Pastoral Australia: Fortunes, Failures & Hard Yakka: A Historical Overview 1788-1967

By Michael Pearson and Jane Lennon

Pastoral Australia tells the story of the expansion of Australia's pastoral industry, how it drove European settlement and involved Aboriginal people in the new settler society.

The rural life that once saw Australia 'ride on the sheep's back' is no longer what defines us, yet it is largely our history as a pastoral nation that has endured in heritage places and which is embedded in our self-image as Australians.

The challenges of sustaining a pastoral industry in Australia make a compelling story of their own. Developing livestock breeds able to prosper in the Australian environment was an ongoing challenge, as was getting wool and meat to market. Many stock routes, wool stores, abattoirs, wharf facilities, railways, roads, and river and ocean transport systems that were developed to link the pastoral interior with the urban and market infrastructure still survive. Windmills, fences, homesteads, shearing sheds, bores, stock yards, travelling stock routes, bush roads and railheads all changed the look of the country. These features of our landscape form an important part of our heritage. They are symbols of a pastoral Australia, and of the foundations of our national identity, which will endure long into the future.

• Language: English
• Publisher: CSIRO PUBLISHING
• Release date: Apr 27, 2010
• ISBN: 9780643102132

Book preview

PASTORAL AUSTRALIA

FORTUNES, FAILURES

and HARD YAKKA

A historical overview 1788–1967

Michael Pearson and Jane Lennon

CSIRO PUBLISHING in association with

the Department of the Environment,

Water, Heritage and the Arts

and

the Australian Heritage Council

2010

© Commonwealth of Australia 2010

All rights reserved. Except under the conditions described in the Australian Copyright Act 1968 and subsequent amendments, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, duplicating or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. Contact CSIRO PUBLISHING for all permission requests.

Every effort has been made to trace and acknowledge copyright. The publishers apologise for any accidental infringement and welcome information that would rectify any error or omission in subsequent editions.

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data:

Pearson, Michael.

Pastoral Australia : fortunes, failures

and hard yakka : a

historical overview 1788–1967 /

Michael

Pearson, Jane Lennon.

9780643096998 (pbk.)

Includes index.

Bibliography.

Agriculture – Australia – History

Australia – History.

Lennon, Jane

630.994

The paper this book is printed on is certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) © 1996 FSC A.C. The FSC promotes environmentally responsible, socially beneficial and economically viable management of the world’s forests.

Published by

CSIRO PUBLISHING

150 Oxford Street (PO Box 1139)

Collingwood VIC 3066

Australia

in association with the Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts

Set in ITC Century Edited and indexed by Aedeen Cremin Cover and text design by Andrew Rankine, Atypica Typeset by Andrew Rankine, Atypica Printed in China by 1010 Printing International Limited

CSIRO PUBLISHING publishes and distributes scientific, technical and health science books, magazines and journals from Australia to a worldwide audience and conducts these activities autonomously from the research activities of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO). The views expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent those of, and should not be attributed to, the publisher or CSIRO.

Cover images

Wool clip leaving Chillinup Station, WA, in the 1920s.

Little had changed in transportation since the start of grazing.

SLWA 001078D

Road trains in outback Queensland, in 2002. The diesel prime mover and multiple trailers became the dominant mode of stock transport after World War II.

SLQld, Image no. 5809-0001 -0080, picqld-2006- 09-19-16-39

Authors:

Michael Pearson is a consultant historical archaeologist and heritage conservation planner with over thirty years’ experience in NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service, the Australian Heritage Commission, and as head of Heritage Management Consultants. He is Deputy Chair of the ACT Heritage Council, and Adjunct Professor of Cultural Heritage Management at the University of Canberra, and has nearly 100 published articles and books.

Jane Lennon is a heritage conservation planning consultant with over thirty years’ experience in Victoria’s Department of Conservation and Environment, Australian Heritage Commission and as an Australian Heritage Council member. She has published extensively and is currently a member of the Queensland Heritage Council and an adjunct professor at the Cultural Heritage Centre for Asia and the Pacific at Deakin University.

CONTENTS

Foreword

Authors’ Preface

Acknowledgements

List of Abbreviations, Acronyms and Contractions

Note on Measurements

Introduction

Chapter 1. Genesis 1788–1830

The creation of a wool industry

Expansion to the south and west

Market forces on the Australian industry

Adapting the Merino

Summary

Chapter 2. Boom, Bust and Gold 1830–1860

Climbing onto the sheep’s back

Depression and boiling down

Summary

Chapter 3. After the Gold Rush: An Evolving Industry 1860–1890

Changes across Australia

Transportation

Meat processing

The best stock for Australia

Summary

Chapter 4. Consolidation and Expansion 1860–1890

Optimistic expansion in New South Wales

Victoria: stabilisation after the gold rush

South Australia and Tasmania

Western Australia: the slow starter

Queensland: separation, boom, gloom and consolidation

The Northern Territory: the new frontier

Summary

Chapter 5. Depression and Drought 1890–1915

Advance and retreat in New South Wales

Queensland: depression, drought and recovery

The Northern Territory: two decades of stagnation

Western Australia: the pace quickens

Mixed fortunes: Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania

Summary

Chapter 6. Maturity and the Golden Years 1915–1967

A national overview

Transportation

Twentieth-century consolidation in the south-eastern states

Queensland: from drought to the golden years

The Northern Territory under the Commonwealth regime

The growth of Western Australia

Summary

Chapter 7. Afterglow: Pastoralism into the Twenty-first Century and the Heritage of Earlier Centuries

Endnotes

Bibliography

List of pastoral stations mentioned in the text

Index

Maps:

Spread of pastoral settlement across south-eastern Australia

Ludwig Leichhardt’s journey to Port Essington 1844–45

Early long-distance stock routes

Spread of rabbits

North Australia, expansion of pastoral settlement

Queensland stock routes

Boxes:

The Australian Agricultural Company

A Saxony saga

The shepherd

The Overlanders

Water in a dry land

From shearing shed to woolshed

Shearing and the shearer

Droving

Wool stores

Establishing Bowen Downs station, Queensland

The sheepdog and the cattle dog

Artesian miracle

The Never Ever?

Erldunda station, Alice Springs district

Whims and windmills

Rabbits

Wellshot: ‘one of Australia’s great sheep stations’

Waltzing Matilda

Bush culture

The stockman

Woolwashing and woolscouring

Haddon Rig

Walers

Country Women’s Association

Centrefold: Time line of Australia’s Pastoral Industry

FOREWORD

Pastoral Australia outlines the little-known story of the expansion of the pastoral industry across Australia. Pastoralism was a major impetus for the modern settlement of the continent. It played a key role in establishing a national psyche (as well as many national myths) and had widespread implications for the landscape.

The challenges of sustaining a pastoral industry in Australia make a compelling history of their own. In recording that history, the authors reveal the connection between meeting the challenges and the evolution of a distinctively Australian approach to life.

Our pastoral story is often forgotten and obscured now that Australians increasingly live in urban areas and on the coastal fringe: the bush is far removed from where most of us spend our lives. The rural way of life that once saw Australia ‘ride on the sheep’s back’ no longer defines us; yet it is largely our life as a pastoral nation that has endured in heritage places and which is carried in the mythology of what it means to be Australian.

While in ecological terms it is not long since the first livestock were introduced to Australia, their impact has been profound. The endeavour of developing livestock able to prosper in the Australian environment met with many obstacles, but Australia quickly became, and remains, the leading producer of fine fibre wool in the world. The gains and losses experienced by those who established the pastoral industry are traced in this book through the vagaries of handling sheep, cattle, horses, camels, and bullocks, all of which were introduced to sustain a growing nation.

The country still bears the vestiges of the many droving routes to metropolitan sale yards, wool stores, abattoirs, wharf facilities, railways, roads, and river and ocean transport systems. They were developed to link the pastoral interior with the urban and market infrastructure needed to distribute the pastoral product. Windmills, fences, homesteads, shearing sheds, bores, stock yards, travelling stock routes, bush roads and railheads all changed the look of the country. These features of our landscape, as much as the vast interior itself, form an important part of our heritage. They are symbols of pastoral Australia and of the foundations of our national identity.

This book was commissioned to provide a historical context for nominations to the National Heritage List. It draws on many published works to present this, from the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788 up until 1967, when the award of equal wages to Aboriginal pastoral workers caused major changes in this industry in outback Australia.

The Australian Government continues to support the places in Australia which have heritage value. I am pleased to present this comprehensive account of Australia’s pastoral history. It is a fascinating aspect of our national heritage, and one which deserves wider recognition by those interested in who we are and where we have come from.

Peter Garrett

Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts

AUTHORS’ PREFACE

This work is based on a report commissioned in 2006 by the Australian Department of the Environment and Heritage. The authors were invited to provide the historical context for the selection and assessment of places of heritage value to the nation relating to the theme of ‘pastoralism’, which refers to grazing cattle and sheep on large areas of land. A major emphasis of the book is therefore the geographical spread of pastoralism and the places that relate to it.

This does not pretend to be a broad social history of pastoralism, nor is it an environmental history of the impacts of pastoralism, although it highlights the history of relationships Australians have had with the land as explorers and squatters, Indigenous workers in the industry from the pioneering days, pastoral workers, mercantile companies, writers and artists. It is a framework for the main storylines and trends, and illustrates some of the places which represent the Australian pastoral story.

Fundamentally, it is about the pastoral industries as the force that impelled the spread of modern human settlement across Australia. In that process, pastoralism created the setting for the modern environment beyond the coastlines expressed in today’s maps of Australia. It examines the spread of stock and their keepers across natural grasslands and watercourses, the development of distinctive Australian breeds through trial and tribulation, the dependence on seasons and markets, the evolution of technology and transport across the long paddocks of Australia. This overview history is based on published sources, a rich selection. But it has been difficult to find material on all our storylines and themes for the different pastoral districts during different periods. There is a need for more regional histories illustrating the vital interplay between stockmen, their workers, water sources, environmental impacts and the socio-economic responses of this interplay.

Pastoral history until the 1950s was the central component of the general history of Australia, which was said to ride on the sheep’s back. Pastoralists had long developed their own form of history-making, writing reminiscences, biographies, family and station histories, and featuring their grand estates in the Pastoral Review. But pastoral history has been subjected to the winds of reinterpretation blowing through Australian history since the 1970s with the role of workers, women, Aboriginal–White relations, environmental degradation and repair being highlighted. Nevertheless, pastoral Australia and the outback retain a treasured place in the Australian imagination and provide the foundations for Australian legends.

Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge the help of Alan Ives in Canberra, and Peter Forrest in Darwin. At the Department of Environment and Water Resources we thank staff Janine Cullen, Frances Murray, Peter Mitchell, Kirsty Altenburg and Robert Bruce for their assistance over the years. Research benefited from the help of the staff of the Petherick Reading Room, National Library of Australia. As peer reviewers, Ian Jack, Peter and Sheila Forrest and Alistair Paterson provided constructive comments on the draft. We are very grateful for the preparation work for publication by Erin Tucker, Laura Back and Juliet Ramsay, along with the editing by Aedeen Cremin and the design and layout by Andrew Rankine.

The following institutions and individuals are gratefully acknowledged for granting permission to produce their images: the National Library of Australia, National Archives of Australia, CSIRO Publishing, State Library of Tasmania, State Library of NSW, Australian Heritage Photographic Library, State Library of Victoria, J.S. Battye Library of West Australian History, University of Queensland Press, Museum Victoria, University of New England, State Library of South Australia, Northern Territory Library, Alexander Turnbull Library, Noel Butlin Archives Centre, Marj Kibby, Text Publishing, HarperCollins Publishers, Steve O’Connor, Nicholson Cartoons, Australian Workers’ Union, National Portrait Gallery, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Charles Massy.

List of Abbreviations, Acronyms and Contractions

Note on Measurements

Distances are given in both miles and kilometres, depending on the source and context. Where the conversion of miles to kilometres is not given, 1 mile equals 1.609 kilometres.

Land area is given variously in acres and hectares. 1 acre is equal to 0.405 hectares. A square mile is equal to 259 hectares.

Weight is given in pounds (lbs) and kilograms. 1 pound is equal to 0.4536 kilograms.

INTRODUCTION

This book is about ‘pastoralism’, the spread of cattle and sheep across the continent of Australia, and the resultant wealth it brought to the settler society. It is about tentative beginnings, the breeding of animals suited to the new, largely arid, environment, and the history of droughts, pests, and economic boom and bust. It is also about the role of pastoralism in shaping the nation, supporting the spread of settlement, providing wealth that was fed into other areas of economic development, and forging an identity shared and valued by many Australians today.

Pastoralism became the economic mainstay of Australia. Wool has been Australia’s single most significant product. Wool exports replaced whale and seal products as the staple for the colonies by 1835 and while the massive returns from gold mining in the 1850s and 1860s swamped wool export earnings during the gold rushes, wool had regained its premier position by 1871 and stayed there. Wool exports during the period of this survey (1788–1967) peaked in 1951 when wool represented 65% of Australia’s total exports (excluding bullion and specie), and about 131 million sheep were being grazed, about 15% of the world total, producing nearly 30% of the world’s wool clip.¹ However, 1951 was an aberrant year in what otherwise was a reasonably stable rate of exports through the 1950s and 1960s, the real boom years coming in the late 1970s and 1980s. While wool was predominant, the cattle industry at that time was producing up to 700,000 tons of meat annually, about a quarter of it for export.²

Pastoralism reflected most of the pressures and influences forming the Australian nation. It is a pervasive creative force that has permeated almost everything that has happened in Australia since 1788. It was a driver of settlement expansion across the country and an underwriter of general prosperity. The rural population, engaged primarily in pastoralism, agriculture and mining, has always been male dominated, an Australia-wide trend, with the adult male population gradually falling from 80% of the total in 1800 to 50% by 1947. The history of pastoralism is therefore dominated by male stories. The importance of the pastoral industry in the development of the Australian identity, from a twenty-first century perspective when the vast majority of Australians live in towns and cities (92.7% in 2005), might appear difficult to understand. But the dominance of the urban population is a relatively recent phenomenon: in 1861 over 60% of the population lived outside the towns, and by 1900 30% were still living on the land.³ So stories of the pastoral life were closer to the life experiences of the nineteenth-century population than they are today, and had a dominant role in defining the national image, much of which we have inherited.

The stories of pastoralism are populated by a large cast of players who have their own stories that can only be touched on here: Aboriginal people resisting invasion, then taking on new roles as rural workers; convicts assigned to an alien environment to help build a new industry; free settlers trying to adapt Old World techniques to Australian conditions; entrepreneurs building massive pastoral empires; women assisting – and sometimes competing – in pastoral enterprise and trying to raise families in harsh conditions; stockmen, bore-drillers, cameleers, bullockies, shearers, truck drivers, rabbiters, travelling merchants, railway navvies and many others providing the labour and infrastructure that supported the pastoral endeavour.

Tens of thousands of places are associated in one way or another with the stories told here. There still exist places that reflect major themes and retain key features of those stories. Some of these icons of our rich and fascinating pastoral history will be discussed in the pages that follow.

1. GENESIS 1788–1830

Looking at the long history of the supremacy of wool it is hard to envisage the tiny and tentative seeds that gave rise to today’s massive pastoral enterprise. European settlement of Australia before the gold rushes of the 1850s was slow and halting, the non-Indigenous population of the various Australian colonies reaching 5200 by 1800, 33,600 by 1820, and 70,000 by 1830. To put this into perspective, that’s about the size of today’s population of Herberton in north Queensland, Dubbo in western New South Wales, and Bendigo in Victoria, respectively, spread across the entire continent. Over the same period sheep numbers grew from the First Fleet’s cargo of 28 to well over a million by 1830, while cattle numbered over 370,000 by 1840.

The creation of a wool industry

The first sheep to arrive on Australian soil with the First Fleet in 1788 were not the Merinos we know today, but ‘Cape’ sheep acquired at the Cape of Good Hope. About 70 of these odd-looking fat-tailed sheep were landed in Sydney, but few survived. A small shipment of Cape sheep landed by HMS Gorgon in 1791 made up for the losses, but by November that year there was still only one ram, 50 ewes and six lambs in the colony.⁴ A slow trickle of Cape sheep continued to arrive, and in 1792 the ship Atlantic landed sheep from Bengal. Like the Cape sheep, the Bengals had a hairy-woolled fleece, with a fine wool underfleece and long hair outerfleece, but they were a more useful sheep for Australian conditions and wool growing. They often gave birth to twins, a trait embedded in the Australia flock to this day. Also in 1792 the explorer George Vancouver, then on a survey expedition on the north-west coast of America, sent the store ship Daedalus to New South Wales with some coarse-woolled Spanish sheep from California aboard. Four survived and were subsequently used in breeding.⁵

Cape fat-tailed sheep, an early type brought into the colony of New South Wales.

NAA A1200, L23315.

Some Irish sheep also arrived and settlers such as John Macarthur and Edward Elliott began cross-breeding from this ragtag collection of types. Governor Phillip distributed most of the government’s sheep to settlers when he left the colony in 1792, and by 1794 there were 49 rams and 59 ewes in the government flock and 161 rams and 257 ewes in private hands, almost all of them of hairy Cape or Bengal breeds.

Like the sheep, cattle were a rare commodity in the new colony. The government herd was protected from slaughter, due to its small size. David Collins reported that two animals were killed in January 1793, only the third time cattle had been killed for fresh beef. Collins also reported that a single cow in calf had sold for £80, a large amount at the time. However, natural increase had its effect and by 1803 the government herds, including the wild cattle in the Cowpastures area, descended from early escapees from the government herd, numbered 1530, with a further 650 owned by settlers. New blood arrived from time to time, such as the landing of 162 head of cattle from India in 1795 and 53 from the Cape in 1797. But in 1804 an epidemic which may have been foot-and-mouth disease first appeared, killing many beasts, especially in the private herds.⁶

As with the sheep, the cattle represented any animal that those aboard the early ships could acquire on their way to New South Wales. The original breed brought on the First Fleet was the Zebu from the Cape of Good Hope. Indian Bengal cattle were introduced in 1791, landed from HMS Gorgon. On 8 August 1804 the first substantial consignment of imported cattle reached Hobart Town from India, the Lady Barlow landing 139 cows, one bull and 60 oxen. These were supplemented early in 1805 when Governor King sent 622 cows to Port Dalrymple, Tasmania’s second settlement. These were again mainly of the Bengal breed, and described as being ‘buffalo like’, but by 1807 many breeds were represented in the colonial herds, including Longhorn, Ayrshire, Shorthorn, Red Norfolk and Polled Dun Suffolk.⁷

Both cattle and sheep were viewed as a meat supply, along with goats which were also being raised for milking.⁸ Sheep of British breeds (Southdown, Teeswater, Leicester and Lincoln) were slowly added to the pool of Cape and Bengal mutton flock during the first two decades of the colony.⁹ Wool production only became a serious prospect after 1796, when Governor Hunter sent Captain Waterhouse (in the Reliance) and Captain Kent (in the Supply) to the Cape of Good Hope for much-needed provisions, including cattle. The Dutch Military Commander of the Cape, Colonel Robert Gordon, had committed suicide after the British had taken over the colony by force in 1795, and his widow was selling off his flock of Spanish Merino cross-breed sheep before departing the Cape.¹⁰ Several officers acquired sheep; five rams and seven or eight ewes made it back to Sydney alive, and were sold to a number of buyers, including John Macarthur, the Rev. Samuel Marsden and Thomas Laycock.¹¹

‘Spanish or Merino ram from Loudon’s Agriculture’. Image from Hobart Almanack for the year 1832.

SLTas

AUTAS001126077155.

While better quality sheep were in high demand, they were hard to get. The major source of fine wool used in European textile production was the Spanish Merino breed. Spain guarded its control of the Spanish flock, but breeding stock had been taken to Saxony (in present-day Germany), which became the primary source for British mills, and several breeders in Britain gained access to the breed, either from Spanish stock via royal gifts or from the Saxon stock. A few visionaries in the New South Wales colony saw a future for Merino sheep in Australia. Governor King (1800–06), had an interest in wool growing, having acquired his own Spanish breeders, and sent off the first identified parcel of export wool, eight fleeces, to Britain in October 1800. These were inspected and classed by Joseph Bank’s wool expert Henry Lacocke, and found to include very good wools.

This set the scene for the open reception given to John Macarthur’s ideas for an Australian wool industry, aired when he visited Britain from December 1802 and leading to a public inquiry by a Committee of the Privy Council on Trade and Plantations. Macarthur and Walter Davidson, who accompanied Macarthur back to Australia, were provisionally granted 7000 acres between them at Cowpastures, south of Sydney, to encourage their wool-growing endeavours; Macarthur also bought breeding stock from King George’s Spanish Merino flock at auction in August 1804, acquiring seven rams and three ewes for £150. Five rams and one ewe survived the return voyage to Australia in 1805 and were pastured at Macarthur’s Elizabeth Farm at Parramatta.¹²

Elizabeth Farm, built in 1793 for John Macarthur. Photographed in 1946.

NAA A1200: L7578.

More Merino blood found its way into the colony during the first decade of the 1800s. The early breeding took one of two lines: Macarthur’s pursuit of ‘purity’ and fineness of wool and sheep, and Samuel Marsden’s pursuit of cross-breeding for robustness to suit the Australian environment. The latter became the more successful formula.¹³ However, the breeding for wool was still the enthusiasm of a few, and poor breeding control was common among other growers, who were still focused on meat production.

After Macarthur’s return to the colony in 1805 he took up the 5000 acres promised him at Cowpastures, naming them Camden Park. He made the first export of saleable wool