Pat Ritter. Books

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'The Shearer' - Page 15:

‘Dug a hole in the ground out back and built a fire, allowed the coals to die down before I put the damper mix in a Bedourie oven, closed the lid, chucked coals over the oven lid, waited forty-five minutes, and there you have it. What’s it taste like?’ Jacob explained excited.
‘Bloody good mate! Keep this up and you’ll still be here by the end of the run.’ Joe ed, taking another piece of damper from the centre of the table.
After smoko Joe settled into his quarters, if you could call it quarters, rooms not much larger than his room at Ma’s Guest House. Instead of using their allocated room, shearers, roustabouts, shedhands and ‘tar boy’ threw their swags onto the veranda floor to capture a cool breeze. Joe joined his mates where the breeze blew from the north.
Close to dusk Jacob walked from the kitchen where he’d prepared dinner for the workers; boiled potatoes, corn meat with damper, bread and butter pudding for dessert. Cocky Young - the owner of the property always left a killer in the yard for the cook to kill to use for meat to feed the workers while the shearing was done.
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'The Shearer' - Page 16:

Joe lay on his swag and saw Jacob leave the kitchen carrying a butcher knife and steel, ‘You going killen?’ Joe asked rising from his swag.
‘Yeah, the boss put a wether in the killing pen.’ Jacob answered.
‘I’ll do it for ya mate. You concentrate on feeding these fellars. Give me the knife and steel’. Jacob happily handed Joe the items pleased he didn’t have to kill the sheep. He didn’t mind cooking, but to kill – he didn’t like doing although it was part of his job.
Joe walked to the killing pen where a woolly wether sheep stood. Joe looked him in the eye. Well fella – you won’t be staring at me for much longer. Outside the pen a killing gallows, made from bush timber, mulga branch for its strength measuring about ten feet in length, fastened to the fork of a mulga post buried deep in the hard ground. This contraption used after the sheep was killed with the hind legs fastened to the top end of the mulga branch with a steel rod in the shape of a W, with sharp points protruded through the hocks of the sheep to hold the sheep in position to finish dressing the sheep.
Joe checked the edge of the knife to define if it was sharp. Sharpening the blade against the steel, he shaved a strip of hair from his left forearm to show the sharpness of the knife. Hair shaved away easily, indicated the knife was sharp.
Stepping into the killing pen, he grabbed the killer with his left hand holding the bottom of its jaw. With his right leg, placed it between the wether’s hind legs, his left leg secured the back of the sheep. He pulled back the neck, stuck the point of the blade into the throat severing it. Blood gushed from the wound like a fountain until it ceased to a dribble and breathed its last breath.
Joe dragged the dead sheep out of the pen to the killing gallows. Slicing the blade of the knife across the inside elbow of the sheep’s left foreleg, he sliced the skin and wool away from the leg down to the point of the shoulder to the neck. After completing both front legs, he severed the front elbow of each leg, twisted the joint and cut the lower leg from the animal. He started on the rear legs doing a similar cut he did with the front, this time separating the skin and wool from the hind legs.
Once the skin and wool parred away from the hind legs, he sliced the knuckle joint, twisting it as he did the front legs and severed the hind hoof from each leg. He sliced behind the hock of each rear leg sufficient to make a hole to place the steel W shaped bar through the severed hocks. Once the steel bar was in place, he hooked it onto the end of the mulga branch. At the opposite end of the branch he pulled it downward, like a seesaw, causing the opposite end with the sheep hooked onto it to rise enough so he could finish ‘dressing’ the sheep. He fastened the end of the branch to stop from slipping.
With the sheep hanging by the hind legs, he made a cut from the centre of the hind legs down to the neck of the sheep. Carefully he separated the skin from the carcass until removed. After laying the hide on the ground with the wool touching the ground, he made an insertion on the carcass from the point where each hind leg joined, down through the stomach section to the brisket (beginning of the rib cage) careful not to rupture the stomach contents.
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Thank you dub. Here is the page for today: 'The Shearer' - Page 17:

With his left arm he placed his hand inside the carcass and used his elbow to force the rib cage of the animal apart to cut from the brisket through to the neck. Before he severed the head, he removed the tongue and placed it on the skin portion on the ground.
He removed the head and placed it on the skin. He placed his hand inside of the carcass. It felt warm, reached behind the stomach to remove it from the carcass ensuring not to puncture the stomach because if it ruptured, remains of the stomach would spill out over the carcass and stink because of the manure contents. After removing the stomach, he removed the heart, lung, kidneys and laid them on the skin beside the head.
He washed the carcass to clean any access blood and threw the carcass across his right shoulder and carried it into the meat house. The meat-house, a wooden constructed building, six feet by six feet square, sealed from ceiling to half-way with gauze to keep the flies out. When he opened the door to the meat house, he quickly closed it; in one swift movement hooked the W bar onto a hook hanging from the ceiling and left the sheep to hang overnight to set.
After he retrieved the offal, that is, the head, tongue, heart, liver, and kidneys, he bought them to the meat house. In the centre of the meat house stood a chopping block almost three feet in diameter and the same in height. To remove the brains from the head, he placed the head with the jaw upright. With a metal clever, he swung the clever, the blade slicing through the bone of the jaw and forehead. With both hands he broke the head apart and with his fingers extracted the brains from inside the head. He set them aside with the other offal.
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'The Shearer' - Page 18:

‘Here’s the offal.’
‘Thanks Joe, I’ll cook it with gravy for breakfast tomorrow.’
After dinner, Joe sat on the rear steps of the quarters and looked at the heavenly sky. His mind relaxed, his energy calm, he looked forward to starting shearing the next morning. Work started at 7.30 with the day divided into four ‘runs’ of two hours each. ‘Smoko’ breaks of half hour each at 9.30 and again at 3pm. Lunch break would be taken at midday for an hour.
Relaxed, his thoughts returned to when he started as a ‘tar boy’ for Mr Thompson fourteen years before. They’d arrived at Camden by lunchtime the following day after enjoying a scrumptious meal of freshly cooked fish on the open fire. Joe’s surprise when he discovered ‘Camden Station’ owned by the Macarthur family who Joe remembered from his school days with Miss Fletcher. How he loved to hear her speak about shearing and how it started in Australia.
Mr Thompson shared stories around the campfire, exciting Joe’s imagination. He couldn’t wait to begin the day. His dreams filled with starting as a ‘tar boy’ and eventually becoming a shearer in his own right. After reminiscing about his past Joe retired to his swag looking forward to the beginning of another shearing season.
Before the sun hit the horizon, Joe awoke prepared his shears for the day; five shearing blades needed to be sharp and in good working order. He dressed in his dungarees, his trousers Ma washed before he left town. They had extra cloth sewn along the front and back legs to protect him from sharp sheep hooves. He wore a singlet with patches under each arm pit where the sheep’s feet pressed whilst shearing.
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'The Shearer' - Page 19:

His pay, the number of sheep shorn each day and to be ‘gun shearer’ at this shed he needed to shear at least seventy sheep a day everyday until the shed run out. Wages were always a concern for the amount of work a shearer needed to do to make a decent wage. Shearing one hundred sheep, shearers were paid a quid or one pound which equated to about tuppence per sheep shorn. Normally Joe sheared sixty sheep per day.
The breakfast bell jangled metal against metal to arouse the men. Joe was one of the first to grace the table. Freshly cooked damper, fried sheep brains, liver, kidney, heart and chops from the kill the night before covered with thick gravy was soon devoured by men gathered around the table, finished off with a pannikin of black tea. If the shed had a good cook, the shearers were happy and content. This shed had a good cook with an abundant of food!
Joe sat back from the table, rubbed his stomach and congratulated the cook on a fine breakfast which took him to morning smoko to have freshly cooked scones.
Bluey Simpson walked beside Joe to the shearing shed. ‘Good morning Boss,’ Joe called to Cocky Young, dressed in white to display his role as owner of the sheep property. Cocky Young acknowledged Joe and Bluey with a nod of his head and stood in the centre of the Shearing Shed where seven shearers shore his sheep. He watched constantly to see how many of his sheep received unnecessary cuts to the hide when the ‘tar boy’ rushed to cover the cut with Stockholm tar to stop the bleed.
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'The Shearer' - Page 20:

The shearing shed was built with bush timber, huge poles which held the raw timber rafters holding the roof in place with honed wooden slabs for the floor. A seven stand shed measured approximately one hundred feet in length, thirty feet in breadth. Seven pens built through the centre of the shearing shed to house the sheep before being shorn. Each shearer took his position in front of a selected pen.
Their role was to open a gate, enter the pen, grab a sheep, roll the sheep onto their back; physically drag it to a point in front of the gate. Close the gate so not to allow any other sheep in the pen to escape. With the front legs of the sheep pointing under the armpit of the shearer, he, the shearer first removed the belly wool.
A roustabout, a young lad, would rush to pick up the belly wool giving the shearer sufficient room to removed the rest of the wool. This was taken in one complete cut, peeling away layer upon layer of wool as the shearer worked magic with his shears. Again the roustabout collected the fleece whilst the shearer dispatched the shorn sheep down a chute before entering the catching pen to retrieve the next one. Cocky Young kept score on a board to indicate how many sheep each shearer shorn.
Wool from the sheep collected by the roustabout delivered to a Wool Classer, who separated and gauged the wool into appropriate piles depended on the various thickness of the wool. A Wool Presser collected the gauged wool from the various piles to fit into a wool pack to be tightly pressed and correctly branded. The name of the property was stencilled to identify the wool packs belonging to the property and the bales loaded onto a wagon to be taken to market.
Morning smoko bell clanged, shearers finished off the sheep they were shearing and put their shears down. Time for morning smoko; half-an-hour allowed each man time for a toilet break and off to the shearers hut for a cuppa and freshly cooked scone.
‘How many ya done, Joe?’ Bluey asked, when the two left the shed.
‘Fifteen – how many for you?’ Joe asked.
‘Seventeen.’ Bluey smiled, knowing his number upset Joe.
‘I’ll need to go faster – won’t I,’ Joe remarked, when they sat down at the table to have their pannikin of black tea and scone.
‘You don’t want to have too many of those scones – it’ll slow you down’.
‘We’ll see,’ Joe answered with a mouth filled with scone. He lifted his pannikin of tea to his mouth to wash the scone down.
‘Meet ya out there Joe. Gotta have a fag before we start again.’ Bluey ed and left Joe at the table.
‘They’ll kill ya don’t you know.’ But Bluey was beyond hearing.
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'The Shearer' - Page 21:

Chapter 4

Joe finished his cuppa, moved his chair back, thanked the cook for the scones and left the room. Other shearers rested along the veranda but Joe wanted to keep moving. He walked to the opposite end of the veranda and looked out across the paddock. His eyes popped when he saw a horse and rider coming toward him. The rider pulled the horse up in front of where he stood.
‘How’re you going, I’m Hannah Young, the boss’s daughter.’ She smiled, dismounted and held the reins.
‘Hi there, I’m Joe Ryan, one of the shearers.’ He couldn’t believe a young woman would stop and speak with him especially the boss’s daughter.
‘Pleased to meet you, Joe Ryan,’ Hannah said joyfully, putting her hand out to shake Joe’s.
‘Over here Hannah,’ a thick loud voice bellowed.
‘Okay Pa, keep your shirt on. I’m talking to one of the shearers,’ she bellowed back.
‘Hannah, how many times have I told you not to speak with the hired help?’
‘Okay Pa. I’ll be there in a minute. Pleased to meet you Joe, perhaps we may see one another again soon.’ She smiled, remounted her horse and rode off toward the shearing shed.
Love at first sight enveloped Joe’s mind until the sound of the bell signalled the end of morning smoko. He returned to his stand at the shearing shed where Hannah stood next to her father, almost directly opposite. Her eyes fixed on Joe standing at the door to his pen ready for the sound of a bell from her father to commence shearing.
The bell clanged Joe opened the pen, grabbed a sheep and dragged it out to his stand. He leaned down to pick up the shears his eyes gazed across to Hannah Young; he decided there and then he would marry her.
His concentration lapsed as he shore the belly wool causing the shears to tear the skin. ‘Tar boy’, he shouted. Immediately a lad ran to his assistance to dab the wound with Stockholm tar to stop the bleeding.
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