I Completed The Loading Of My Dray On A Tuesday Afternoon In The Early
Part Of October, 1860, And Determined On Making Main's Accommodation-
House That Night.
Of the contents of the dray I need hardly speak,
though perhaps a full enumeration of them might afford no bad index to
the requirements of a station; they are more numerous than might at
first be supposed - rigidly useful and rarely if ever ornamental.
Flour, tea, sugar, tools, household utensils few and rough, a plough and
harrows, doors, windows, oats and potatoes for seed, and all the usual
denizens of a kitchen garden; these, with a few private effects, formed
the main bulk of the contents, amounting to about a ton and a half in
weight. I had only six bullocks, but these were good ones, and worth
many a team of eight; a team of eight will draw from two to three tons
along a pretty good road. Bullocks are very scarce here; none are to be
got under twenty pounds, while thirty pounds is no unusual price for a
good harness bullock. They can do much more in harness than in bows and
yokes, but the expense of harness and the constant disorder into which
it gets, render it cheaper to use more bullocks in the simpler tackle.
Each bullock has its name, and knows it as well as a dog does his.
There is generally a tinge of the comic in the names given to them.
Many stations have a small mob of cattle from whence to draw their
working bullocks, so that a few more or a few less makes little or no
difference.
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