The patient bullock

In the early years of settlement pack and draft horses were used extensively to move men and goods around the country: however bullocks proved to be superior in the matter of drawing heavy loads. They needed no shoeing, ate less expensive food, and could be turned out at night even in the depths of winter, being hardier than horses in coping with bitter cold.

The first bullock team arrived with the Dromedary, and, in rehearsal of the work that hundreds of bullock teams were to carry out in the next sixty years, was used to haul great kauri logs out of the depths of the bush.

The timber industry was not the only venture that came to rely on the patient strength of the bullock: it was found that bullocks could plough the stump-studded newly burned off land, could clear the logged slopes to make pasture for sheep, and could haul immense wagons of wool and other produce at an unremitting three kilometres per hour.

A good 'bullocky' could even persuade his team to haul wool wagons into the sea, so that the bales could be offloaded into boats. However the bullock teams were seldom given the respect they deserved, and the bullocky never had as high a status in colonial society as the man who drove a dashing team of horses. Horses moved faster and were therefore more spectacular than the plodding bullock teams. It is ironic, then, that the roads that made transport by coach possible were built with the muscle-power of bullock teams.

Bullockies spent so much time with their teams, and developed so much rapport with the cattle, that their bullocks were often known by affectionate and wittily conceived names. Thus one team in the Wairarapa reflected their drover's repertoire of beverages: Whisky, Brandy, Soda, Beer, Gin, Wine, Sherry, Rum, Stout, Lemonade, Ginger and Coffee. Teams like this one became locally famous, but with the roads that they built, and the coming of mechanisation, their usefulness came to an end. Powerful, patient and dogged they may have been, but they had to humbly move over when the truck made its entrance on the transport scene.