Chapter 42
Murrumatta, New South Wales, Australia. 1845
When Jack Finch was granted his Certificate of Freedom in 1842, he put into action the plan which he had drawn up shortly before his arrest in England seven years earlier. He had done his research — and he knew how, God-willing, he could make his fortune.
From its small beginnings at the turn of the century, the Australian wool industry had flourished. With its vast expanses of open country which were insufficiently-fertile for intensive agriculture, and its warm climate but unreliable rainfall, Australia was ideally suited to sheep grazing. The introduction of the Merino sheep, with its heavy coat of fine wool, allowed Australian sheep farmers to produce fleeces which were snapped up by English buyers.
Jack Finch was determined to become a sheep farmer. He had made enough money from his enterprise in Newcastle to buy himself a small sheep station and a good flock of sheep. But he wasn't going to spend his money yet. He would wait until the following year when he knew he would be able to buy his farm at rock- bottom prices. In 1843, when sheep could be bought for five cents a head, Jack Finch waved his wad of money. As sheep farmers were going bankrupt all over Australia, Jack had no trouble finding an ideal property. He settled in Murrumatta , near Bathurst, where he found a sheep station which, while not exactly reminiscent of the countryside he was used to back home, was sufficiently picturesque to make him feel that he could happily spend some years there, if not the rest of his life.
He had been in Murrumatta for two years now and had no regrets. As he had known it would, the price of wool recovered during that period, and he was now a man of considerable wealth. In addition to his prior knowledge of the fluctuations in wool prices, Jack had other tricks up his sleeve to make his operation superior to those of his neighbours.
The majority of sheep farmers had come from England and continued to farm using the traditional methods of the old country. They employed shepherds — who were often convicts who had been assigned to them — to drive flocks of sheep out to the pastures each day, ensure that they were safe, and then bring them back each night. Sheep dogs were rare, as were horses, so the poor shepherds had to walk vast distances to take the sheep to their destinations, and even further to round up the strays. Keeping the sheep safe was a major operation. Dingoes were rather partial to mutton, and the Aborigines more so, although the fact that they could never forgive the white man for driving them from their hunting grounds meant that they would have stolen the sheep whatever their dietary preferences. And there were always bushrangers looking for a free meal. An additional difficulty was posed by the abundance of native trees, eucalypts, which drained the soil of its limited moisture and thus deprived the grass of water.
Jack's research had taught him that there were some simple, but effective, solutions to the problems. The first of these was the sharp knife. Cutting down the trees with axes and saws was a time-consuming process. Jack simply ringbarked them. Two parallel cuts were made in the bark all the way round a tree. The strip of bark between the cuts was then peeled away. As the bark is the part which transports the nutrient-carrying water to the top of a tree, ringbarking was a certain method of killing trees — comparable with slashing a person's throat. The trees simply bled to death or died of thirst.
The second solution was the wooden fence. Instead of employing one shepherd to look after each flock of four or five hundred sheep, Jack fenced his land to make huge enclosures. A single man, on horseback, could ride round the boundary to check on the state of the fences while another could check on the wellbeing of the sheep. The fence wasn't totally satisfactory for keeping out predators, but Jack could afford to lose a few of his thousands of sheep now and again. His boundary rider was under strict instructions to chase away any dingoes or bushrangers he came across, but to turn a blind eye to the activities of the Aborigines. In his previous life, Jack had experienced eviction for himself — and he could appreciate why the Aborigines loathed the white man so much. It was his humanity towards the real Australians which later helped to save his life.