THE BLACKSMITH

[Maureen K Clifford]

A step back in time - if you don't want to download you can hear an older version of it here

http://pool.abc.net.au/media/blacksmith

[Neville Briggs]

There's an Agricultural College an hour or so from here called Tocal. They have a fully functioning blacksmith workshop. The blacksmith is the brother of Bob Skelton, some of the bush poets might know Bob, he calls himself the Minmi Magster for his bush poetry performance.

The mounted police barracks in Sydney had a blacksmith's forge. I later worked with the police officer who had been the farrier there for the mounties. He told me that when he wanted to get away to do some " foreign orders " he would give a couple of dollars to a local fella who would stay in the forge shed with instructions to tap a hammer on the anvil every now and again so the Sergeant in Charge of the mounties would hear from his office and assume that the farrier was still at his post working. Bad boy,