Talk:Jackaroo

Jillarooing in the Early 1980's

Hello, please don't jump on me, I am not clear on the etiquette here, but I was a Jillaroo in the Outback of Australia in the early 1980's. I was part of the cohort of Jillaroos referred to in the quote, "But during the '70s [and early '80s], as a consequence of feminist thinking, a new source of jillaroos began to appear". Many of us were inspired by Robyn Davidson's (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robyn_Davidson) then recent camel trek across the West Australian desert to venture out into the more forbidding parts of Australia, which had previously been all but barred to women. If I may generalise from my experience, I think this page needs improvement. Please make of this what you will;

First, the title is not correct; in my experience, Jillaroos (or Jackaroos) are not trainees, or at least not in the last quarter of the 20th century. My experience as a Jillaroo was closer to the quote from 1978; "Jackaroos are, or were, sweated labour."

I think the notion that Jackaroos had any kind of social standing or status is incorrect, and the quotes given are selective. I can imagine they were originally written to try and entice people to come out and work on remote stations with images of idyllic conditions. The truth is more that Jackarooing and Jillarooing was not a career or a profession, merely an occupation, and an extremely hard one at that. Many Jackaroos were (traditionally) itinerant rural labourers, and gravitated between permanent work on stations and itinerant work on the outskirts of towns, some travelling like swagmen. The difference is mostly accounted for by how one found work; either by correspondence, or by travelling. I traveled from place to place looking for work with a swag, and often found work Jillarooing on stations. Being a "swaggie" is a mode of travel, while being a Jillaroo is an occupation. As a Jillaroo, you needed zero formal qualifications. Every morning, if you had the guts to get on the horse, or wrestle the ram, or toss bails, or get into the paddock with the bull, you had a job. If not, the track back to town is that way.

Most of the work was not permanent, but seasonal. Between times I traveled, camping in billabongs, or in the bush along creeks and riverbanks or sleeping in huts provided by landowners while working. When the work was finished, we moved on. We traveled with very few possessions, mostly; a hat, a swag, a stock whip, a billy, a bag of flour, a tin of golden syrup and a rifle if we were able. A horse would have been a costly encumbrance. We lived on rabbits, ducks and the occasional 'roo if in company with Aboriginals on their own land. We walked and got rides from place to place, looking for work. Men did the heavy work, women did mustering with the men, some cleaning, some fruit picking (but only out of desperation), small stitching and sewing repairs, and took care of dogs and other animals. How you could do a traineeship like that I could not imagine. The trainee idea would certainly not be the norm - this kind of work is almost entirely learned on the job.

Jackaroos and Jillaroos are a special segment of Australian Rural Labour - they remain part of the Working Class because of their iteneranting, and their general lack of community ties or property relations with the land. They are not permanent Farm Labour, they are a fluid work force - many will take work in rural towns if they can get it while moving from place to place, at least initially, but their lack of trade-tickets and formal training generally forces them back out to the bush. Some Jackaroos and Jillaroos are actually homeless and/or illiterate, and as a consequence, life in the outback, for all its hardships, is preferable to the shame of being homeless in a city. Others like myself were technically homeless by choice, because of family or social issues, but otherwise not illiterate or poorly educated. I was driven to that way of life by a series of traumatic personal experiences, leaving me unable to bear living in the city at that time. After a few years, I worked through my issues, and realised that my life was genuinely at risk if I kept living in the bush and working as a Jillaroo. With another female friend, I eventually returned to the city to try and find safer work.

Jackaroos and Jillaroos live very dangerous lives. At least initially, until one learns how to survive, it is remarkably easy to have an accident on a station, to fall from a horse, to be trampled or gored by a bull, get shot, to break a leg far from help, be bitten by a snake or struck by lightening or die of any one of a hundred other gruesome things, either on the job or between jobs. It is probably the most dangerous profession in Australia, but also one of the most poorly paid. Whether it is still like that now, after 40 years I cannot say, but I can't imagine how it could have improved. Even with all my experience, I would not live long if I went back to that, I know, because it is so very physically demanding. Please spare some thought for the people who have no other option in this life but to do that work, and respectfully, please don't call them "trainees". Thank you.

If responses to my comments in Talk are favourable, I would be willing to do the edits to improve this page, though I would leave out my personal experiences and opinions. However I think I would prefer it if someone with more experience at this than I have would have a go first at taking what I've written here and making the appropriate changes to the entry.

PS. Sorry, I don't have any photos from that time. Taking photos was the furthest thing from my mind at the time.

PPS. My guess as to the entomology of the word "Jackaroo"; it comes from the practice of roasting Kangaroos on a spit. A "jack" was a person who turned meat on a spit, per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotisserie. To "Jack a 'Roo" was to turn a Kangaroo on a spit, a very common practice by Jackaroos at the end of a long day in the bush. Yum!

"Jillaroo" is of course just the polite feminine form of Jackaroo, since women are naturally sensitive to being mis-gendered while doing male work. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wrightla61 (talk • contribs) 11:38, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

Images are keenly sought

Any one who can upload a photo, to which they hold the copyright, or one that has an expired copyright (In Australia that means 70 years after the author's death), will hopefully do so. They must be out there! Historical photos would be of great value. --Greenmaven (talk) 01:44, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Word choice improvements

In a couple of places, the word choices could be better:

1. § History has a sub-section for each of the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries; these have cumbersome labels of the form "… century usage, practice, and social conditions". "21st century", for example, would suffice. A prefatory note could state that "Usage, practice, and social conditions have changed over time".
2. § 21st century usage, practice, and social conditions uses the Americanism "dude ranches" to describe what the only citation supporting that label calls a "bush school" and a "jackaroo/jillaroo 5-day school". Dude ranch redirects to the guest ranch article, which links to farm stay, which states that "farm stays" or "farmstays" are popular in Australia, citing an Aussie website that describes "farmstays and stationstays". Now, none of these terms is commonly used throughout Australia, except perhaps "bush school" – in the sense of a government primary or (possibly) secondary school in a remote location, such as a small town "in the bush" (that is, far from major cities, not literally within forested areas) – but not in the sense of training for life in the bush. The term "jackaroo/jillaroo 5-day school" is specific, if clumsy, for that particular business. The Aussie farmstays website has dozens of holiday (what Americans call a "vacation", Aussies call a "holiday") venues on farms, and a few more on (cattle and sheep) stations (which Americans call "ranches"), so the terms "farmstay" and "stationstay" would be reasonably self-explanatory to many Australians. Whenever I hear the term "dude ranch", I immediately think of an American ranch for paying tourists or vacationers. I've never heard an Aussie use "dude ranch" to refer to an Aussie holiday destination – but I could have been in the wrong place when they did. It's silly to call a station stay with a small element of jackaroo training anything but a "jackaroo school" or "jackaroo course" – certainly not a dude ranch. But again, I've never heard an Aussie say "farmstay" or "stationstay" either … we do, however, use a similar phrase, saying "we're staying on a farm", and I'd certainly like to stay on a cattle station for my next holiday. I conclude that I don't know how to fix this text, tho' I think that the farm stay article would make a more appropriate link than the dude ranch one.

So I'm making these changes, which of course you are welcome to improve if you can:

1. Simplify the sub-headings to just "19th century", "20th century" and "21st century";
2. Add the prefatory note I drafted above;
3. Link to farm stay instead of dude ranch.

yoyo (talk) 19:30, 22 January 2017 (UTC)

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Article contains almost nothing on jackaroos

Instead of "Jackaroo (trainee)" the current article is really "Jackaroo (word)". It's about the history of the word usage, not about the job or lifestyle. Maybe rename it? IAmNitpicking (talk) 12:42, 6 May 2019 (UTC)

I would rewrite the article instead. --Malerooster (talk) 23:57, 6 May 2019 (UTC)

Me, too, I just don't have the background to do so. IAmNitpicking (talk) 13:20, 8 May 2019 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Jackaroo (disambiguation) which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. P.I. Ellsworth , ed. ^{put'er there} 05:53, 9 February 2023 (UTC)