The Bullock



The typical Australian bullock -- long-horned, sullen-eyed, stupid,
and vindictive -- is bred away out in Queensland, on remote stations
in the Never Never land, where men live on damper and beef,
and occasionally eat a whole bottle of hot pickles at a sitting,
simply to satisfy their craving for vegetable food. Here,
under the blazing tropic sun, among flies and dust and loneliness,
they struggle with the bullock from year's end to year's end.
It is not to be supposed that they take up this kind of thing for fun.
The man who worked cattle for sport would wheel bricks for amusement.

At periodical intervals a boom in cattle-country arises in the cities,
and syndicates are formed to take up country and stock it.
It looks so beautifully simple -- ON PAPER.

You get your country, thousands of miles of it, for next to nothing.
You buy your breeding herd for a ridiculously small sum,
on long-dated bills. Your staff consists of a manager,
who toils for a share of the profits, a couple of half-civilized
white stockmen at low wages, and a handful of blacks,
who work harder for a little opium ash than they would for much money.
Plant costs nothing, improvements nothing -- no woolshed is needed,
there are no shearers to pay, and no carriage to market, for the bullock