The Shearer's Dream

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Title:     The Shearer's Dream
Author: Henry Lawson [More Titles by Lawson]

Mitchell and I rolled up our swags after New Year and started to tramp west. It had been a very bad season after a long drought. Old Baldy Thompson had only shorn a few bales of grass-seed and burrs, so he said, and thought of taking the track himself; but we hoped to get on shearing stragglers at West-o'-Sunday or one of the stations of the Hungerford track.

It was very hot weather, so we started after sunset, intending to travel all night. We crossed the big billabong, and were ploughing through the dust and sand towards West Bourke, when a buggy full of city girls and swells passed by. They were part of a theatrical company on tour in the Back-Blocks, and some local Johnnies. They'd been driven out to see an artesian bore, or wool-shed, or something. The horses swerved, and jerked a little squawk out of one of the girls. Then another said:

"Ow-w! Two old swaggies. He! he! he!"

I glanced at Mitchell to see if he was hit, and caught his head down; but he pulled himself up and pretended to hitch his swag into an easier position.

About a hundred yards further on he gave me a side look and said:

"Did that touch you, Harry"

"No," I said, and I laughed.

"You see," reflected Mitchell, "they're more to be pitied than blamed. It's their ignorance. In the first place, we're not two old tramps, as they think. We are professional shearers; and the Australian shearers are about the most independent and intelligent class of men in the world. We've got more genius in one of our little fingers than there is in the whole of that wagonette-load of diddle-daddle and fiddle-faddle and giggles. Their intellects are on a level with the rotten dramas they travel with, and their lives about as false. They are slaves to the public, and their home is the pub-parlour, with sickly, senseless Johnnies to shout suppers and drink for them and lend their men money. If one of those girls is above the average, how she must despise those Johnnies--and the life! She must feel a greater contempt for them than the private-barmaid does for the boozer she cleans out. He gets his drink and some enjoyment, anyhow. And how she must loathe the life she leads! And what's the end of it as often as not? I remember once, when I was a boy, I was walking out with two aunts of mine--they're both dead now. God rest their fussy, innocent old souls!--and one of 'em said suddenly, 'Look! Quick, Jack! There's Maggie So-and-So, the great actress.' And I looked and saw a woman training vines in a porch. It seemed like seeing an angel to me, and I never forgot her as she was then. The diggers used to go miles out of town to meet the coach that brought her, and take the horses out and drag it in, and throw gold in her lap, and worship her.

"The last time I was in Sydney I saw her sitting in the back parlour of a third-rate pub. She was dying of dropsy and couldn't move from her chair. She showed me a portrait of herself as I remembered her, and talked quite seriously about going on the stage again.

"Now, our home is about two thousand miles wide, and the world's our stage. If the worst comes to the worst we can always get tucker and wood and water for nothing. If we're camping at a job in a tent there's no house-cleaning to bother us. All we've got to do when the camp gets too dirty is to shift the tent to a fresh place. We've got time to think and--we're free.

"But then, agen," he reflected, "there's the world's point of view to be considered. Some day I might be flashing past in a buggy or saloon-carriage--or, the chances are it will be you--and you might look out the window and see an old swaggy tramping along in the dust, or camped under a strip of calico in the rain in the scrub. (And it might be me--old Mitchell--that really wrote your books, only the world won't know it.) And then you'll realize what a wretched, miserable life it was. We never realize the miseries of life till we look back--the mistakes and miseries that had to be and couldn't be helped. It's all luck--luck and chance."

But those girls seemed to have gravelled Mitchell, and he didn't seem able to talk himself round. He tramped on, brooding for a while, and then suddenly he said:

"Look here, Harry! Those girls are giving a dance to-night, and if I liked to go back to Bourke and tog up and go to the dance I could pick out the prettiest, dance with her all the evening, and take her for a stroll afterwards, old tramp as they thought me. I've lived--but it wouldn't be worth my while now."

I'd seen Jack in a mood like this before, and thought it best to say nothing. Perhaps the terrible heat had affected him a little. We walked on in silence until we came to the next billabong. "Best boil the billy here, Harry," said Mitchell, "and have some tea before we go any further."

I got some sticks together and made a fire and put the billy on. The country looked wretched--like the ghost of a burnt-out land--in the moonlight. The banks of the creek were like ashes, the thin, gnarled gum-bush seemed dry-rotting fast, and in many places the surface of the ground was cracked in squares where it had shrunk in the drought. In the bed of the creek was a narrow gutter of water that looked like bad milk.

Mitchell sat on his swag, with his pint of tea on the ground by his foot, and chewed his pipe.

"What's up, Jack?" I asked. "Have you got the blues?"

"Well, yes, Harry," he said. "I'm generally dull the first day on the track. The first day is generally the worst, anywhere or anytime--except, perhaps, when you're married. . . . I got--well, I got thinking of the time when a woman's word could have hurt me."

Just then one of the "travellers" who were camped a bit up the creek suddenly commenced to sing. It was a song called "The Shearer's Dream," and I suppose the buggy of girls, or the conversation they started, reminded him of it. He started his verses and most of his lines with a howl; and there were unexpected howls all through the song, and it wailed off, just as unexpectedly, in places where there was no pathos that I could see:

Oh, I dreamt I shore in a shearer's shed, and it was a dream of joy,
For every one of the rouseabouts was a girl dressed up as a boy--
Dressed up like a page in a pantomime, and the prettiest ever seen--
They had flaxen hair, they had coal-black hair--and every shade between.

"Every" with sudden and great energy, a long drop on to "shade," and a wail of intense sadness and regret running on into "between," the dirge reaching its wailsomest in the "tween" in every case.

The shed was cooled by electric fans that was over every "shoot";
The pens was of polished ma-ho-gany, and ev'rything else to suit;
The huts was fixed with spring-mattresses, and the tucker was
simply grand,
And every night by the biller-bong we darnced to a German band.

"_Chorus, boys!"_

There was short, plump girls, there was tall, slim girls,
and the handsomest ever seen
They was four-foot-five, they was six-foot high, and hevery size
between.
Our pay was the wool on the jumbucks' backs, so we shore till all
was blue
The sheep was washed afore they was shore (and the rams was scented
too);
And we all of us cried when the shed cut out, in spite of the
long, hot days,
For hevery hour them girls waltzed in with whisky and beer on
tr-a-a-a-ys!

"_Chorus_! _you_ ---!"

They had kind grey eyes, they had coal-black eyes, and the
grandest ever seen
They had plump pink hands, they had slim white hands, and hevery
shape be-tw-e-e-n.
There was three of them girls to every chap, and as jealous as they
could be--

"Ow! you ---"

The singer's voice or memory seemed suddenly to have failed him at this point, but whether his mates hit him on the back of the head with a tomahawk, or only choked him, I do not know. Mitchell was inclined to think, from the sound of it, that they choked him.

[The end]

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Some definitions and Australian slangs:

anabranch: A bend in a river that has been cut through by the stream. The main current now runs straight, the anabranch diverges and then rejoins. See billabong.

Barcoo-rot. "Persistent ulceration of the skin, chiefly on the hands, and often originating in abrasions". (Morris, Australian English). Barcoo is a river in Queensland.

billabong. Based on an aboriginal word. Sometimes used for an anabranch, but more often used for one that, in dry season or droughts especially, is cut off at either or both ends from the main stream. It is often just a muddy pool, and may indeed dry up completely.

blackfellow: condescending for Australian Aboriginal

blackleg: someone who is employed to cross a union picket line to break a workers' strike. As Molly Ivins said, she was brought up on the three great commandments: do not lie; do not steal; never cross a picket line. Also scab.

blanky or --- : Fill in your own favourite word. Usually however used for "bloody"--see crimson/gory.

blooming: actually used in speech instead of "bloody" (see crimson).

bluey: swag. Explanation in Lawson's "The romance of the Swag" here.

bob: one shilling

bullocky: Bullock driver. A man who drove teams of bullocks yoked to wagons carrying e.g. wool bales or provisions. Proverbially rough and foul mouthed.

bummer: A cadger or bludger. Someone who begs for food. Interesting Americanism already. Also, tramp. (Different meaning today)

bush: originally referred to the low tangled scrubs of the semi-desert regions (cf. `mulga' and `mallee'), and hence equivalent to "outback". Now used generally for remote rural areas ("the bush") and scrubby forest.

bushfire: wild fires: whether forest fires or grass fires.

bushman/bushwoman: someone who lives an isolated existence, far from cities, "in the bush". (today: a "bushy")

bushranger: an Australian "highwayman", who lived in the `bush'-- scrub--and attacked especially gold carrying coaches and banks. Romanticised as anti-authoritarian Robin Hood figures--cf. Ned Kelly--but usually very violent.

bunyip: Aboriginal monster, inhabiting waterholes, billabongs particularly. Adopted into European legends.

caser: Five shillings (12 pence to the shilling, 20 shillings to the pound ("quid")). As a coin, a crown piece.

chaffing: teasing, mocking good-humouredly

churchyarder: Sounding as if dying--ready for the churchyard = cemetery

crimson = gory: literary substitutes for "bloody"--the "colonial oath", unacceptable in polite company. Why, is a complete mystery. Popularly explained as contraction of "by Our Lady". Unproved. In reproducing (badly) a German's pronunciation of Australian, Lawson retains the word, but spells it "pluddy".

dood: Dude. A classy/cool dresser.

drover: one who "droves"

droving: driving on horseback cattle or sheep from where they were fattened to a a city, or later, a rail-head.

fiver: a five pound note

gory: see crimson

Homebush: Saleyard, market area in Sydney

humpy: rough shack

half-caser: Two shillings and sixpence. As a coin, a half-crown.

jackaroo: (Jack + kangaroo; sometimes jackeroo)--someone, in early days a new immigrant from England, learning to work on a sheep/cattle station (U.S. "ranch".)

jim-jams: the horrors, d.t.'s

jumbuck: a sheep (best known from Waltzing Matilda: "where's that jolly jumbuck, you've got in your tucker bag".)

larrikin: anything from a disrespectful young man to a violent member of a gang ("push"). Was considered a major social problem in Sydney of the 1880's to 1900. The _Bulletin_, a magazine in which much of Lawson was published, spoke of the "aggressive, soft-hatted stoush brigade". Anyone today who is disrespectful of authority or convention is said to show the larrikin element in the Australian character.

lucerne: Alfalfa in US

mallee: dwarfed eucalyptus trees growing in very poor soil and under harsh rainfall conditions. Usually many stems emerging from the ground, creating a low thicket.

mateship: See Lawson story, "Mateship". A heavily romanticised, but nevertheless very practical form of (male) loyalty to a (male) companion who travels with/works with him. A "mate" provides not only companionship, but help in emergencies. Typical of an Australian in the "outback"--or "Never-Never", or under war conditions. A man without a mate was a "hatter"--"his hat covers his family". Such a person might go "ratty" (see further in The romance of the Swag). Equivalent to the "buddy system" in SCUBA diving.

metalled: of a road, covered in crushed rock (e.g. "blue metal")

mulga: Acacia sp. ("wattle" in Australian) especially Acacia aneura; growing in semi-desert conditions. Used as a description of such a harsh region.

mullock: the tailings left after gold has been removed. In Lawson generally mud (alluvial) rather than rock

myall: aboriginal living in a traditional--pre-conquest--manner

nobbler: a drink

nuggety: compact but strong physique; small but well-muscled

pastoralist: OED sees it a equivalent to "squatter", but in Lawson someone often someone managing a large cattle/sheep "station" for a "pastoral company" rather than an individual. Seen as ultimate capitalist oppression.

pluddy: see crimson

quid: monetary unit; one pound

ratty: insane--or, very eccentric, "cranky".

ringer: the champion sheep shearer in a shed that season

rouseabout: Labourer in a (sheep) shearing shed. Considered to be, as far as any work is, unskilled labour.

sawney: silly, gormless

scab: see blackleg

shout: In a group; to stand (pay for) a round of drinks. Bad form to leave before your turn comes around. Much peer pressure to drink more than one wished. One can also "shout" for everyone in the pub. skillion(-room): A "lean-to", a room built up against the back of some other building, with separate roof.

spifflicated: punished, thrashed without mercy.

spree: prolonged drinking bout--days, weeks.

squatter: Someone who took up large areas of land, originally without official permission ("squatted"), for sheep especially. Became the "landed aristocracy" of Australia. ("Up rode the squatter, mounted on his thoroughbred")

steever: Originally a Dutch coin. Used here like "penny"--or brass razoo.

sundowner: a swagman (see) who is NOT looking for work, but a "handout". Lawson explains the term as referring to someone who turns up at a station at sundown, just in time for "tea" i.e. the evening meal. Line (2494) of actual text (not counting P.G. matter). swagman (swaggy): Generally, anyone who is walking in the "outback" with a swag. (See "The Romance of the Swag".) Lawson also restricts it at times to those whom he considers to be tramps, not looking for work but for "handouts". In view of the Great Depression (1890->. In 1892 it was reckoned 1/3 men were out of work) perhaps unfairly. Perhaps because he _was_ there. See `travellers'.

Tattersalls: The earliest public lottery in Australia. (1881)

tenner: a ten pound note. tin-kettling: making noise by striking metal pots/pans. May be celebratory (weddings--in this collection, New Year's Eve), or may indicate extreme social disapproval of someone.

travellers: "shearers and rouseabouts travelling for work" (Lawson).

[The end]
Henry Lawson's short story: Shearer's Dream

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