Late one evening, over some fine Russian vodka during a family holiday in Yamba in mid-2000, Peter regaled his son and daughter-in-law with some old yarns about his days in the bush. He talked about how he learned to shear in 1956 during a shearer’s strike, how he felt about using the word ‘scab’ and how he ended up being flown to Sydney in an old war plane, the Avro Anson, to visit his ailing father.
In 1956 when the shearer’s strike was on and I was working as a station hand at Bundarra, we had sheep that were badly flyblown. Because the shearer’s strike was on, we couldn’t get any shearers out there to crutch the sheep so they were dying left, right and centre.
So Noel, the manager of the property (there was three of us working there at the time: Danny Ford, Tim O’Leary and myself), he could shear and he taught us how. But because of the unions, we weren’t supposed to shear sheep or anything because of the unions. The reason they were dying was because you couldn’t get any shearers out because they had this big shearer’s strike. But we needed to crutch these sheep or else they would have all died and that is how I learned to shear.
It was a demarcation dispute over wages and wide-comb and all that sort of thing was going on and it was going on for 9 to 11 months. They were demanding all sorts of things like inner spring mattresses for shearers and pool tables; some places were pretty rough but others were pretty good. But these same fellas would go into town and live off the smell of an oily rag but out in the shearing shed they wanted everything like a five-star hotel.
The shearers wouldn’t come out and they were black balling sheds if they hired ‘scab shearers’, they called a ‘scab shearer’ someone who wanted to work. They would come out to various sheds and they would blackball the shed and all this sorts of stuff. There were fights everywhere.
Warren Penny, who was a pilot, flew an Avro Anson into Wanaring with a load of shearer’s on board. And I got a ride back to Sydney, ’cause Dad was pretty crook. And I got a ride back with Warren in the Avro Anson and they grounded them not long after that (laughs)! Those planes were mainly used for reconnaissance during the war, they were a twin engine; smaller than a DC3 but bigger than a small plane.
We went into the pub and this bloke told us he was flying in with a mob of scab shearers. I didn’t call them scabs ’cause these guys just wanted to work. But they didn’t get much further than the pub!
Anyway, Warren had to go back and he said, “Run out to the airport and I’ll give you a ride to Sydney.” In actual fact, the publican took us to the airport and so me and the guy who built the huts there at Bundara (Bob Bradley, it was) flew back to Sydney with Warren in this Avro Anson.
Peter J Hill – 27 June 2020
Peter J Hill - Australian Bush Artist 