Alexander Vindex Vennard (1884-1947), collected yarns, ballads and anecdotes about bush life, which were published for about twenty-five years in a regular column 'On the Track' for the "North Queensland Register" and "Townsville Daily Bulletin". He adopted the pseudonym 'Bill Bowyang' after the straps buckled over trousers below the knees.
The New Shepherd
By "Bill Bowyang."
Written in 1922.
The New Shepherd
By "Bill Bowyang."
Written in 1922.
The manager of a Western station recently told me the following yarn:
He engaged a discharged sailor to take charge of a large flock of sheep, and explained to him that all he had to do was to keep them on the run and not allow them to wander into neighbouring property. At the end of a couple of hours the manager rode across to see how the sailor was doing. The air was thick with dust as though a thousand head of cattle had passed by. At last he distinguished the form of his new shepherd — a collapsed heap prone upon the ground.
Surrounding him were the sheep, a pitiful huddled mass, bleating plaintively, with considerably more than a week's condition lost. "What the dickens have you been doing to those sheep?" he shrieked. The ex-sailor managed to gasp out, "Well, I've done my best. You told me to keep them on the run, and so I hunted them up and down, and round — and now — I'm just dead beat myself."
Sources:
He engaged a discharged sailor to take charge of a large flock of sheep, and explained to him that all he had to do was to keep them on the run and not allow them to wander into neighbouring property. At the end of a couple of hours the manager rode across to see how the sailor was doing. The air was thick with dust as though a thousand head of cattle had passed by. At last he distinguished the form of his new shepherd — a collapsed heap prone upon the ground.
Surrounding him were the sheep, a pitiful huddled mass, bleating plaintively, with considerably more than a week's condition lost. "What the dickens have you been doing to those sheep?" he shrieked. The ex-sailor managed to gasp out, "Well, I've done my best. You told me to keep them on the run, and so I hunted them up and down, and round — and now — I'm just dead beat myself."
Sources:
- On the Track. (1922, February 2). Townsville Daily Bulletin (Qld. : 1907 - 1954), p. 2.
- The shepherd, c. 1850s, Samuel Thomas Gill, Dixson Library, State Library of New South Wales
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