Media: BOOK - paperback, 124 pages
Author: H. Barker
Year: 1994
ISBN: 0859051978
Publisher: 0

A history of droving and stories of the famous drovers.

The acute powrs of observation and the vivid recollection of years spent in the bush that characterized his "Camels and the Outback" are again delightfully shown by H.M. Barker. After highlighting the achievements of some of the best known of the early pioneers - Hawdon, Tyson, de Satge, Sutherland, Gray, Buchanan, Christison and Cotton - he introduced us to the pleasures, rigours, vagaries and discomforts of droving as he himself experienced them.

There is the same richness and variety of incident, the same strange and expert knowledge - this time of cattle, sheep, horses and the them whose job it is to get them from place to plkace - and the same simple yet none the less deep philosophical relfection that were so makred a feature of his erlier book. Within these covers extremes meet.

The practical efficience and expertise of "Boomerang" Jack Brady as a horse-breaker or the skill of Sharkey and Sharper as horsemen can be set against the eccentric behaviour of Nugget Wilson and Paddy Lennie; the excitement and dangers of a stampede at at night against the peaceful poking along of cattle at a snail's pace during the day; the petting of a motherless lamb against the butchering of a bullock in the open air on the groud. And the whole book is told in Barker's direct and refreshing style.

Contents:
Preface
1. Introductory
2. Joseph Hawdon
3. James Tyson
4. Oscar de Satge
5. George Sutherland and Bob Gray
6. Nat Buchanan
7. Rosert Christison and A.J. Cotton
8. The Rigours of Droving
9. The Pleasures of Droving
10. Incidents in a Mustering Camp
11. A Diversity of Bushcraft
12. Horses
13. Horse-Breaking
14. Shoeing Horses
15. Aborigines as Shotckmen
16. The Decline of Droving
Index