Bullock Team On Way To City

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29965, 29 October 1962, Page 12

Bullock Team On Way To City

Yesterday Mr Murray Thacker, of Okains Bay. set off from his home with the bullock team and waggon which will lead the centennial procession of the Canterbury Agricultural and Pastoral Association through the city during the lunch hour next Monday—the day before the four-day show opens on November 6. The journey of about 50 miles will take Mr Thacker and the team about four days. Lapt night the four Friesian bullocks were pastured in the holding paddock at DuvaucheUe. Bullocks were an important feature of early Canterbury and Banks Peninsula history. There were very few horses in the province and bullocks were used for ploughing, pulling waggons and timber from the bush, and when their working life was past they were fattened for the butcher. Nearly all the bullocks in the early days were Shorthorns, or Durhams as they were called, and one historian described the breed as: “admirably suited to the triple needs of the dairy, the plough and the butcher.” In the procession, and in a daily parade at the show which will feature a cavalcade of transport through the century, the bullock team will draw a wool waggon which was built locally and which will be loaded with bales of wool.

Mr Thacker bought' the bullocks last autumn and has spent the winter training them. In the process he has dragged from the bush between 30 and 40 cords of firewood, sledged fence posts to the tops of his hill country farm and has found them useful in many ways. A fortnight ago he used the leaders to strain a fence. As far as can be ascertained the team is the only one still in- existence in New Zealand. The last one in Canterbury was featured in the Little River centennial celebrations.

The team is yoked with the traditional bullock yokes

—curved heavy timbers which cross the shoulders of each span, or pair of bullocks. with iron U-shaped nods around the neck and fastened through the yoke. The yoke itself has a large iron ring to Which is attached a heavy chain to the next span and to the pole of the waggon. Mr Thacker can also claim another probably unique feature with his team. They are the only team of working bullocks to be Tb-tented, a necessary requirement for their entry to the show grounds where all cattle must be tested.

Their speed is about two miles an hour on the road. Mr Thacker has been keeping them in fit condition by driving them up and down the hilly Peninsula roads around the bay, where 60 years ago they were a common sight and the shouts of the “bullockies” rose up through the clear air. Patience and a strong voice are essential qualities of the bullock driver but Mr Thacker was not prepared to say whether he had mas-

tered the foil range of invective and unorthodox language usually associated with the bullock drivers ot the past. The long whip with its snaking plaited leather thong which cracks like a pistol shot is also part of the general equipment. A recent article in an Australia:: farming publication described one “buUocky's” boast of cutting his initials in the bark of a bluegum tree at 25 paces and cutting “the eye out ot a mosquito at 20 paces." Mr Thacker is an ardent collector of historical objects and he has at his home a museum of Maori artifacts, weapons and food gathering equipment. He has two Maori canoes which he has restored and a collection of antique firearm,About 2000 persons visit the museum each year.

By this evening the team will have reached Little River and wiU travel to about Kaiituna tomorrow. The team will be at Mr J. Overton’s farm at Halewell on Wednesday evening.