Safeguarding our culture and history

The rugged drovers who herd their cattle and sheep around Australia, braving dust, drought and hardship are a central part of the Outback myth. The stock routes and reserves often match ancient Aboriginal pathways, safeguarding important cultural heritage.

Travelling stock routes and reserves were established from the 1830s for drovers to safely walk sheep and cattle between properties and markets. Robert Groth, Drover in north-west NSW. Photo: Cecile van der Burgh

The stock route network is an integral part of Australia’s rural history. Travelling stock routes and reserves were established from the 1830s for drovers to safely walk sheep and cattle between properties and markets. Their routes were set aside as public land. They followed reliable water courses across the fertile valley floors. Often, they match the original pathways of Indigenous Australians, who shared their knowledge with the early explorers.

Livestock trails or stock routes are by no means unique to Australia. However, in no other country has such an extensive and formalised system of stock routes evolved, and nowhere else do stock routes have such contemporary prominence as in Australia.

Travellers, drovers and Indigenous Australians before them used the stock route network to move across the country side. This tradition lives on today and is too important to lose. The old native trees and waterholes found on many routes provide welcome shelter. They hold important Aboriginal cultural heritage. The adventurous life on the routes is celebrated in the works of poets and writers such as Henry Lawson and Banjo Paterson.

Clancy of the Overflow by Banjo Paterson

In my wild erratic fancy visions come to me of Clancy
Gone a-droving `down the Cooper' where the Western drovers go;
As the stock are slowly stringing, Clancy rides behind them singing,
For the drover's life has pleasures that the townsfolk never know.

And the bush hath friends to meet him, and their kindly voices greet him
In the murmur of the breezes and the river on its bars,
And he sees the vision splendid of the sunlit plains extended,
And at night the wond'rous glory of the everlasting stars


Country Singer John Williamson in August 2008:

It’s about time all Australians realised that so much of the native bush we enjoy alongside country roads are stock routes. The stock routes are corridors for our wildlife through cleared land. They are the last remaining original bush in most of the areas they run through. I remember, in my farming days, we saved our sheep during the 1965 drought at Moree by droving them through Queensland stock routes.

These corridors belong to all Australians. They are as precious as our rivers for many reasons. Like our rivers, it should not be possible to sell them off.

I am quite prepared and honoured to be the patron for save our stock routes for all Aussies.

CAMPFIRE ON THE ROAD 
By John Williamson

We must never let ‘em take this life away
Old stock routes belong to one and all
Drovers, dreamers all agree, poets, Aborigines
We have a right to light a campfire on the road