AUSTRALIA may have been built on the back of the sheep and the best teamsters may have been built their teams with horses and bullocks, but it was the goat that made the Stainkey brothers their living.
There were five boys who made up the Stainkey brothers – Alf, Herbert, George, William (Bill) and Joe. Enterprising young lads growing up in Richmond, the brothers’ first success came with their 14-head goat team, before they took on the shearing world and later owned some 15 properties in the Hughenden, Richmond and Julia Creek districts.
Their stepfather, Harry Stainkey, was a blacksmith in Richmond. In 1906, he made his five stepsons a wagon with all the same components of a horse team’s but on a smaller scale. Its smaller design was the perfect fit for goats, livestock that was much more affordable compared to horses.
The two eldest boys – Alf and Herbert – ran the goat team for a number of years before handing it over to their younger siblings.
What had started as an innovative idea soon became a necessity when the boys’ stepfather died and they had to find a way to support their widowed mother.
The teenage boys worked their goat team on the weekends carting wood for the town. They would travel six miles out of town to collect wood and loads could weigh a tonne-and-a-half. The boys received just 15 shillings for one load.
It wasn’t just weekends they worked. After school, the boys would also instruct their goat team as any teamster would his bullock team and carry water for two shillings a load. They used six goats for loads of three casts of water or 150 gallons.
Second eldest Herbert Stainkey recorded such facts in a history he wrote in 1974. William (Bill) Stainkey’s son Cec has since preserved that history and created a statue memorial to his father and uncle’s achievements.
“My father and his four uncles were noted for their working ability,” Cec said.
Such ability was not confined to commanding the goat teams. The brothers also had success racing the lead goats, Star and Garter, who were named after the hotel in Richmond as the owner had given the two kid goats to the boys.
One brother would ride in the saddle race while another would compete in the cart race. Herbert recorded a time the brothers won both the races and took away the prizes of a new saddle and cash of ten shillings.
They also had success with scratch races, where the winner was determined by the weight and distance one goat could pull a load of sand. The Stainkey brothers’ goat pulled approximately 470kg a distance of 27 yards, or 24 metres.
When the family moved from Richmond to Winton, all their belongings were pulled by the goat team – a distance of more than 200km.
The entire trip took them three weeks with the team travelling 12-14 miles (19-22 kilometres) a day. Only one day, or 14 miles, into the trip, the family were caught in rain and held up for a week.
Herbert wrote that about five kilometres out of Winton, some 150 people gathered to see the team come into town. With people calling out instructions to the goats, the Stainkey family had trouble getting down the street.
Goat racing continued in Winton, but not the scratch races. That was until the day the boys were carting groceries from the goods shed to the local store and were stopped by “a gentleman from the city” who didn’t believe the goats could pull that much weight.
The man bet them five pounds and lost his money. Six of the goats were set up to pull one ton of stores and then all but the lead two were released. They continued to pull the one-ton load for five yards (4.5m).
It may be strange to think of the goat as being an important commodity, but Cec Stainkey can recall the notorious eating machines from his own youth.
“Goats were big things back then – they were part of the west,” Cec said.
“People would keep their kid goats locked up during the day and that was how they got their goats to come home at night,” he said.
“They were eaten for their meat and people loved their milk.”
But, there were some things you couldn’t do with goats on the loose, Cec warned.
“You’d never park your car under a tree – no way. The goats would jump up on your car to eat off the tree; they’d slide down and leave their tracks all over your car.”
Cec’s two elder uncles – Alf and Herbert – left the goat team while in Winton to work in the shearing sheds. They handed the team over to the younger boys, who kept the team going until 1916 when they let all the goats out to live their days at pasture.
“Once they outgrew the goats, the five of them became really good shearers and earned a lot of money shearing,” Cec said.
“They were incredible workers and that’s what made them.
“One of their greatest feats was when they bought 1500 sheep from Silver Hills and were droving them back to Rose Downs. When they came to the Flinders River, it was in flood to the top of the banks. Rather than be held up for a month because sheep don’t like water and there was no bridge, they decided to build a yard each side of the river.
“They went and got the old Council boat and they rowed the sheep across 12-15 at a time. Two would tie the sheep up while one would row the boat and the other two swum, one either side of the boat to keep it straight.
“They loaded the whole of the sheep – 1500 – in a day and a half and then they proceeded to Rose Downs.
“The boat in those days had no motor but since then has had one fitted. The boat to this day sits in the Jack Brown Memorial Park in Richmond.”
From their money shearing, the brothers went into property and each held a share in Miria Downs. Individually, they also had their own success. The eldest, Alf and his son Harry owned St Elmo, Belgavia, Clifton Park and Mt Devlin. Herbert owned Woodlands while George owned Rose Downs and the Bluebird Café.
Cec’s father Bill owned Glen Nevis and the two picture theatres in Richmond – the Strand, which was taken over by the army in the Second World War, and the open air theatre. Glen Nevis was passed down to his sons Cec and William Jnr.
The youngest Stainkey brother Joe and his son Roy owned Belford, Argle, Gairlock, Cooncool, and Ennis Downs. Robert Stainkey, a descendant of Bill Stainkey, still owns Clare Valley and Singleton today.