Gordon,
Maybe they came out on the same boat!
No, my uncle died some time ago.
He worked on a sheep station and farm for a certain Mr Cunningham.
Cunningham was also a Pommy, and when first out there he ploughed some land. It set like roof tiles and it remained that way. He and the blokes tried disking it after a rain, but it just put little lines in the surface. They found they had to plough, "as deep as a matchbox" or it'd set like iron.
He loved it out there. His dad being gamekeeper he was V good at catching rabbits, and shooting 'roos on the fly.
Took him a couple of weeks to check the fences, and he lived mainly on mutton.
For new forest, he would catch the sheep and fill a cigarette paper with sugar and tip it in its eye, and that usually cured it.
When he first went out, he was a wheat lumper. He was awful competitive, and worked like a steam -engine. The blokes would say to him, "You're not a Pommy!" and he felt V proud of that! Sacks, grit and sweat took all the skin of your back for a start, but it came back thick and hard he said! (sacks were filled, sewn up, and then finished to bursting point with a funnel in one corner. Nothing to hold on to on them.
I worked along side him and we made a team! ...even if he Was a Lot older!
Name was Tom Reeve. A great bloke.
Should have said he only had a thumb and index finger on one hand. Had lost the rest in an accident in West Riding carpet mill as a young lad.
