A Backblocker's Pleasure Trip

Coming from the backblocks, we expected to find the metropolis of the oldest State something better than a promiscuous cattle ranch. We thought that stockriding, droving, and browsing herds were unknown there; that Sydneyites had long ago lost sight of that phase of Australian life. We were disillusioned.

It was soon forced upon our notice that several stock routes traversed the residential centres. Sydenham road, one of the busiest thoroughfares in the populous suburb of Marrickville, was one. This we knew as the Long-Grey-road. Mobs of sheep passed along almost every night. They travelled late, and down the road they were heralded by a clatter on each side as windows were banged down to keep out the dust they raised; whilst the shouting of the drovers and the yapping of dogs woke up everybody who had got to sleep. If the mob passed before 10 p.m., a crowd of street urchins joyfully apprenticed themselves to the droving profession, and raised more row and more dust than a gang of rouseabouts in a drafting yard at shearing time. Sometimes the stock passings were recorded in the small hours, when the reposing residents would be wakened long before it was time to get up. In the bush the drover was a quiet workman; but in the city droving seemed to be impossible without the accompaniment of a tremendous lot of noise. The cattle route exacted more than the mere sheep road. The cattleman's motto seemed to be: "We're awake; let's wake everybody else."