Jack Sammon"s bush poetry- Rusty Spurs, After The Wet and The Drovers Reunion.

                JACK SAMMON OF AUSTRALIA WRITES -
     In Australia the only way to shift cattle from the stations (ranches) was to walk them to the railheads, which could be up to a thousand miles away. Just like the American west, thousands of cattle were driven by drovers down the stock routes (trails) every year. As a young boy growing up on a station where the main stock route went through, I would see those mobs of cattle feeding past the homestead, and the bearded drovers slowly riding back and forth behind them, through the dust haze. At night we could hear the sound of the horse bells drifting through the air and the faint sound of singing as a drover rode the cattle on watch. It is small wonder then that all I wanted to be when I grew up was be a drover. I wonder how many boys who lived along the Chisholm Trail one hundred years before my times had the same dreams. As soon as I was old enough to leave school I got a job as a drover.

         The problem was that in our isolated life, we did not know that the twentieth century was catching up on us. In the 1960s the government started building all weather roads, opening up the cattle country in the north. These roads were called Beef roads and we soon found out why, as now the cattle could be transported by trucks. In no time the trucks started to take over from the drover and work became harder to find. In 1978, I finally gave the game away after years of following down the stock routes, and took a job as an underground miner.

      So here is a poem I wrote about the end of my droving.

RUSTY SPURS

There's a pair of spurs hanging on a nail out in the shed.
The straps are dry and cracking and the metal's rusty red.
My father gave them to me when he taught me how to ride.
And well do I remember how I strapped them on with pride.

Those spurs bring back the memories of the days of long ago,
to the times of droving cattle, where the western rivers flow.
My thoughts are riding night watch, with the stars shining bright,
as I ride around the cattle singing just beyond the fire light.

We lived for months away from home out on the great stock route.
As we walked the cattle slowly in from stations further out.
Days were long and life was hard, but the saddle was our throne,
for we were Kings of our domain and answered to ourselves alone.

But we didn't feel the winds of change blowing out our way so fast.
Soon the drover and his plant would be the memory of the past
For contractors with their big machines were building roads of tar.
As they pushed their way across the plains they made a vivid scar.

Now the trucks, in the wet or dry, could tackle those outback roads.
By night and day they rattled out to pick up the bovine loads.
Yes, the drover's day were numbered as the trucks came out our way.
as the trip that took us months to do, they could travel in a day.

Although we tried to struggle on, the trucks were here to stay.
In the end, like other drovers, I had to give the game away.
So I sold my plant and horses for anything I could,
Caught a train that headed south, and left the droving life for good.

I've settled down in town and hung those spurs up in the shed.
And now I wear a miner's lamp, working under-ground instead.
But at times when I see those spurs, my mind goes drifting back
to the days of droving cattle out in Wave Hill Track

JACK SAMMON ©1999

photo of bronco branding ramp
Bronco Branding Ramp

Photo of Jack Sammon, drover from the Outback.

Pulling calf Up To ramp

Bronco branding at Talawanta, 1951

           Jack Sammon, like other stockman, worked on cattle stations during the dry season of the year, and lived in stock camps out on the cattle runs. However, for three months it was too wet and hot to be able to work cattle. Then the stock camps were shut down and the stockmen (Ringers) were paid off. Most of them would head south and get jobs in towns; and most of them took jobs in mines working underground.

       They all had intentions of "giving the bush away" and to keep on working as miners (for miners received much higher pay with shorter hours). Nevertheless, as soon as the wet season was over, the call of the cattle camps was usually too much. They would roll their swags (bed rolls) and head out to the cattle camps for another season.

         Jack Sammon did this for years. In 1978, after twenty years of following cattle down stock routes, he took a permanent job as an underground coal miner. With these thoughts in mind, Mr. Sammon wrote the following poem:

"Each year in Camooweal, men and women who once worked as drovers and ringers hold a reunion where they come together and with old friends sit around a camp fire reminiscing and sharing stories and experiences of those years they spent in droving camps before large road transports brought an end to the droving era through out Australia.
It was while attending the drovers reunion, listening to the stories they were telling I got the idea to write this poem I call the Drovers Reunion. "

(A picture taken at that reunion appears on the previous web page, Edna Zigenbine. It features Jack Sammon, Edna Zigenbine and George Booth.)

It’s a little group of people, who now gather every year,
To the border town of Camooweal, they come from far and near,
Where they join up with old friends of theirs and sit around the fire,
While in the evening sky above, a big full moon climbs higher.

Of the many men and women that went droving in the past,
It’s just this group around the fire, who now represent the last,
They only have their memories and old photographs to show,
Of years spent droving cattle where the western rivers flow.

And when lined and weathered faces from those former droving days,
Blend in with the dancing shadows of that flickering fire’s blaze,
Those old memories are rekindled and thoughts go drifting back,
To times they spent in droving camps out on the Wave Hill Track.

From their cracked and gravelled voices we can hear the stories told,
Of the nights spent watching cattle in those droving days of old,
Sitting shivering in the saddle, with cold fingers gripping reins,
When winter winds were blowing ‘cross those endless Barkley plains.

And we hear a hint of sentiment in voices filled with pride,
When they begin to mention some old horse they use to ride,
Who would never balk or stumble through scrub on a gloomy night,
When lightening flashed and timber crashed as cattle rushed in fright.

And we hear them tell of how they battled to get the cattle through,
When they bought them down to Queensland in the drought of fifty two,
Where scanty feed was mostly stubble, burnt black by summer heat,
And the grey dust swirled above them, churned up by cloven feet.

Or droving down “The Cooper” channels, where big fat bullocks pass,
Wading knee deep through the clover and waving Mitchell grass.
When they camped by shaded waters where the brolgas dance and play, and brumbies came to water at the closing of the day.

Oh how I wish I had been with them, back in their younger years,
Droving down the Wave Hill stock route with a mob of Vesty steers,
Or taking turn on night watch coming through the Murranji,
Where south winds moan through lancewood scrubs, and lonely curlews cry.

For they have seen the ‘Vision Splendid’ that poets wrote about,
When they crossed those vast expanses of that country further out,
Where many a night watch song was sung beneath those western stars,
To the rhythmic beat of horses feet and chime of snaffle bars.
© Jack Sammon 2005