Stories of Early Deniliquin - Bk1

A collection of stories about Early Deniliquin

Indexed with more than 1400 names referenced within the stories.

An extract from
Stories Of Early Deniliquin 1 :

TEN SKETCHES OF REPRESENTATIVE HOUSES

DIFFICULTIES OF TRAVELLING
GETTING THE WOOL CLIP TO THE SEA BOARD

Travelling, it can be easily understood, was a matter of great difficulty in those good old days. To travel to Sydney meant months of mental strain and physical exertion. The routes were none too clearly defined, in some parts there were no routes at all, and a journey to the New South Wales capital was an undertaking of no small moment. Provisions for many days had to be put aboard, for they had no comfortable railroad cars or well fashioned stage coaches then. It was a long journey and lonely one, fraught with adventures often times of the most thrilling kind. The trips had to be made and the journey faced by the bullock driver. It was in 1843 that the first shearing was done in the Deniliquin district. A little had been effected the previous year but nothing to speak of. In 1844 it was pretty general on all the stations where sheep were depastured. For the first season one bullock team was sufficient to convey the wool for any one of the stations.

The Thule clip for that year was comparatively a big one, for it had thirteen and a half bales of spade pressed wool. Perricoota was nearly as large, however, Moira too, came up smiling, so to speak, for Mr. Lewes station had a patent wool press which was quite an unique piece of mechanism in its way. A box was made into which the empty bale was placed, the end of the lever was mortised into a tree. It was sixteen feet long. When the wool was in three men seized the other end of the lever, lifted it till it rested on the press, and then stood heavy logs of wood on its extreme end to ensure extra pressure. It was quite an "institution" in the district and numbers of surrounding settlers came to view it. The jocund bullock drivers started on their long journey to Sydney up the river to Albury, thence by Gundagai, Jugiong, Bogalong, Yass and Goulburn. Five months was the average trip, and the "bullocky" who returned at the end of that time laden with supplies was considered no "slouch" at his work. Other stations loads followed in the wake, and thus from a small beginning grew the immense wool trade of the now famous Deniliquin district.

Excerpt from an article -
Pastoral Times Newspaper -- 28th September 1895