A cornerstone in Australian sheep industry

You can see them everywhere in the Australian outback working sheep and cattle in the paddocks, in the yards or shearingsheds or saleyards.
They are helping their owners with all kinds of handling stock whether it be common farm animals or more exotic ones like ostriches or lamas.
They are not big in size, but they have an enormous capacity, and it is safe to say that without them it would be impossible to handle stock in the dry areas where dogs have to work all day long and be able to travel great distances over stony and difficult country, sometimes in temperatures of over 40 Celcius. And it would never have been possible to develop Australia´s wool industry into such an important part of that country´s economy. They are the most common working dogs in Australia and they are called Working Kelpies.

In spite of all rationalizing and mechanizing Australia today is as dependent as ever on their working dogs. As people leave farmlife and move into cities and the costs of farm hands rise, the need for more efficient handling of stock has increased and in that situation Working Kelpies have become invaluable helpers.

Scottish working dogs ancestors of the breed

The Working Kelpie is descended from working dogs that the scottish immigrants began importing from the old country during the first part of the 19th centrury. In those days working dog in England and Scotland varied from one district to the other, and so the dogs that came to Australia were a heterogeneous lot. The only thing they had in common was that they were all called ‘collies’.

The Robertson family are among the earlist Scottish immigrants who began importing the bloodlines that came to make up the foundation of the Working Kelpie. George Robertson came to Australia towards the end of the 1830ies and worked with relatives until he in 1843 bought Warrock station outside Casterton in western Victoria, where he raised large mobs of sheep and cattle. Warrock is said to be the birhplace of the Kelpie breed as the first ‘Kelpie’ was born there.

During the first years of the 1870ies J.D. “Jack” Gleeson worked at Donrobin station which was situated not far from Warrock. He became taken in by a bitch pup bred by George Robertson by two black-and-tan parents, imported from Scotland. But Mr Robertson had a principle not to sell any bitch pups, and instead gave the pup to his nephew, who at first also refused to sell the pup for fear of what his uncle would say. However Gleeson succeded in talk him into swapping the pup for one of his fine stock horses, but the swap had to be done secretly at night. Gleeson named the pup Kelpie, which is a gaelic word meaning water sprite, an evil spirit haunting the fords in the shape of a horse that lures the traveller into riding on its back to his destruction. Later the bitch became known as ‘Gleeson´s Kelpie’ or ‘Old Kelpie’.

Shortly afterwards Gleeson left the area and traveled north to New South Wales. On his way he visited his friend Mark tully, who was a great admirer of the collies bred by the Rutherford family. They were descended from so called North County Collies, e.g. dogs from around the border between England and Skotland, that is exactly from the area that has given the Border Collie breed its name.
Mark gave his friend as a gift a dog, Moss, a black male of Rutherford´s breeding by Yarrawonga Clyde out of Rutherford Lassie. Moss was mated twice to Kelpie and the first litter was born c 1873.

About this time a pair of black-and-tan collies, Brutus and Jenny by name, were imported for Gilbert C. Eliot. They were mated during the sea voyage and the bitch whelped shortly after arrival. One of the pups, called Caesar, later became the sire of Kelpie´s next litter that was born c 1875.
One black-and-tan bitch pup out of this litter was given to S:T.W.King who named her Kelpie after her mother. Her performance when she tied with Gibson´s Tweed at the first sheepdog trial in NSW in 1879 was very impressive, and there was a great demand for her pups. At first they were just called ‘Kelpie´s pups!, but later on they became known as just Kelpies.