It can be easy for history to overlook the long-term contributions of the various families who have, over many generations, been employed on the sheep and cattle stations of the Flinders Ranges, and of the Outback generally. Quite apart from their years of hard work and dedication, some families have had a significant impact on the whole of the pastoral industry, even at the national level.
One such family is that of John Hawkes Mules (1842 – 1894). John’s ancestors had traditionally dealt with flocks of quite different ilk. His father, also named John Hawkes Mules, was the vicar of Ilminster, Somerset, from 1828 to 1858. His grandfather, another John Hawkes Mules, was vicar of Muchelney, Somerset. His brother, Charles Oliver Mules, was Bishop of Nelson, New Zealand, from 1892 to 1912.
The young John Hawkes Mules was working in the Flinders Ranges – on Oraparinna Station – by as early as 1860, at the age of eighteen. His employers were Septimus Boord and twenty-three year old George Charles Dewdney. By 1870 he was managing the Blanchewater Station, on the outwash plains to the north of the Flinders Ranges.
It was John who, on behalf of the Blanchewater and Umberatana proprietors, purchased the thousand or so cattle which Harry Collins (Harry Readford) had brought down the Strzelecki Creek – the cattle stolen from Bowen Downs in Queensland. Fortunately for the Blanchewater people, they got to keep the Bowen Downs mob – the Roma Court case had effectively failed to prove that the cattle had been taken from Bowen Downs. In fact, the only animal positively identified in the case was the imported white bull.
John later worked on Holowiliena Station where, in 1875, he married Catherine, daughter of Holowiliena owner William Warwick. Their first-born was named John Hawkes William Mules, and he was to spend his life managing or owning sheep and cattle properties throughout South Australia, Queensland and New South Wales. His early working years were spent on Oraparinna and Coongie Stations where he ‘learnt the trade’ under his uncle, Robert Warwick, and Coongie manager Larry Darmody.
John junior’s claim to fame arose out of his many years of managing sheep. A major problem in the Australian conditions was blowfly strike, which could be a terribly debilitating condition, particularly for certain bloodlines of merino ewes. In the early 1930s, on his farm at Woodside, John worked on his ideas for a quick surgical procedure to remove the worst of the skin folds around the sheep’s crutch, the site most prone to blowfly strike. In the later 1930s the CSIR worked on improving the technique and it soon became a widespread practice among woolgrowers. The procedure was named after the Mules family name.
John married Elsie Maynard in 1904 and they had one son, Marwood William Mules (generally known as Bill), born in 1908 while the family were living in Queensland. Bill, although he spent time farming sheep in the Cradock district, was more of a field naturalist, with a particular interest in birds, butterflies and insects. In the mid-1930s he began working on projects for the CSIR – the forerunner of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO).
Working for Dr LB Bull of the CSIR Animal Nutrition Research Department, Bill conducted field trials with the Myxoma virus with the hope of proving that it might be an effective control for the rabbits which were in plague proportions across the farming and sheep-grazing areas of Australia. The trials were held in several sites in southern Australia, with a significant site on Wardang Island in Spencer Gulf.
By 1944 the (by now) CSIRO finalised the testing program. They had shown that the virus was lethal to rabbits, and to rabbits only, but had not been able to show that there was an effective insect vector to carry the virus from one infected burrow to another. Without such a vector, the virus would be ineffective in stamping out the rabbit pest across Australia. The plan was shelved.
Fortunately, in 1950, researcher Dr Jean McNamara of Melbourne began a very public letter-writing campaign to convince the Federal Government to resurrect the myxoma virus project. She argued that the government had given up too easily, and that there was every likelihood that a suitable insect vector would exist somewhere in Australia. Jean McNamara was the noted researcher and virologist who had proposed back in 1934 that the Australian Government take a serious look at the myxoma virus as a possible way to control the rabbit scourge.
A test site set up near the River Murray in the Barmah area produced the eventual proof of the project. By February 1951 huge numbers of rabbits were dying along lengthy stretches of the river system, both upstream and downstream. A suitable mosquito vector had been found. Within a few years myxomatosis had brought about a massive reduction in rabbit numbers across southern Australia.
It may be of interest to some readers that Burke’s Heraldic Illustrations traces the Hawkes Mules family in a direct line back to Godfrey, Earl of Ewe, natural son of Richard, First Duke of Normandy and grandfather of William the Conqueror. It would also interest some of the merino flock to know that the family crest consists of a hand armed with a glaive – a curved blade sharpened on the outside curve. The family motto is ‘Misericordia temperet gladium’.