The Kettles were known as the family of bullock drivers and therefore whip makers. Ray who [1981] now carts stock in the back of his one tonner as well as farming and post-splitting, and his older brother Alf, did a huge job of logging from Green Hills for Harvey Bardenhagen, who had a sawmill down in Lilydale. You could hear the whistle blow from the mill steam engine from “up North”. We used to go home for dinner by their whistle.
The bushmen used to fell huge gums with the crosscut saw, then trim them, then they would have the bullocks- two would do the job - roll the log on to the skids with the aid of the wire rope.
Bullocks are better than horses with slow deliberate straining because they will lean into the load in case of sudden jerks
whereas horses might skit and shy or back back. The log was slowly raised up the skid logs onto the wide-wheeled, strong-axled timber jinker. [This picture is of logs being brought down North Lilydale Road, likely one of the Kettles or Fred Kelp in charge.]
They move very slow and carefully over that three miles.
Fred Kelp did some of exactly the same job, same trail, a generation before. He’d bring one wagon down from Lowes’ to the front of Arthur Scott’s,
go back for another wagon, hook the two together and plod like a big jointed soldier-beetle down to Lilydale.
A boy walked behind to crank the brake while in Fred the bullocks know he was there with the odd swing of the whip on a 10 foot pole and the odd string of choice vocabulary.
He began like that and ended up one of the biggest property owners of the district, justifiably attached to his hard-won earnings.
Alf Kettle was killed at his trade - like so many others - by a dry branch falling out of a tree being felled.
Now, back to whips, John Henry (“Old Jack Mahnken”) and some of his boys could put a new tail on a whip.
You need the kangaroo skin for that, more pliable for the bite and crack. The stub end is usually bullock hide, plaited while still green and then it shrinks tight.
[...]
Cows used to have bloody acute hearing. They seemed to pick up the least sound from the boss on a bullock team.
When I was learning, the uncles used to play jokes on me. I'd be gittin along, thinking I was hellish smart driving this four, pulling a plough or a haywagon and they’d stop! What have they stopped for? I never said anything. One of the others had said "Whey!" Just quietly, a hundred yards across the paddock. I never heard it but the bullocks did.
The bullocky had a whole code that these animals had better know or God help ‘em. If he said : "Whey, come hither!" the nearside leader stopped, while the offsiders all pulled round to the left towards the boss.
If he said: "Whoa! Gee off!" the side closest to him wheeled on to their right while the offside stopped.
A beginner can pick up a whip and if he doesn't know which way to hold it, he's got Buckley’s.
Every bullocky in Tasmania held his whip handle, a 7 foot long sassafras pole, straight like a standard-bearer up across his right shoulder when he called "Gee up" and over his left shoulder for "Whoa!"
Of course I was only an observer. You would have to talk to Kettles or Gibbins to get it all exactly.
[[The image at bottom is of bullocks dragging logs from one of the Lowe family's bush blocks. Charlie, Rupert and Laurie Lowe, sons of William and Ann, operated two sawmills at North Lilydale in the early days.]]