A hard pioneering life

Press, 12 September 1986, Page 19

A hard pioneering life

Off the Sheep’s Back, by Bill Richards, published by Lindon Publishing, price $19.95, 171 pages. Reviewed by Hugh Stringleman. Bill Richard’s biography concentrating on the first half of this century is a readable account of the hardships and enjoyments of life in rural South Auckland and the Waikato. His miner father settled on a virgin block at Raglan before the First World War and Bill has written an entertaining account of access problems, bush

clearing, house building, accidents and rare social events. But one of the tragedies of his life was a growing estrangement from his father, who refused to give away any responsibility or land ownership. So son Bill took to the road as a scrub cutter and shearer. Bill Richards overcame a wrist disability to set some of the first shearing records in New Zealand, including the first tally over 300 in a day. Oddly, his shearing exploits do not stand out in this book,

which takes its title and photographs from the industry, but rather it is the early farming stories which linger. Of his later shearing career, after being forced off his own farm when he was 40, we learn little from this book but it must have been an impressive one. A photograph of Bill stil shearing in his seventies is published, with the information that the National Shearing committee had bestowed on him the title of Master Shearer, an honour conferred on few men.