I had an uncle who managed two properties out at Trangie, west of Dubbo. Very flat country, and a big sheep rearing area in the early sixties.
My uncle preferred to go around in a horse and sulky. I lived in Sydney, but visited him a couple of times, and went out with him and his dogs, which rode in a frame under the sulky. He'd check the mobs, and treat the fly blown animals with old hand shears.
At shearing time the sheds were running flat out. It was a great time for a young fella, rounding up sheep for the shearing pens, or riding out into the properties and help pull animals out of muddy dams, cut off the lamb's tails, treat the fly blown sheep, or drag them into the railway vans for transport.
His dogs were amazing the way they could round up a mob and move them around on just a few commands or whistles.
I learned a lot about the way people used to live on the land, before satellite technology or PCs.
Also had a great aunt who lived in a cabin, with a dirt floor and flattened kerosene tins for lining the walls. She had no electricity, a well for water, and a fuel stove. There was a pit toilet away from the cabin and well. The bunk beds were made from hessian bags slung between poles. Staying with her was a great holiday for a kid. She lived at Dural in the 1950s - there was a daily bus from Parramatta that went out there along the unsealed Old Northern Road. You could see it coming by the dust cloud.
Dural was remote, and mainly citrus farms. She lived on Roughley's property. Nearby by was a huge free range chicken property run by the Cranston family - real free range chooks, just allowed to go all over the place, and put into big pens for the evening to protect them from foxes. We'd go there to collect eggs.
I see Dural these days, and there is no hint of what it was like back then. Same for Trangie - taken over by foreign owned cotton corporations. The town has diminished. No outdoor picture theatre, banks, rail service, department store. Sad.