The Bull from Illawarra

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 782, 16 July 1954, Page 9

The Bull from Illawarra

by

SUNDOWNER

JUNE 29

HAT surprises me most about Queensland cattle ticks is the cost of not dipping at all. I did not know that "tick worry" actually kills cattle, but I am assured that it kills thousands even where dipping is fairly regular. A Queensland weekly to which I am temporarily subscribing has, in

fact, suggested that the answer to tick losses will probably be found

in the blood of those cattle which for gome reason or other have not been dipped and by some lucky chance or other have not died but developed an immunity. Two out of three, it says, will die; but science may find what it is looking for in the blood of the third. Here, again, I imagine that the reference is to areas where the infestation is very heavy. All the cattle I saw in Africa 50 years ago, milking cows and working bullocks, were studded with ticks, but I do not remember that ticks ever killed them. If I had nothing to go on but talk I would be sure that it is tall talk, and that the locals are stretching a visitor’s obedient leg. But there is at least partial persuasion in print. * #

JUNE 30

ODAY I saw my first Queensland : sheep. It was a Merino wether,

dingy with age and coal dust, tethered in a dirty

back yard:

JULY 1

HERE is an interesting custom here of measuring road distances from running creeks, and a pleasant practice of putting up the name of a creek

about half a chain before you come to it on

either side, and you therefore never

cross a creek-if you belong — without knowing where you are and where you are going, and I wish we could say the same in New Zealand. But I am not sure that Australians are any brighter than we are in selecting their place names. Here are some of the notices I saw in a road journey of about 50 miles: Duckhole Creek, Andy’s Creek, Running Creek, Doubtful Creek, Bollard Creek, Doughboy Creek, Sheep Station Creek, Darkey Creek, Branch Creek, Catfish Creek, Deep Creek, Nine Mile Creek, McGinty’s Creek, Double Creek, Scrubby Creek. I like Doughboy, Duckhole and Catfish, but I think we would be equal to Nine Mile,

Sheep Station, Running and Doubtful. It, of course, opened my eyes to find so many creeks, all running, in country too dry and hard for cultivation. * * "

JULY 3

"YES," he said, "that is our Illawarra -the original Australian Shorthorn." I thought the original Australian Shorthorn was a bull bred in England or Scotland and not quite good enough to be kept at home; but I was not sure

enough of my ground to argue. In any

case, I was a visitor, and the confidence of Australians. though not

small, is nowhere equal to their hospitality and friendliness. I listened and tried to admire. But the bull I was asked to admire looked like nothing so much to me as the probable begetter of a good team of working bullocks. He was big, leggy,

coarse in the bone, and as high in the shoulders as a Brahman. I thought, in fact, that he was one of the new Brahman crosses now being advertised in Queensland, and exciting a good deal of controversy. But I was assured that his mother, in a bad season, and after many hours of travelling, had just given 70 pounds of milk with three pounds of butterfat in 24 hours, and that at home in normal conditions she had given 90 pounds of milk with 314% pounds of butterfat. Illawarra cows, I was further , assured, had been.first 35 times in the 36 years in which butter production re cords had been kept in Queensland. Since the proof of the cow is the milking, I turned back to that bull when the owner was not there to advertise him, but all I could see were the hocks of a giraffe and the trailing belly of a buffalo. If there are 1654 like him in Australia, as I gather there are fiom the latest issue of the A.I.S. Herd Book, and 8728 cows, and if no other breed can compete with them in ihe bucket, it is time we gave up trying in New Zealand to breed Shorthorns that not only milk well but look perfect ladies, I have in any case been only a lukewarm admirer of Milking Shorthorns since Gordon Jones’s Darbolara bull got tangled in his chain and my courage went out in a flood when I struggled to release him. (To be continued)