THOMAS SIMPSON HALL & THE HALL'S HEELERS 

George Hall and his family arrived on the Coromandel in 1802.  George's first land grant was at Toongabbie, on the fringes of the new colony.  The Toongabbie grant was a disaster and George was successful in obtaining a new grant in the recently discovered Windsor area, on the Hawkesbury River, in 1803.  From then on, George's fortunes prospered and his land holdings increased.  At the time of his death in 1840, George Hall owned or leased land (or his family nominees did) from Auburn in western Sydney to the Darling Downs in Queensland.  It was a family boast that they could travel from Sydney to the Darling Downs and camp on their own land every night.  The Halls continued to operate this vast pastoral empire as a family concern for thirty years after George Hall died, mainly under the direction of William and Thomas, the most able of George Hall's sons.

By the 1830s the Halls had established cattle runs in northern New South Wales in the areas now known as Manilla and Moree and were discovering the difficulties and dangers of working wild range cattle in the mountainous and heavily timbered country between the runs and the markets in Sydney.

The need for a working dog, suited to stock control on large unfenced cattle runs and for droving to the coastal markets was the impetus behind Thomas Hall's development of the Halls Heeler.

Early colonial working dogs were sheep-dog types from the southern part of Britain. In the early 1800s, early forerunners of the Old English Sheepdog were imported to the colony.  These were white or black and white and, in the colony, were known variously as Bobtails, Black Bobtails or "Smithfield" dogs.

The term "Smithfield" was applied to a variety of  large working dogs associated with the Smithfield Markets in London.  The particular "Smithfield", that was brought to the New South Wales colony, seems to have been an Old English Sheep Dog type.  Beilby (1897) notes: "I believe a few [Old English Sheep Dogs] were bred several years ago, and for a time were known as Smithfield Cattle Dogs".

By 1840, the Hall family owned property from western Sydney to the Darling Downs.  Scale in kilometres.

Map courtesy A J Howard.   

Jack Timmins (either "Old Jack", 1757-1837, or his son "Young Jack (c.1818-1911) bred a "Smithfield" - Dingo cross litter.  Whether this was by accident or by design is not known.  The offspring were known as Red Bob-tails.  Timmins family records (Howard pers. comm.) and, later, Kaleski (1933) describe the Red Bob-tail as being large and clumsy, with an awkward gait and a horribly severe bite.  Kaleski's earliest mention of Red Bob-tails was in 1903 where he distinguishes the "merlin or blue heeler, erroneously known as the Smithfield" from the "red bob-tail, often called by drovers Timmins breed".  He goes on on to describe the Red Bob-tail as "a square-bodied, long-legged dog, with a wedge-shaped head and saddle-flap ears (sometimes pricked), and a bob-tail.  They are faithful and good yard dogs, and all right for short trips, but will not stand much traveling, and are generally noisy".  This description must have come to Kaleski from older men who had seen the Timmins "Smithfield"-Dingo crosses because the cross was not repeated (Kaleski 1933; Timmins family records).  The "merlin or blue heeler" was later known as the Halls Heeler.

 The Halls Heeler was developed by Thomas Simpson Hall (1808-1870) on his Dartbrook property in the Hunter Valley of New South Wales.  He crossed an imported working dog, from the north of England, with Dingo and by about 1840 had achieved the dog that met his family's needs.

The Halls Heeler was an essential part of the management of the Hall Estate, the first great cattle empire in Australia, and few left Hall ownership during Thomas Hall's lifetime.  Following the break up of the Hall Estate after 1870, Halls Heelers became generally available and and descendants of Thomas Hall's dogs were eventually seen in the show ring.  Howard named the imported dog the "Northumberland Blue Merle Drovers Dog", a name based on the dog's colour and function.

The Northumberland Blue Merle Drovers Dog was not merle, in the modern genetic sense, but a mottled or speckled animal.  It was one of the many British working dog strains that vanished following the Industrial and Agricultural Revolutions.  Robbie Hall, a Hall family historian in Northumberland, (Howard pers. comm.) discovered that the Northumberland Blue Merle Drovers Dog was a distinct strain but, by the time of Thomas Hall's imports, only a few remained on former Hall farms in Northumberland.

Thomas Simpson Hall c. 1832.

    - From a painting in the possession of Enid Ross.  Photo courtesy A J Howard.

There are no contemporary photographs of the Hall's Heeler where the dog is identified as such. The only indication of what Hall's Heelers may have looked like is from an Allen family photograph taken in the late 1890s.

The Allen family lived at Blairemore, a Hall property near Aberdeen, NSW. The dog in the family group looks old and it is most unlikely to have been a young dog - or it would not have stayed still for the duration of the long photographic exposure required by 1890s photography.

The Allens' dog is likely to have been born around 1890 or even earlier and it is also likely that the dog was of Hall's Heeler stock as members of the Allen family were employed by the Halls.

Hall's Heeler [?] late 1890s.

- Photo courtesy A J Howard.

If these assumptions are correct then some, at least, of Halls Heelers were bobtailed dogs, and blue spotted or blue mottled in colour.  The ears of the Allens' dog may originally have been pricked but later damaged by haematoma or other misadventure - or he may just have been bored by the antics of the photographer.

Blue working dogs are still to be found in Britain.  Hancock (1997) is of the opinion that Thomas Hall's imported dogs were similar in type.

References

Beilby, W (1897).  The Dog in Australasia.  George Robertson,
     Melbourne.
Hancock, D (1997).  Breeding grounds for rumour.  Dogs Monthly
     December 1997 p. 21-22.
Kaleski, R L (1903).  Cattle Dogs.  Agricultural Gazette of NSW August
     1903 p. 752-758.
Kaleski, R L (1933).  Australian Barkers and Biters.  2nd ed. rev.
     Endeavour Press, Sydney.
References to Howard are to A J  (Bert) Howard's extensive research into Hall and Timmins family history, most of which is still unpublished.

Blue working dog of a type still to be seen in Britain.

- Photo courtesy David Hancock.

 

 

- Noreen Clark
June 2002

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