Agnes Buntine was a Bullock Driver

Agnes Buntine was a bullock driver, trail blazer, matriarch and pioneer. She was a highly respectred, enterprising and strong woman, described by Richard Mackay as "a representative of the best of the old business pioneers

"Mother Buntine", as she was often known, was one of Australia's few women bullock drivers. She had her own team and drove it from Port Albert to Seaton carrying supplies for the goldfields at Walhalla. From Seaton the loading west by packhorse to Walhalla. The track to the diggings was newly open and Mrs Buntine was the first to use it.

It appears from all accounts that Mrs Buntine coped admirably with the hardship and violence encountered during this enterprise. Richard Mackay describes how once, at Seaton in the 1860's, he saw Agnes Buntine ship a drunken man who had "dared to grossly insult an unoffending girl" . According to another eyewitness she "laid into the drunk without mercy and thrashed him nearly sober"

In Gippsland Agnes Buntine was a legend. She could muster stock, kill and dress a bullock, use a pick and shovel and split posts and rails. She ploughed, harrowed and sowed her land. In short she could carry out any task as capably as an able bodied man

Agnes Buntine had two husbands and lived to old age herself. Her first husband, Hugh Buntine, left Ayrshire, Scotland in 1838 aboard the ship "William Roger". There was much sickness during the voyage, and the first Mrs Buntine, and a baby born during the trip, both died in Quarantine in October 1838 after the ship reached Sydney.

Owing to drought and a scarcity of water, Hugh Buntine and his five surviving children left Sydney for Melbourne in 1840. Her, on 30 October 1840 he married Agnes Davidsonand the family moved to the Merri Creek and begandairying.

Agnes Davidsonhad been born in Glasgow in1822 and had emigrated to Australia with her parents, John and Sarah and five brothers and sisters. She was engaged as a dairymaid by a farmer named King for