We have seen the last big shearing, we have baled the last big clip;
We have railed the last big tally from the sheep’s back to the ship;
We have seen the last big muster, with its hundred thousand sheep,
The last big pastoral holding, with its thousand square-mile sweep.

The ivy-clad, old home-stead still peeps quaintly through the trees;
The oak, the ash, and sycamore, still beckon with the breeze;
The shearing shed is standing yet, where rouseabouts were we –
In fancy, when I’m riding past, they seem to wave to me.

It doesn’t seem so long ago (though this I sometimes doubt),
Since I first struck a job outback, as station rouseabout;
It seemed a wrench to leave the crowd, to wear a broomie’s crown –
How times have changed, the car now brings the backblocks to the town.

When some town stranger brought the news – a year old and a day,
It seemed as if the city were, a million miles away;
We rarely heard a bagman’s tale – the saddle made him sore,
But nowadays, by farmer’s dogs, he’s hunted from the door.

The bush road to Little Valley, a rough-ridin’ bullock track,
(At the dawn you had to saddle if at sunset you’d be back)
Is to-day a spanking highway, sealed with some new patent tar,
And the flivvers scoot along it, like a frantic shooting star.

The sly Manuherikia, now bridged from bank to bank;
I have seen the drovers ford it, when head high from flank to flank;
We have crossed it in the flood time in the station shandradan,
And last year I glided over in a swanky six sedan.

The old jittery iron-tyred rattler, yoked behind two thoroughbreds,
How they flung the miles behind them, when you gave the pair their heads;
And though flivvers travel faster, and MAY get you round the bends,
With a “pair” you’re never lonely, and they’re man’s two whitest friends.

The swell dances in the woolshed (Ah! I think we’d best forget).
When the ringer called the figures, for the “Lancers” and “The Set”;
And we sat around on woolbales, or just squatted on the floor,
While some shearer sang a ballad of the golden days of yore.

And we all joined in the chorus, just to give a bloke a hand;
While the cook’s mate led the music, with his concertina band;
The girl friends took round the supper, and the boss he gave the pound;
And the rouseys in their shirt-sleeves passed the pannikins around.

It was rough and it was homely, but with nothing to regret,
For the spirit was the standard of the station etiquette;
So, along the human journey – in the smooth or in the rough,
Let us never lose the spirit, and we’ll find things right enough.

The gruff, hardy old-time squatter, in the main has journeyed West;
The refrigerating bus’ness has since changed the sheepman’s quest;
And will serve its useful purpose, ’till more scientific ways
Are devised, then it will vanish, like the good old station days.



Blade shearing, Illustrated New Zealand News, December 1883