AROUND THE SHEDSLife in and around the woolsheds Andrew Chapman

v

CONTENTSForeword viA labour of love – and light Alan Attwood

Introduction xiA revolution in the bush Charles Massy

Preface 1Passion Andrew Chapman

People 2

Woolsheds 56

Places 64

Woolsheds 114

Mates 120

Woolsheds 146

Tools 154

Woolsheds 180

Signs 188

Acknowledgements 210

The Five Mile Press Pty Ltd1 Centre Road, ScoresbyVictoria 3179 Australiawww.fivemile.com.au

Copyright © Andrew Chapman, 2012Introductory essay copyright © Alan Attwood Introductory essay copyright © Charles Massy

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or be transmitted by any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

First published 2012

Printed in China

Internal design by Anna Wolf

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Chapman, AndrewAround the sheds: Life in and around the woolsheds / Andrew Chapman

ISBN: 9781743460047 (hbk.)

Shearing sheds–Australia–Pictorial worksSheep-shearing–Australia–Pictorial worksWool industry–Australia–Pictorial worksAustralia–Social life and customs–Pictorial works

728.920994

Cover photograph: An old shed still functioning against all odds adjacent to Trulands woolshed, Campbell Town, TAS.Image on page ii: Kalka woolshed, Calca, SA.

Shearers at work at Grassdale Estate shearing shed, Merino, VIC.

Dedicated to the memory of my mother, Betty Chapman 1922–2011.

vi

A LABOuR OF LOVE – ANd LIghT ALAN ATTWOOd

In a career that is nearly as long as most of his stories, Andrew Chapman has photographed almost everything. His subjects have ranged from prime ministers to peeling tree bark, sports stars to sheep. He has a soft spot for sheep. Indeed, if there is one constant in his pictures over the past 40 years – running in tandem with all that is asked of professional photographers; assignments that have taken him to boardrooms and town halls and city squares and most places in between – it is sheep. And, of course, the people who work with them. Most of us maintain an informal division between paid jobs and personal projects; what we do for money and what we do for love. Increasingly, though, Chapman has leant towards labours of love. Which has meant many more sheep, a subject he first started exploring in the 1970s.

In 2006, in his book simply called The Shearers, he tried to explain his motivation: “I’ve travelled to these semi-arid areas of Australia to photograph the big shearing sheds and the people who inhabit them, to wait and to capture what I once thought was a dying way of life. I’m still waiting for shearing to die out, superseded by some you-beaut robot technology or chemical fleecing, but I’ve been expecting these changes since I first heard about them …” The shearers; the property owners; the sheds themselves – he has considered them all like an explorer studying empty spaces on a map. “As a documentary photographer,” he continued, “this is a rich tapestry from which to make photographs.” At a time when manipulation is not restricted to physiotherapists, Chapman still talks about the “honesty” of images. He is that unfashionable thing, a documentary photographer, a craftsman in the grand tradition of David Moore, who argued in 1966: “The truly great photographs one remembers are only those that have been shot ‘straight’. The subjects have been selected, focused and exposed without using any technical tricks.”

Not that Chapman has resisted advances in technology. Far from it. He has a childlike passion for new toys, can talk pixels with the best of them, and swapped

darkroom for digital long ago – though he was recently overheard muttering “I must get back to some film”. But his camera is just a tool; what really matters is his eye. He sees things: shed workers unconsciously replicating a scene from a Tom Roberts painting; the visual poetry in an arrangement of dilapidated chairs or tumbledown timber; abstracts constructed from wool-bale stencils; the patina of age on fences and gates; a wrist-watch suspended on a hook by its metal bracelet band. He works with a keen appreciation of the most crucial element in photography: the light. This is a man who waits – for shadows to fall the right way; for late-afternoon sun to imbue prosaic objects with a golden glow; for the angle of light to transform a fleece into something resembling a rugged landscape seen from the air. He also has a gift that has nothing to do with technology: an affinity with people. Look at the faces of his subjects: they have been seduced by this lanky stranger who uses quaint terms like “chinwag” and has almost certainly hidden half his head in some kind of hat. They like him; they trust him; they offer him a cuppa and a cake (he could use a few); then, before they know it, they have acceded to his request to stand over there, by the railing, just so …Or – and this is perhaps the greatest tribute to a photographer on the job – they ignore him altogether. They get about their work, oblivious to Chapman framing them in his viewfinder, crouching in a corner or balancing up high, somewhere he probably shouldn’t. This is how he gets some of his best pictures, like one of a shearer embracing a fleece with an intense grip somewhere between that of a wrestler and a lover.

There has always been an indelible streak of egalitarianism in his work. When his subject was politics he focused not just on party leaders but also those on the sidelines – the campaign volunteer with a silly hat and ill-fitting t-shirt; a gaggle of media people waiting, always waiting. In the same way, his subject now is everything in and around these marvellous old shearing sheds: proprietors, hired hands, the buildings themselves, sheep and dogs. Lots and lots of dogs. Do the maths: there might even be more of

Opposite page: Corriedale rams. West Cloven Hills shearing shed, Camperdown, VIC.

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them than sheep. And, for goodness sake, look in their gleaming eyes – even the dogs like this blow-in with the camera, urging them to hold it there, hold it there while voicing the greatest lie in photography: just one more …

Since he began this project there has been an urgency to his work; a desire to document an aspect of Australian life, far from urban centres, that is in danger of disappearing altogether. It is no secret that in recent years a broader sense of personal transience has become increasingly pressing. Like his namesake, Andrew Marvell, in the late 17th century, Chapman has heard “Time’s winged chariot hurrying near”. All who know him have been astonished by his stamina and resilience and the way in which his cameras and a determination to make good use of them have been an unprescribed part of the healing process. This volume, a follow-up to the elegant Woolsheds (who would have thought those two words might ever be neighbours?), is a tribute to the love and care of those closest to him and his own commitment to getting a job done. It is the nature of such a project that one shed leads to another; one shearer points to a counterpart or a place that would be worth taking a look at.

So he has been on the road again, discovering new places, looking at how the light falls at various times of the day, shaking more hands and sipping more mugs of tea, greeting yet more dogs and sizing things up with an artist’s eye.

Marvell and his bloody chariot can wait. These days, Andrew Chapman has more in common with a much later poet, Robert Frost. He has promises to keep. And miles to go before he sleeps. Alan Attwood

Opposite page: Billy Garner gives shearing demonstrations for Shear Outback at Murray Downs woolshed, Hay, NSW.

Working dog at The Gums woolshed, Burra, SA.

A LABOuR OF LOVE – ANd LIghT

xi

A REVOLuTION IN ThE BuSh ChARLES MASSy

The wool cloth industry was the backbone of Europe for six centuries from the 1200s to the Industrial Revolution. Shearing, sheep and wool processing were therefore integral to the growth of modern Western European economies and civilisation. Because England was at the forefront of these developments, Australia’s emergence as a major supplier of raw wool during the Industrial Revolution was a significant moment.

However, there was a time when the harvesting of Australia’s greatest export earner depended largely on a pair of shears, some sheep and a piece of ground. Anyone could have a go; sheep flocks were a motley collection of breeds; fleeces were filthy from nightly shepherding and were simply bundled into rough sacks of any kind; and the place of shearing could be in a paddock, on a piece of tarpaulin or under a bough shed. By the mid-19th century, leading industrialists of the British wool trade urgently sent experts to sort out the mess that was emerging from Australia.

Thus arrived Thomas Shaw: a small, feisty wool expert from Leeds. After a quick inspection of the colonies, Shaw declared that Australian stockholders “know nothing whatever about wool”, and quickly set about organising systems for classing wool and sheep, and re-orienting this operation back into the primitive bush shearing sheds rather than in dirty warehouses on Australia’s chaotic docks: places, he said, that were inhabited by “old fellmongers, weavers, hatters and porters to cloth warehouses who are simply imposters”. In the hands of similar Yorkshire and Saxon wool men, a system evolved that eventually led to the emergence of Australia’s famous industrial shearing sheds.

In time these great sheds and their inhabitants became core to our national character and identity, and to our literature, music and nationhood. The great woolsheds of the late 19th century and into the 20th were veritable bush cathedrals. And the shearers – “that roaming republic” as Charles Bean called them – were the heroes who bestrode the cathedral boards while being at the fiery centre of nation-shaping events before Federation.

Yet this 200-year Australian history has antecedents dating back millennia, and threads of this ancient and most noble human cultural tradition can clearly be seen today in the shearing sheds of Australia.

The wild sheep was domesticated about 11,000 years ago in the area of north-east Iraq, but such early sheep moulted their motley-coloured fleeces and so did not require shearing. About 5000 years ago fleeces began to appear that were white and grew continuously through the year, thereby requiring shearing.

Then, by the early 1400s, fine, soft and white fleeces from the sheep that would make Australia famous – the Spanish Merino – hit the European market. This revolutionised the wool trade. The Merinos came out of the Spanish highlands and by the 18th century ran in flocks as large as 45,000.

What distinguished the Spanish system was its highly organised shepherding, harvesting, grading and marketing of the precious fleeces. Spanish shearing places or esquilos could be huge, the best of them expensive structures of stone and timber; long and rectangular, often two-storeyed with glass windows, and sometimes with a chapel attached. The shearers used primitive shears and shore up to 15 sheep a day. And, contrary to popular myth that Australia had the “biggest” sheds in terms of numbers of shearers, in the free-for-all hand-clipping in Spain, between 200 and 300 shearers was not unusual. Even in the heyday of flocks of more than 100,000 in mid-19th century Australia, when hand-shears were the only tool, early photos reveal no more than 100 shearers at the biggest stations. Nevertheless, at its peak from the late 19th century, the Australian industrial shearing shed with machine shears was to become the largest and best organised of its kind in the world.

In terms of wool and sheep, therefore, the 19th century belonged to Australia. Indeed, by the 1880s Australia had evolved the greatest wool economy, with some industrial mechanised sheds running from 80 up to 101 stands. Moreover, Australia

Opposite page: Edenvale woolshed at Wagin, WA, was built in the 1920s. It was mostly constructed of jarrah, including the weatherboards and interior walls.

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can certainly boast the biggest sheep flocks. About the time of World War I, A.B. Triggs of Yass had 1.2 million sheep shorn across his many properties.

What is crucial to the great rise of the Australian wool giant, and little appreciated, is that the Australian wool harvesting system and shearing shed evolved hand-in-glove with the Industrial Revolution and its aftermath. When, by the 1850s, the cotton fibre was grabbing wool’s markets (because it processed better on the new industrial machinery), Australian breeders saved the industry when they created a long-combing Merino wool that could be processed on the emerging mechanised combs in England.

The result of the twin revolution in sheep-breeding and mechanisation was the emergence of the modern Australian shearing shed as a scene of wool harvesting that used mechanised hand-shears. Given the vast numbers of sheep on the big stations, this in turn required a veritable re-engineering of the operation of shearing. Andrew Chapman’s stunning photographic record over many years of our great shearing sheds and of the people working in and around them poignantly reveals this design, the smooth flow of work from harvest to pressing, and the evolution of technology and organisation through the decades.

And so the great Australian shearing sheds are part of an 11,000-year process and tradition: a remarkable journey revealed in their very design. But what makes the Australian shearing shed unique are two key factors. First is the vernacular nature of design and material unique to our environment: that combination of corrugated iron, bough or thatched walls or roof, local timber, mallee-stick gates, rammed-earth, stone of many hues and consistency, or giant eucalypt beams and posts. The second key feature is the unique and hard-working characters who toil in and around our sheds. Andrew Chapman has brilliantly captured the essence of that combination of design, organisation and people that comprise our bush cathedrals – and the nation-shaping occupation of shearing, which harvests the “golden fleece”. Charles Massy

A REVOLuTION IN ThE BuSh

Opposite page: Evolution of technology. Sorell Springs woolshed, York Plains, TAS.

Ferrier’s woolpress no.1189 at North Tuppal shearing shed, Tocumwal, NSW.

1

PASSION ANdREW ChAPMAN

Woolsheds are a direct link to the beginnings of white settlement in Australia, at a time when the Industrial Revolution was just gathering pace. Shepherds moved flocks out across the lands of the new colony, and the seeds of a great new industry were sown. As Europe’s population expanded, the demand for textiles and clothing increased. The British annexation of Terra Australis was perfectly timed to fulfil this need.

Here was a new frontier, a territory to explore and allow expansion of the wool industry. This fuelled Australia’s rapid settlement, initially along the seaboards and then deep into the interior. What ensued was to economically and socially dominate the national psyche well into the 1960s.

In my photographic odyssey, I am taking you on a visual journey where much has changed from those early days, yet so much remains the same. I have travelled to every state and compiled a snapshot of an industry that has had its ups and downs, but lives on, just as a punch-drunk boxer always manages to get off the floor and go another round.

In Around The Sheds, you will see some of the characters I have met along the way and find that they have a common link: a declared passion for the wool industry. Whether they be shearers, farmhands, woolgrowers, roustabouts, cooks or stock agents, they are most passionate about the industry they inhabit.

Andrew Chapman

Left: Old tin woolshed, Woolsthorpe district, VIC.

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PEOPLE

A mate of mine once observed that watching shearing was like watching a well‑choreographed ballet. Everyone has their part to play, and woe betide anyone who lets the team down. Someone who doesn’t pull their weight sets off a chain reaction of discontent.

Many young people say that shearing time was where they learnt their work ethic. If they were not up to speed, they were quickly told. They went on to work through the pain, the heat and the discomfort, crawling into bed at night, only to get up and do it all again the next day. The old‑timers would look on with pride and a little amusement. Those who could not hack it soon left for other work, and those that were left could apply themselves diligently to any task.

A well‑honed team works smoothly, held together by mutual respect. This usually develops into a powerful bond between team members, a mateship of the shed. There are unwritten rules, an etiquette if you like, such as shearers getting to eat first, followed by rousies, shed hands, farmers and any hangers‑on. These rules are quickly learnt by newcomers.

Come smoko, the conversations turn to footy, fishing and working in far‑flung places. I’ve heard of conversations being left unfinished when a shed cut out, to be picked up again at the start of the new season’s shearing.

This mateship of the shed gets everyone through each day, through each week and through each job.

Opposite page: Shearing team at Boonoke station, Conargo, NSW.

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Bonnie Chapman and her dad, Geoff, at Nyangay shearing shed, Hay, NSW.Roger Crawford in his Mt Brown woolshed, Wilmington, SA.

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Opposite page: New Zealand shearer Clinton Selby at Gunadoo woolshed, Hay, NSW. He is being assisted by Daniel Newell.

Barry and Jo Wiseman’s shearing shed at Winjallok, VIC.

“Didn’t have a shed 10 years ago, now we’ve got three of them, so we are well set up.”

— Barry Wiseman

Barry and Jo Wiseman have always known the value of hard work.

A comparative latecomer to shearing, Barry started learning when he was 20 and spent 20 years around sheds in the St Arnaud district of Victoria. “By that time I’d managed to get enough ground to be more of a farmer and less of a shearer, so I weaned myself out of it,” he says.

As they worked and saved, they bought one small acreage, then another, and put in a few sheep. Back in those days Barry had no shearing shed, so he found a second‑hand barn, which he could convert to a shed, and set about having it moved. The local transport company also had a shed ready to move. So Barry and Jo bought the second shed as well and had them relocated to their two small acreages.

After a stint living in St Arnaud, Barry and Jo realised how much they missed the quiet of a rural block and bought a farm at nearby Winjallok. Much to their amusement, another woolshed came with it. Barry shakes his head at his good fortune. “Didn’t have a shed 10 years ago, now we’ve got three of them, so we are well set up.”

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“I don’t think the younger farmers coming home today want to know about stocking in any way, sheep or cattle.”

— Andrew Toovey

Can wool survive? Andrew Toovey has the properties Boyacup and Shamrock Farm at Cranbrook, where he runs Angus breeders, merino ewes and Suffolk ewes. He also crops about 5000 hectares. He says he has moved from mainly sheep (95 per cent), at the time the wool floor price was abolished, to mainly cattle (65 per cent). He can’t see a return to the great days of wool.

“I don’t think the younger farmers coming home today want to know about stocking in any way, sheep or cattle. A lot of the younger ones want to do cropping. If they do anything they might run a few cattle and sheep, but I don’t think we’ll see the days of the early 1980s when we were 90 per cent sheep in the area and very little crop.”

His woolshed was built for $90,000 in 1998, when many people said there would not be enough sheep to shear. “We’re still putting 5000 to 6000 sheep through the shed a year. It will probably stay at that.” Today the shed would probably cost $250,000.

Opposite page: Neil Supple, of Glenburn shearing shed. lives in ‘paradise’. Paradise, Victoria that is.

Right: Andrew Toovey with his border collie Clara. Clara was bred by well-known border collie trainer Phil Slade. Kojonup, WA.

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Opposite page: Shearers Geoff Ford and Brett Dickson at West Cloven Hills shearing shed, Camperdown, VIC.

Man and machine. A woolpresser works an Ajax press at The Gums woolshed, Burra, SA.

Come smoko, the conversations turn to footy, fishing, and working in far‑flung places. I’ve heard of conversations being left unfinished when a shed cut out, to be picked up again at the start of the new season’s shearing.

Left: Brad Masters at Lower Lansdowne woolshed, Tambo, QLD.

Opposite page, left to right: Woolclasser Alan Eastwood, Nyangay shearing shed, Hay, NSW.

Shearer Hugh Potts, during smoko at Kalka woolshed, Calca, SA.

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A well‑honed team works smoothly, held together by mutual respect. This usually develops into a powerful bond between team members, a mateship of the shed.

Opposite page, left to right: Lewis Hill woolshed, Royal George, TAS.

Roustabout at Titanga shearing shed, Lismore, VIC.

Above: Walter Milner chats with Adrian Cameron at Trulands woolshed, Campbell Town, TAS.

Right: Young shearer Shaun McCarthy at The Gums woolshed, Burra, SA.

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Opposite page: Shearing at Bimerah station, Longreach, QLD.

The shearing board at Elston woolshed, Wycheproof, VIC.

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A mate of mine once observed that watching shearing was like watching a well‑choreographed ballet. Everyone has their part to play, and woe betide anyone who lets the team down.

Left: Bill and Steve at Bimerah station, Longreach, QLD.

Above: Gavin Dark at Lake Repose shearing shed, Glenthompson, VIC.

Opposite page, left to right: Wilkatana woolshed, Port Augusta, SA.

Roustabout during shearing at The Gums woolshed, Burra, SA.

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Opposite page, left to right: Shearers Hugh Potts and Mick Sampson at Kalka woolshed, Calca, SA.

Shearers Blue Turner (standing) and John Shields pause for a yarn, Titanga shearing shed, Lismore, VIC.

Kate and Mick Callaghan inside Toopuntul woolshed, Oxley, NSW.

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“We were taught knitting, sewing, mending, as well as milking the cows.”

— Ted Hall, shearer and knitter

When the going gets tough, the tough get going. Well, that’s the way it is with Ted Hall. After losing his hand and lower arm in a fish mincer accident in his early 20s, Ted was fitted with an artificial arm and bounced back to a life of physical activity, including shearing and chainsawing while working on road gangs around rural Victoria. Today, well into his 70s, Ted still shears around 20 sheep a day on hobby farms in the Alexandra district and always has a cheerful word to say. It’s hard to imagine Ted ever retiring. When asked what he does in his spare time, Ted’s wife Val laughs out loud. He knits, she says, and can he knit! Socks are one of his specialties. Josie Chapman, wife of photographer Andrew, can attest to his generosity, as she is the recipient of a pair of multicoloured Fair Isle socks with redback spiders as a border.

Ted learned to knit and sew as child, when he was the only boy in the family and had six sisters. “Mum says, ‘You’ve got to learn the whole lot, the same as the rest of them’. So we were taught knitting, sewing, mending, as well as milking the cows.”

Left: Shearer Ted Hall shearing at Danoon woolshed, Alexandra, VIC.

Opposite page, left to right: Gill Strachan at Rosalea woolshed, Burra, SA.

Des (Boof) Adams at Alonnah woolshed, South Bruny Island, TAS.

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Opposite page, left to right: Bill Kelleher inside Navarre station woolshed, Navarre, VIC. The original parts of the shed date from about 1860, its shingle roof is intact under the iron.

George and Tricia Church’s Korrinup woolshed, Kojonup, WA. George is 94 and despite a tornado nearly demolishing his shed in the 1990s, decided against a builder’s advice to demolish and went on to restore it.

Right: Albert Ah Yee’s shed at Merino Downs, Eagle Point, VIC. Albert’s family have been in the Bairnsdale-Omeo region over several generations.

An ageing population is left holding on to the farm.In so much of Australia, you “just add water and she’ll be right”. Never more so than across the Western Australian sheep/wheat belt. But the west’s love affair with the wool industry is slowly evaporating. Just about every property visited had downsized or moved away from sheep, mainly to cattle or an increase in wheat production.

Several factors seem to be at work here, age being the most common. One elderly farmer lamented: “It’s just too much hard work.” He had downsized from a flock of 3000 to about 30 and moved into beef cattle production. As young people seek a more comfortable lifestyle or head off to work in Western Australia’s mining boom, an ageing population is left holding onto the farm.

An ageing demographic among farmers, shearers and rural workers in general will present a real problem in the next 20 or so years.

Most likely, wool’s time will come again, and it’s to be hoped the west will still be in a position to take advantage of it.

On Korrinup, near Kojonup in WA, George and Tricia Church talk about their 1906 granite-and-mudbrick shed, which was torn open by a tornado in 1991. Despite the walls being 45cm thick, the tornado blew the northern wall in. The western wall was so shaky that it had to be demolished. George, who is 94 and has run the property since 1947, is sentimental enough to have had the shed repaired as it was originally built. George remembers the days when wool was a pound a pound. “They would pay you 96 pence a pound for the sweepings off the floor,” he says.

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Alex Cant of Kojonup, WA, is a third-generation sheep farmer and collects woolshed paraphernalia. The first press he acquired, Ferrier’s no.1101, came from Savernake in NSW about five years ago. He can date some of his presses to 1888, but he owns a working screw press that is probably from the 1870s. The screw from another press was rescued from a farmer’s garden, where it was serving as an ornament. Alex collects all types of shearing gear, including handpieces and portable shearing plants, which were carted from farm to farm.

Opposite page: Alex Cant among his woolpresses, part of a collection of shearing-related paraphernalia that he has collected over the past four years.

Deeside was settled in 1855 by Lee Shuard’s ancestors, who had been in WA since 1844.Thirty-five kilometres south-east of Manjimup in south-west Western Australia, Deeside was settled in 1855 by Lee Shuard’s ancestors, who had been in WA since 1844. Like other sheds on the property, the woolshed is all jarrah and originally had jarrah shingles on the roof. It was built by ticket-of-leave men, who would camp by the river during its construction. The shed can accommodate four shearers at a pinch, but it is more comfortable with two. Lee says that before Manjimup was settled, Deeside was a stopping point for people travelling between Albany and Bunbury. Left: Lee Shuard’s Deeside woolshed, Lake Muir, WA.

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“We’re certainly facing a large problem, a serious problem, of how to replace the men who are retiring out of the industry.”

— Tim Hughes, shearing contractor

Shearing contractor Tim Hughes has been in the business for 30-odd years and is finding it harder to find young shearers.

“We’ve had a very good coach here [at Merton Vale, near Campbell Town, Tasmania] for the past three years but there’s a bit of a problem of getting blokes to stick.

“It’s a pretty hard job to learn and whether people are willing to work like this any more I’m not too sure. But we’re certainly facing a large problem, a serious problem, of how to replace the men who are retiring out of the industry. It’s a problem in the wool industry throughout Australia so there needs to be some serious thought put into it.”

He says the average age of the shearing workforce is about 57. “Blokes are pretty keen when they’re young but then they have a girlfriend and they get married, and I think the petticoat government takes over and I don’t think they’re allowed out.

“Years ago, some of the older fellows that I used to work with, they used to love camping out. I think they liked the camping out more than the work, really.

“There aren’t that many places around these days that even have shearers’ huts. A lot of the farmers have let them go because the men in the team have travelled from the nearby town. But we’ve almost come full circle now because the men in those towns, their working life’s up.”

Should there be more training provided by institutions such as Australian Wool Innovation? “Rural people haven’t been given a lot of encouragement [by successive governments] to stay in rural areas throughout Australia and I think there has to be a lot more done to make it more attractive.”

Opposite page, left to right: Shearer Ken at Titanga shearing shed, Lismore, VIC.

Lewis Hill woolshed, Royal George, TAS.

Right: Tim Hughes at Merton Vale woolshed, Campbell Town, TAS.

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Opposite page: Skirting the fleece at Lake Repose shearing shed, Glenthompson, VIC.

Roustabout Joanne Crawford throws a fleece as Helen Alexander looks on, Willoughby woolshed, Barcaldine, QLD. Willoughby is owned by Don and Helen Alexander.

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Roustabout Ronnie Munday Stevens working at Lower Lansdowne woolshed, Tambo, QLD. Shearer Gavin Dark gathers a fleece, Lake Repose shearing shed, Glenthompson, VIC.Angela Kirkpatrick working with her father John, a gun shearer. Grassdale Estate shearing shed, VIC. Rowie Ververis at the “Shearing of the Rams” reconstruction at Elston woolshed, Wycheproof, VIC.

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Left: New Zealand shearer Clinton Selby at Gunadoo woolshed, Hay, NSW.

Above: Shearer Benny McGuire at Grassdale Estate shearing shed, Merino, VIC.

Opposite page: Shearers Frank Hamilton (green singlet) and Greg Muir washing up before lunch. Elston woolshed, Wycheproof, VIC.

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Deeargee

Deeargee woolshed is like a

wedding cake in three layers or,

in this case, built in three stages.

The Sutherland family woolshed

near Uralla, NSW, is one of

the finest sheds in the country.

Deeargee was once a portion

of Henry Gostwyck Cory’s vast

Gostwyck holding, perhaps the

first sheep run established on the New England tablelands, in 1831.

The original 1852 shed was destroyed in an arson attack in 1872. Gostwyck’s

second owner, Henry Dangar, built an octagonal blade shed in the same year.

According to The Armidale Times of 1879, “It has every facility necessary for

shearing, sorting, pressing, baling and other operations. Even a lightning

conductor has been thought of.”

About 54,500 sheep were being shorn during the 1880s, so in 1888-89 an

extension was added to the shed’s tail to accommodate 27 new Wolseley

shearing machines. In 1903, a brick section to house bales and an overseer’s

office was built from bricks kilned on the property.

In 1970, Gostwyck was divided between Henry Dangar’s two granddaughters.

The western side of the property retained the name Gostwyck and the eastern

side, on which the woolshed stands, was called Deeargee.

It is rare to find such a historical gem in such good condition and it brings

me much pleasure to see it, when so much of what I discover is fighting for

survival.

But, the New England tablelands have always prospered from wool.

Fine sheds such as Bell Trees, Newstead and Deepwater station woolshed

are not uncommon.

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eLSTON

Murray Stapleton bought back

his childhood – well part of it,

anyway – when he purchased

his deceased uncle’s property at

Wycheproof, in Victoria’s Mallee.

Uncle Charlie Elston owned

Colwyn Park, which was the

scene of Murray’s earliest rural

memories. Murray trained as a

doctor and went on to become

a leading surgeon, but the love of the land was in his blood.

When his uncle passed on, Murray picked up the property with its adequate

four-stand woolshed and started restocking it. Then a bloke rang him and told

him about an old woolshed near Melbourne that was to be demolished for

housing. Murray set about planning and, three semi-trailer loads later, he had

the dismantled shed delivered next to the Elston one.

A builder, Cory Jones, was commissioned to join the pair, with strict

instructions from Murray that nothing was to be thrown out. “Even the stumps

should be like the old ones, that is, the shed should stand up on old boxwood

fence posts.

“So a shed that was once slightly dilapidated has now been restored and

can house 800 sheep.” Murray hopes that the finished shed, along with its new

stockyards, will stand for 100 years.

Most importantly for Murray, it reminds him of his happy childhood, when

his Uncle Charlie was his champion man. “I miss him and I can see him walking

around the trees where I am looking … We should honour those people who

tried so hard to make a living and who built sheds out of tree trunks.”

60

aCaCIa DOWNS

There’s no doubt about it, Acacia

Downs woolshed is one hell of a

monster. The woolshed lies 30km

south-east of Muttaburra in central

Queensland and owner David Fysh

knows little about its history. Alas, all

records were burnt quite a few years

ago. David would love to know more,

but he’s at a loss on how to find out.

He does know that the shed was

the old Hughendon Meatworks in the

1880s and that it was disassembled

and moved to Acacia Downs by

bullock teams just after the First

World War. There would have been no workers to move it during the war,

he reckons. Rumour has it that the structure was only half of the original

meatworks, but it’s hard to find out if this is correct.

The woolshed is set up four metres off the ground, and the sheep run

up into the pens via a huge ramp made of stones that were collected from

surrounding paddocks. Once inside its huge expanse, wood, tin and lanolin

greet any visitor that treads the boards.

It was 12 stands but it’s now 10 and Robert Tutuki’s shearers get through

about 20,000 sheep annually. Once they are shorn, the sheep slide down

chutes, more akin to an amusement park than a shearing shed. After pressing,

the wool bales are dropped through the floor to be stored or loaded onto

trucks below. It’s a smooth production line.

Acacia Downs is certainly one of the country’s more spectacular sheds,

and long may it remain so.

62

COLONa

About two hours west of Ceduna,

SA, as you head out and onto the

Nullarbor Plain, out to the right

appears a red vision upon the

dusty grey-green landscape.

Here stands Colona, surely

a 1920s test for what was to

become the Sydney Opera House?

Well, maybe not, but it certainly

brings its more important architectural cousin to mind.

In the 1940s, when Grant Fox started shearing at Colona as a lad, the

property was run by Sir Alan Currie, pastoralist and noted breeder of merino

sheep, and was managed by a fellow named Dick Green. When asked about

its remoteness, Grant responds in a matter of fact way.

“I was born and bred out here (in the district), and that was home and the

neighbours were no different to neighbours anywhere ... they all had a drink

of tea and a bit to eat. We’d go out once or twice a year to a Christmas treat

or a half day somewhere.”

When Grant arrived at his first big shed on the back of a big truck with

just a few blankets, he asked where he was going to sleep. “So one of the

shearers said, ‘You sleep there because those fellas know your father’, which

was good. But they were old fellas and snored all night. We slept head-to-toe,

head-to-toe. I was green all right, but I remember that I came away with a

cheque for 27 pounds. That was a lot of money in those days.”

Today the abandoned shed echoes with Grant Fox’s memories and simpler

yet harder times. The shed stands on the indigenous protected area of Yalata.

The community hopes to one day restore Colona to its former glory.