SHEARIN’

After the gold diggin’ I did a lot of shearin'. Binangon sheep are so tall you need a ladder to shear 'em. And the mossies -  spare me days! The mossies are so big they eat the bullocks and pick their teeth with the horns. Hoop snakes are everywhere. Rollin' themselves into circles and bowlin' along the roads, racin' the cars. 

I was up in the bush at Binangon one day. Bit of a hill and hard slog. Just as I get to the top I almost fall over this bloody great snake layin’ in the sun. (The trees had been hinged down for the day). The thing rears up at me and I jump back and started runnin’ down the hill as fast as I could go. But this bloody snake just sticks its tail inside its mouth and comes rolling down the hill after me! Lucky I managed to grab an overhanging branch on the way down and haul meself up into the tree, But that hoop snake was goin’ so fast by then, he couldn’t stop. Just kept on rolling down the hill into the creek and drowned.

What do you mean ‘is it true’? Course it’s true. If that hoop snake hadda got me I wouldn’t be here tellin’ youse about it, would I now?’ Cripes!

When I was shearin’ I met a bloke called himself 'Crooked Mick'. Big bastard 'e was. They used ter kill two steers to get enough leather to make him a pair of shoes. And strong. He swung an axe in each hand when 'e was cuttin' fence posts. 

Course, I was just that bit stronger and faster than ol' Mick. Oh, 'e was flashy all right - shearin' so fast that his blades had to be cooled in water. That kind of cheap trick. But I had it all over him with the shovel and the crowbar when we was fencin' - one in each hand. Saved a lot of time that did.

And the tales 'e used ter tell! Once 'e reckoned 'e 'ad a job stonin' the crows. Binangon was chocka with the bloody things. So Mick works away at this job for weeks, pickin' up rocks and 'urlin''em at every crow in sight. In the end there was only one crow left and Mick 'ad bin tryin' to kill 'im fer some time, but 'e just couldn't hit the bastard, 'e was too quick and smart. Eventually, in a fit of rage, Mick picked up the biggest rock he could find and chucked it at the last crow. The rock just missed the crow and landed over in the territory. They call it Ayer's Rock now – or Uluru.

That was the sort of yarn you 'ad to put up with from Mick. 'E wasn't a bad sort of a bloke, but ' e did go on - and on. There was another one 'e used to tell about ‘ow 'e captured a willy-willy and  made it run some bloke's windmill faster. And once 'e chopped a whole limestone mountain into building blocks in one week flat. Then there was the time 'e shot a dingo, a roo and a wild pig with the one bullet - 'ad a little bit of trouble linin' the three of 'em up, though', 'e used ter skite.

Once Mick reckoned ‘ewas out huntin' pigs. Suddenly one came straight at him out of the scrub. 'I didn't have time to fire', Mick says,  'I just jumped for the first branch of a tree. It must have been forty feet up - 'but I missed it. Luckily, though I caught it on the way down'.

I had to leave after a while though. I couldn't stand any more of Mick's skitin'. Anyway, I was shearin' so many a day that they were all complainin' there was no work for anyone else. 

Not sure what happened to old Crooked Mick after that. I seem to remember 'earin' somewhere that he died - swallowed one of his own bloody yarns, I shouldn't wonder.