Con the Bastard and his Gang

Con the Bastard and his Gang.

It was one of those magic nights. The air was warm and dry and scented
with eucalyptus. I stopped the ute, pulling it onto the dirt shoulder
and turned off the engine and the lights. As my eyes adjusted to the
velvet blackness, the great vault of the sky began to blaze with stars.
Taking care not to wake the others, I climbed down from the cab and
went to the front of the vehicle, propping myself against the bull bar.
It was one of those rare times when a man can be alone with himself and
content, an experience peculiar to the bush and the rural life. I
savoured it for a few moments before a voice muttered in sleep from the
back of the truck and broke the spell. It had a heavy Greek accent and
as I started the engine and pulled back on the road I chuckled to
myself at the memories it evoked.

For the previous month I had broken my back along with the others in
Con the Bastard's shearing gang in the wool shed at Boonoke. It was a
huge property, one of Rupert Murdoch's indulgences and it ran over two
hundred thousand merinos. It was so big they once lost a flock of two
thousand sheep and had to take the plane up to find them. Even then it
took two hours of aerial surveying to locate them and call the drovers
in. The mustering and holding yards were each big enough to house the
Royal Easter Show and when we pulled up in Gummy Smith's old truck that
first day the air was so full of dust the drovers had tied
handkerchieves over their mouths. They whistled and yipped at the dogs,
driving them almost insane with excitement. The dogs were running along
the fence rails and over the sheep's backs with their tongues lolling
out. It was better than a circus.

There were twenty of us in the shearing gang. I'd worked with most of
them before in previous seasons, so it was easy to fall into a routine.
You need a routine when you're shearing because it's the only thing
that keeps you sane. It's a pig of a life, spending ten hours a day
crouched over sheep with sweat in your eyes and your back so cricked
you think you'll never straighten up. But like the great Banjo said,
it's better than being an office worker and, to tell the truth, not one
of us would swop the life for anything.

And the bush hath friends to meet him, and their kindly voices greet
him
In the murmur of the breezes and the river on its bars,
And he sees the vision splendid of the sunlit plains extended,
And at night the wondrous glory of the everlasting stars.*

We'd just finished two weeks shearing at Hightrees and had driven all
night to make it on schedule in Deniliquin. None of us had had any
sleep when we pulled up at Boonoke, but that didn't stop Con going
straight in to see Bill Stokes, the manager. He came out of his office
with Con fussing along behind him as we stamped our feet by the
truck.
"Goo'day, fellers. How you doing?" he smiled. "Ready for it?" Bill
Stokes inclined his head towards the sea of sheep in the yards.

Before we could reply Con had stepped in with an ingratiating smile,
"We're ready, Mr. Stokes. We'll start right away."

"Okay, stow your gear and be in the woolshed in&;#8230;" Bill Stokes
pulled out the old fashioned watch he kept on the end of a chain in his
waistcoat pocket. He flicked open the lid and considered it for a
moment, "&;#8230;in an hour, no, make that an hour-and-a-half." He'd
noticed that we all looked a bit knackered and knew that we'd use the
time to snatch some sleep. He was good like that, old Stokes.

We grabbed our carryalls and nearly ran to the shearers huts, so
desperate were we to put our heads down. Boonoke was an old property,
nearly as old as Wanganella the property nearby where George Peppin had
bred the original Australian Merinos in the 1800's. The woolshed was a
museum piece and the ironbark floors and walls gleamed like they'd been
freshly oiled. It was the lanolin
in the wool, the same stuff that makes shearers' hands softer than a
woman's. The shearers' line was quite comfortable, neat little huts
with two beds apiece and lined ceilings so you only cooked a little bit
instead of baking like you did on other properties.

I bunked in with Portmanteau Jack because I knew I'd always be right
for a drink from the huge portable bar he took shearing. The other
blokes paired off and soon there was silence. As I fell asleep I
wondered who had been landed with Gross Maurie and how long this
unfortunate would put up with his nocturnal farting and belching. I'd
had the misfortune to bunk in with him myself a couple of seasons
before and had taken my mattress into the woolshed after the first
night.
He was called Gross Maurie for his generosity with his bodily gasses
and also to differentiate him from Maurie the Thumb, another member of
the gang. We're a weird mob, that's for sure.

It seemed that I'd no sooner closed my eyes when Con's alarm clock went
off. It was a huge monstrosity with two gleaming brass bells. Con would
sit it in a steel washbasin and when it went off you could hear it a
mile away. There were always plans afoot to steal it and throw it in a
dam but Con guarded it like it was the Crown Jewels and wouldn't let
anyone else within a yard of it. We all grabbed our hand pieces and ran
for the woolshed because we knew that Con liked to judge things very
finely, sometimes leaving us only a couple of minutes to get to
work.

The woolshed at Boonoke is two-storeyed. The shearing is done on the
upper deck which is set out in the shape of the letter T. The sheep are
driven up a ramp from the holding yards below and held in pens. There's
a pen for each shearer, with a swinging gate along the horizontal
gallery. The classing table and the bins are situated in the vertical
portion of the T.
Shearing is brutal work. You never get a break because your pen is
always full and no sooner have you separated a sheep from its fleece
and called the rouseabout to throw it on the classing table when you
feel the beady eye of Con upon you. Con's the classer as well as the
team leader and he's always making outrageous claims to property
managers about how many sheep his gang can shear in a day. He's a devil
when he gets on the grog.

After we'd been shearing for the best part of a month and settled into
a routine word got about that Con had a bet on with the manager. We
despatched the rouseabout to see what he could extract from the
manager's secretary. She was on the wistful side of thirty with the
hips and eyes of an experienced woman and the rouseabout was a young
man and not bad looking if you ignored the missing front tooth.

He came back about midnight and tapped softly on my door. Jack and I
were enjoying a tot of Slivovitz from genuine crystal liqueur glasses
and discussing the woeful state of Balkans politics. When the
rouseabout walked in and sat on the edge of my bed you could tell from
the grin on his face he'd done more than just talk to her.

"Now my boy," said Portmanteau Jack, selecting another glass from his
portable bar and giving it a polish with the tail of his shirt,
"Compose yourself and tell us what you've learned." Jack always took on
airs when he'd been drinking.

The rouseabout took his time, sipping the fiery liquid and rolling it
around his mouth. "She likes shearers, " he said at last. "She says
we've got the softest hands. We went into the woolstore and lay down on
the fleeces. Then she made me take her clothes off and stroke
her."

"What, all over?" said Jack. The rouseabout nodded. A sigh escaped from
Jack's lips and I could see his eyes start to glaze over with memories
of his own erotic escapades. Or perhaps he was considering having the
secretary over himself for a nip or three.

The conversation was in danger of taking the wrong fork in the road.
"We don't want to know about that!" I said hastily. Jack looked up as
if he was going to disagree. "No," I said before he could speak, "Tell
us about the bet, rouseabout."

The rouseabout looked almost as disappointed as Jack that he wasn't
going to have the opportunity of relating the details of his conquest.
I began to feel like a prude.

"Well, Con has bet Mr. Stokes that we can shear over four thousand
sheep tomorrow. Bill Stokes is going to give Con a dollar for every
sheep that we shear over four thousand. Con's got to give him a dollar
for every sheep that we're under."

Jack lost his dreamy look and his composure instantly. "Shit!" he said.
Four thousand bloody sheep in a day! That's er&;#8230;" Jack
scratched his head as he wrestled with the calculation.

"I worked it out already, " said the rouseabout eagerly. "She let me
use her calculator. It's two hundred and twenty two sheep each. Course,
if you let me shear as well, it's only two hundred and ten."

Jack and I sat back in stunned silence while the rouseabout grinned at
us hopefully. "Well, what do you think?" he said after we'd failed to
respond.

"I think you've got more piss and wind than a butcher's cat," Jack said
dolefully. Then to me, "You're the ringer - what's the most you've
sheared in a day?" I had to think about it because I seldom kept the
tallies in my head from one season to the next.

"About two twenty. I did two eighty once, but they were lambs," I
replied eventually. Jack gazed at me for a moment before coming to a
decision.

"Rouseabout," Jack said firmly, "Go and get the blokes."

As the boy left the hut I called after him, "You'll probably find Gross
Maurie's bunkmate in the woolshed."

When the gang was assembled and had squeezed themselves into our room,
Jack took the floor. "Gentlemen, I'm afraid I'm unable to offer you all
a drink as I don't carry a sufficient number of glasses."

Gummy Smith grinned, exposing his pink dentures with its solitary
remaining tooth. "That's all right, Jack, " he said, producing a
tumbler the size of a small vase, "I've brought my tooth glass." He
held it out expectantly. Jack's face assumed an expression of
resignation and sadness which became one of black despair as the rest
of the gang produced their own drinking vessels. "Have you got any of
that Cointreau stuff left, Jack?" said Gummy. He'd started to dribble
and as he sucked the saliva back into his mouth his dentures chattered
like a pair of castanets.

Eventually we were all settled with drinks in our hands. Jack sent a
rueful glance towards his portable bar, now considerably depleted, and
decided he would close the lid for safety's sake. Then he sat on it for
extra security. The entire gang had their eyes fixed on him. Jack
savoured his drink, stretching out the moment.

"Get on with it, Jack," growled Maurie the Thumb from the window ledge
where he was perched.

Finally, Jack spoke, "Well, boys, rouseabout here has discovered
something very interesting, haven't you, son?"

The rouseabout looked up from his drink at which he was gazing with
false modesty. "That I have," he said, eyes all gleaming. Then not
waiting, he rushed on. "I was over in the wool store with Diane cos she
wanted to lie on the fleeces. She asked me to stroke her, so I did -
all over."

The gang was transfixed. Maurie the Thumb clutched his glass to his
chest with both thumbless hands. He'd lost them in a wool press years
before though he was fond of telling people who didn't know the story
that he'd been tortured by Aborigines. Jack's head settled on his chest
with a dreamy expression on his face. Gummy was dribbling even more and
the others were snuggled up to each other like a bunch of children
being told a bedtime story. I knew we could be there all night unless
someone broke the spell. I was about to interrupt the rouseabout's tale
when Gross Maurie came to my aid.

"Cor, struth," someone said. "Dead goannas." As the noxious gas drifted
further around the room the gang members wrinkled their noses in
disgust and made a mad rush for the door. Only Gross Maurie was left
sitting on top of the wardrobe with a pained expression on his
face.

"It wasn't me, " he protested. No one believed him. After twenty
minutes of concerted fanning with newspapers and bed sheets the room
was finally inhabitable again. The meeting reconvened with Gross Maurie
standing on the verandah outside, his head through the open window so
he could hear.

"Right, where was I?" said the rouseabout.

"You were just working your way up her thighs, I believe," sighed
Jack.

"Oh, yeh, that's right," said the rouseabout, gazing dreamily into
space.

I knew that if he got into his stride again there would be no stopping
him. It was time to speak. "Okay, Rouseabout, tell them about the bet
that Con's made." If there's one thing that shearers like it's a saucy
story, but gambling is taken very seriously indeed.

"What bet?" snapped Gummy suspiciously.

"Yeh," added another of the shearers, "What bet?"

So fierce was the interest shown by the gang that for a moment I
thought the rouseabout was going to bolt. Even Gross Maurie was making
movements to climb in the window in his eagerness to hear more. I stood
up, waving my hands to get their attention.

"Listen, men. Con's gone and made one of his crazy bets with Bill
Stokes. He's told him we can shear four thousand sheep in a day. It'll
cost a dollar for every sheep under that number - and he gets a dollar
for every sheep that we're over. Even if we perform a miracle we'd
never get within cooee of four thousand. It's more likely that we'll
shear well under. I glanced at Joe who kept an unofficial tally in case
the management tried to pull a fast one. "How many did we shear
yesterday, Joe?" I asked him.

Joe looked at me for a moment and shifted the quid of tobacco to his
other cheek. He had a very prominent adam's apple and it bobbed up and
down as he spoke, "Three thousand one hundred," he replied.

"Right," I said. "And where do you think Con's going to get the nine
hundred dollars that he'll owe Bill Stokes if we shear the same number
tomorrow?"

The gang members looked at each other as the dreadful realisation
dawned on them. "Our bonuses," breathed Maurie the Thumb, "Our bloody
bonuses!"

A horrified silence settled on the room. The rouseabout was the first
to speak, "I reckon we should go to Mr. Stokes and tell him we're not
going to do it."

Portmanteau Jack stood up, all five feet four inches of him, "That
would be treachery, son."

"Yesh," said Gummy. "Con may be a bastard, but he's our bastard."

The rouseabout glanced at me, uncertain of the morals of the
argument.

"They're right, rouseabout," I told him kindly. "We've got to stand by
each other even when we do foolish things." Some of the gang nodded in
agreement though it was apparent that a few of them sided with the
rouseabout. "No, " I said firmly. "There's got to be a way out of
this.

We talked for half-an-hour before formulating the plan. It relied on a
bit of subterfuge, some bribery and a superhuman effort from the gang.
As the shearers line subsided into sleep my mind was ticking like a
clock.

I was up at 5 o'clock and pulling on my boots on the verandah by three
minutes past. There was a lot to do and only a couple of hours left
before shearing was due to start. A cock crowed in the distance and the
first fingers of the dawn crept over the horizon. I could see the
silhouettes of Boonoke's famous pepper trees. The drover's motorbike
I'd selected from the machine yard started at the first kick and in
moments I had it burbling along the track that led to the jackaroos'
quarters. As I expected, they were already stirring when I tapped on
their door, but they must have thought they were still dreaming when I
put my proposition to them. In the end it cost me a bottle of Bundaberg
rum for each of the five of them, but they agreed. We all shook hands
in the in yard outside, sitting on our motorbikes. Then they wheeled
out with their dogs riding on the luggage racks behind them. I watched
them for a moment, the formation dwindling against the rising sun,
before kicking my bike into gear. I had a tally man to suborn and had
no time to waste admiring rural images.

When I eventually returned to the shearers line Con had the gang lined
up and was haranguing the blokes about the virtues of hard work. He
gave me a suspicious look when I strolled up, but I managed to convince
him that I was just taking my morning constitutional.

The blokes were playing their parts beautifully with just the right
amount of disinterest. If they'd shown the merest speck of enthusiasm
Con would have known we were up to something. When he mentioned the
extra bonus of 50 cents for every sheep we sheared over four thousand a
few of them managed a contemptuous curl of the lips. Con got angry at
this and when he gets angry you can cut his Greek accent with a knife.
"You buggers! he ranted. "You ungrateful, lazy swine!" He was about to
launch into further personal descriptions of a more slanderous nature
when he noticed that several of the men were looking distinctly
aggressive. He stopped short, red faced and panting, deciding that
discretion might be the best course. He stumped off towards the
shearing shed calling over his shoulder, "I wash my hands of you all. I
will shear the sheep myself. Yes, and I'll class the fleeces, bale the
wool and carry it on my back to market in Melbourne where I will
auction it. I don't need you. I need nobody, only Con!"

It was such a spirited performance that I couldn't resist calling out
to the men, "Three cheers for Con the Bastard!" As the men commenced a
ragged cheer Con turned to glare at us. Then he removed the filthy
brown trilby that he always wore and stood with his head bowed. You'd
have thought he was receiving a twenty-one gun salute.

The sheep were waiting for us, shifting nervously in their pens on the
shearing level. I glanced down the line of men as I fitted my handpiece
to the cable that fed off the line from the generator. Each of then
gave me a little nod to let me know they were ready. The big second
hand on the shearing clock clicked around to 7.30am and we were off. It
was as if someone had fired a gun to start the four hundred meters.
Instantly there was bedlam as eighteen huge merinos were dragged out of
the holding pens. Then it was the same drill as always - throw it on
its back and pin it while you shave off the legs and belly wool; throw
it on its side to separate the fleece at the flanks; flip it over and
repeat the process and finish the shear at the spine. All the time the
sheep is wriggling and struggling to escape. When you've separated the
sheep from its wool, you bundle the terrified animal down the shute to
your pen in the big yard below and call for the rouseabout to come
collect the fleece for classing while you start the process over again.
As I worked I hoped the jackaroos were doing their stuff below.

By the time the midday break came around the ache in my back had
assumed the dimensions of a major spinal injury; the others were
feeling just as bad you could tell. Even Con had broken out in a light
sweat with the constant flow of fleeces to trim and separate. I sneaked
a look out of the open window down to the holding pens below. I could
just see the end of the chutes by stretching my neck. On the stand
beside me Joe was forcing a shorn sheep into the chute, using his knees
and hands. When it had disappeared I quickly looked outside again. What
popped out of the chute below was not one sheep, but two. The plan was
working perfectly.

It was simplicity itself. I had despatched the five jackaroos to round
up five hundred of the sheep we'd shorn the day before and hide them
near the shearing shed. There were at least a dozen buildings the
jackaroos could use.
All the jackaroos had to do was bring the sheep over to the shearing
shed in groups of fifty and keep them on the lower level - there was so
much activity and noise going on that no one would notice them being
driven over. I had toyed with the idea of rounding up a thousand, but
in the end it was decided that we'd make up the shortfall ourselves
with concentrated effort.

The scam worked like this - whenever the jackaroos heard a sheep being
pushed down the chute they popped another one in the side of the chute
so that two arrived in the yard instead of just one. I hoped the
jackaroos would have the good sense to replace the side panels of the
chute when they day was over.

The only part that could have gone wrong was if the tally man, a
company employee, raised a fuss. I knew that he wouldn't because there
was a bottle of Portmanteau Jack's sambucca in his bottom drawer that
wasn't there the day before. As I was leaving his house that morning I
had mentioned that sambucca was an aphrodisiac and would make any
female secretary instantly compliant. The tally man had been chasing
Bill Stokes' secretary for years without success. He'd been positively
eager to help us out.

I had just shorn my one hundred and fiftieth sheep when I looked up and
saw Bill Stokes staring suspiciously at me from the doorway. I put on
my most sincere innocent expression and added a little pain, which
wasn't hard. He must have seen the twinkle in my eye though, because he
snorted and turned on his heel. I stamped three times on the floor to
warn the jackaroos below that the manager was about, but I was too
late. He must have run down the steps and around the building because
just as he arrived at the holding pens two sheep popped out of the same
chute. Stokes couldn't have failed to have noticed.

Down below the dust was like a brown fog and the noise of hooves and
bleating made overhearing impossible, but I could see enough to read
their lips as Stokes turned on the tally man in disbelief. "Did you see
that?" he shouted.

The tally man licked the end of his pencil and laboriously made a mark
on his sheet. "See what, Mr. Stokes?"

The manager was nearly tearing his hair out, "That, you fool! Two sheep
just came out of that chute at the same time!"

The tally man sucked on his pencil gain and turned a piteous gaze on
the manager, as if he was deranged, "I don't think so, Mr. Stokes, I'd
have noticed something like that." Then, "Sometimes the heat and dust
can play tricks on your eyes. You have to watch that. especially in my
job."

Bill Stokes looked as if he was going to explode, but the tally man
faced him down and slowly he began to subside as uncertainty crept into
his mind. You could see him puzzling to himself as he walked slowly to
the fence and leaned on the rail. If the tally man ever decided to give
up counting sheep there was a certain career for him in
television.

After watching the chutes for fifteen minutes during which nothing out
of the ordinary happened, Bill Stokes eventually stalked off to his
office. The tally man looked up at me and puffed out his cheeks in
relief. I gave him a wave of congratulations and stamped on the floor
for the jackaroos to resume.

With fifteen minutes left on the clock I looked out of the window
again. The tally man gave me ten fingers five times to indicate we were
still fifty sheep short. The ring-in flock had run out long before and
there were only nine of us left shearing. The rest of them were slumped
in corners or down below vomiting from exhaustion and heat stroke. Jack
who was three up the line from me called for the rouseabout although he
was midway through shearing a sheep. When the rouseabout ran up to him
he silently indicated a hand piece and one of the vacant spots in the
line. The rouseabout was nearly dead on his feet himself, but he
managed a whoop of excitement and wrestled a merino onto its back. Con
came over immediately to protest but when Jack told him to start
gathering up the fleeces himself or, by jingo, he'd sheer the classer
and toss him down the chute, he retreated. Silently, he began gathering
up the fleeces from the shearers' feet. I think Jack's outburst had
shamed him.

When the siren blew and the tally man handed the sheet to Bill Stokes
at a few minutes past five the shearing floor looked like a battlefield
with us on the losing side. Stokes perused the sheet carefully then dug
into his pocket. "Four thousand and one sheep shorn, Con. I owe you a
dollar."

Con threw out his chest and accepted the coin as if it was a VC. "It's
a pleasure to do business with you, Mr. Stokes," he beamed.

Although it was mid-week we all felt we had earned ourselves a drink.
We piled into Gummy's truck and set off for the Conargo pub. We let the
rouseabout ride up front in the cab. He thought it was great honour,
but in fact we were all heartily sick of hearing how had shorn five
sheep in fifteen minutes. Gummy wouldn't mind putting up with it as
he's deaf on the passenger side.

Bill Stokes was at the bar when we arrived, talking to the owner of a
nearby property. He kept glancing over in my direction, so I sat at one
of the tables and pretended to read a newspaper. I knew he'd be over
later for a chat.

After ten minutes or so he slid onto the bench seat opposite me and
placed a beer in front of me. He studied me for a moment before
speaking, "It's been a funny sort of day, ringer. A shearing gang, for
no reason I could discern, suddenly shears hundreds more sheep than it
ever has before. Meanwhile, on the very same day, five hundred shorn
sheep go missing and no one can trace one hide or hair of them."

I sipped at the beer he'd brought me, blowing the froth away from the
side of the glass, "Well, I'll be blowed, Mr. Stokes," I said at last.
"You never know, perhaps the shearers were inspired. As for those lost
sheep, well, Boonoke is a bloody big place. Have you thought of sending
the plane up to have a look for them?"

He looked at me suspiciously then his eyes crinkled and he started to
laugh. It was so infectious I had to join in and soon we were wheezing
and chooking with tears in our eyes.

Our mirth was interrupted by Con who arrived at our table clutching a
half bottle of ouzo in his hand.He swept off his hat with a grand
gesture and held it to his heart, swaying slightly. "Mr. Stokes, " he
said solemnly, "I have the damn bloody finest team of shearers in
Australia and I tell you today was only practice." He paused for a
moment to take a swig from his bottle. "Tomorrow we're going to shear
five thousand bloody sheep and I have a thousand dollars that says we
can do it!."

Con stood erect. chest puffed out, while he waited for Bill Stokes to
accept the challenge. He didn't notice Gross Maurie and Joe creeping up
on him from behind. They were so quick that the rest of the bar
scarcely noticed when Joe tapped Con on the head with a chair leg.
Maurie and Joe each took an arm and dragged him out of the door to
deposit him in the truck.

Bill Stokes turned to me, still laughing, "That Con," he said. "He's
such a bastard. He's nearly as bad as you blokes."

"Yeh," I replied, "We make a good team, don't we?"

* Extract from 'Clancy of the Overflow' by A.B.'Banjo' Patterson. First
published in The 'Bulletin', 21 December, 1889, Melbourne.