Rural
29 July, 2025
Drover’s 3500km sheep trek unearthed in Guthrie family history
In 1882, a 21-year-old drover, a team of men, and 11 thousand sheep made history with a 3500 kilometre trek from a small Western Victorian town of Donald in the Wimmera to the Northern Territory.
The trip lasted 16 months and would be recorded as the longest sheep drive in Australian history, a testament to the people who challenged some of Australia's harshest conditions in the early days of settlement.
The drover, Wallace Caldwell's remarkable achievement has been documented by a Grampians farmer/vigneron, Tom Guthrie, who chronicles this remarkable feat and his ancestral link to the owner of the sheep, his namesake and great-grandfather, Thomas Guthrie, in his self-published book The Longest Drive.
Tom was aware of his great-grandfather's adventurous spirit as an early pioneer, but it was the Year of the Outback in 2002 that sparked his interest in following up on the story in earnest.
"I can't remember the exact moment, but I remember thinking that it could be an interesting story, not knowing where it would lead," he said.
Retracing the drover's trail
It led to several journeys of his own, a literary journey, and three family holiday trips with his wife Sarah and children Pollyanna and Ford, to research and investigate the historic trip, 12 years in total.
"To stand on that soil at Avon Downs was both exciting and emotional; it was wonderful, undulating grazing country with few trees except along the river. " Tom said.
"We camped on the riverbank and just marvelled at the remoteness, which was an experience in itself," he said.
Unearthing some of the original clipper and shearing parts from the soil was another important link to the past for the travellers.
Small clippings from newspapers Tom collected along the way, a birth or a death notice, or in one case, a report that 4,000 sheep had passed through the town, told Tom he was on the right track.
"It was these little pieces of information that helped bring the story together," he said.
"The children were three and a half and five on their first trip, and as they got older, they understood more about what we were doing and now look back on what they describe as some of the best holidays they ever had," Sarah said.
Early pioneer
But the story began with another journey many years before, when in 1847, fourteen-year-old Thomas Guthrie boarded a ship to journey from Scotland to Hobart in Tasmania to join his brothers and work in their shop.
However, they were not good businessmen, and he soon decided to branch out on his own.
In his early twenties, he began work in the sheep and wool industry as a Stock and Station agent in Geelong, buying and selling sheep and wool; a decision which turned out to be one of the best he made, as Australia was 'riding on the sheep's back' at the time.
He married, and together they bought several properties in South Australia and Victoria, including at Rich Avon at Donald in the Wimmera, which became an important part of his next venture.
Thomas heard of land available in the Barkley Tableland, now the Northern Territory.
He successfully bid for 700,000 acres (283,279 hectares), at an auction in Adelaide and embarked on one of his most spectacular but risky ventures.
Another buyer also bought a parcel of land there but changed his mind and offered it for sale.
Thomas bought the additional 700,000 acres (283,279 hectares), so he was the owner of 1.4 million acres (566,558 hectares), sight unseen.
He sent a man ahead to build a manager's house on the property, and being a sheep man, he began getting a mob of sheep together at Rich Avon to stock the property he named Avon Downs in the north.
It took eight months to assemble the mob from his own and neighboring farms.
He later wrote that he should have gathered them together in New South Wales to shorten the distance they had to travel.
His first choice to drive the sheep north was experienced drover Wallace Caldwell, but he was away on another drive.
However, the drive set off with a stockman in charge, men, and wagons on the long trek in the middle of September 1882.
Little was recorded about the historic drive until Caldwell wrote his account of it many years later.
The drover's story
In his handwritten account of the trip, Caldwell said, "I was supposed to start the drive from Rich Avon in the Wimmera, but I was delayed at another drive.
"The man who was put in charge of the drive was a good sheep man but had never done any droving, and while I was only 20 years of age at the time, had done a lot of it, so I was called to take over," wrote the young Caldwell.
On arrival at Wilcannia to take over the drive, he could see all was not going well, so he let the 10,000 ewes go but kept the 850 rams back and fed them on cut scrub.
They mustered them a month later and continued the journey.
They crossed the busy Darling River by punt.
He described Wilcannia as bustling with Bullock drays, camel teams, Cobb and Co Coaches, and the Darling busy with paddlesliders due to the Mount Brown Gold Rush.
They continued, but the drought hit the sheep hard, and the men had to physically carry sheep ahead of the mob, put them down, and return to pick up more and take them to the front of the mob, only averaging two to three miles a day.
When they arrived in Queensland, they found a plentiful supply of grass and water.
Caldwell wrote that they never lost another sheep after that; they quickly became fat and healthy.
They continued until they arrived at the edge of the lagoon on the southern end of the property, where they were to meet the station manager to show them the way to Avon Downs.
They waited a month and arrived at Avon Downs with about 4,000 sheep.
"I had doubted we would arrive with any." Caldwell wrote.
They had carried out the longest trip with sheep ever in Australia.
This 4,000 became 70,000 at the height of the property's operation.
Sadly, Caldwell didn't receive recognition for this feat while alive and lay in an unmarked grave in Perth for many years until, in the absence of relatives, Tom bought the plot where Caldwell and his wife Sarah lay and had a headstone erected in his memory.
A group of family and friends gathered at the graveside, and Tom read the poem, Pioneers by Banjo Patterson.
"I believed he deserved a headstone," Tom said.
They toasted the amazing Australian drover with their own Grampians Estate wine and placed emu feathers, Sarah had collected from their farm in the Grampians, on the grave.
Chance finding
Caldwell's account was not published until 60 years after he submitted it for publication, when former Governor General of Australia Sir Paul Hasluck, a former journalist who had saved it from the wastepaper basket many decades prior, passed it on to the Longreach Stockman's Hall of Fame after a chance finding when clearing out a cupboard.
It was published in their newsletter and eventually found its way into the hands of first-time author Tom Guthrie of Grampians Estate in Great Western.
This was a great find for Tom because it documented such an important part of his family history.
"That and my great-grandfather's memoir, written when he was 93, meant so much to me," he said.
"I had their words in my hands."
But Tom still had a book to write.
With the 150th Anniversary of Rich Avon looming, Tom said he knew discipline was the only way he'd make the deadline he'd imposed on himself, so he allocated 10 hours a week for three years.
"I discovered that writing is a selfish activity because you just have to shut yourself away and do it," he said.
"I drove up there [to Avon Downs] once on my own just to check everything I had written was right; seven thousand kilometres in ten days is quite a trip."
He said he found travelling the route by car challenging, so to have done it in those harsh conditions 150 years ago, on horseback, and in some of the toughest conditions, impressed upon him the amazing resilience of the people he wrote about.
"I think this story is an example of what Australia was and still is today.
"You can become somebody without a pedigree, unlike so many countries."
He was deserving of a headstone
Monuments have been erected by Tom at Rich Avon, at Donald, where the historic drive began, and the end point at Avon Downs in the NT to mark the historic event.
The first-time author who wondered if the tandem trailer carrying two pallets of his published works would ever interest anyone is now on its third print run.
There are many heroes in this story, but the remarkable efforts of the young drover Wallace Caldwell, whose historic account would have been lost if not for the chance discovery of his manuscript, is certainly one of them.
Another is the fourteen-year-old Thomas Guthrie, who will be remembered as one of Australia's most adventurous pioneers who grew up to forge a successful sheep farming operation in Australia's untamed land.
And then we have the author of 'The Longest Drive,' his namesake, Tom Guthrie, a fourth-generation sheep farmer who was inspired to research and record this amazing story.
The Longest Drive by Tom Guthrie, printed in Australia, is currently sold out but will be available through Grampians Estate at Great Western in Western Victoria and online when the next print run is ready.