Pioneering days of Miriam Vale and district', Queensland by W. G. Blomfield, 1946-1947 - Page 131

BLUE CATTLE DOGS & other cattle dogs.

Over 70 years ago Joe Andrew & other old hands at my old home BOOROLONG, used to tell me of a drover, TIMMINS. He used to take mobs of cattle, up to 300 head, hundreds of miles with the help of two blue cattle dogs. About 45 years ago a brother of mine met the old drover (at) Collarenebri. He said he was a man about 6 feet high, a raw boned old man, who as a younger man must have weighed 15 stone. TIMMINS told my brother he was 100 years old, & he thought he was possibly 102.

Inhabitants of Collarenebri used to say that Timmins was the first man who bred the blue cattle dogs, but that was wrong as FRANK SIMPSON HALL of DARTBROOK, ABERDEEN, one of a large family of GEORGE SMITH HALL, who came to Australia in 1802, who bred the first Blue Cattle Dogs, & they were known as Hall's heelers. They were out of a blue & black Scottish sheep short, & were by a DINGO, & some of them still have the undercoat of the Dingo, not common in other dogs. They got the blue spots & the patches of black from the sheep short. The ones that are red & black, with reddish spots, & the all reds, some with blue round the muzzle, took after the dingo. Have heard that the sheep short was known as the MERLE, & my own had a very intelligent dog out of an Australian bred blue by a dog.