Jack had 3 dogs, one named Bessy was a beautiful orange fawn coloured Greyhound a delightful friendly kind dog. Jack also had a reasonably old female rough haired creamy coloured Staghound, named Fly, and a very vicious pale coloured brindle male dog named Tiger.
Tiger was not trustworthy and was chained up, usually, except when Jack took them up the bush for a run.. Jack used them to catch and kill kangaroos. The roo meat was feed for the pigs.
My brother and I used to spend time over with Jack and Joyce. We were farm kids so the town did not interest us. We used to go Mallee stump picking with Jack. as he was supplying the town fires.
Jack also used to get 10 shillings (1 Dollar) per skin for the roo skins (fur coat etc were in high demand world wide) Robert and I got 2 shillings (20 Cents) per skin for any we skinned.
Jack used to charge 10 shillings each to all the young men who went with him on roo shooting day trips and the same for spotlighting night trips.
My brother and I were aged between 10 to 14 during these years. My brother and I were dog handlers and had to make sure that none of those men got bitten by either of the stag hounds.
One night they spotted a dingo, and of course they were inclined to have been with them, so we’re not very stable. While racing across the low scrub with the truck a drain got in the way.
Jack put on the brakes as the truck leaped in the air. One or the blokes was thrown over the cab and was saved by the arm of the rear view mirror. Most of their guns went off as they were primed to shoot. It could have ended up very nasty.The dingo of course was never seen again. My brother and I were often taken to some spot, turned loose with the dogs on their leads and told to walk into the bush until we came to a fence or some distinct object at a certain place, when the Roos got thick we had to let the dogs loose.The dogs would take of and kill Roos as they ran. There were thousands of Roos in those days. We sometimes saw mobs of 5000 or more, just looked like big mobs of sheep except they hopped.
We were to walk sometimes up to 3 miles into the scrub in e given direction.
The blokes would be waiting and would shoot as the Roos crossed the fence.
We used to think it was rather a dangerous operation, because those blokes were not always stone cold sober.
My brother and I were very good bushmen, as we were farm reared, and knew we had to keep the sun and shadows in set positions to avoid getting lost.
Occasionally some of the blokes would be on horseback.
They would race beside the roo and hit it behind the ear, with a stirrup iron which killed it instantly. One day one of the fellows got thrown and a big roo grabbed him from behind.
The secret of avoiding getting hurt in that situation, is to fall flat on the ground. But this roo got a grip on Charley, brought both its hind legs up and ripped them down Charlie’s back.
Fortunately Charlie was wearing a heavy leather sheepskin lined coat and only the coat got damaged.
Some time later one of those nights turned unthinkably awful. After the dogs and us 2 were dropped of at Jack and Joyce's
and the others taken to their homes, one man, who was in the passenger side of the truck dropped his gun on the ground as he stepped out.
Sadly to say it went off.
He was married with a couple of young children "
