[4] On its first release, the reviewer in The Sydney Sun praised Davison's ability to get into the mind of an animal without descending into bathos.

The review concluded: "This author knows his subject, and brings to the work also a great love of all dumb brutes as well as a peculiarly fine descriptive gift.

His station scenes are so vividly recalled that the reader can almost hear the bellowing of the beasts and the crack of the stockwhips.

"[3] A reviewer in The Queensland Times noted that "With a happy gift of expression, Mr. Davison has painted the ordinary round of work on a cattle station with startling new tints, and always from the angle of the beast on the hoof.

"[6] In Alex Miller's novel Coal Creek, hard-boiled inmates at Stuart prison soften at this tale of a red heifer's bid for freedom, "and were like children with it, demanding to have it read to them over and over".