WORKING bullock teams have long passed into Hunter Valley history.
But once they were the backbone of colonial settlement in Australia, until replaced by steam-powered railways, riverboats, and, finally, trucks hauling timber in the 1940s.
Modern Australia, you might say, was even founded on the backs of these (usually) gentle giants. These long-horned bovines could each weigh between 600 kilograms and a tonne, were hard-working and reliable, according to old bushmen.
They were indispensable to Australia's wool and timber industries that relied on them for about 150 years.
Around Mount Sugarloaf there are even landmarks named after old timber cutters and bullockies who once lived there, places such as O'Donnell's Brush.
The bullock teams kept working in steep wooded gullies too rough for horses, and which later trucks found impossible, while bulldozer drivers found it extremely challenging.
The big animals once hauled desperately needed supplies to remote country towns, timber pit props to mines, relocated houses and churches (on sleds), and even went a mile underground near Cessnock, at a Millfield mine, to shift three five-ton winches to the pit bottom.
About 28 bullocks from Clarence Town even created a world record for haulage by pulling 50 tonnes for a charity day at Cessnock in 1984. The next year, a Queensland bullock team beat that effort, lifting the record to 101 tonnes. Little wonder then there's even a mural celebrating the era of bullocks and bullockies on a Kurri Kurri wall.
I was reminded of all this recently after coming across a photograph of a bullock team pulling logs from Mulbring forests in 1984.The Herald file photo, from the late Allan Jolly, shows bullocky Peter Avery urging his team up a mountain. In 1976, Les Avery and son Peter were reported to be the only bullockies still commercially operating in the Watagan Mountains.
Some other bushmen remained, but their teams were kept as a hobby.
It was a far cry from when hundreds of men once worked hills from Wyong to Wollombi with their bullock teams. The photograph in turn reminded me of a magnificent 30-minute documentary, inspired by an earlier Herald story and made in Mulbring. It screened on Channel 10 in September 2003.
Follow You Follow Me told the story of Hunter Valley identity Les Avery, then 87, and his team of bullocks working the bush in the Watagan Mountains for the camera. Its producer and director was veteran cameraman at NBN TV David Threlfo, who saw the rare opportunity to record for posterity how bullocks provided the first means of heavy transport in Australia. Unlike similar documentaries, Threlfo tackled the subject at the source, grabbing three genuine bushmen still around to talk about their dying craft. Besides Les Avery, the doco also features fellow bushmen Reg Wade of Paxton and Cessnock's Allan Dehn.
Threlfo said that spending the day in the bush filming them and a small team of bullocks was a privilege.
"Nothing had changed. Working with the bullocks and men using a bandsaw to cut tall trees, well, it was like going back to Biblical times. It was hard graft," Threlfo said.
"It was an absolutely fantastic experience being with them. It was a little like stepping back in time. I included Timbertown in the film, but it's now gone too. And you have to remember that decades ago if something went wrong out in the bush you had to fix it yourself on the spot and quickly."
The big bullocks, for example, usually worked in multiple pairs, and each lead pair were joined together by a timber yoke on their necks with iron hoops. If a yoke broke, another one would have to be shaped immediately, carved out of a nearby log using an adze, a sharp axe-like tool but with a curved blade.
"Then to attach it to the animal, the (bolt) holes couldn't be drilled out because there was no electricity in the bush. Instead, holes would be burned through the yoke only using a rod made red-hot from a campfire," Threlfo says.
If David ("resigned never retired") Threlfo's name sounds familiar, it's because he's shot at least four major documentaries on Hunter coal history, including the 1988 Logie Award-winning documentary The Richmond Vale Railway.
Threlfo says he shot his bullocky documentary because he wanted to save a piece of Australiana.
"For example, I found out why so many main streets in country towns are so wide. They had to be that width to enable bullock teams to be turned around," he says.
"We're also still following old bush tracks (first bullocks then horses). Standard rail gauges are four foot, eight inches and that's because people measured the width of a draught horse and followed it for train tracks.
"Bullockies like Les Avery were so gentle and calm and brimming with knowledge. He had so much control over his animals. His whip never touched them and they were like pets to him. Each had beautiful names (like Jolly, Plum, Pilot and Star)."
Although retired, Avery readily agreed to participate in the documentary with his hobby bullock team saying, "It's better than sitting on my verandah rusting away." After all, working bullocks in the bush had been his passion since he left school at age 14.
The documentary also reveals that its three participants - Avery, Wade and Dehn - had a combined experience of 140 years of working in the bush. Retired bushman Reg Wade also remembers when there were "hundreds of blokes" making a living working the Watagan forests, plus "30 to 40 bullock teams".
Wade said old bullockies did little harm to the bush, unlike modern bulldozers working in the wet, damaging ground and "smashing, ripping and tearing the bush just to get one tree".
Also, going into the bush again to help make the documentary, meant keeping a crucial, forgotten part of history alive.
"It's a special day being out with Les and his bullocks. I think it means more than gold to me," Wade says.
