Con the Bastard and His Gang
Struth, who'd be a shearer.
For the previous month I had broken my back along with the others in Con the Bastard's shearing gang in the wool shed at Boonoke. It was a huge property, one of Rupert Murdoch's indulgences and it ran over two hundred thousand merinos. It was so big they once lost a flock of two thousand sheep and had to take the plane up to find them. Even then it took two hours of aerial surveying to locate them and call the drovers in. The mustering and holding yards were each big enough to house the Royal Easter Show and when we pulled up in Gummy Smith's old truck that first day the air was so full of dust the drovers had tied handkerchiefs over their mouths. They whistled and yipped at the dogs, driving them almost insane with excitement. The dogs were running along the fence rails and over the sheep's backs with their tongues lolling out. It was better than a circus.
There were twenty of us in the shearing gang. I'm the ringer, the gang's gun shearer. I'd worked with most of them before in previous seasons, so it was easy to fall into a routine. You need a routine when you're shearing because it's the only thing that keeps you sane. It's a pig of a life, spending ten hours a day crouched over sheep with sweat in your eyes and your back so cricked you think you'll never straighten up. But like the great Banjo Paterson said, it's better than being an office worker and, to tell the truth, not one of us would swap the life for anything.
We'd just finished two weeks shearing at Hightrees and had driven all night to make it on schedule in Deniliquin. None of us had had any sleep when we pulled up at Boonoke, but that didn't stop Con going straight in to see Bill Stokes, the manager. Stokes came out of his office with Con fussing along behind him as we stamped our feet by the truck.
"Goo'day, fellers. How you doing?" he smiled. "Ready for it?" Bill Stokes inclined his head towards the sea of sheep in the yards.
Before we could reply Con had stepped in, "We're ready, Mr. Stokes. We'll start right away."
"Okay, stow your gear and be in the woolshed in…" Bill Stokes pulled out the old fashioned watch he kept on the end of a chain in his waistcoat pocket. He flicked open the lid and considered it for a moment, "…in an hour, no, make that an hour-and-a-half." He'd noticed that we all looked a bit knackered and knew that we'd use the time to snatch some sleep. He was good like that, old Stokes.
We grabbed our carryalls and nearly ran to the shearers huts, so desperate were we to put our heads down. Boonoke was an old property, nearly as old as Wanganella the property nearby where George Peppin had bred the original Australian Merinos in the 1800's. The woolshed was a museum piece and the ironbark floors and walls gleamed like they'd been freshly oiled. It was the lanolin
in the wool, the same stuff that makes shearers' hands softer than a woman's. The shearers' line was quite comfortable, neat little huts with two beds apiece and lined ceilings so you only cooked a little bit instead of baking like you did on other properties.
I bunked in with Portmanteau Jack because I knew I'd always be right for a drink from the huge portable bar he took shearing. The other blokes paired off and soon there was silence. As I fell asleep I wondered who had been landed with Gross Maurie and how long this unfortunate would put up with his nocturnal farting and belching. I'd had the misfortune to bunk in with him myself a couple of seasons before and had taken my mattress into the woolshed after the first night.
He was called Gross Maurie for his generosity with his bodily gasses and also to differentiate him from Maurie the Thumb, another member of the gang. We're a weird mob, that's for sure.
It seemed that I'd no sooner closed my eyes when Con's alarm clock went off. It was a huge monstrosity with two gleaming brass bells. Con would sit it in a steel washbasin and when it went off you could hear it a mile away. There were always plans afoot to steal it and throw it in a dam but Con guarded it like it was the Crown Jewels and wouldn't let anyone else within a yard of it. We all grabbed our hand pieces and ran for the woolshed because we knew that Con liked to judge things very finely, sometimes leaving us only a couple of minutes to get to work.
The woolshed at Boonoke is two-storeyed. The shearing is done on the upper deck which is set out in the shape of the letter T. The sheep are driven up a ramp from the holding yards below and held in pens. There's a pen for each shearer, with a swinging gate along the horizontal gallery. The classing table and the bins are situated in the vertical portion of the T.
Shearing is brutal work. You never get a break because your pen is always full and no sooner have you separated a sheep from its fleece and called the rouseabout to throw it on the classing table when you feel the beady eye of Con upon you. Con's the classer as well as the team leader and he's always making outrageous claims to property managers about how many sheep his gang can shear in a day. He's a devil when he gets on the grog.
After we’d been shearing for the best part of a month and settled into a routine word got about that Con had a bet on with the manager. We despatched the rouseabout to see what he could extract from the manager's secretary. She was on the wistful side of thirty with the hips and eyes of an experienced woman and the rouseabout was a young man and not bad looking if you ignored the missing front tooth.
He came back about midnight and tapped softly on my door. Jack and I were enjoying a tot of Slivovitz from genuine crystal liqueur glasses and discussing the woeful state of Balkans politics. When the rouseabout walked in and sat on the edge of my bed you could tell from the grin on his face he'd done more than just talk to her.
"Now my boy," said Portmanteau Jack, selecting another glass from his portable bar and giving it a polish with the tail of his shirt, "Compose yourself and tell us what you've learned." Jack always took on airs when he'd been drinking.
The rouseabout took his time, sipping the fiery liquid and rolling it around his mouth. "She likes shearers, " he said at last. "She says we've got the softest hands. We went into the woolstore and lay down on the fleeces. Then she made me take her clothes off and stroke her."
"What, all over?" said Jack. The rouseabout nodded. A sigh escaped from Jack's lips and I could see his eyes start to glaze over with memories of his own erotic escapades. Or perhaps he was considering having the secretary over himself for a nip or three.
The conversation was in danger of taking the wrong fork in the road. "We don't want to know about that!" I said hastily. Jack looked up as if he was going to disagree. "No," I said before he could speak, "Tell us about the bet, rouseabout."
The rouseabout looked almost as disappointed as Jack that he wasn't going to have the opportunity of relating the details of his conquest. I began to feel like a prude.
"Well, Con has bet Mr. Stokes that we can shear over four thousand sheep tomorrow. Bill Stokes is going to give Con a dollar for every sheep that we shear over four thousand. Con's got to give him a dollar for every sheep that we're under."
Jack lost his dreamy look and his composure instantly. "Struth!" he said. Four thousand bloody sheep in a day! That's er…" Jack scratched his head as he wrestled with the calculation.
"I worked it out already, " said the rouseabout eagerly. "She let me use her calculator. It's two hundred and twenty two sheep each. Course, if you let me shear as well, it's only two hundred and ten."
Jack and I sat back in stunned silence while the rouseabout grinned at us hopefully. "Well, what do you think?" he said all eager like after we'd failed to respond.
"I think you've got more piss and wind than a butcher's cat," Jack said dolefully. Then to me, "You're the ringer - what's the most you've sheared in a day?" I had to think about it because I seldom kept the tallies in my head from one season to the next.
"About two twenty. I did two eighty once, but they were lambs," I replied eventually. Jack gazed at me for a moment before coming to a decision.
"Rouseabout," Jack said firmly, "Go and get the blokes."
As the boy left the hut I called after him, "You'll probably find Gross Maurie's bunkmate in the woolshed."
When the gang had squeezed themselves into our hut, Jack took the floor. "Gentlemen, I'm afraid I'm unable to offer you all a drink as I don't carry a sufficient number of glasses."
Gummy Smith grinned, exposing his pink dentures with its solitary remaining tooth. "That's all right, Jack, " he said, producing a tumbler the size of a small vase, "I've brought my tooth glass." He held it out expectantly. Jack's face assumed an expression of resignation and sadness which became one of black despair as the rest of the gang produced their own drinking vessels. "Have you got any of that Cointreau stuff left, Jack?" said Gummy. He'd started to dribble and as he sucked the saliva back into his mouth his dentures chattered like a pair of castanets.
Eventually we were all settled with drinks in our hands. Jack sent a rueful glance towards his portable bar, now considerably depleted, and decided he would close the lid for safety's sake. Then he sat on it for extra security. The entire gang had their eyes fixed on him. Jack savoured his drink, stretching out the moment.
"Get on with it, Jack," growled Maurie the Thumb from the window ledge where he was perched.
Finally, Jack spoke, "Well, boys, rouseabout here has discovered something very interesting, haven't you, son?"
The rouseabout looked up from his drink into which he was gazing with false modesty. "That I have," he said, eyes all gleaming. Then not waiting, he rushed on. "I was over in the wool store with Diane cos she wanted to lie on the fleeces. She asked me to stroke her, so I did - all over."
The gang was transfixed. Maurie the Thumb clutched his glass to his chest with both thumbless hands. He'd lost them in a wool press years before though he was fond of telling people who didn't know the story that he'd been tortured by Aborigines. Jack's head settled on his chest with a dreamy expression on his face. Gummy was dribbling even more and the others were snuggled up to each other like a bunch of children being told a bedtime story. I knew we could be there all night unless someone broke the spell. I was about to interrupt the rouseabout's tale when Gross Maurie came to my aid.
"Cor, struth," someone said. "Dead goannas." As the noxious gas drifted further around the room the gang members wrinkled their noses in disgust and made a mad rush for the door. Only Gross Maurie was left sitting on top of the wardrobe with a pained expression on his face.
"It wasn't me, " he protested. No one believed him. After twenty minutes of concerted fanning with newspapers and bed sheets the room was finally inhabitable again. The meeting reconvened with Gross Maurie standing on the verandah outside, his head through the open window so he could hear.
"Right, where was I?" said the rouseabout.
"You were just working your way up her thighs, I believe," sighed Jack.
"Oh, yeh, that's right," said the rouseabout, gazing dreamily into space.
I knew that if he got into his stride again there would be no stopping him. It was time to speak. "Okay, Rouseabout, tell them about the bet that Con's made." If there's one thing that shearers like it's a saucy story, but gambling is taken very seriously indeed.
"What bet?" snapped Gummy suspiciously.
"Yeh," added another of the shearers, "What bet?"
So fierce was the interest shown by the gang that for a moment I thought the rouseabout was going to bolt. Even Gross Maurie was making movements to climb in the window in his eagerness to hear more. I stood up, waving my hands to get their attention.
"Listen, men. Con's gone and made one of his crazy bets with Bill Stokes. He's told him we can shear four thousand sheep in a day. It'll cost a dollar for every sheep under that number - and he gets a dollar for every sheep that we're over. Even if we perform a miracle we'd never get within cooee of four thousand. It's more likely that we'll shear well under. I glanced at Joe who kept an unofficial tally in case the management tried to pull a fast one. "How many did we shear yesterday, Joe?" I asked him.
Joe looked at me for a moment and shifted the quid of tobacco to his other cheek. He had a very prominent adam's apple and it bobbed up and down as he spoke, "Three thousand one hundred," he replied.
"Right," I said. "And where do you think Con's going to get the nine hundred dollars that he'll owe Bill Stokes if we shear the same number tomorrow?"
The gang members looked at each other as the dreadful realisation dawned on them. "Our bonuses," breathed Maurie the Thumb, "Our bloody bonuses!"
A horrified silence settled on the room. The rouseabout was the first to speak, "I reckon we should go to Mr. Stokes and tell him we're not going to do it."
Portmanteau Jack stood up, all five feet four inches of him, "That would be treachery, son."
"Yesh," said Gummy. "Con may be a bastard, but he's our bastard."
The rouseabout glanced at me, uncertain of the morals of the argument.
"They're right, rouseabout," I told him kindly. "We've got to stand by each other even when we do foolish things." Some of the gang nodded in agreement though it was apparent that a few of them sided with the rouseabout. "No, " I said firmly. "There's got to be a way out of this.
We talked for half-an-hour before formulating the plan. It relied on a bit of subterfuge, some bribery and a superhuman effort from the gang. As the shearers line subsided into sleep my mind was ticking like a clock.
I was up at 5 o'clock and pulling on my boots on the verandah by three minutes past. There was a lot to do and only a couple of hours left before shearing was due to start. A cock crowed in the distance and dawn began to peep over the horizon. I could see Boonoke's famous pepper trees begin to emerge from the darkness. The drover's motorbike I'd selected from the machine yard started at the first kick and in moments I had it burbling along the track that led to the jackaroos' quarters. As I expected, they were already stirring when I tapped on their door, but they must have thought they were still dreaming when I put my proposition to them. In the end it cost me a bottle of Bundaberg rum for each of the five of them, but they agreed. We all shook hands in the yard outside, sitting on our motorbikes. Then they wheeled out with their dogs riding on the luggage racks behind them. I watched them for a moment, the formation dwindling against the rising sun, before kicking my bike into gear. I had a tally man to suborn and no time to waste admiring rural images.
When I returned to the shearers quarters Con had the gang lined up and was haranguing the blokes about the virtues of hard work. He gave me a suspicious look when I strolled up, but I acted all natural like and he didn't twig.anything was up.
The blokes were playing their parts beautifully with just the right amount of disinterest. If they'd shown the merest speck of enthusiasm Con would have known we were up to something. When he mentioned the extra bonus of 50 cents for every sheep we sheared over four thousand a few of them couldn't help a contemptuous curl of the lips. Con got angry at this and when he gets angry you can cut his Irish accent with a knife. "To hell with you buggers! he ranted. "You ungrateful, lazy swine!" He was about to launch into further personal descriptions of a more slanderous nature when he noticed that several of the men were looking distinctly aggressive. He stopped short, red faced and panting, deciding that discretion might be the best course. He stumped off towards the shearing shed calling over his shoulder, "I wash my hands of you all. I will shear the sheep myself. Yes, and I'll class the fleeces, bale the wool and carry it on my back to market in Melbourne where I will auction it. I don't need you. I need nobody, only Con!"
It was such a spirited performance that I couldn't resist calling out to the men, "Three cheers for Con!" The men commenced a ragged hurrah and Con turned to glare at us. Then he removed the filthy green trilby that he always wore and stood with his bald head bowed. You'd have thought he was receiving a twenty-one gun salute.
The sheep were waiting for us, shifting nervously in their pens on the shearing level. I glanced down the line of men as I fitted my handpiece to the cable that fed off the line from the generator. Each of them gave me a little nod to let me know they were ready. The big hand on the shearing clock clicked around to 7.30am and we were off. It was like opening time at the pub. Instantly there was bedlam as eighteen huge merinos were dragged out of the holding pens. Then it was the same drill as always - throw it on its back and pin it while you shave off the legs and belly wool; throw it on its side to separate the fleece at the flanks; flip it over and repeat the process and finish the shear at the spine. All the time the sheep is wriggling and struggling to escape. When you've separated the sheep from its wool, you bundle the terrified animal down the shute to your personal pen in the holding yard below and call for the rouseabout to come collect the fleece for classing. As I worked I hoped the jackaroos were doing their stuff below.
By the time the midday break came around the ache in my back had assumed the dimensions of a major spinal injury; the others were feeling just as bad you could tell. Even Con had broken out in a light sweat with the constant flow of fleeces to trim and separate. I sneaked a look out of the open window down to the holding pens below. I could just see the end of the chutes by stretching my neck. On the stand beside me Joe was half way through shearing a young ewe, using his knees and elbows to keep her still. I quickly looked outside again. Even though he was still struggling to finish the shear, a shorn sheep popped out of his chute below. The plan was working perfectly.
It was simplicity itself. I had despatched the five jackaroos to round up five hundred of the sheep we'd shorn the day before and hide them near the shearing shed. There were at least a dozen buildings the jackaroos could use.
All the jackaroos had to do was bring the sheep over to the shearing shed in groups of fifty and keep them on the lower level, out of sight. There was so much activity and noise going on that no one would notice them being driven over. I had toyed with the idea of rounding up a thousand, but in the end it was decided that we'd make up the shortfall ourselves with concentrated effort.
The scam worked like this - whenever the jackaroos heard a sheep being pushed down a chute they waited for a half a minute then popped another one in the side where it passed through the lower level. The jackaroos' sheep would emerge just as if it had come all the way down from the shearing level. They'd have to get their timing right so that the shorn sheep didn't pop out too close together. But it didn't really matter as nobody was going to be watching. I hoped the jackaroos would have the good sense to replace the side panels when they day was over.
The only part that could have gone wrong was if the tally man, a company employee, raised a fuss. I knew that he wouldn't because I told him the story and there was a bottle of Portmanteau Jack's sambuca in his bottom drawer that wasn't there the day before. As I was leaving his house that morning I had mentioned that sambuca was an aphrodisiac and would make any female instantly compliant. The tally man had been chasing Bill Stokes' secretary for years without success. He'd been positively eager to help us out.
I had just shorn my one hundred and fiftieth sheep when I looked up and saw Bill Stokes staring suspiciously at me from the doorway. I put on my most sincere innocent expression and added a little pain, which wasn't hard. He must have seen the twinkle in my eye though, because he snorted and turned on his heel. I forced the shorn sheep into my chute and stamped three times on the floor to warn the jackaroos below that the manager was about, but I was too late. He must have run down the steps and around the building because just as he arrived at the holding pens two sheep popped out of my chute. Stokes couldn't fail to have noticed.
Down below the dust was like a brown fog and the noise of hooves and bleating made overhearing impossible, but I could see enough to read their lips as Stokes turned on the tally man in disbelief. "Did you see that?" he shouted.
The tally man licked the end of his pencil and laboriously made a mark on his sheet. "See what, Mr. Stokes?"
The manager was nearly tearing his hair out, "That, you fool! Two sheep just came out of that chute together! No one shears two sheep at the same time"
The tally man sucked on his pencil again and turned a pitying gaze on the manager, as if he was deranged, "I don't think so, Mr. Stokes, I'd have noticed something like that." Then, "Sometimes the heat and dust can play tricks on your eyes. You have to watch that especially in my job."
Bill Stokes looked as if he was going to explode, but the tally man faced him down and slowly he began to subside as uncertainty crept into his mind. You could see him puzzling to himself as he walked slowly to the fence and leaned on the rail. If the tally man ever decided to give up counting sheep there was a certain career for him in politics.
After watching the chutes for five minutes during which nothing out of the ordinary happened, Bill Stokes stalked off to his office. The tally man looked up at me and puffed out his cheeks in relief. I gave him a wave of congratulations and stamped on the floor for the jackaroos to resume.
With fifteen minutes left on the clock I looked out of the window again. The tally man gave me ten fingers five times to indicate we were still fifty sheep short. The ring-in flock had run out long before and there were only nine of us left shearing. The rest of them were slumped in corners or down below vomiting from exhaustion and heat stroke. Jack who was three up the line from me called for the rouseabout even hough he was midway through shearing a sheep. When the rouseabout ran up to him he silently indicated a hand piece and one of the vacant spots in the line. The rouseabout was nearly dead on his feet himself, but he managed a whoop of excitement and hauled a merino out of the holding pen. Con came over immediately to protest - rouseabout's aren't supposed to shear, just gather the fleeces for the classer - but when Jack told him to start gathering up the fleeces himself or, by crikey, he'd sheer the classer and toss him down the chute, he retreated. Silently, he began gathering up the fleeces from the shearers' feet. I think Jack's outburst had shamed him.
When the siren blew and the tally man handed the sheet to Bill Stokes at a few minutes past five the shearing floor looked like a battlefield with us on the losing side. Stokes perused the sheet thoughfully then dug into his pocket. "Four thousand and one sheep shorn, Con. I owe you a dollar."
Con threw out his chest and accepted the coin as if it was a VC. "It's a pleasure to do business with you, Mr. Stokes," he beamed.
We all pretended not to notice.
Although it was mid-week we all felt we had earned ourselves a drink. We piled into Gummy's truck and set off for the Conargo pub. We let the rouseabout ride up front in the cab. He thought it was great honour, but in fact we were all heartily sick of hearing how had shorn five sheep in fifteen minutes. Gummy didn't notice as he's deaf on the passenger side.
Bill Stokes was at the bar when we arrived, talking to the owner of a nearby property. He kept glancing over in my direction, so I sat at one of the tables and pretended to read a newspaper. I knew he'd be over for a chat.
After ten minutes or so he slid onto the bench seat opposite me and placed a beer in front of me. He studied me for a moment before speaking, "It's been a funny sort of day, ringer, funny. A shearing gang, for no reason I could discern, suddenly shears hundreds more sheep than it ever has before. Meanwhile, on the very same day, five hundred shorn sheep go missing and no one can trace one hide or hair of them."
I sipped at the beer he'd brought me, blowing the froth away from the side of the glass, "Well, I'll be blowed, Mr. Stokes," I said at last. "You never know, perhaps the shearers were inspired. As for those lost sheep, well, Boonoke is a bloody big place. Have you thought of sending the plane up to have a look for them?"
He looked at me suspiciously then his eyes crinkled and he started to laugh. It was so infectious I had to join in and soon we were wheezing and choking with tears in our eyes.
Our mirth was interrupted by Con who arrived at our table clutching a half bottle of ouzo. He swept off his hat and held it to his heart, swaying slightly. "Mr. Stokes, " he said solemnly, "I have the damn bloody finest team of shearers in Australia and I tell you today was only practice." He paused for a moment to take a swig from the bottle. "Tomorrow we're going to shear five thousand bloody sheep and I have a thousand dollars that says we can do it!."
Con stood erect, chest puffed out, while he waited for Bill Stokes to accept the challenge. He didn't notice Gross Maurie and Joe creeping up on him from behind. They were so quick that the rest of the bar scarcely noticed when Joe tapped Con on the head with a chair leg. Maurie and Joe each took an arm and dragged him out of the door to deposit him in the truck.
Bill Stokes turned to me, still laughing, "That Con," he said. "He's such a bastard".
"Yeh," I replied, "We make a good team, don't we?"
