Blade shearers, hard men of the high country

Press, 21 November 1987, Page 23

Blade shearers, hard men of the high country

By

GARRY ARTHUR

"Click go the shears boys, click, click, click ... ” — the .. words of the old folk song refer ” to blade shears that were universal in shearing sheds in the old • days, and are now making a comeback in the South Island high country as more runholders opt for the protective “singlet” of wool that the blades leave behind on their sheep. High country blade shearing is a traditional skill practised by a proud band of tough, competitive men, and one or two women as

well these days. , It is a craft which has built up . its own fund of tall stores and - folklore, and has proved a rich field for historical research by a Christchurch writer, Halina Ogo-nowska-Coates.

, Her new book, "Boards, Blades ’ and Barebellies,” captures the atmosphere of the woolsheds and

the shearing gangs who travel up and down the South Island building up amazing tallies of sheep Shorn by hand in a single day — including the mere handful who have qualified for the over-300 club.

“I’m really interested in living history,” says the author, who is a University of Canterbury history graduate. “This is an aspect of it, dating back to the pioneering days. It’s an aspect of working history.” She gathered much of her material at first hand, starting with the shearing shed at Esk Head station in North Canterbury and working her way down to Southland. She talked to shearers, roustabouts, contractors who

supply the shearing labour to farmers, and to the runholders themselves. It took her four years, and gave her tremendous respect for the men who have made blade shearing their way of life.

“I’ve also been to heaps of people’s places and been taken into the garages of retired shearers to see their collections of shears. I’ve been down to Timaru to talk to poets of the shearing sheds. Lots of them write poetry; it’s all ‘de dum, de dum, de dum, de da ... ’ but it’s a tradition that dates back to the old colonial days, and they’re still doing it. There’s an old poet from Fairlie, Bill Perry, now in his 80s, who’s coming up for the book’s launch-

ing. He’s written lots of poems about blade shearing.

“Then there’s a Southland shearer called Mick Bowie. He’s an excellent shearer and writes really gutsy poetry.” Shearers were plainly suspicious of Ms Ogonowska-Coates when she first appeared in the sheds, and she met some resistance to her efforts to record the oral history of their craft. But word soon got around; once she was accepted, she had plenty of co-operation. The one thing she did not do was shear a sheep herself: “I was game to try, but they never offered it.”

Perhaps it was just as well. Even the most experienced shearers can develop their own version of R.S.I. — repetition strain injury. When it happens, they say their shearing hand has “blown up” and they have to take a week or two off — quite a setback in a job that is rewarded according to the day’s tally of sheep shorn.

“The pressure of working with hand shears for months at a stretch can ‘blow your hand’,” she writes. “The cutting wrist swells to twice its size, the finger joints go blue and puffy, and the whole hand throbs with pain. Shearers say it feels as if there’s sand in the tendons, and the only remedy is to rest for a couple of weeks.”

But they are hard men. “Talk about iron wrists!” says the author in amazement at the strength built up by flexing a pair of springy razor-sharp shears from dawn to dusk. “And their hands are heavily calloused.”

Their endurance is legendary. “If you don’t shear, you don’t get tallies,” she says. ‘lt’s backbreaking work on the board, but they push themselves to the limit. They’re incredibly buggered by the evening.” Part of the research she particularly enjoyed was hearing stories and tales that she describes as being “built into the, job. “It’s a shared experience. They still tell these stones as they eat their meals, and the

younger shearers know them, too. They know all the tallies of the gun shearers, and the famous feats of endurance. There’s a 300-a-day club, and all the shearers know the names of the five or six who are in it.” Lots of shearers she met have nicknames arising from their work on the board. “It’s very close-knit,” she says. “There’s a very strong community feeling.” Machine shearing was actually a lot slower than professional blade shearing when it first came in during the 1890 s, but as machinery and techniques improved, it soon took over from the old hand method. The trouble was that it took too much wool off sheep grazing the South Island high country, and the almost naked animals had nothing left to protect them from the unpredictable sub-al-pine weather. Stock losses were high in sudden storms that can descend on that country even in summer, and now more and more farmers have returned to blade shearing. Consequently, the number of blade shearers has risen, too, until there are between 230 andir 250 at work in the high country-’ today.

As well as leaving sheep with their protective “singlet,” the method has other advantages. “A lot of farmers like the job that the blades do,” says Ms Ogo-nowska-Coates. “They leave a nice neat finish, and it’s quiet in the sheds, too.” The click, click, click of the song is not in fact music to the ears in the shearing shed. “It becomes extremely irritating after a couple of hours on the board,” she says. Shearers fit their blades with a piece of leather known as a “knocker” which stops them clicking every time they close.

Many high country runholders, especially in the days when jobs were scarce, were autocratic men who ruled their sheds with rods of iron. Poor work, slow work, and in some sheds even singing and whistling were enough to earn some poor shearer the sack on the spot. Shearers developed their own code words as warnings that the

boss was about, and some were shrewd enough to outsmart the runholder even after getting the boot.

Ms Ogonowska-Coates records one story about Glenmark Station, where the tough runholder sacked a shearer who protested about the way his work was being scrutinised. “Angrily the sacked shearer packed up his gear and made off down the road, stopping by the creek to boil his billy. It was while he was waiting for the water to boil that he had an idea. They were pretty short of blade shearers at Glenmark that year, and he was fairly sure he could get taken on again if he used another name. To make sure that his scheme would work, this bloke sharpened up his knife and shaved off his beard in the cold creek water.

“He had his cup of tea and. packed up, striding back up the road to the Glenmark shed. He introduced himself as Jack Smith and was taken on as the boss had just sacked a shearer for rough work. In fact the boss himself took a liking to the fresh-faced new airival and praised his wwk. When the shed was cut out, Jack Smith took home a

decent cheque and booked himself in for the following year.”

The shearer’s cook is an important figure, and Halina Ogo-nowska-Coates has collected some fascinating folklore about them, as well as recording their recipes for such classic concoctions as shearers’ scones, rabbit stew, colonial goose (boned, stuffed and roasted leg of mutton), “duff,” and pikelets — enough for 20 shearers. Incidentally, to test the baking temperature of a wood-fired range, , one shearers’ cook was said to have persuaded an unsuspecting young roustabout, to put his hand in the oven. When the boy began to yowl with pain,. the heat was about right

Blade shearing is a hard life, but one that seems to get in the blood. Some are third-generation shearers in their families.

“You’ve got to put up with blood, sweat and tears,” the author quotes Peter Casserley, a world champion blade shearer, as saying, “There’ll be blisters on your fingers, matagouri thorns in your legs, and kinks in your bacfcißut you can’t get wildland starwbashing the sheep. You’ve ’ got to have a big heart”

Shearers with iron wrists

Outsmarting the runholder