PACKMEN'S TROUBLES.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIII, Issue 125, 28 May 1932, Page 1 (Supplement)

PACKMEN'S TROUBLES.

BACK COUNTfiY STORIES. BARBED WIRE AND KEROSENE

(By M.E.S.)

On a wild winter's night, when the old station hands are gathered round the cookhouse fire, secure in the knowledge that there is no early start booked for the morning, it is the time-honoured practice to "swap yarns" of other days and other places. Jokes that time has not made stale are told against the "new chum" and the "homey," but the favourite butt of all witticism ia the parkman and His iniquities. It is a fertile theme, as full of variety as the men and horses who have inspired it. As the night wears on and the stories grow taller, one would fancy that packing on a sheep station was a job undertaken solely by the escaped inmates from a criminal lunatic asylum. As a matter of fact, your packman must have both brains and brawn, but greater than these are patience and a sense of humour. It is, of course, the last job to give a "new chum," for it is work fraught with the possibilities of disaster. To the uninitiated "packing" means the leading of a single horse along ail ordinary road, but this is not "the packman's job," as it is understood oil a station. Managing a Team.

On one bush run that I knew all goods had to be packed 11 miles from the road to the homestead. The track was narrow and winding! mostly up and down papa hills, and the team consisted of 16 horses. The packman went out with his beasts on one day, slept in a shed at the roadside, and started off again early.next morning. Picture for a moment the disposing of 10 loads upon the backs of 1C horses, every load more unconformable than the last, every horse different from the next in temper, carrying capacity and nerves. Picture the joys of loading corrugated iron on a very windy day, of struggling with kerosene, barbed wire, flour, grass seed and furniture. Yet it all had to be brought. Once the team was loaded and started away behind the leader, a specially-trained and particularly sagacious animal, they we out of the driver's sight for six miles. Indeed, in the whole distance, there was only one spot, where he could get a view of the entire team, and that only by leaving the track at a certain bend, cutting across country, and climbing a hill whence he could sec the only straight strip of track in the whole eleven miles.