Shearing in the bushranging era

Sheep shearing at Yandilla Station, ca. 1894

Sheep shearers working in a shed at Yandilla Station.

A supervisor or manager in a hat, vest, shirt and trousers

and a tarboy in rough clothes pose for the photograph.

(A tarboy assists by dabbing tar or antiseptic on any cuts suffered

by the animals during shearing.

Australian life in Queensland in the bushrangers time

The bushrangers roamed Australia during the 1800's. The term bushranger was first used in a newspaper in 1805. Here is are some images of what life was like in the northern state of Queensland during that time.


Mounted Police station in Cooktown.
Barracks and police station in the country above Cooktown 1878

Hopetoun selection in southern Queensland.

Edward McDermott's grocery store
in Brunswick Street, Fortitude Valley, Brisbane, ca 1884

 Family having tea in the garden of Richmond Hill homestead,
Mackay, Queensland, ca. 1890

Group of women having a tea party in Queensland, ca. 1887

Reading the paper in a Gympie garden, ca. 1871

Blacksmith shop, Oxley Road, Oxley, Brisbane 1888.
 

 Gold miners outside a bark hut, Queensland, ca. 1870
Two gold miners dressed in working clothes outside a slab bark hut
with mining tools nearby

You might like to find out more about:

• gold mining in Australia in the bushranger days.
• bush homes in the 1800's.
• what bushrangers ate.
• From the bookstore: Blacks and Bushrangers. Adventures in Queensland ... With Illustrations By Edward B. Kennedy.

What did bushrangers eat?

Pioneer settler's home in the Australian bush

What a bushranger ate, when they were in the bush, would depend upon many factors:

• what part of the country they were in
• their own bush survival skills
• if they were actively on the run from the authorities
• if they knew free settlers who would support them

Many bushrangers hunted wild rabbits and native animals such as duck, pigeons and kangaroos and if they were near an ocean or river they would try and catch fish or eels.
When bushrangers were being hunted by police and trackers it would have been difficult to stop and cook food over a fire.
Some bushrangers stole provisions owned by the settlers or travellers or store owners if they were near a town, helping themselves to salted meats, potatoes, onions and flour. Some were supported by free settlers who had been convicts and were sympathetic to the bushrangers hatred of authority.  
Bushrangers may have known about native plants that they could eat such as stinging nettle, prickly pear and tea tree but this is not documented.

The call of the Australian Bush 1880




1880 Northern Queensland Australia
Travelling through the bush in the Cooktown District

The road is rough - but to my feet
Softer than is the city street;
And then the trees! - how beautiful
She-oak and gum - how fresh and cool!

From The Call of the Bush by Dora Wilcox,

born Mary Theodora Joyce Wilcox (1873-1953) poet and playwright.

A bush home in Australia in 1895

The first settlers endured the inclement climate and the harshness of the bush as they went forth into the forest with the manly determination to reclaim the wilderness and to make themselves a home in its previously unbroken solitudes. To do this, has involved no small amount of courage, of patient endurance, of steadfast hope, of physical strength and of pertinacious toil.  Picturesque Atlas of Australasia: published in 1886.

It's hard to tell from this photo, due to the fence, whether it is a fully wooden construction called a bark hut or a slab hut or a wattle and daub home.

Bark Hut
A hut almost entirely made from the stringy bark tree which was chosen because of its straight grain. The bark was stripped and cured before being used to create the walls.

Slab Hut
A hut made from slabs of split or sawn timber, often in a vertical construction. Timber was split along the grain and used green not seasoned.

Wattle and daub
The wattle is the horizontal weaving of thin branches between vertical stakes.
Daub is the binding ingredient usually made of clay in Australia mixed with wet soil, or sand, animal dung and straw.

LINKED UP AT: History and Home

Family group in front of rough bush dwelling

1870's

This is a slab hut construction with a bark roof. A slab hut is made from slabs of split or sawn timber, often, in Australia, in a vertical construction. Timber was split along the grain and used green not seasoned.

Learn about the construction of other buildings in the 1800's.

Linked to Oh My Heartsie Reviews, Twinkle in the Eye, Today in History...on your site

1873 photo of Bank of NSW in Warwick

Photographer: William Boag



This building was erected by the Bank of NSW in Palmerin Street, Warwick opposite the Warwick Dispensary in 1871 and opened for business in February 1872.

In 1842 Governor Gipps declared that 'all settlers and other free persons shall be at liberty to proceed to the Darling Downs in like manner as to any other part of the Colony.' Warwick was the first town on the Darling Downs established on the banks of the Condamine River. The Leslie brothers first settled in the area as squatters and in 1847 the NSW government asked them to select a site for a township. The local Aborigines called the area as Gooragooby, it was going to be called Canningtown but the name Warwick was chosen.

The early streets of Rocklea, Brisbane

Horses and riders outside the Crown Hotel, Rocklea, Queensland in 1899.
John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland

 The town of Rocklea is nine klms south of central Brisbane. It was named after a watercourse - the Rocky Water Holes - where there was good farming land. The Crown Hotel was licensed in 1862 to Edward Barnacle, the name above the entrance.
This way of placing the licensees name prominently can also be seen in the 1880 photo of The Glenrowan Inn, site of the Kelly Gang shoot out in that year.

Bush School 1872

Logan/Beenleigh area, Queensland

This is believed to be the Logan non-vested (non-Government funded) school, established in 1870, in what school inspectors described, at the time, as a 'new, well-ventilated, and roomy building'.
The structure also was used as a place of worship.
One teacher was employed to teach 58 children. He was reported to be 'painstaking and conscientious', but the level of attainment was regarded as very low, caused by the irregular attendance. Among the subjects offered, geography, writing and spelling were regarded as 'especially imperfect'.

Lunch in the bush

Lunch in the bush, near Warwick, Queensland, ca.1893.

A man and woman stopping for a meal and a billy of tea. The horses have been unhitched from the double buggy. The double buggy was advertised as 'a must for squatters' as it was admirably adapted to travelling over huge logs and rutted ground. Travel in Australia during the late 1800s would have been very difficult.

RESOURCE: John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland.

Hyde Park Barracks

Hyde Park Barracks, Sydney,

drawing by Hardy Wilson in 1914.

National Library of Australia image.

Constructed by convict labour in 1819, by order of Governor Lachlan Macquarie, the Barracks design is by architect Francis Greenway. It was built as the main male convict barracks in New South Wales and was lodgings for convict men and boys who worked in government employment around Sydney until it closed in 1848.

Melbourne in the 1800's

Detail from the Cyclorama of Early Melbourne by John Hennings

 

In 1892, the Victorian government commissioned John Hennings to paint a cycloramic painting of Melbourne. Hennings was paid 500 guineas (about A$1000) for his work which took five months to complete.

A cyclorama was a pictorial entertainment that was popular in Europe and America from the late 18th century until the arrival of cinema at the end of the 19th century.

Hennings was born in Germany in 1835 and arrived in Australia in 1855.

RESOURCE:  State Library of Victoria

'The Immigrants first Christmas in Queensland'

New settlers pictured outside their tent,

celebrating their first Christmas in Queensland Australia.

Copied and digitised from an image appearing in the The Illustrated News-Budget, 23 December, 1911.

ROBBERY UNDER ARMS

William Strutt the artist who painted this scene in 1887, Bushrangers on the St Kilda Road, described it as "one of the most daring robberies attempted in Victoria" in 1852.

The St Kilda Road was the scene of frequent hold-ups during the Victorian gold rush by bushrangers. During the gold rush a temporary camp was set up for new arrivals and it was called Canvas Town.  It was in the part of St Kilda Road between Canvas Town and Melbourne that most hold ups occurred. The bushrangers, who conducted the holdups, were thought to be mostly former convicts from Van Diemens Land which is now called Tasmania.

Find out more background to the art work PDF