Sheep Washing at Jondaryan

Double Dipping

On many stations, especially where there was a good river frontage, washing was confined to a double swim through a large waterhole.

In 1868 Messrs Kent and Wienholt, proprietors of Jondaryan Station introduced new washing machinery to their extensive sheep-farming establishment.

It was considered the most effective and complete of any yet introduced into Queensland - similar to that employed by Thomas and Somerville Learmonth, a prominent Victorian pastoralist family at their Ercildoun property near Ballarat.

Spout Washing

Erected on the banks of the Jondaryan Long Waterhole were a series of yards and lanes and gates, made of hurdles, and arranged for the conveniences of drafting sheep, and a little further on a wash pool, engine shed, and drying yard.

About 2000 hoggets held in the yards are gradually passed into the soak, under the spouts, and on to the drying yard preparatory to being sent to the shearing shed at Jondaryan.

Two or three men are employed drafting the sheep through the yards and lanes, in batches of twenty or thirty, to a platform near three large soak-troughs or vats.

Here other men are stationed, who seize the sheep and pitch them into the soak-vats. The soak consists of a compound of hot water, soft soap, and soda.

Soap and Soda

The use of soda had been condemned, by experts on sheep-washing, as injurious to the wool, on the ground that although it tended to increase the whiteness of the staple, it took out of the wool the whole of the yolk, making it hard and crisp, and consequently of less value in the market.

Kent and Wienholt found that soda materially helped cleanse the wool, and used only half the quantity in the soak, giving more time before the sheep are shorn for the yolk to rise again.

Soak Vat Swimming

Soak-vats are about fourteen feet long by four feet deep, and four feet wide. They are divided in the middle by slides, which are raised and lowered at pleasure.

A large boiler kept the soak at a uniform temperature of 110 degrees. When six or eight sheep have been thrown into the first compartment of the soak-vat, they are allowed to swim round it for about two minutes, care being taken that none of them get choked or crowded together.

The slide is then raised, the sheep are passed on to the next compartment, and another batch is thrown into the first one. After being thoroughly saturated and steeped with the soak, the sheep are helped up an incline out of the vat into a passage facing the pool.

Other men stationed there take them in hand and send them, tail first, sliding down a shoot into the wash pool, where the washers are ready to receive them

Treading Water

The pool is a large hole, some forty feet by twenty-five feet, about fifty feet from the creek, and is floored and lined with timber. An iron cistern, thirty feet by five, and five feet deep, spans like a bridge the middle of the pool.

Across the bottom of this cistern, and traversing its whole width, boxes or "spouts" are affixed, which taper downwards from the cistern - at the junction with which they are about two feet wide to a narrow edge from which the water issues with considerable force.

Pressure Cleaning

These spouts, eight in number, are some six feet long, and each one is constructed so as to throw two jets or sheets of water the full length of the sheep.

The cistern is kept filled by a stream of water constantly rushing into it, and raised from the creek by a centrifugal pump, worked by a 30-horse power horizontal steam engine.

A race conducts the surplus water from the wash pool to the creek while the contents of the soak-vats are carried away by covered drains to a considerable distance from the waterhole.

One man stands on each side of the spout. The one nearest the soak-vat takes the sheep immediately it has descended the shoot into the wash pool, and places it upon a board or table under the spout and beneath the surface of the water, turning the animal's head to his mate on the other side.

Washpool Wading

The two men then turn the sheep from side to side, allowing the water from the spout to play upon it until the fleece is thoroughly cleansed, care being taken to keep the head well out of water.

The sheep is then taken off the board by the man on the opposite side of the spout to that on which it was received, and he casts it adrift in the wash pool with its head towards the inclined pathway leading to the drying-yard.

This pathway, and the drying-yard as well, is floored with 2-inch scantling, placed a short distance apart to allow the drip-water from the fleeces to escape. They then hurry away to wedge themselves in amongst the crowd.

Shepherd to Shearer

When a certain number of sheep have collected in the pathway, they are put into the drying-yard, where they remain until the following morning.

The shepherd then again takes charge of them, and receives directions as to the route to be taken across the plain to the shearing shed nine miles distant and the time to be occupied in the journey.

The sheep are usually shorn on the third day after that on which they are washed, giving time for the yolk to rise again, rendering the wool soft and elastic, and of greater value in the market for manufacturing purposes.

Great Improvement

The new process adopted at Jondaryan is a great improvement on the systems adopted in preceding years. The number of men now employed at and about the wash pool is nearly forty, and they can turn out from 2000 to 2200 well washed sheep in a day.

The time occupied in the whole process from throwing the sheep into the soak-vat to casting it adrift from the spout does not exceed five minutes.

The old system of washing, saw sheep kept in the water twenty minutes, and the deaths resulting from the exposure was enormous, particularly if the sheep were in poor condition.

Source: Trove Digitized Newspapers - The Queenslander - 12 December 1868