Management, Managers and The Managed: Land, Labour and Free Selection on Ollera Station, Guyra, 1861-1910

Abstract

This thesis considers the history of a New England pastoral station, primarily in the half-century between 1861-1910, when it was managed by a tripartite team consisting of resident partner, superintendent and principal sheep-overseer. Points examined include the hierarchical structure, consequent internal divisions of both responsibility and the changing power-relationships of the management system throughout a seventy-year-long partnership. Particular attention is paid to the crucial importance to the station's success of its superintendent and principal sheep overseer. Examination of station diaries reveals the extent and diversity of their activities, their work-related and interpersonal skills, their legal and community involvement and their success as private businessmen. Several closely related issues are then addressed. First, management's attitudes towards the successive Land Laws which were passed between 1861 and 1884, the strategies the sibling-partners employed to resist and control free selection on 'their' land and the outcomes for both employers and employees. Also considered are the experiences and composition of the station's workforce which has traditionally been considered itinerant and almost universally European male. Not only stable and comprising almost all of the free selectors on the property, the station's workforce also contained an unacknowledged cohort of European women and their children, single Chinese males and local Indigenous people. Careful unpicking of the station's diaries and ledgers provides valuable insights into the significant contribution made by these 'hidden' workers and, in particular of the importance of a modified 'family economy' system which operated on the station throughout and beyond the period under discussion.