Droving
The old droving breeds include, for example, the Bouvier of Flanders, the Rottweiler, the Greater Swiss Mountain Dog, in the UK – the Old English Sheepdog.
Drovers took their herds and flocks down traditional routes with organised sites for overnight shelter and fodder for men and for animals.
Being in a position of great trust, the drover might carry to the market town money to be banked and important letters and take with them people not familiar with the road.
Around 5,000 years ago the builders of Stonehenge in southwest England feasted in the Stone Age on pigs and cattle and other animals from as far as northeast Scotland, some 700 km away.
In these countries these drives covered great distances—800 miles (1,300 km) Texas to Kansas[6]—with drovers on horseback, supported by wagons or packhorses.
[7] In an Ordinance for the cleansing of Smythfelde dated 1372 it was agreed by the "dealers and drovers" to pay a charge per head of horse, ox, cow, sheep or swine.
[8] Henry V brought about a lasting boom in droving in the early fifteenth century when he ordered as many cattle as possible be sent to the Cinque Ports to provision his armies in France.
[7] An act passed by Edward VI to safeguard his subject's herds and money required drovers, from the mid-sixteenth century, to be approved and licensed by the district court or quarter sessions there proving they were of good character, married, householders and over 30 years of age.
Considerable expertise meant that flocks averaging 1,500 to 2,000 head of sheep travelled 20 to 25 days from Wales to London yet lost less than four per cent of their body weight.
[7] It has been estimated that by the end of the 18th century around 100,000 cattle and 750,000 sheep arrived each year at London's Smithfield market from the surrounding countryside.
Patsy Durack, for instance, left Queensland for the Kimberley in Western Australia in 1885 with 8,000 cattle, arriving with only half that number some two years and two months later, completing a drive of some 3,000 miles.
[11] In the 16th century, the Swiss operated cattle drives over the St. Gotthard Pass to the markets in Bellinzona and Lugano and into Lombardy in northern Italy.
The 18th-century English graziers of Craven Highlands, West Riding of Yorkshire, went as far as Scotland to purchase cattle stock, thence to be brought down the drove roads to their cattle-rearing district.
In the summer of 1745, the celebrated Mr Birtwhistle had 20,000 head brought "on the hoof" from the northern Scotland to Great Close near Malham,[13]: 53 a distance of over 300 miles (483 km).
[14] On March 26, 1883, two Scottish/Australian families, the MacDonalds and the McKenzies, began a huge cattle drive from Clifford's Creek near Goulburn, New South Wales to the Kimberley, where they established "Fossil Downs" station.
Drought conditions delayed progress and most of the original party, apart from Charlie and Willie MacDonald, withdrew long before Cooper's Creek was reached.
Despite a grueling journey through crocodile- and mosquito-infested territory in the top end with frequent Aboriginal attacks, the cattle eventually arrived at the junction of the Margaret and Fitzroy Rivers in July 1886 and "Fossil Downs" station was established.
[15][16] The Tibbett brothers drove a flock of 30,000 ewes in the early 1890s from Wellshot Station to Roma in Queensland, a distance of over 700 kilometres (435 mi), in search of grass for the stock.
[18] Another famous drove was by William Philips in 1906, who overlanded 1,260 bullocks from Wave Hill Station some 3,400 kilometres (2,100 mi) to Burrendilla, near Charleville in just 32 weeks.
30,000 cattle and sheep were driven from Wales to London each year. [ 7 ]
