The occupational hero of nineteenth and early twentieth-century Australian shearers was the fabled 'Crooked Mick'. Mick was a superhuman character most often seen on the Speewah, an equally fabled sheep station where the board was so long it took all day to get from one end to the other - by horse.
We've published a short article that tracks the origins and development of the legend of Crooked Mick and the Speech on the blog at