A River Rules My Life by Mona Anderson

Author:Mona Anderson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2017-08-10T04:00:00+00:00

PART TWO

CHAPTER 14

Autumn Muster

Autumn is always a busy and colourful time. Each of the homestead trees, struck by the sunlight, seems to consume itself in flames. I am sad when the first hard frost comes along and the shameless winds tear the leaves from their branches. The big walnut near the back door fills with whispers and sighs as it reluctantly gives up its fruit. Each year it bears a heavy crop for which the possums and I compete.

The first job is weaning. As the ewes are mustered and brought in their lambs are drafted from them and the station resounds with distressful bleats. This sad sound goes on until the lambs, eye-clipped and dipped, are taken safely away to a block well out of sight of their mothers.

All the adult sheep are mouthed, each one separately. When a sheep is a year old it loses its baby teeth and gets two adult ones. Each year it cuts two more until at four years it has a full mouth of eight. From then on the teeth start to deteriorate, so once a year they are inspected. This done, the older animals are culled from the flock, to be taken to the nearest ewe fair, about fifty miles away. This used to mean driving them across the river and then spending a week with them on the road before they arrived at the saleyard. If a flood happened to coincide with the date of the river-crossing the men had an awful performance. Once Ron and the musterers spent eight hours in the water to get a thousand sheep across. This risk remains, but trucks have done away with the week-long drive to the sale.

Sometimes the river is too high to cross at all, and nothing can be done about it. The cull sheep miss the sale, which is usually the last of the season. Later they may be sold privately, on the place, but they still have to be taken across the river.

Dipping with a spray dip, the modern way, is very different from dipping with the old tip dip, when men, dogs and sheep were knocked about. The hoggets, “like lambs to the slaughter”, were not much bother, but the older sheep almost had to be carried on to the platform one by one. Dogs barked, men sweated and cursed. Each one of the old ewes and wethers, they swore, had at least one doubtful ancestor. At the end of the day it was not only the dogs who were dog tired. In the house during the evening meal it was not safe to open my mouth except to put in my food. I closed it quickly, too, in case a few words slipped out. I might let slip a simple sentence like “Will there be a mail going out tomorrow?” That would be the last straw. To be thinking of mail when there were days of dipping to do!

Then came the winter the men pulled down the old yards. The spray dip had come to lighten our lives.

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