Halls Heeler

History

George Hall and his family arrived in the New South Wales Colony in 1802. By 1825, the Halls had established two cattle stations in the Upper Hunter Valley, Gundebri and Dartbrook, and had begun expanding northward into the Liverpool Plains, New England and Queensland. Moving cattle to markets required driving them along unfenced stock routes through rugged bush and mountain ranges. Until ice-making and refrigeration were invented in the 1850s by James Harrison, butchers and customers bought meat in small quantities, so cattle growers maintained a constant but small supply.

The droving dogs commonly used at the time were Smithfield dogs, which often barked and bit cattle on the nose, aggravating the livestock. Thomas Simpson Hall, one of George's sons, established Dartbrook station in the 1820s and honed the cattle-handling potential in his dogs. He bred blue speckled Highland Collies with dingoes, an ancient type that seldom barks and instinctively bites the heel or hindquarters. The resulting Halls Heelers worked silently and bit the heels of cattle to enforce authority.

A.B. “Bert” Howard has posited that the imported working dogs were called Northumberland Blue Merle Drovers Dogs, though limited evidence supports this. Development probably began on Dartbrook in the 1820s, and later Halls Heelers were bred on other Hall properties. Drovers outside the Hall family, including the Timmins family, obtained these dogs; the Timmins dogs became known as Timmins Biters.

Descendants

By the 1890s, dogs of Halls Heeler ancestry attracted the attention of a group of Sydney men with a recreational interest in competitive dog showing. None were stockmen working cattle daily. The Bagust family was the most influential among these breeders. This standard was published by the New South Wales Department of Agriculture in 1903. Breed clubs in Queensland and New South Wales adopted Kaleski's standard but re-issued it with local changes. Queensland breeders accepted both short-tailed and long-tailed Cattle Dogs as varieties within a single breed, and both were exhibited, usually in separate classes.