions of white men for the murder of Aboriginal people in Australian history, and marked a turning point in the recognition and protection of Indigenous rights under British law.

2. South Australia will allocate an additional $216 million to its child protection system in the upcoming state budget.

The funding will cover the cost of caring for children not in family-based settings and provide new support measures, including investments in early intervention and better support for families and carers.

The government also committed $9m to allow training providers to invest in new infrastructure, equipment, and technology to address skills shortages.

3. Homelessness rates have fallen in Melbourne's inner suburbs, but are increasing in Victoria's west due to tight rental markets and lack of service providers.

[ovisiphorus]

I read that at one point during the Buffalo Bill show Europe tour, they were in Italy doing their rodeo and round up tricks and stuff and the Italian cowherds (I forget what they’re called, but they’re functionally similar to cowboys) weren’t impressed and challenged Bill’s crew to a bet and the Italian cowherds won. I’m not sure this is true, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it were.

[mybeingthere]

Peter Mungkuri, Australian, b 1946, Language: Yankunytjatjara/Pitjantjatjara

Art Centre: Iwantja Arts, Indulkana.

“I was born in the bush near Mimili, me and my mum and father had no clothes, and were living traditional way. One time some fella came with cattle for branding; that wati (man) was the first white person I ever saw. I never went to school, my school was riding horses, learning to brand and break them in. All us tjilpi (old men) used to be stockmen, we went everywhere working together; Mimili, Kenmore Park, Granite Downs, all over the place, every station; we had a good time working and didn’t worry about other things. We had a whole herd of horses, back then we were all cowboys. These things, and everything here, is my memory – my knowledge, I like to paint the memories of my country.”

https://www.apyartcentrecollective.com/peter-mungkari

[javen-tiger]

The first national project to record mass killings on the Australian frontier has found that around half of all massacres of Aboriginal people were carried out by police and other government forces. Many others were perpetrated by settlers acting with tacit approval of the state.

The final findings of the eight-year long Colonial Frontier Massacres Digital Map Project show that conflict was widespread and most massacres were planned, in a deliberate attempt to eradicate Aboriginal people and Aboriginal resistance to the colonisation of the country.

. . .

The most common excuse for a massacre was as a reprisal for the killing a colonist, and the number of people killed was heavily disproportionate. The death of one colonist could result in police-led revenge expeditions that lasted weeks or months. Researchers found that attacks on settlers, while often referred to in historical documents as the reason for a killing, often took place after the alleged “killing of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people, abduction and sexual abuse of women, or livestock’s use of hunting grounds and water”.

. . .

Massacres classified as “opportunity” were the second most common. Most of these attacks were planned, not random clashes, and many had government involvement or were carried out in the knowledge that there would be no formal repercussions.

A significant number of massacres took place to “teach the natives a lesson” after the theft of livestock – evidence of the conflict over land, water and resources between settlers and the Aboriginal people they were systematically displacing.

. . .

Emeritus professor Lyndall Ryan, who led the project, said that stockmen in the NT commonly operated under the orders of big pastoral companies.

“Particularly after 1860, it is becoming clear that most of the massacres are being conducted by employees of major companies who are bankrolling these big pastoral leases, or mining leases,” Ryan said.

“These companies have more money to arm their employees with good firearms to go out and do their work. It’s not the small selector who’s killing Aboriginal people, it’s these big companies who have experienced overseers, experienced stockmen, to patrol and contain the Aboriginal people.”

. . .

“The newspapers have been an extraordinary source of evidence. What is most interesting about the newspapers is people from northern Australia . . . would write to the Argus or the Age or [other metropolitan papers] and tell them what was going on. So people in Melbourne knew what was going on.

[regardingjenmish]

On the topic of Jensen’s clothing choices on Australia we have a boot company called RM Williams and I think Jensen would really appreciate them because a) they’re good quality boots and they’re high end and used to be and sometimes still are used by farmers or stockmen (Australian version of a cowboy)

I had to go check and i agree! Someone needs to send a link to Jensen right now so that he can buy them and match them with his cute lil outfits! It’s definitely something he’d wear.

[blueboyluca]

The Hall’s Heeler

So, Thomas Hall created his heeler by crossbreeding the family working cur with the dingo. He would then have selectively bred his dogs until they were displaying all the physical attributes and working traits needed.

As in any breeding program, there would have been unsuitable specimens, and he obviously culled ruthlessly. Yet he achieved his ideal type in quick time. By 1830, Thomas Hall had his heeler, the first successful working dog created in Australia.

Hall’s breeding program had produced a medium-sized brush-tailed dog with a rectangular dingo appearance. It was simply the acclimatised dingo, with the cur’s working-dog wiring. From the dingo, Hall’s heelers inherited cunning, high intelligence, resourcefulness, perfect adaptation to the environment, and a tireless, economical gait.

From the cur, the heeler inherited a powerful work ethic, and the skill of heeling – darting in a crouch behind an uncooperative beast and biting it on the hock of the beast’s weight-bearing leg. The heeler also inherited the courage to confront wild cattle front-on, snapping at their heads to turn them around, usually heeling them on their way. But with the boss it was very willing to please. It had the cur’s natural suspicion of strangers and the cur’s protective devotion to its master, his stock, plant, and property.

Hall’s heelers had a protective double coat that was all dingo. It consisted of a fine, dense, insulating undercoat, and a longer, weather-proof outer coat. At first it retained the dingo’s red colouring, or a red speckled or mottled variant, with a red undercoat that had solid red patches. But it was the cur’s blue colouring that eventually appeared with regular back-crossing. This back-crossing to the cur would have been necessary to strengthen the working instinct in the Hall’s heeler. It would eventually produce the occasional tailless dog, but in the early years they were a rarity.

The cur’s blue colouring ended up predominating because of Hall’s selective breeding, and an obviously strong preference for a non-dingo-coloured dog. His dogs were mottled, speckled or agouti (blue and white hairs evenly intermingled), with or without black patches. They often had tan markings down the legs, on the chest, inside the ears and under the tail, just like the marking patterns found on black and tan dogs.

The Timmins Biter

The Hall stockmen had been using Thomas Hall’s heelers at Weebollabolla and the adjoining Bulleroo Station since 1832, and there is no question that Jack Timmins was aware of them. But it is not thought that he acquired Hall’s heelers until, at the age of fifty-five and with George Pitt’s assistance, he took possession of Rocky Holes Station near today’s Warialda. This was in 1871, the year after Thomas Hall’s death, when Hall’s heelers became available to the Halls’ former competitors.

Timmins had bred and worked bobtails at Kurrajong and was known to be a great dog man. Like everyone else stuck with the bobtails, he would have been acutely aware of their shortcomings. After the failures of his father’s red bobtail, Hall’s heelers would have been a revelation to him.

At some stage Timmins must either have bred or acquired one or more tailless heelers. It was from this tailless stock that his reputed line of Hall’s heelers, the Timmins biters, was developed.

Timmins biters were like Hall’s heelers in every respect. Today, their descendants the stumpy-tail cattle dogs are a slightly more squarish dog like their cur ancestors. Timmins’s selective breeding produced a different strain that bred true to type and reliably produced tailless dogs, though tailed dogs are not unknown in tailless lines.

The Australian Cattle Dog

Despite its isolated development and a century of populist misinformation... the origins of the Hall’s heeler and the subsequent divergence of the Timmins biter are now clear. While the identity of the British dog that contributed to the Hall’s heeler was open to distortion, no one has ever doubted that the native progenitor of those mighty breeds is the dingo. In fact, for cattle-dog enthusiasts and other Australians in the know, the dingo’s contribution has always been something to be proud of. It is the world’s unique wild-dog redemption story.

It’s the greatest pity that the story wasn’t told until the last years of the twentieth century. And it wouldn’t be a dog man, but one of Australia’s great dog women who smelled a rat and finally created the impetus for the real story to be told.

It took three decades of scouring British, colonial and Hall family records, and collaborating with historians and family members in Australia and Britain, to uncover the real story of the Hall’s heeler. The research covered the Halls’ original properties in the Hawkesbury region, their expansion into the Hunter Valley and north into Queensland, the bobtail, the red bobtail, the Timmins biter and the Timmins family.

⁠— The Dogs That Made Australia by Guy Hull (2018)

[trekkitkat]

Okay, Imagine this. Hugh Jackman and Cate Blanchett, in Kingsman 3.

Eggsy and Harry end up working with Australian spies on a mission.

Like Kingsman 2 had the American spies. Jackman and Blanchett are agents for the Australian superspy agency.   Their HQ is disguised as a store called Stockade and agents are referred to as Stockmen. Just imagine these two gorgeous badasses chasing down a villain through Sydney on motorbikes or something. And the whole thing is just outlandishly Australian with the accents and clothes and one of them can have a bullwhip as a signature weapon.

Bonus if Eggsy is adorably fanboying over Jackman.

[farnwidetravel-blog]

Australian Workers Heritage Centre Barcaldine QLD

Centenary of Labour Movement, 1891 – 1991, Bicentennial Celebration Theatre

We were thinking we would fill in a couple of hours, but the Queensland Workers Heritage Centre, deserved much more. We could have spent more than four hours wandering through this comprehensive coverage of Australian workers through their unions and organisations from the late 1880’s to the turn of the twentieth century.…

[justdyingslowly]

Australian cowboys are called Stockmen, Jackaroos and Jillaroos. I just want everyone to know that fact.

[hwheat2021]

June 17-18 Buntine Hwy

We veered east off Duncan Road onto the Buntine Hwy which was named after Noel Buntine who established a livestock transportation business known as Buntine Roadways in the 1950s in northern Australia. Everyone has heard the stories and seen the pictures of the amazing ‘road trains’ (and us!) that run across the dry, hot and barren Australian Outback, but few know how it all got started up here. A woman of course! A delivery specialist Agnes Buntine, a famous female bullock driver in the late 1800s set the stage for her great-great-grandson Noel Buntine who was one of the original road train pioneers of the mid-1900s, when the trucks replaced the bullock teams.

Anyway here we were traveling this route with our cubby-on-wheels! It was awesome looking around at the countryside and knowing how remote we were - even with Hema Maps who don’t always get it right. Hahah! Long dirt roads bordered by dense grasslands - and here and there cattle.

Our second night out of Halls Creek we camped near a water bore and were welcomed by cattle calls as well as the loud chatter of birds around the bore reservoir. And then we were heading for Kalkaringi, an historic place.

Kalkaringi. It was here in 1966 at what was then known as Wave Hill, that Vincent Lingiari led 200 aboriginal stockmen and their families who walked off Wave Hill Cattle Station in protest against the work and pay conditions. Their lands, Gurindji country, had been ‘occupied’ by British settlers 80 years earlier resulting in the destruction of their water and food sources and livelihoods, that period also saw a number of massacres and killings, children stolen and other abuses by the early colonists.

The group walked some 30 km from Wave Hill Station to Wattie Creek where they stayed in protest for 9 years. After years of advocating, Vincent Lingiari eventually achieved what he set out to do for his people. In 1975 Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam, ‘handed-back’ the land to the Gurindji people.

At the time the Gurindji strike was taking place in Australia, the worldwide civil rights movement was in full swing. Many of us remember that Martin Luther King Jr and Nelson Mandela, but the history of the Indigenous Australian civil rights movement and its heroes, like Vincent Lingiari, is still largely unknown in our country. The tyrant of silence!

We were supposed to check in at the police station here but they were out visiting remote communities so I just left my number in case they wanted to contact us. So interesting chatting with the people there. These are the people on their own country, Gurindji, and English is their second language. Lovely people and a humbling experience.

But then we were on sealed roads albeit single lane but wahoo! It seemed a little luxurious until someone came twd us and they’re not slowing down or getting off the tarmac. The edges were a little treacherous with jagged hungry toothed-bitumen drop offs waiting to chomp unwary tyres.

And we reached Top Springs an the intersection between the Buntine and Buchanan Hwys where we stayed the night. A delightful little oasis and we could have a shower - sheet heaven! Probably should have stayed a couple of days. This is the intersection of the Buntine and Buchanan Hwys. Well of course we’re coming back. Amazing coincidence at the pub, we were served by a German couple we had met at Henbury Meteorite Craters weeks ago!

It’s a vast region and quite lovely driving through savanah country - pretty Turkey Bush, big blowsy Kapok flowers and Mulla Mulla. Despite this being the Buntine Hwy it is gazetted at the Coolibah Stock route. This stock routes cross-cross the country.

And then we reached Victoria Hwy which runs between Katherine and the Great Northern Hwy in WA. The traffic was unnerving and for us not pleasant touring.