Timeline: Sheep, Wool and Shearing in the Jondaryan Saga

The Australian Merino sheep have their origins in the Spanish Merino, which were the results of 2000 years of breeding. The Spanish jealously guarded their breed, only releasing very small numbers to special friends. With the defeat of Spain in the Napoleonic Wars, the French dispersed the Merinos to a number of different countries.

 

Left: Sheep from the Jondaryan flock. Right: A recreation of a shepherd's hut.

In 1794 John Macarthur brought a number of Indian Bengal sheep to Australia and a year later a few Irish sheep and started crossbreeding with them. When Captain Waterhouse and Captain Kent arrived in Botany Bay in 1797 with some Spanish Merinos from the Cape of Good Hope, Macarthur obtained some of these and began crossbreeding with them. By 1803 he had over 4000 head of almost pure Merinos. Following the French dispersal of the Spanish Merino flocks, Macarthur obtained Merino sheep from England, France, Germany and America, which gave him a diverse bloodline.

The first sheep arrived on the Darling Downs on 4 June 1840, when the Leslie brothers arrived there with 5700 sheep that had come from Macarthur's flock at Camden.

It was not until October of 1843 that the first sheep arrived on Jondaryan. The ewes came from Stephen Coxen's flock at Yarandai on the Hunter River, these having originated from Macarthur's flock, while the rams came directly from Macarthur. Jondaryan's sheep numbers and wool production reflected the general trend on the Darling Downs. Between 1841 and 1858, Jondaryan changed hands six times as a result of the difficult times the early owners were going through.

JM Andrew built the first shearing shed on Jondaryan in 1846. It was a small primitive building, constructed with rough bush logs and roofed with sheets of bark and partly walled in with ironbark slabs, it was situated in the other side of the creek, not far from the homestead complex. A disgruntled ex-employee deliberately burned this down in 1849. Andrew then constructed a larger shearing shed on the same site in 1851, which was roofed with ironbark shingles. This building served as the shearing shed for the station until the new woolshed was commissioned in 1861.

The discovery of gold in Victoria in 1851 and the resulting gold rush of the 1850s and 1860s had a marked effect on the grazing industry in the eastern half of Australia, with much of the labour being drawn away by the goldfields. Jondaryan, along with all the other stations on the Darling Downs had to be run very shorthanded, although Jondaryan fared better than most, because of the enlightened policies of William Kent I towards his employees and his preference for employing families, which made his workforce more stable.

The lack of labour saw most of the sheep being left unattended and free to wander and fend for themselves. To everyone's surprise the flocks prospered and grew without the shepherds to look after them, but they had to be restricted in their movements, so a fencing program was commenced. Wooden fences were erected at first, these were slow to construct and labour intensive. When wire became available in the 1860s the fencing program was greatly expanded.

One beneficial side effect of the gold rush and the influx of new immigrants to the country, was the demand for meat on the goldfields and excess sheep on the stations were taken and sold there at a good profit. William Kent I was one of those who saw the potential of this market and put his brother-in-law William Graham in charge of overlanding sheep to the goldfields.

The ensuing shortage of labour on the Downs stations in the 1850s saw a movement to bring in Chinese labourers, but a great many of these were lost to the goldfields which also attracted many more of their compatriots to the country. The Chinese were initially brought out to act as shepherds, but they took on all kinds of work, with many becoming shearers. It was a Chinese shearer who taught Jacky Howe to shear.

The first shearing took place in the new woolshed in 1861 before it was completed. The woolshed had been originally designed to have a shingle roof, in fact 12,000 shingles had already been cut for this purpose, when galvanised corrugated iron became available in England and it was decided to roof the building with this material instead. The roof was prefabricated in England before being shipped out. It was late in arriving, but as the rest of the building structure had been completed, it was decided to carry out the shearing in the new woolshed without its roof. Tarpaulins were erected over the shearing boards and the wool-handling areas to give some shelter to the men working there.

Up until the early 1880s most sheep were washed before they were shorn, only the rams and pregnant ewes were not washed, for fear of damaging them. On Jondaryan the washpool was situated about two miles down stream from the homestead, this consisted of a stone-paved pool on the edge of the creek. A California pump powered at first by a four-horse gear and then by a portable steam engine, from 1865 on, pumped water from the creek up to ship's tanks on high stands, from these it was directed via wooden shoots to men working below in the washpool.

The sheep were let down a chute to the men waiting in the pool. The men then took the sheep and turned them over and over in the water under the powerful spout coming from the tanks, until all the dirt and grease was washed from the wool. The process took around one minute. This was very hard on the sheep, it was said that after being washed it took fifteen minutes before the sheep could stand again. As hard as it was on the sheep, it must have been even harder on the men doing the washing. They had to stand in the cold water up to their waist soaked to the skin, as they turned the sheep over and over under the waterspout all day every day.

This soon sorted the men from the boys, nevertheless, some impressive records were set. In 1873 two strapping young men Adam Bates and John Englehart, who were good friends, decided to have a competition to see who could wash the greatest number of sheep. Their competition lasted for just on two months, at the end of which Adam Bates had washed 10,586 sheep, but his friend John Englehart had beaten him, he had washed 11, 772 sheep in the same period of time.

In the blade shearing days, when the shed had its full complement of 52 competent shearers, it is reported that a fleece was coming onto one of the three wool-rolling tables every eight seconds. This required everyone in the shed to competently carry out their allotted task if the shed was not to become snowed under with wool.

Machine shears were first installed in the woolshed in 1890. To get them to use these new machines, the shearers were offered a bonus of 10 shillings per week if they used them. Thirty-six stands were converted to the machine sheers, the remainder being retained for blade shearers. These were later reduced to one small board of 10 stands that was used to shear the rams and the stud flock.

The stud flock had its origins in the early 1860s. The idea grew out of William Kent's desire to have the best available stock for the purpose required of them. He continually upgraded the stock by obtaining top bloodlines from wherever they were available. This resulted in Jondaryan stock being readily sought after as breeders and a premium price being paid for them.

An indication of how well the breeding program worked with the sheep on Jondaryan, is indicated inthe remarkable increase in the fleece weight that occurred over a forty-year period, from the first shearing in the new woolshed in 1861, until the turn of the century.

In 1861 the 60,000 sheep on the station that had been purchased from the Tooths, yielded an average fleece weight of 1.25 pounds, this was around the average for sheep on the Downs at that time. Twenty years later in 1881, with the commencement of the breeding program, when sheep numbers on the station had reached their peak, 200,000 sheep were shorn, with a fleece weight average of five pounds. A further twenty years on in 1901, sheep numbers had dropped to 130,000, but they had an average fleece weight of 9.25 pounds.

A year before the national shearer's strike of 1891, the shearer's union called a strike on Jondaryan. Edward Wienholt was an outspoken leader in the station owner's fight against the shearer's union and greatly riled the union's leadership. As a result of this, in spite of the fact no conflict existed between management and the shearers, the union called a strike on Jondaryan to fight Wienholt and as a test case. The thinking was that if they could defeat Wienholt on Jondaryan, they could defeat any of the stations.

Charles Williams was manager on Jondaryan at that time. William Kent I had instilled in him his philosophy and ideals with regard to the management of employees. Charles Williams put that into practice. There had never been any trouble between him and the shearers on Jondaryan. In fact he had assisted the union by deducting the union dues from the pay of those members of the union employed on the station.

Williams was annoyed by Wienholt's actions towards the shearers, which interfered with his management of the station. He took the first opportunity to come to an agreement with the union. A meeting was held at Pittsworth between the shearer's union leaders and Charles Williams. An agreement, known at the Pittsworth Accord, was struck. This ended all hostilities between the two parties.

Wienholt, along with most of the other big pastoralists rejected the agreement and the union went ahead with a national shearers strike the following year in 1891, but the agreement held up for Jondaryan and the station was not involved in that strike.