Straggle Muster

This is a Kiwi book, and more than that, it focusses on the South Island - mostly around Canterbury high country. I enjoyed reading it, and I have rated it accordingly, but for those who don't have at least some geographic knowledge of the stations, the place names, and some basics about Merino sheep farming would probably find this impossible to carry on after the first couple of chapters!

I say that because this is a book of thirty something chapters, each a stand alone anecdote, and each on a theme - the author then tells a story or a number of stories around that theme, and these stories include and name the station, the physical characteristics - the hills, the rivers, the fords, and the blokes involved, their dogs, and their horses! So while I recognised none of the names (This was written in 1964!), I am familiar enough with the station names, their rough location and the approximate geography to be able to contextualise it all.

For example there is a chapter called Hard Winters which tells, in its nine pages, a short childhood anecdote, then stories from Castle Hill Station, Wilberforce Station, Mt White Station & Mt Algidus Station.

However, the writing is good (in a Barry Crump, kind of a style - if you know who that is) and the stories run together well. Unlike Barry Crump, there is nothing you wouldn't believe in this book - it comes across as legitimate, and is an interesting look into the Canterbury past. My only criticism of the writing is there are three or four examples of repetition, although a couple of these are acknowledged (with a “as I mentioned earlier...”), they should really have been edited out.

The blurb does a good job of explaining in generality the book:
To straggle muster is to muster in sheep that have been missed in previous musters. Working on the vast hill stations of the South Island, shepherding them by the thousand, and describing here forty years in the hill country with cooks and packies, wild cattle, bosses and publicans, harvesting teams and lonely shepherds.The men who thinly populate the vast high country stations, who love it's rugged, desolate and beautiful landscape. This is a man's world where the life tests character at every point and danger and fatigue weed out the not so tough.Peter Newton writes with humour and verve of a proud profession, and behind the fun and frolic he will show you a proud high country itself.

For me, 4 stars, but not for all.