Kōrero: Rural language

Sheep mustering on horseback with dogs in the South Island high country has led to a wide range of terms to describe the work, clothing and lifestyle. Listen to John Gordon discussing the colourful language of mustering.

Transcript

In the days when all the stations in the high country of the South Island had teams of men to bring the flocks in for shearing, crutching and tailing, the men who did this work were said to have taken up the burnt chops. They were musterers and to do this work they needed a team of tripe hounds[?], or in common terms, dogs. He was a sort of bloke who ate hockey sticks for breakfast wore Bill Massey's on his feet, slept on a scratcher and rode pig skin. Or to use more common place terms, ate chops, wore boots, slept in a bunk and rode a horse and saddle. 

They spoke another language, one based on practical terms mixed with a resigned sense of humour, like the musterer's name for a real hash merchant of a cook, a blacksmith. And his stew had the title of Hashme Ghandi. If anyone in a gang came from Marlborough, then he was a sandy hooker, yet his neighbouring province gave its name to a Nelson hunterway, which was nothing more than a rock roll down a face in desperation in an attempt to head off breakaway sheep. Apparently Nelson shepherds in the past had few and poor dogs.