Pat Ritter. Books

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'The Shearer' - Page 16:

‘Ya better come and have a cuppa then. We’re got a new cook bloody hell mate, we go through more cooks then we do feeds. Hope this fellow can cook.’ They walked toward the kitchen in the shearer’s quarters, ‘Meet Jacob Cartwright – our latest cook.’ Bluey introduced Joe.
‘How’re you going mate?’ Joe said taking the cook’s hand and shaking it in a warm welcome.
‘Good – thank you, pleased to meet you, Joe - is it?’
‘Yeah – Joe Ryan. I’m one of the shearers here. Not as good as Bluey, but you never know, this could be my shed to be ‘gun’ shearer.’
‘Excuse me while I get some butter.’ Jacob excused himself to walk onto the veranda to retrieve the butter from the Coolgardie safe, a square box contraption approximately three feet in height, and the same square with timber frame exterior covered with wire-netting. Inside the wire-netting, charcoal packed between galvanised exterior casing allowed air to flow through the charcoal. Water sprinkled through the charcoal kept the galvanised iron casing sufficiently cold to keep butter and meat from defrosting or going bad.
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'The Shearer' - Page 17:

Chapter 3

‘Come and get some damper and a cuppa,’ Jacob called to Joe and the others waited their chance to taste freshly cooked damper.
Joe plastered butter onto a piece of thick damper he’d cut from the loaf on the kitchen table, poured treacle over the butter, picked up the piece in his fingers pushed it into his mouth, treacle running down the side of his hand and mouth. He licked the thick black treacle away with his tongue. Savouring the taste of freshly cooked damper coated with butter and treacle, he said to Jacob, with his mouth half-filled, ‘Mate, this is the best damper I’ve tasted for a long time. How did you cook it?’ Joe finished swallowing the remains followed by a hot pannikin of black tea.
‘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 18:

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.
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'The Shearer' - Page 19:

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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'The Shearer' - Page 20:

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. Before returning to the kitchen he spread the skin across a rail at the killing pen to dry.
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'The Shearer' - Page 21:

‘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 22:

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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