A bullock's nightmare

If you never have nightmares, but you'd like one, try to imagine yourself as a bullock on the Omeo plains in, say, 1845. That'll do it.
Once you were grown up and in your prime you would be rounded up and headed south down the Tambo valley. At least water was always available but some parts of the walk were steep and some were heavily forested. It was a long, hard walk down to Bruthen, 60 miles, at about 12 to 15 miles a day and it would take four or five days.
By the time your feet, or hooves, had had a short rest you'd be back on the track, heading southwest for Port Albert, another 105 miles but in easier country. That would take about six days, or perhaps seven, and then you'd be turned into roughly-built cattle yards. The air smelled quite strange, with a sort of saltiness to it. Of course, you'd never before been down to the sea.
If you asked one of your fellow bullocks just where you were he'd have been struggling. He might have heard rumours of that other, longer and harder trek across the ranges to Eden to be shipped. No bullocks ever came back from that walk so you'd never heard much about it.
Bullocks were shipped from the Old Port at first, which was also called Seabank (I think) or New Leith. I'm still unsure of the life spans of each of those last two names.
Port Albert is on Shipping Point and one assumes cattle were shipped from there, too. Certainly the water was deeper close inshore. With the ships plying across the Strait to the good cattle-markets in Van Diemen's Land drawing only eight or nine feet, for the most part they could use the Old Port but not come too close to the shore.
Now came the undignified part of the journey, something entirely foreign to the animals. There was no pier, no jetty, so you could not be loaded up a gangplank. Instead you'll be moved to a yard near the shore, where you would first set eyes upon the sea.
You'll be walked to a flat-bottomed punt and some men will put a rope around your neck, up near the horns of which you're so proud. Suddenly you'll feel yourself being pulled forward and into the punt.
Some of you will not take kindly to this treatment. Some will refuse and have to be 'bundled' into the punt. Some will even finish up in the water instead of in the punt, so for the first time ever they'll be swimming
Some men will come alongside the punt in a rowing boat, and they'll tie your rope to one of the ringbolts around the punt. The rowboat will then tow you and the mates loaded with you, perhaps four or five, out to a small ship, the first one you've ever seen.
When the punt has been brought alongside the Waterwitch a rope will be thrown from the ship and a man will pass the end of it under you and hook it back to the rope, That bloke will release the rope holding you to the ringbolts and then, suddenly, you'll be swung into the air. You'll be hauled onto the boat and lowered down into the hold, where a particularly foolhardy or very highly-paid man will release you from the sling.
Yes, I know that you are a wild bullock and that you've suddenly been asked to come out of the bush and to endure 10 or 12 days on the road. You'll be submitted to all sorts of new experiences and most of them will not be pleasant. It will help if you stay calm.
You can blame James MacFarlane, from Heyfield for these indignities. He started the system in 1842, chartering the Waterwitch schooner for a hundred pounds a month to ship cattle across the Strait.
Unfortunately for you and your mates that boat needed fourteen feet of water to stay afloat. Soon there were at least four small ships carrying you and your friends and relatives to Van Diemen's Land.
These were the Waterwitch, just out there in front of you, the schooners Scotia and Industry and the brigantine Pateena. By the end of the year the trade will be well established.
Soon, however your mates who follow you down to the sea will be subjected to a whole new set of indignities. The punt, believed to have come from the wrecked Clonmel, will be abandoned and the bullocks that will follow you down from the Tambo Valley and a growing number of places in Gippsland, will simply be roped, pulled into the water and towed out to the waiting ship. Don't worry about this too much because it will not be a long swim.
However, when you reach the boat more bad things will happen to you. A sling will be put around you, which means someone has to pass the rope under you and underwater. It will then be hooked back to the rope from the ship and away you go.
If you don't like all this, and you won't, take pleasure in the fact that a really good bullock will fetch up to forty pounds in Van Diemen's Land. None of the men handling your boarding of the Waterwitch will want to hurt you in any way – and they won't want you to hurt them, either.
The next stage of your journey will be a new and perhaps frightening experience. The little ship you are on will sail away down the channels into Corner Inlet, and you'll feel the deck moving and lurching under your hooves. This is a very strange and upsetting feeling and you will bellow in fear and perhaps anger, for most of the journey.
If you are lucky you'll be taken to a place called Launceston, which is a lot closer than another place with a name you've never heard.
At least here you'll be able to get ashore without being made to swim, and without being hoisted high out of the water in a rough sling.
Don't relax too much at this point. Bad things can happen to good bullocks. Let's just say that you won't be going home to tell the story of your adventures.