Up the Country: A Saga of Pioneering Days

In those days, and for a couple of generations afterwards, there were a number of herds of clean-skinned horses and cattle at the head of the Muniong watershed. These had sprung from beasts, some of them blood stock, that had escaped from settlers in the early days and had made their way to the fastnesses of the wild and well-watered country. Here they throve and multiplied, with no enemy but the dingoes who would sometimes attack the newborn, and occasional severe winters. The blacks had early retreated from that locality, so there was no threat from them. There were fine beasts to be had by anyone up to the undertaking, though practically none were, save Jim Poole and Larry Healey of Little River. A man had to be familiar with the inaccessible gullies and gorges of the region to which the stock retreated when pursued, and he had to be able to ride like thunder on a locally bred horse. No horse from down the country was safe on those hills, the haunt of wombats and lyrebirds, or in the boggy lick-hole country with its myriad springheads.

Poole devised a way of baiting the lick-holes with salt. And in severe winters, when the wild horses stood knee-deep in the snow, he snared them in winged stockyards baited with hay. The Curradoobidgee stockyards were famous as the best and most extensive up the country. The outer fence, of four well-pegged, broad rails and a cap, was seven feet high, a veritable jail from which few beasts escaped. Poole Senior was the King Billy of the stock-riders on Maneroo, and tales of the hell-for-leather mustering, branding and drafting feats that took place there in his prime have been handed down by the old hands to the present day.