"Fifty eight years ago Bill Butcher of Booroorban started a trend, which took some years before it was" "accepted by the locals, and today is part and parcel of Australian rural life. He pioneered stock mustering on a motor- cycle in 1937, much to the disgust of dis- trict drovers.

'It was an insult to a stockman, mustering on wheels instead of on horseback," he said. "The old-time drovers were disgusted, stock- men were insulted and I even received a punch on the nose from one of them, he was that wild with me! "But I didn't like horses - still don't. You'd be out in the paddock, miles away from home and when you look up from what you were doing, there's the horse walking home. Bikes don't walk away like that "By the time you got the horse ready, the job could be done "Bill’s first motorcycle was a Velocette two- stroke. He later progressed to an Indian side- car which had room for the tuckerbox and dog. It took a while before others followed his"

"Some did have bikes in those days, but they never went off the road. They only used them to get the mail.

"It wasn't until after the war when labour became scarce that others started using motor- bikes for mustering." Bill Butcher's parents moved to Booroorban in 1928 when they bought the Royal Mail Hotel. "We went there because the railway was coming and Booroorban was going to boom," he remembers.

"The rail line was to be extended from Hay to Deniliquin, but the Depression put a stop to that.

"The pegs are still at ‘Elmsleigh’." Born in Deniliquin where his parents owned the former Bendigo Pub and a dairy property, he went to school at Booligal when the family moved there in 1923 to buy the Duke of Edinburgh Hotel.

"I will never forget the day when Parliament House opened in 1927. The only person in Booligal who had a wireless was the Postmaster. He invited the whole school to the Post Office to hear the opening broadcast."

“almighty cheer from the girls - who had been watching us all along. “I also remember our teacher at Booligal, Mr. Hammond. It was my turn to knock off his tobacco, which we smoked in the boys’ toilet. We got caught, and as punishment, my father sat me down with a big cigar and made me smoke it. Didn’t I get crook. At first I thought it was wonderful and puffed and puffed away. I couldn’t finish, and it didn’t stop me smoking either.

“We got caught out badly at Deniliquin too. A group of us used to smoke at the goods shed on our way home from school. “On this particular day the storeman saw smoke coming from the shed, thought it was on fire and called the fire station. That was in the early 1920’s. We were hiding under the platform, which was made of slats. Through those slats we heard the fire engine coming up the street and then heard it stopping very nearby. We still didn’t realise what was going on. “Then we heard the voices coming closer. “One of the voices belonged to my father – the fire-captain! They were standing virtually on top of us, wondering where the smoke was coming from. “Then, out came the torch. Panels were lifted. We were trapped. “We were found. “Even that didn’t stop me from smoking. “Thinking back, what did stop me was my mother falling off her chair. “When we had nothing to smoke, we would cut three inches of cane off the chair. One day mother went and sat in the chair and crashed to the ground. “There was very little cane left. The sight of mother falling to the ground cured me!”,,

Bill was working around Booroorban at the time of the Headless Horseman, a legend which still lives on around the Black Swamp area. “The Headless Horseman was a local who had put a hurricane light on the top of his head and placed a sheet over it. He then tore into the cattle. It only happened once, but the legend lived on because the Cobb & Co drivers kept it alive by talking about mystery lights they had seen at the Black Swamp.”

He also remembers the heroic efforts of Booroorban mail driver, Mrs. Carry Edwards, whose motto was - the mail must get through. “What a remarkable woman she was. “The bravest thing I saw during the 1944-45 drought was Carry heading off with her horses, with 65 gates to open between Booroorban and Jeraly, often on her own. “Her horses were poor, they had no feed, but the mail always got through. “Thinking back, the good old days were when we were young and stayed busy.

“I remember at Booligal it was our job to get the town cows in, and if you put the calves in for the storekeeper, you got two lollies. “I remember this particular day the cattle were all over the Lachlan. So we stripped off and got the cows in, but when we returned to the river bank, our clothes were gone! “We immediately suspected the Nicholson girls. “So with no clothes and no shoes on, we walked two and a half miles to where we reckoned they would have hidden our gear. Sure enough, there were our clothes neatly stacked. “We were walking amongst the trees, so as not to be seen, but in order to get to our clothes, we had to leave the trees and go out into the open. I drew the short straw, covered myself with leaves and dashed for the pile of clothes. But when I bent down to pick them up, I dropped the leaves and with that there was an,

Bill will celebrate his 80th birthday on Saturday. He still musters sheep on a motor bike, nearly 60 years after pioneering that form of mustering with his two-stroke Velocette, and getting a punch on the nose from an insulted drover. “Now looking back over the years, the most important thing I have done in my life was to get married, settle down and raise a family. “That is what life is all about, making a home.”