Currango

Our holidays in March in the 1960ies used to coincide with the mountain men mustering their cattle and sheep off the summer leases ready for winter and before the winter snows came. The local graziers had these mountain leases till the 1970ies I think. It was great to watch the men coming into Currango with their pack horses and dogs. Tom Taylor was in charge of making sure the tallies were correct and that no stock were left behind. The cattle were beautiful fat herefords and the sheep fine merinos. The dire predictions of terrible bushfires after the leases were stopped came true years later when Canberra was devastated by huge fires no one could stop, the fuel built up because there were no stock to eat it down. I still think controlled grazing would be the answer in our National parks rather than controlled burning which is apt to get out of hand
There were also a lot of feral pigs beginning to be noticed and Tom sometimes caught a litter of little pigs and domesticated them and converted them into very good hams and bacon, the flavour was superb.They all seemed to be black pigs and some of the boars were massive. You would not want to be confronted by one out in the open. One day my boys who would have been 10 and 8years then and I, were walking on a track towards the Murrumbidgee and I was absentmindedly admiring the twisted and gnarled little snowgums. I started to hear pigs grunting and looked around to see where the children were as in their usual fashion, full of energy, they had rushed ahead. I couldn't see them and started to get panicky as the little snowgums would not offer any protection whatever, the grunting got nearer as I moved forward and I suddenly tweaked, still not quite sure but singing out to the boys, they could no longer contain their glee at having nearly fooled their mother!! However that evening Dr Brown, who had been fishing further up the river did have to contend with a sizable pig and escaped by getting to her car in time. I still have some sizable tushes from a boar shot by Harry.