Bullocky Bill – silverfox175

Some years ago I’d visited the statue of the dog on a tucker box when I drove back to Sydney from Melbourne. I knew that Maureen hadn’t seen this statue, so I planned a small diversion for her to visit Gundagai (pronounced Gun-da- guy say it quickly) on the home would leg of our road trip. The town is about eight kilometers ( five miles) from Snake Gully, where the statue is located.

The legend of the dog and the tucker box (food box) began around 1850. Pioneers had moved south & west from Sydney around 1830 looking for land along the Murrumbidgee River  (which is 1488 km or 900 miles long). They dragged everything using bullock teams and in the wet they got bogged down.

One story is that a poem called Bullocky Bill told of a dog that guarded his master’s tucker box until he died.

There are two main poems about the dog on the tucker box – the one below, a PC version (from 1920s), and another below the first (written in 1850s).

‘Nine Miles from Gundagai’ by Jack Moses

I’ve done my share of shearing sheep, Of droving and all that; And bogged a bullock team as well, On a Murrumbidgee flat. I’ve seen the bullock stretch and strain And blink his bleary eye, And the dog sit on the tuckerbox

Nine miles from Gundagai.