ACD Breed History

The history of the Australian Cattle Dog is long, varied and controversial as there were few
written records.

This version of the history of the Australian Cattle Dog was written
by Noreen Clark and is published in her book "A DOG CALLED
BLUE". This is the first researched and documented history of the
ACD and I have used this with the kind permission of Noreen.
The Australian Cattle Dog and his cousin, the Australian Stumpy Tail Cattle Dog, share
common origins in the Halls Heeler, a distinct working-dog breed development in the
1830s by Thomas Hall. Need drove the development of the Halls Heeler and the early history
of both breeds is interlocked with the history of the Hall family and
the growth of the Hall cattle empire.

George Hall, with his wife and four young children, arrived in the
fourteen-year old New South Wales Colony in 1802. At first,
George was put to work on a Government farm at Toongabbie but
in 1803 he was granted 100 acres on the Hawkesbury River, on
the north-western fringe of the colony. George prospered and soon
added to his land holdings. By 1820 he owned or rented some 850
acres. George's family also grew. Thomas (1808-1870) was one of
six sons and three daughters.

Thomas Simpson Hall c. 1832

Successful exploration during the 1810s discovered rich grazing

land to the north, west and south of the highlands that surround
Sydney. John Howe, a close friend of George Hall, estabilshed a
useable track from Windsor to the Hunter River in 1819 and in 1824 the younger Halls,
including Thomas, explored the Upper Hunter Valley with the intention of selecting land. By
1825 the Halls had established two cattle stations in the Upper Hunter Valley, Gundebri and
Dartbrook. Thomas Hall settled at Dartbrook and his home became the base for the northward
expansion of the Halls' pastoral interests into the Liverpool Plains, New England and
Queensland.

Droving from the Hunter Valley stations to the Sydney meat markets, along John Howe's
original track, was difficult because of dense scrub and difficult terrain. Droving from the
Liverpool Plains runs to Sydney presented a more acute problem. In droving terms, thousands
of head of cattle had to be moved for thousands of kilometres along unfenced stock routes,
including through the rugged Liverpool Range. A note, in his own writing, records Thomas
Hall's anger at losing 200 head in scrub.
A droving dog was desperately needed but the colony
offered nothing suitable. The colonial working dogs
are understood to have been of Old English Sheepdog
type (commonly referred to as Smithfields), imported
from the south of England. Jack, a dog of this type,
was photopraphed at the Metropolitan Intercolonial
Exhibition, Sydney, in 1898, where he was exhibited
as a Cattle Dog. With their heavy build, shaggy coats
and intolerance to climatic and vegetation conditions,
the Colonial Smithfields were useful only over short
distances and for yard work with domestic cattle.

Thomas Hall addressed the problem.

For some years, Thomas had kept Dingoes at

Dartbrook for study and realised that they had potential
in the development of a working dog. He now looked
for a second breed to cross with Dingo. Probably on
the advice of his parents (both from farming
backgrounds), Thomas imported Drovers Dogs from
his parents home country, Northumberland. For
convenience the Hall family historian, A J Howard,
Jack, exhibited as a Cattle Dog in 1898
gave these dogs a name: Northumberland Blue Merle
Drovers Dog; drovers dog for their function and blue
merle for their blue mottled colour.

These Drovers Dogs had long been bred for their working
characteristics and distinctive colour by ancestral Halls and
other farmers in Northumberland and across the border in
Scotland. By the early 1830s, when Thomas Hall imported
his Drovers Dog strains were becoming extinct in
Britain. The distinctive blue colour, however, is still to be
seen in some modern British working dogs. It is not
associated with the Merle gene.

The origins of the Northumberland Blue Merle Drovers Dog

Modern British working-dog.
Photo, courtesy David Hancock
are obscure. The short coat, conformation and natural
taillessness of the Cur Dog, illustrated by Bewick and other
early British writers, suggests that the Cur was one of the
ancestors. Some of these early writers describe the Cur as
a Drovers Dog. Thomas Hall's imports may, or may not,
have been tailless themselves. As possible carriers of
taillessness, they are the most likely source of taillessness
in the Australian Stumpy Tail Cattle
Dog.

Thomas Hall crossed his Drovers Dogs with his Dingoes and by 1840 was satisfied with his
resultant breed. During the next 30 years, the Halls Heelers, as they became known, did not
disperse beyond the Hall properties. The Halls were dependent on the dogs and, given the
number and size of the runs needed Halls Heelers, it is unlikely that there was a surplus.
Besides, the dogs gave the Hall family an advantage over its competitors in the cattle industry.
 After Thomas Hall's death in 1870, the Hall
cattle empire came to an end. The runs in
northern New South Wales and
Queensland went to auction with the stock
on them and, for the first time, Halls
Heelers became freely available. Some
were retained by stockmen from the
former Hall properties and others were
eager to own them. It is thought, for
example, that the stockman, Jack
The Cur Dog, from an engraving by Thomas Bewick
Timmins, acquired his famed Timmins
Biters (Halls Heelers) at this time. The
wholesale butcher, Alexander Davis, is
said to have bought Halls Heelers to
Sydney, from the Hunter Valley, to work in
his cattle yards and move cattle from yards to abattoir.

By the 1890s, Halls Heelers, by then known simply as Cattle Dogs, had attracted the attention
of several Sydney dog breeders with interests in the show ring, of whom the Bagust family
(particularly Harry Bagust, c. 1860-1914) was the most influential. In 1897, Robert Kaleski
(1877-1961) drew up the first Breed Standard for the Cattle Dog. Kaleski's Standard was
published by the NSW Department of Agriculture in 1903 and re-published in 1910. From 1903
until his death, Kaleski campaigned tirelessly for true recognition of Australian stock dogs -
Cattle Dogs and Kelpies.

Also in the 1890s, Cattle Dogs of Halls Heeler derivation were seen in the kennels of exhibiting
Queensland dog breeders such as William Byrne of Booval (near Ipswich). It is thought that
these Cattle Dogs were obtained from former Hall properties in southern Queensland and
northern New South Wales.

The early exhibited Cattle Dog population in Queensland differed from the parallel population
in New South Wales. The Queensland population included both long-tailed and stumpy-tailed
types and both types were exhibited in the same classes. Stumpy-tailed exhibits were
sufficiently strong in numbers by 1917 for some shows to have introduced seperate classes
for long-tailed and stumpy-tailed entrants. Queensland also had a marked preference for blue.
Stumpy tail Cattle Dogs appear not to have been exhibited in New South Wales and there is
evidence of strong discrimination against them. Red speckled Cattle Dogs were, however,
accepted in New South Wales and the Royal Agricultural Society of New South Wales
introduced seperate classes for them in 1918.

The early Queensland population progressively lost its identity, however, except in the kennels
of the few breeders that were dedicated to Stumpy Tail Cattle Dogs. William Byrne (his early
breeding included stumpy-tailed Cattle Dogs) is the first Queensland breeder known to have
favoured New South Wales bred Cattle Dogs. His first was Rowdy, probably whelped 1899,
and others followed during the next twenty years. Byrne may even have set a trend; other
breeders certainly followed his lead. The number of Sydney bred dogs found in Brisbane and
Ipswich kennels increased during the 1920s and 1930s. They included Little Logic, whelped
1939. There was no corresponding Sydney interest in Queensland-bred dogs until after World
War II. Cattle Dogs, known as Australian Heelers or Queensland Heelers, became an
exhibited breed in Victoria during the 1930s and Victorian breeders also shopped in Sydney.

Logic Return
Little Logic

Royal Shows were suspended during World War II and resumed in 1947. Sydney exhibitors
saw Little Logicoffspring, for the first time, amoung entrants at the Sydney Royal of
1947. These exhibits, and their sires' show record, created immediate demand for Little
Logic's lineage. By the end of the 1950s, there were few Australian Cattle Dogs whelped that
were not Little Logic descendants. The convergence of Little Logiccontinued into the next
generation when Little Logic's best know son, Logic Return, also attained prominence in the
show ring and popularity at stud (initially in Brisbane and later Sydney).

The prominence of Little Logic and Logic

Return in the pedigrees of modern Australian
Cattle Dogs was perpetuated by Wooleston
Kennels. Whelped in 1965, Wooleston Blue
Jack was line bred to Little Logic and Logic
Return, and Wooleston Kennels subsequently
line bred to Wooleston Blue Jack, himself. For
some twenty years, Wooleston supplied
foundation and supplementary breeding stock
to breeders in Australia, North America and
Continental Europe. As a result Wooleston
Blue Jack is ancestral to most, if not all,
Australian Cattle Dogs whelped since 1990 in
any Country.

Looking back from a 2000's Wooleston Blue Jack

perspective, Wooleston's most influential
client was Tallawong Kennels in Victoria.
Starting with Wooleston Blue Jenny,
Tallawong line bred to Wooleston and, by the
late 1970s operated as a closed kennel, breeding back to its own lineage. No other lineage is
as pervasive in the Australian Cattle Dog population of the 2000s as Tallawong and no dog's
descent is as strongly expressed in the modern population as Wooleston Blue Jack's, both
via Tallawong and independently of that lineage.

The Role and Impact of Robert Kaleski

Robert Kaleski, a younger breeder associate of Barry

Bagust, was a tireless advocate and long term publicist
for the Cattle Dog and other Australian working dogs.
Without him they would have lacked an effective voice.
He was heard frequently, and particularly in Sydney's
weekly newspaper, the Sydney Mail appealing for true
recognition of the role that Cattle Dogs and Kelpies had
played, and were playing, in Australia's cattle and
sheep industries.

In the pages of the Sydney Mail, Kaleski begged the

organisers of the Sydney Royal Show to increase the
prize money offered to the agricultural breeds, as an
incentive to working stockmen to exhibit their dogs. He
pointed out that suburban breeders, being unaware of
their importance, were likely to lose some of the
Robert Kaleski (1877-1961)
important working characteristics in the dogs they bred.
Some of his comments in the exhibited dogs of the
1920s and 1930s show that he saw evidence that some
Sydney breeders were breeding Cattle Dogs of a type
that were far removed from the Cattle Dogs of the early 1900s; photographs from the period
support his observations. His pleas for higher prize money went unheeded.

Kaleski compiled the first Standard for the

Cattle Dog breed in 1897 and had it
published, with photographs, by the New
South Wales Department of Agriculture in
1903 and 1910.

Nipper, bred by Harry Bagust, appears to be

a classical exemplar of the breed that
Kaleski described and is probably close to
Halls Heeler in type and conformation. Rural
Cattle Dogs, photographed in the 1940s and
believed to have been bred from Halls
Heeler stock, are similar.
Nipper, bred by Harry Bagust in 1899.

Kaleski's standard was taken up by breed

clubs in Queensland and New South Wales and re-issued as their own, with local changes.
Despite the modifications to Kaleski's Standard and despite Kaleski's own prejudice against
red coat colour and taillessness, his Standard was the first great step in establishing the breeds
identity.
Kaleski's version of Breed Origins

Kaleski's Department of Agriculture publications in the 1910s are written with authority and,
combined with the photographs that accompanied them, give insight into the early
development of the Cattle Dog and the breed type for which he wrote the Standard.

In his later writings, however, Kaleski introduced some contradictory and unlikely assertions.
With the passage of time, these have been generally accepted. The most enduring of Kaleski's
myths relate to alleged early Dalmation and Kelpie infusions, said to have been introduced by
the Bagusts into the early Cattle Dog breed. These infusions are not referred to in Kaleski's
writing until the 1920s and there is no evidence that they occured in the mainstream early
development of the Cattle Dog.

Kaleski was preoccupied by similarities. For example, for his a red Cattle Dog looked more like
a Dingo than a blue Cattle Dog did; therefore there was more Dingo in its total make-up. It
seems likely that Kaleski sought to explain the Cattle Dogs mottled colouration and tan on legs
by similarity to the Dalmation and Kelpie, respectively. Having done so, he had then to produce
reasons for introducing these breeds, and particularly the strange choice of Dalmation. The
genetics of coat colour, alone, make the Dalmation an extremely unlikely mainstream ancestor
of the Australian Cattle Dog.

In 1911 the Cattle Dog would, according to Kaleski, "make any horse or beast lead, and watch
his owner's property when the latter was away from it" and would "gallop to the lead of a mob
and hold it there". A working dog of perfection.

From a functional viewpoint, the alleged Dalmation infusion (it was first mentioned in the
AUSTRALIAN ENCYCLOPEDIA in 1926) was "needed" to instill a love of horses and guarding
instincts into the breed and the alleged Kelpie infusion was "required" because the Cattle Dog
"could not be sent ahead to block or wheel [the mob]". Kaleski's reasons for these infusions
were in complete contradiction to his earlier (1911) statements.

In 1935, by which time the Bagusts were long dead, Kaleski re-affirmed both infusions and
specifically attributed them to Bagusts. The Dalmation and Kelpie myths became increasingly
elaborate with time and eventually Kaleski was able to tell us which Dalmation (he belonged
to "one of the Stephens, a very old Sydney legal family") and which Kelpies (black-and-tan
dogs, "Maidens dogs, if I remember aright"). Kaleski also mentioned an early Bull Terrier
infusion, but not by the Bagusts.

Given Kaleski's self-contradictions and the belated accounts of the alleged Dalmation and early
Kelpie infusions, it is unlikely that either occured although the Bull Terrier infusion is probable.
This was also the opinion of Alan Forbes (Pacific Kennels), who lectured to trainee judges
during the 1960s for the RAS Kennel Control, and of Berenice Walters, Wooleston Kennels.

Various other infusions have certainly occured during the last 100 years, either by accident or
by design. The photographic record includes some very atypical Cattle Dogs, and chocolate
and cream miscolour in both modern Cattle Dog breeds has been substantiated. Dingo re-
infusions are also well known, dating from the early years of the twentieth century to more
recent dates.

Despite his lapse in the matter of breed origins, however, it is hard to believe that the Cattle
Dog breeds would have endured without the dedication and commitment of Robert Kaleski.
(Hall Family Properties)