getting home and straight on the harvester, with my pale skin from being out of sun for six months and my nice soft hands from being in the lanolin from the sheep fleeces, guess u can imagine how i would be out in the 100 F plus heat. But I must have survived, after New Year I grabbed a mate , one who had a vehicle and we headed back to Queensland for the summer shearing season, we called into the Wilcannia pub and had a couple of beers, but thought better leave as some of the drinkers were getting a bit boisterous, and we weren't looking for a scrap.

A Few miles out of town we pu.lled up for a camp, rolled our swags out on the side of the road , next morning had a bushman's breakfast then hit the track, only we took the track on the wrong side of river, and the wild pigs had been doing what pigs like to do, that is root around ,made hell of a mess of the road, we had to travel in low gear most of the time.

Got to the next town and of course had to call in at the pub, and then put the car on the ferry or punt to cross the river, at this time there wasn;t much water in the river and while the car was ferried across , we walked across the river, it was that low.

the next town we came to the pub had only recently burnt down so all they had was a tin shedso we had a couple of beers there ,grabbed a couple of bottles and away we went, a few miles down the track and we were as happy as Larry, the beer being a different brew then we were used to , but happy is good.

dont recall too much about what we did or how we done it ,but here are some memories.

one shed we were at I was pen mates with this old fella, must have been about seventy and only about 5 ft, and not very heavy, aha ,I thought ,I will have you,when the bell rang to start shearing, this old bloke had much trouble just to drag the sheep out onto the board, but once he got it there , boy I could not see him for wool , he was too good for me .

another time we were sent out to this shed , four of us to shear 2,400 sheep, only had a week as we were to join another team to make 10 shearers, any how 600 sheep a man in five days should have been a piece of cake, but how wrong we were, they were the toughest sheep I have ever come across, being a sis stand shed ,got another two shearers, one of them we called the left handed gun, as hes was really fast ,managing to do 16 sheep a day,lol.

By the end of that week we had only shorn 1800 a bloody hard hot week it was , after knockoff I used to sit in the bath and have the shower going, also up here there was this burr, called galvanised burr , was very thorny and one had to be careful how handled the sheep , and also would cut our hands, I tries to wear but not work very well for me.

at the next shes there were ten shearers and we started off shearing rams for the first three days, this was the only time that I had been chipped as was getting a little rough as was racing another bloke, out where we were they had artesian bore , well this water came out of the ground boiling hot, so they had drains thru all the paddocks and when it got to where animals were it was drinkable.after being here for 2 or 3 months we headed home, when we got to where we walked across the river ,we found out this time that ,that was impossible, it was very hot and dry and every tree we seen had a dozen or so roos under it frying to keep cool. this was the end of my sojourn shearing in Queensland