This is the poem mounted on the wall in the historic sheep musterer's hut we stayed in at Woolshed Creek near Mount Somers. It seemed very appropriate for our tramping experience because it reflected so many of the reasons we were there:
The Reasons
It is not fame or fortune, that makes men muster sheep,
On broken rugged hillsides, and ranges rough and steep;
It is not love of comfort, or the working of short hours,
That makes them tread the mountains, mid the pure fresh alpine flowers.
It's the frosty early mornings, as dawn breaks clear and bright,
And the mists rise from the valleys as the day takes o'er the night;
It's the climbing out with gang of mates to reach your beats on high,
The kea soaring on the wing in the slowly lightening sky.
It's the feel you get when top is reached and the whole world's stretched below;
A maze of peaks and ridges, bright red in the sunrise glow.
It's the stirring sight of stringing sheep as they move for the day's first noise,
But it never pays to take them cheap, for they're full of many ploys;
It's the pride you feel when your heading dog hooks a mob a mile away,
Though he's cast on running shingle and his pads have bled all day;
It's the satisfaction at days end when the last sheep's through the gate,
And with weary tread you head to camp for the evening's getting late.
It's the smell of wood smoke rising from the hut tucked in the lee,
Of the towering bluff bound massif clothed with bush and shingle scree;
It's the swinging billy boiling as the packy makes a brew,
And the dixie on the fireside full of simmering mutton stew;
It's the old camp oven sitting in the embers glowing red,
And the smells that issue from it from the slowly rising bread.
It's the yarning in the sacking bunks and the smell of candle wax,
The rolling of the day's last smoke, the whinnies from the hacks;
The hobble chains a clinking as they head down to the creek,
And the morepork in the birch trees tells the world it's time to sleep.
--Jim Morris
