With a very full career, both in print and media journalism, producing documentaries and publishing books on Australian history, respected historian Dr Jonathan King acknowledges his time as an enthusiastic jackaroo on a large Riverina sheep station was essential to his later work ethic and commitment to a job once started.
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“I couldn’t have done, what I have achieved through a most fascinating career, if not for those formative years when I was a jackaroo on outback sheep properties,” he said. “My years on Bundure Station, near Jerilderie, under Fred Hutchins, taught me everything.”
Reflecting upon the many significant events to his credit Dr King said the most notable was initiating and organising the First Fleet re-enactment to coincide with Australia’s Bicentenary celebrations.
“I was inspired by the part taken in organising the First Fleet by my direct ancestor Philip Gidley King, and I wanted to acknowledge his contribution to the founding of this country,” Dr King said.
It was a concept once developed that was to meet many obstacles before the re-enactment fleet eventually left the same port in England as the previous fleet had done 200 years before.
“It was an outrageous idea,” Dr King admitted.
“But we pulled it off with the help of some fantastic dreamers who defied the government who said it ‘can’t be done!’”
The entire project took 10 years to reach maturity but, as Dr King now acknowledges, his determination stemmed in part from his time as jackarooing on outback sheep stations.
“I just don’t take no for an answer,” he said. “The Bicentenary was the biggest history lesson in Australia,and I wasn’t going to let a few negative people divert my attention from what I considered a great project, which would benefit both Britain and Australia.”
The inspiration for choice of career comes in many and varied directions. But in Dr King’s case, he decided upon a career in the bush upon leaving school due to the influence of Banjo Paterson’s poetry, and a painting by Tom Roberts.
Growing up in Melbourne, Dr King didn’t have any contact with the bush until he went to Geelong Grammar as a boarder and began to meet scions of families with a long association with the pastoral industry.
Dr King recalls his parents also thought some time as a jackaroo would be good for his health, as he suffered from asthma.
Taking as his cue the poetry of Banjo Paterson, especially Clancy of the Overflow, with his stirring rendition of a life under “the wondrous glory of the everlasting stars”, Dr King eagerly accepted the chance of a career on the land.
“The idea of the ‘vision splendid’ appealed to my youthful imagination,” he said. “It is the best poem Banjo wrote, and I imagined myself droving behind mobs of cattle and sheep, rather than sitting in a dingy little office.”
He went further and expressed admiration for Tom Roberts’ seminal depiction of working in woolsheds, Shearing the Rams, painted at Brockelsby Station, near Corowa in the late 1880’s.
“I used to dream when young of being in that picture,” Dr King said.
But the reality was not always romantic when Dr King joined the New Zealand and Australian Land Company as a jackaroo on Bundure Station, Jerilderie, under the management of Fred Hutchins.
After long hours riding the paddocks, mustering sheep and experiencing the varied jobs associated with operating a sheep station, Dr King still found time to read through his collection of favorite authors.
“I was always fascinated by poetry, and read a lot of the classical poems,” he said.
“Poetry comes from the writer’s soul . . . there is so much passion and interest . . . and such a high impact through the brevity of words.”
Besides poets like T.S. Elliot, Keats, Robert Browning and Dylan Thomas, Dr King also cited Shakespeare and Charles Dickens as influential wordsmiths.
“Riding around Bundure, I would hobble my horse, light a fire and boil my billy for lunch, and take out my copy of David Copperfield or some poetry to read while I ate my sandwiches,” he said.
Admitting the life toughened him physically, he said he was also beginning to become bored as his mind was opening up the possibilities of words and literature.
But the spark to consider another career came one day when he was cutting Bathurst Burrs in a paddock on Bundure Station.
When the overseer was doing his inspection rounds, Dr King suggested a better way to do the job more efficiently.
“I told him I had an idea,” he now recalls with some amusement.
“He rose as high as he could in the stirrups and said to me . . . you are only a jackaroo . . . you don’t get paid to have ideas.”
It was a “turning point” and obviously time for the ambitious young man to move on.
“One thing leads to another, and I had become bored as my mind was opening up,” Dr King said.
He was offered a cadetship with NewsCorp, then News Limited, and he started working on the night shift, recalling it has “the best education I ever had, and that is why I develop my ideas”.
Eventually, Dr King moved to a position in television in Britain, and later in academia where he met and married Jane.
“She is the best thing that ever happened to me and we continue to have a great partnership,” he said, fondly remembering their wedding day and the birth of four daughters.
Jane also recognises the determination of her husband to carry through with each project he sets his mind to was decided by his period as a jackaroo.
“He can fix anything with a coil of No. 8 fencing wire,” she said.
The archives collected during the fleet reenactment are now being prepared for the Mitchell Library.
“In many ways, I am extremely pleased to be a member of an Australian pioneering family,” he said.
