Courtesy of Danielle Langloism, Wikipedia CCLThe Indispensable Goat
BRISBANE, Australia — From the 1870s to the 1960s goats were inextricably linked to the lives of settlers throughout vast Queensland.
They provided fresh meat and milk that ensured a family’s survival. They pulled carts, providing primary transportation where horses did not thrive. Goats were raced and jumped with child jockeys aboard, the champions celebrated throughout Queensland.
And of course they were beloved family pets — “adventurous, curious, invasive and indomitable,” as Australian goat historian Faye Schutt tell us in “The Indispensable Goat — a History of Goats in Queensland.”
In this podcast with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Schutt talks of the more than 300 Queensland families who came forward with stories and photos for her book, including the photo seen here of Roy Dunn jumping his goat Nugget in 1905. Dunn loved the photo so much his family had it engraved on his tomb stone.
We learn from Schutt that Captain James Cook for eight years had his pet goat aboard his ship Endeavour, during which he achieved the first European contact with the eastern coastline of Australia in the 1770s.
Intrinsic to Queenslanders’ lives, yet often called the “poor man’s cow,” the goat’s crucial history in the development of Australia is being erased as time passes and people die, their stories with them, Schutt said.
To that end, Schutt and her colleagues at the Australian Workers Heritage Center have begun a campaign to raise more than $300,000 to build a goat museum in Queensland.
