Bullock team pulling a loaded wagon along a country road, New South Wales. Fairfax archive of glass plate negatives. National Library of Australia.

My great-great granduncle,  Lynn III Shepherd, had a bullock team. Born in 1862 he had watched his father, Lynn II Shepherd, digging the goldfields, to make enough to support his family.  Lynn figured there was more gold to be made supplying the diggers rather than digging in the dirt in the hope of the big find that never happened.

A bullocky, as they were known, tramped everywhere, carting impossible loads to near impossible places, their plodding and the ruts of their wagons slowly building the paths that we travel today as roads, their camps turning into villages that became today’s country towns and regional cities. Lynn was well known in his trade as a carrier at the beginning of the twentieth century when the bullock-drawn wagons gave way to motorised vehicles. According to family history, a poem was written about him and I think that would justify calling him a legend.