THE TRARALGON & DISTRICT HISTORICAL SOCIETY INC

MONTHLY MEETING REPORT - AUGUST 2004

Horses and Sundry Items      By Barry Sykes

Talk for Korumburra Historical Society, 6th May, 2004
and for Traralgon & District Historical Society 10th August, 2004

I’m sure everyone knows that horses have been one of man’s most useful domestic animals for hundreds of years at least, and over that time they have been put to a huge range of tasks, from providing companionship for young girls to waging wars, and absolutely everything in between. Malcolm Kennedy, in the introduction to his book "Hauling the Loads", put it very well when he said

Tonight I want to look at some of those things that horses have been expected to do, in terms of working horses, rather than recreational uses touched on above, or winning races, around which the huge and lucrative (for some!!) industry of "The Sport of Kings" has grown.

As well, it has been said, although I don’t know how accurate it is, that it is very difficult to get camels and horses to work together. Perhaps somebody has told them the story about a camel being a horse designed by a committee, and they don’t like it!!

For us in Australia, the era during which the horse was king was the 19th and early 20th centuries, and photos of any streetscape from that period bear this out. People have looked at these pictures and marvelled at the lack of cars, trucks and buses; and observed that it must have been great not only to lead life at a more leisurely pace; but also to not have had all the pollution that these vehicles, particularly the diesel powered ones, pour into the atmosphere; and it wasn’t nearly as noisy! Little do they know that in fact it was just as polluted in its own way all those years ago, and with all the animal droppings everywhere, it was pretty grubby as well.

Malcolm Kennedy, in "Hauling the Loads", also states that:

These figures are not surprising when Malcolm notes that "A stabled horse consumes some 3½ tons of dry fodder, and over 2,000 gallons of water annually." He suggests that much of it may have been carted out to the market gardens and orchards then in the eastern suburbs.

However, to think that such a situation only belonged to the sedate times of 100 years ago would be to delude ourselves, because even today this confronts Dutch authorities on a daily basis, due to the fact that there are more pigs in Holland than there are people. Thus, disposal of their effluent, as well as that from the other animals housed during the winter, is a major problem in such a small country, to the point where farmers who cannot demonstrate that they have a satisfactory and non-polluting method of storing and disposing of the effluent their animals generate, cannot obtain a licence to operate. Disposal costs can run as high as $20 per cubic metre, as I understand it.

There are more pigs than people in Australia too, except ours are wild ones: much of the meat from the wild pig shooters in Western NSW is sent off to Germany. There’s no accounting for tastes!!

Then, as is the case for any industry, to support all these horse owners and operators, there was a whole army of people who gained a livelihood in one way or another from them, whether it was the growers of wheat, oats and barley for chaff, which took place close to Melbourne in the Rockbank-Melton area for example; or businesses specialising in vehicles, harnesses, saddlery, whips and accoutrements, not to mention breakers, blacksmiths, veterinary services, or knackeries for disposal of animals that had succumbed.

And we must not forget the hundreds of horse troughs that dotted Melbourne’s streets for many years as the result of a bequest from a person who felt that not enough watering facilities were available in Melbourne’s streets for working horses, and it wasn’t always convenient for drivers to carry water for their charges. I suspect that many of these are now gone, given their upkeep costs for horses that will no longer drink from them.

And finally in this aspect, we’ll give Malcolm Kennedy the last say when he says:

As we know, here in Victoria, Carlton & United Breweries carries on this tradition even today, expending considerable sums on the upkeep and transport of its team, so beautifully groomed and resplendent in the finery and details of their harnessing, to various parts of the State.

When we look at horse teams, we could hark back to Malcolm Kennedy’s reference to bullock teams, and ask what dictated the choice for the teamster. The basic differences were that horses were faster than bullocks for mainline haulage, such as we saw in the Riverina for example; but balanced against that was that they were more expensive to buy and maintain, and needed good quality feed to enable them to perform at their best.

Bullocks on the other hand were relatively cheap to buy and maintain, and could eat whatever they found about them without affecting their performance. It would seem that in difficult country bullocks were also superior in hauling heavy loads, and hence the number of photographs that exist of them snigging logs out of the bush. In a way, I suppose comparing horses and bullocks is like comparing crawler tractors with wheeled ones.

Along with the growers of what was known as "shandy" (a mixture of various grains specifically for chaff production) were the chaff mills dotted about the place. Because chaff is such a bulky commodity, for obvious reasons these usually were near a railway, such as the one at Melton, which was across from the station. A spur siding ran into them for convenience, but as in Melton’s case, and also at Trafalgar, the siding ran away from the yard at a virtual right-angle. This meant having a curve from the lines in the yard that was too sharp for any locomotive to go around, and so horses had to be used to haul the railway trucks into and out of the mill. Here I must digress, and to prove that it took me some years to understand the finer points of railways, in my tender years I couldn’t work out why the big sign said "Engines must not pass this point" when in fact the track continued on!! I recall that in later years the Melton mill finally bought themselves a tractor.

Feed for horses was a major factor in any project. As an example, from Mary Healy’s book about the life and times of Andrew O’Keefe, here is a provisioning list for O’Keefe’s Black Spur camp, which included:

O’Keefe of course built the Korumburra and Toora section of the Great Southern Railway. And whilst on local railways, in June 1911 the Railways advised the Strzelecki Coy that their line would only be available for horse traction, until they closed it the following year. With the rising grade from the Black Diamond Junction to their siding, the loaded trucks would have rolled very easily down the hill, without the horse, but one assumes they would have needed the horse to get the empty trucks up to their siding in the first place.

Horses were involved in railways from the very start; being used heavily in their construction, with the Government setting not only a rate for the man, but also one for his horse for such work. In the case of the Outtrim line it was 7/- for the man, and 3/- for his horse per day. Once they were constructed, horses were then largely used for shunting work where only one or two trucks needed to be moved at a time, again until the advent of suitable tractors. The last official shunting horse finished up in Ballarat in the mid-1950s. And let’s not forget the Welshpool to Port Welshpool narrow gauge horse tram, or the trolley service that replaced the train between Alberton and Port Albert once the extension to Yarram was built.

I think it is fair to say that the pioneers and their children would have found life considerably more difficult had they not had ponies to carry them over what passed for roads, given that in the very early days wheeled vehicles didn’t lend themselves to the general terrain, until better roads were a reality. As well, as Malcom Kennedy has observed above, the draught horse was the backbone of early farming, and as we know, the residents of Nhill saw fit to erect a statue of one in their main street in recognition of the many teams that laboured long and hard in the wheat belt, of which Nhill is very much a part, and the contribution those thousands of horses made.

And even here horses didn’t have it easy. They may not have had the long hours in the heat and vast acreages, but they were troubled considerably by their constantly having to tramp through mud of varying depths, and the attendant complaints they suffered as a result, as the Land of the Lyre Bird tells us. Because of the hills around here, and we know some are steep, horses and sledges were very much the order of the day, until the advent in the 1950s of the Ferguson tractor, which was light, nible footed, and with their wheels out wide coped reasonably with most hills, partly because the driver had a clear view of every wheel of his tractor and where it was going.

I am aware that farm tractors had been around long before the 1950s, and indeed there is some controversy as to whether this latter point is only academic. Generally speaking, most earlier tractors were designed for broad-acre farming, to replace the teams I mentioned above, and were heavy, cumbersome and very prone to bogging on wet ground - not really the sort of thing for South Gippsland. The lighter types, such as the I-H Farmall series, were designed for (American) market gardens and orchards, and neither of these are found on the sides of hills like we have around Korumburra.

The change-over from horses to tractors wasn’t a hard decision for most farmers, because not only did it eliminate the ritual of feeding and preparing them for the day’s work, versus just the tirning of a key; but also the much more attractive fact that even when horses weren’t working they still had to be fed and maintained, whereas a tractor just say there in the shed till the next time it was needed. Most farmers also knew that in the place of each horse they could run another 2 cows, which meant more income: a point not lost on them. Needless to say that in the 1950s when this revolution in farm operations took place, draught horses were sold off very cheaply indeed to make way for tractors. The irony is that today a good draught horse will hit your pocket very hard, to the tune of several thousand dollars, if you can even find one for sale in many cases.

And by comparison with the brewery teams noted above, the harness for horses pulling sledges was very basic indeed, comprising only a bridle (blinkers optional), collar and hames, a set or trace chains, and a couple of lengths of light rope for reins. The arrangement for pit ponies, which we’ll look at next, was similar, excepting that their bridle incorporated a ducky leather helmet that was usually round with holes for the horse’s ears. It was not unknown for novices to think these holes were for the horse to look through, and spend some time trying to juggle them accordingly. They also had what was known as a spider, which extended along their back and its role was to stop the trace chains and swingle bar getting caught up in their legs when not hauling skips. Harness makers would not have made much of a living out of these farm and mine horses! Nor would blacksmiths for that matter, because for farm and mine work there was little or no need for them to be shod, unless they had to spend time on the roads. Other states had a somewhat different arrangement, for their mine horses had a full cart harness, and in place of trace chains and swingle bar they had a U-shaped piece of pipe, which basically formed a set of shafts, as for a cart or dray. The coupling to the skips was also different (and higher).

I can’t tell you the figures from all the mines, but I do know that in 1897 the Outtrin Mine had 31 horses and 50 ponies on its inventory. I imagine Jumbunna would probably have had a similar number. However, over their 59 years of operation, the Wonthaggi mines would have totally eclipsed these figures. Just feeding and maintaining all these animals would have been quite a task in itself, quite apart from the cost thereof. And let’s not forget that the mines also hired men with teams to do much of their carrying work away from the mine, such as the supply of mine, such as the supply of mine timbers.

Probably the most important ones to us here are the pit ponies that worked in the mines, because generally speaking in Victoria they were peculiar to the coal mines. And of course, apart from the stable hands who looked after them, most of their lives were spent working with the wheelers. A wheeler is a person who is in control of the sets of skips as they move around the mine. In other types of mines they were known as truckers. Usually, because agility was the key, wheelers were 16 to 18 years old, who did this prior to moving onto the coalface as miners. Agility was called for, because riding along the skips wasn’t a part of the deal - not because mine managers were being difficult, but there was a safety factor. If a rake of skips stalled in a low tunnel, anyone in them would be trapped until someone came along to extracite them.

Many miners speak of wily put ponies, who knew their job just as well as milk-cart horses knew their runs - often better than their drivers. It seems that wheelers new on the job did try riding the empty skips, but inevitably the pit pony would select a spot where the roof of the shaft was very low, and just stop, and no amount of abuse from the unsuspecting wheeler would persuade it to move on so he could get out. There were of course also wily wheelers who carried a long pointed stick, and when the pit pony jibbed (refused to go) in a difficult area, it was vigorously prodded in a most sensitive area of its anatomy, which usually had the desired effect.

Whilst they neither filled nor emptied them, the wheelers’ task was to get the filled skips away from teh coal face, and replacing them with empties, as well as turning them around (ie getting them emptied) on the surface. The skips were usually wooden-bodied (because the coal corroded steel bodies), and at water level held ½ ton of coal. Away from the main ropeways, pit ponies were used to haul these skips, usually in sets of three, although this would have been dependent on the gradient of the tunnel, and the capability of the horse. Part of the wheeler’s job was also to ensure that these pit ponies were cared for whilst on shift.

Contrary to popular belief, in Victoria at least, these ponies (which weren’t really ponies, but heavily-built small horses) were stabled on the surface at the end of their shifts, and like other working horses of the time, were put out to pasture over the weekend where practical for a range of reasons. As a result, Mondays were not a good day for wheelers, particularly during spring when the grass was lush, and the ponies had stoked up on it over the weekend.

However, it is true that in many of the very large mines in England, pit ponies lived and worked entirely underground. As a result, over time they had to remain there, because to subject their eyes to daylight would have blinded them.

On the main roadways, where the wheeler’s and their horses’ roles ended, the (wire) rope haulage took over, and the skips were coupled into sets to be taken to the surface. There their contents were weighed and tipped over the screens, after having their attached tokens removed and recorded in favour of the miners who filled them. Each miner had his own specially numbered set of tokens. Often the limit of these sets of skips was due to the length of the lead roads at the screens.

Not all mines used pit ponies as we here know them. In some mines in other stats and countries the tunnels were much larger in circumference than ours here, and full sized horses were employed instead. I think from pictures they appear to be medium draughts. These too were not silly, and a story from Mt Morgan in Queensland says how their normal rake of skips was 25, and if another was attached by mistake or whatever, the horse wouldn’t budge until the extra skip was removed.

As we know, mining has always been a hazardous occupation, not only for the men, but also the horses, and over its life, the Wonthaggi mines averaged one horse fatality a month, which over their 59 years of operation amounts to quite a few animals. Naturally this doesn’t mean that on 15th of each month a horse lost its life, but that’s how it averaged out. As well, not all of them were killed as a consequence of their work in the mines, because a minority were inflicted by other problems, such as snakes, not normally found down mines.

And to finish, speaking of unreasonable mine managements, the most notorious mine horse of all came from Collie in Western Australia. Notorious because he is probably the only working horse that has ever brought a whole state to a halt. To add insult to injury, his name was "Red". From his photo he would appear to be a medium draught. Since it is such an intriguing story, I’ll reporduce it from the book "One Day in Collie" (pp 142-143), written in 1979 by Harold Williams, the then manager of the Collie mines. Unfortunately no date is given, but the reference to the racehorse Bernborough in it may provide some sort of time frame for some. Here it is:

And finally, I think it would be fair to say that in Australia the days of the working horse being out there in the workaday world, hauling loads or whatever in the streets or on the farms, has gone and won’t be back, so that the only opportunity the coming generations will be able to have to see them in action (albeit somewhat artificially) will be in places like Coal Creek, or at Horse and Tractor rallies.

Clearly that’s better than nothing.