SHEARING At work on ORONGORONGO'S FLOCKS

Evening Post, Volume CXXVI, Issue 150, 22 December 1938, Page 19 (Supplement)

SHEARING At work on ORONGORONGO'S FLOCKS

By HELEN C. WHEELER

if^N "Orongorongo," Mr. Eric R. Riddiford's sta'^J'tion near Palliser Bay, shearing time begins in

October. This old estate, won from virgin bush by the late Mr. Daniel Riddiford in 1840, is today one of the finest examples of New Zealand pastoral industry. Though only thirty miles from Wellington, its five thousand odd acres lie tucked away in the giant hills behind' Baring Head in an atmosphere as back-blocksian as imagination will conceived Thither each October repairs the shearing gang of twenty-two Maoris, drawn from all parts of the North Island. The same eight men have shorn the annual 200 bales of Romney and Merino'halfbred wool year after year; the wahines and the girls.are old hands at the fleecing table/Smilingly they declare that they love the work. One believes them. One has to, when one considers the excellent wages they receive, and- the Maoris', own statement: "This is just a holiday." Each year they leave their regular employment for a few' weeks of the summer, when they move from station to station,^bringing variety coupled - with * good money.,to the routine of existence. More sought after, on account of speed and dexterity, than white shearers^ a. good Maori gang such as the one which goes, every yOar tov "Orongorongo" does not lack "customers." : ' „' ■ '

Work in, t the shed begins at, 5 ajn. The sheep, penned under cover overnight, are restless. The slatted floor boards echo dully the impatient stamping of their feet; they cough, sneeze, bleat disgruntedly. Heavy with wool, over-warm in the stuffy' atmosphere, they pant distressfully, their flanks heaving like bellows. A few, calmer-minded than their fellows^ chew the cud. A trickle of foamy green saliva hangs on their lips, and the queer, warm smell of the-grass rises steamily from their nostrils. Comparative .peace—until the men arrive, and the dogs.

The velvety half-dark of the shed is suddenly heavy with sound, called up at the turn of a switch of eight machines. There, is a stirring, a clumsy bustling in-the pens, a frantic huddling into the farthest corner. All unavailing. The,lean brown men are relentless. - The first victims are those who have not huddled deep enough. Dragged to the pen Moor^ by hind - legr bundled within reach of the shears,, they ate sat propped on their haunches, their heads caught back against the shearers' knees.' The younger sheep kick and bleat their protests, while the shears skim between their front legs and' the fleece falls back from their bellies. The more worldly-wise are-resigned. There is an unconscious dignity about the way they accept this yearly business of' being shorn . . . who shall say that a sheep has no memory? (

"PLIGHT figures in a row . . . eight lean, hard "^ men varying in age from youth to middle life. They wear only old'trousers and a cotton singlet; their bare feet are encased in sacking moccasins of their own making, padded and stitched with strings These moccasins are stained almost black

with grease from the wool and with dust; but they afford their wearers a strength of foot-hold on the slippery floors that will defy the struggling powers of any sheep. Watch the man in the middle of the row. His hair is more than iron-grey. As he bends over his charge a streak of light catches his face, throws into relief high cheek-bones, the prominent temples. There is a thin growth of silver-grey stubble on his chin. His skin has the coppery glow of a ripe chestnut, and all a chestnut's polished shine. Sweat is on him like breath on a mirror. When he

straightens up for a moment one can see it tunnelling the wrinkles around his eyes. From one corner of his mouth hangs a cigarette that is eternally out, for the simple reason that he finds no time to smQke it. His' thin, wiry body, brown through the singlet, is moist with sweat; and his arms, too, as they move over and through the deep, white-golden wool. From the pen behind him his sheep come with their burden and his living; through the slit in the wall before him they slither, long-legged, ungainly.^ ridiculously selfconscious in their nakedness., He will shear 200 in one day, a constant stream through the hole in the wall. He will take 27s or 28s per hundred, according to the price .of t wqpl-for the season.

Turn now to the fleecing table, where the Maori girls and women work, one on either side, with others to fetch and carry the fleeces. Watch as each great fleece, straight from the hands of the shearers, is flung out* over the boards, and the deft brown hands pluck away the ragged outside edges. They work rhythmically those hands, gleaming with the grease of the wool. ' They work swiftly. There is music in the easy movement of tossing out the woollen rug; in the pluck, pluck, plucking of the fringes; in the folding of the outer edges; in the rolling of it inside out into a huge creamy-white ball, still warm, and-breathing the queer sheep fragrance of dip and tar and earth.

Dim lights and a young breeze blowing from the hills- Huddled greywhite forms of sheep in a labyrinth of pens. Insistent barking of dogs; imperious whistling of men. Within a long, low shed the slithering scurry of pointed black hooves on a board floor. Lean brown men bending over ungainly bodies, taut-veined arms enveloping a smother of white wool. The thudding whirr of machinery, endlessly monotonous, broken occasionally by a laugh, a joke, a curse, or a protesting, panicky bleat. . . . A typical shearing scene on any New Zealand station.

These are the comely, smiling folk who love their job as "fleeceos." At one side of the table stands an old wahine, old only in years, for her heart is the shy, sunny heart of a child. Ample-bosomed, broad-hipped, she waddles when she walks;- but her wit is quick and telling, and her love of colour indisputable. Into one cotton over-all she has crowded all the colours of the rainbow.

/OPPOSITE her works a tall, slim slip of a thing, v with beautiful features and sleek hair carefully rolled beneath a net. She wears a sky-blue linen frock. The seams of the bodice have burst

and repairs have been carried out with—common or parcel string. Mind? Sure, she did it herself! Why not? . r.

Hard by the fleecing table stands the wool classer, white-gowned, taking each bundle from the arms of the fleeceos. He has seen twenty shearing seasons at "Orongorongo," and eye as much as touch tells him now all he needs to know in his job. He watches with almost paternal pride the wool press crushing down its precious burden.

Outside, the world of shadow has given-place to one of blazinjg sunlight. A light wind, blows, and a dust-haze hangs smoky-grey above the yards. Heavy white bodies surge this way ' and that at the approach of a dog; huddle in mad panic at the coming of a shepherd. Their great, foolish eyes stare, distraught, at nothing.

Dagging, or the trimming of dirty wool by blade shears, is carried out in the yards preparatory to the main shearing. Under the blaze of the sun, bronzed shepherds work in a little yard surrounded Aby sheep, dust, and dogs. Four men will "cut out" 2000 sheep, on an average, per day; and that is due; very largely to the help of their dogs. To see an intelligent sheep-dog working in the yards is at oncte apleasure and a revelation. A word, a sign from his master, and he is up and away, jumping the fences ■ always. No struggling

to clamber between awkward gaps in the boards. Just an effortless spring, a clear swpop . . . hither and thither . ..'•. no time wasted. . . "...

"CMOKO!" One hears the cry echoing as the huge billies of steaming tea, the clanking enamel • pannikins, the baskets of cake, are brought into the shed at hours.. which for society spell morning and 'afternoon teatime. Then for half an hour the whirr and thud of the machinery is stilled. Weary backs are straightened. High up on bales of wool men and women 101 l over their tea, laughing, bandying jokes, watching smoke rings curl ceiling-wards against the shadows . . . or else roll like children in the grass and the sunlight.

. Over in the cookhouse, whither the : shepherds go, dogs at heel, and with the long, half-lurching stride of those who spend most of their lives in the saddle, smoko is served on the kitchen tableheavy china cups on white-scrubbed wood, and a huge platter of sponge cake, made as only a station cook knows how to make it. A light hand and more eggs than ever the city-dweller would dream of putting into one cake are only part of the secret The men prop against the table, drink cup after cup of tea from the large battered enamel teapot, and speculate on the dinner menu from the odors wafting round the room. A connoisseur in perfumes will find a whole new world awaiting him In a cookhouse kitchen, from the smell of baking carrots to the heady fumes of matai wood burning in the great coal range.

IjWEN today, "Orongorongo" is isolated; can be reached by car only after thirty miles of narrow, winding hill road. But whereas in the old days the wool was carted, two bales at.a; time, to the beach nearby, thence to be shipped by launch and steamer to Wellington; nowadays it is taken direct to the city in lorryloads of 22 bales. Comparing general conditions of a few years ago with those of today, Mr. Riddtford said that his aunt, Mrs. Dudley Hewitt, first left "Orongorongo" in a Maori war canoe; five or six years ago she paid the old home a visit—this time in a Daimler. Instead of being carried off, as expectant mothers are today, to the comforts of a nursing home, Mrs. Hewitt's mother would go on horseback to. Pencarrow, cross the Strait in a whaleboat, and later return under the same conditions with the baby.

Even in the early part of this century, standing bush flourished where now the magnificent homestead stands. Wild pigs and goats abounded, and tame pigs their way on occasions to the verandah of the house and slept there. Years of toil alone have made "Ororigorongo" the place it now js; in addition to the house in its spacious and beautiful grounds, it has its own electricity plant, and its modern shepherds' and shearers 1 quarters. '

Caught as it is in a valley cleft between giant hills, shingle-scored and comparatively barren, with, on the other side of it, the blue swinging tides of the sea, "Orongorongo" is a little colony in itself, an oasis in a wilderness. Reached by:''a road that, after leaving Petone, climbs tortuously up the Wainui hills, catapults across the plain-like floor; of the Wainui Valley, and then snakes its way through more hills flame-yellow with the gorse that streams from crest to foot of them, "Orongorongo" typifies the pioneer spirit that set out to win great things from nothing.