OVERWORKED.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXII, Issue 822, 5 April 1910, Page 4

OVERWORKED.

A correspondent to the Sydney Bulletin writes; —“I wish to submit as my nomination for the most arduous billet known to man or dog, on land and sea that of book and storekeeper on any of the big Darling River sheep runs during the shearing. Some of his duties are these; —Attend to and keep written up all station accounts, books and correspondence. Tend the telephone and, in addition, be a telephone engineering expert, able to cope with all the eccentricities of that machine. Buy stores from hawking steamboats, and supervise the landing of same. Open accounts for and ration 80 or 90 extra men. Keep track of their indebtedness to the station ; keep open and lie in attendance at two stores —one at the homestead and one at the shearing-shed. Humour three cooks. Make out detailed statements at a moment’s notice for men who receive the bullet. Ship the wool, checking each bale at the steam-boat. Be in the woohoom at the same time, and lend a hand “rolling” towards the door; be back at the station half an hour before the last bale is shipped, to make out bills of landing in triplicate. Remain at the steamer’s side and personally survey the final bale being shipped ; make up the weights and specifications. Play nap of evenings with the classer, machinery expert and boss of the board ; gel the mails : sort and deliver them ; keep track of and collect all moneys owing to blind and deaf and dumb collectors, parsons, rev. fathers and what m t ) these blokes are always thick round a big shearing) ; shoo oil' insurance and numerous other drummers; explain to paid-off men that the 3d they cannot trace on their store account was for a packet of matches got at o’clock on the teenth of mber ; answer a quadrillion silly questions put by visitors, some feminine and beautiful, some feminine and not beautitul, and some not even feminine. Finally, be a jolly good fellow with plenty of time to spare.”