How to shear a sheep!

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To begin with let me apologise for being very lax at writing these blogs, with a new job that doesn’t give me a day off until my contract is over it is tough to find the time to write. But with the constant nagging of my dear Mother I have sat down to complete some more episodes. So sit back, enjoy and I am sorry it has taken so long.



In my diary it says ‘I’m not sure what we actually did this morning, it is a blur of stuff’. This means that is took longer than usual for us to get ready and moving for a day of adventures in the Aussie Outback. We eventually set out in Ian’s 4x4 with me in boot, or trunk for my American friends. Let’s be clear, I was actually sitting on a seat and not randomly placed in the back, although that would have been quite a ride. Sitting back there by myself it brought back memories of travelling from Gaborone (the capital of Botswana) all the way to Victoria Falls on the same sort of bumpy roads. Ah good times!



Our trip today was to see the sheep being sheared. Ian and Di’s (the people we are staying with) place is a working sheep ranch and, before they were hit by a 10-year drought, they had over 10,000 sheep! Now they have about 5,000 all scattered across their land. Our journey was made longer by some of the stops we made; the first was to watch Eagles eating their pray. They were very impressive creatures, their feathers were a beautiful mix of brown colours, definitely worth the stop to see. The first planned stop was in Flinders Range National Park to see some Aboriginal rock paintings. Very easy to miss if you didn’t know what you were looking at, there were not paintings but rather tool marks in the rocks that had been used as a form of language. All that you could identify was the lichen that was growing over them. Our next stopover was at the Kangaroo Man’s home, Ian had some business to do there before heading on. The final stop before we got to the sheep shearing was lunch, mmmm, our picnic spot was in a dried up creek. It wasn’t a huge picnic just sandwiches but oh my! they were very good. HB was busy trying to go for a walk through the bush and picking up sticks from piles of wood. I was a tad worried about where she was putting her hands in case there was something lurking within the piles of wood. Mrs G got there before I did and told her to stop, then proceeded to ask Ian if it was safe for her to go rummaging around. Ian’s response was “well it isn’t the best idea, never know what could be hiding in there.” Well, that settled HB was told to get out of the bushes and go for a walk down the creek instead. Bless HB, Ian’s comments had rather frightened her and she was taking baby steps in fear that a snake or spider would appear! At this point I joined her for her walk so we could discuss how snakes can hear us walking and would probably try and hide rather than confront us. While saying this I almost walked right into a GIANT spider’s web. It belonged to a Golden Orb Spider and stretched from one tree to another, across the creek bed. It gets worse, the spider was sitting right in the middle, how I managed not to scream still baffles me. Trust me though if I had walked into it, they would have heard my scream back at the ranch. These spiders aren’t poisonous, just incredibly ugly and big. HB and I hastily retreated and warned people not to walk that way. Time to move on!



From the creek it still took us about an hour to get to the shearing station. Believe it or not watching people shear sheep is rather fascinating. It looked like the sheep were being very roughly handled; they would drag them from their pens by their front legs and then obviously cut their wool. Some of the sheep came out with nice cuts over them, but Ian explained that the sheep aren’t hurt. Once the wool is collected they sort it depending on the quality; they check for strength, length and even the evenness of the wave! The people sorting the wool can even tell if their feed has been changed and pin-point it to the month that it was changed! Did you know that it takes 3-5years to train to shear sheep properly? Amazing, well at least I think so. To round the sheep up the shepherd would send the sheep dogs to run across the backs of the sheep to drive them into the pens. A dog version of crowd surfing. Still not an easy job as these sheep didn’t not want to go where they wanted them to go, so they either didn’t move, went in the wrong direction or tried to escape the pens. HB and I found it highly amusing. After being sheared the sheep are finally branded with paint (not an iron like I thought) and then sprayed with a lice killer. Mrs G didn’t like to watch as she found it rather barbaric, I could understand that, but hey it has to be done otherwise they would over heat and we wouldn’t be able to wear woollen clothes, like the jumper that she was wearing at the time.



Heading back it took us over 2 hours to get back to their house, the whole drive was across their property! Just shows how big these sheep ranches are. Di had made a lovely lamb curry for us, exactly what we needed after a day watching sheep being sheared. HB was washed and in bed without any complaints, the day had totally and utterly worn her out. As for me I came down with a blinding migraine so took myself to my very welcoming bed.

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Photos

Aboriginal Tool Marks
The big circle of Lichen was made by an Aboriginal.

A bit of a squeeze
The sheep dogs would run across their backs to make them move.

Awww and Emu family
A Daddy Emu and 2 baby Emus.

Comments

[MNSusan]

Yay!
Anita! Its terrific to see these start up again. I know how busy you've been with your new job and bless your mum for encouraging you to continue! Can't wait to hear how your adventures progress.