Country's fortune built on the backs of sheep and shearers

Johnny Jones kept a thousand merinos at Waikouaiti and sold their wool in Sydney, among the very first New Zealand farmers to do so.

SHEAR HARD WORK
A history of New Zealand shearing
Hazel Riseborough
Auckland University Press, $45, pbk

Reviewed by Bryan James.

But who shore his sheep in the early 1840s, long before organised settlement?

More than likely the shepherds, but by the mid-1860s, when there were millions of sheep needing to be shorn over the whole country, one of New Zealand's founding and most important industries - shearing - had become well-established.

Hazel Riseborough, an academic historian who happens also to be a qualified wool classer, has written in Shear Hard Work, one of the most interesting and readable local histories one could wish for, thoroughly researched, well-illustrated and above all in a narrative style that will appeal to all readers.

Anyone who has at some stage in their life shorn sheep will know just what hard work it is: there may not be any routine physical work quite as tough as shearing.

If we assume New Zealand's early fortunes were built on the backs of millions of sheep, we must also acknowledge that those fortunes were also built on the sweat of the men (they were mostly men) who bent their backs in 9- to 12-hour days until the flocks were "cut out"- with no weekends off.

And let's not forget that Otago had the biggest flocks and sheds in the country.

And, as Dr Riseborough points out, shearing has been one of the very few industries where Maori have played a prominent role for the whole of its history.

Without them in the early days it is doubtful the sheep would have been shorn, such were the conditions.

And our first "gun" machine shearer was a Maori, Raihania Rimitiriu, who shore 332 sheep in nine hours in 1906 with a comb "less than two-thirds the width of modern combs".

I wonder where the wool industry would be even today if it was not for the Maori shearing gangs, travelling in company, often in family groups with babies and children (banned from sheds these days), moving from shed to shed - shearers, sorters, pressers, rousies, cooks and all.

They were prepared to put up with appalling conditions and were virtually self-contained units.

And, until quite recently, most shearing gangs experienced living situations during the various "seasons" few of their urban brethren would tolerate for a day, let alone for weeks on end.

Unionism played a significant role in getting shearers better working conditions, and better pay, but it was a long and testing struggle; their first national strike did not take place until 1976, with mixed but some progressive results - and at least an official acknowledgement of the poor working conditions and pay rates.

In the meantime, skills were improving in all categories, boosted after World War 2 by the work of the New Zealand Wool Board's instructors led by Godfrey Bowen.

The Golden Shears and similar competitions raised standards and the status of shearing, and the skills learned in New Zealand found global favour.

Many Kiwi shearers now make a good living overseas and are in demand wherever sheep are farmed on a large scale.

It is greatly to the author's credit that she has allowed so many people involved at all levels in the local industry to tell their story in their own words.

The famous names are all here, as are stories about the better-known sheds and the best known gangs.

Not surprisingly, the South features prominently.

Shear Hard Work is well indexed, has a bibliography and extensive notes.

No woolshed should be without it.

• Bryan James is the Books Editor.