Tales get taller about old shearing runs

Their exploits on and off the boards are legendary, including the practical jokes played once work had finished for the day.

Now, the fit young men who went north in those teams of the 1950s and 60s - up to 30 in a team of shearers, wool classer, engine man, shed hands, wool presser and cook - are aged in their late 70s, 80s and into their 90s.

First-hand recollections of the exploits and the time when Western Australia's economy, like the rest of Australia's, was said to 'ride on the sheep's back', are starting to fade.

At the instigation of former shearing contractor, now shearing historian and author Val Hobson, 81, the Shearers and Pastoral Workers Social Club and sponsors have set about making a documentary for education and promotion purposes.

Local television production house Dingo Is Talent and its producer Adrian Faure have been commissioned to film and edit a 25 to 30-minute documentary with the working title Shearing - Truck Days.

The aim is to record for posterity recollections of the remaining retired shearers who travelled north on the trucks before they "drop off the perch", as one of them, Kevin Plunkett, 85, put it.

Before converting to cattle in the 1970s, northern pastoral stations ran sheep - big flocks, up to 100,000 on Liveringa and Noonkanbah for example, mustered and shorn once a year in sheds with 10 or more stands.

From the early 1920s when trucks began to replace camels as relatively reliable heavy transport in the heat and dust of the north, shearing teams rode them or caught the coastal steamer to Port Hedland, Broome or Derby and picked up the trucks from there.

Contractors - the main ones were Synott & Dunbar and rival Pastoral Labour Bureau, known as PLB - signed up stations in a 'run' that started in the Kimberley after cyclone season had hopefully ended and worked south.

Shearing teams left Perth - usually from the now demolished Ozone Hotel - and travelled, worked and relaxed together for eight to 10 months, going from shed to shed until the run was completed.

The station 'bush telegraph' and country newspapers kept track of where each team was.

Should unseasonal rains cause a halt to shearing, turn outback roads into impassable quagmire and catch two teams in the same remote town with only one pub, the local police constable was quickly on the phone seeking reinforcements.

Gun shearers could earn three times the average wage of a city tradesperson and there was little opportunity during their time away to spend it, so some of their exploits when they returned home were also of legendary proportion.

Filming for the documentary started last week at a working shearing shed near Brookton, with a shearing team run by Pingelly contractor Graham Stevens providing a backdrop for interviews with retired shearers David Sears, 78, and Mr Plunkett.

By chance, Mr Stevens' presser Peter Meeres, 65, Brookton, was one of the last to travel north to shear, from 1972-76.

"We were only away three months so we could go back down south for the spring shearing, but they were big sheds up north," Mr Meeres said.

"We used to start at Mardie then go on to Roebourne, Whim Creek, Port Hedland and a station out next to Shay Gap."

Shearers and Pastoral Workers Social Club president Doug Kennedy, 77, a former wool classer who took over as shearing contractor from his father Eric, copped some good-natured ribbing from the old shearers.

"How come they (Mr Stevens' shearers) don't have to do any of those wrinkly things you used to get us to shear?" he was asked.

Later, filming moved to a shearing shed not in use at Cuballing to record more interviews with retired shearers, including Terry Wilkinson, 93, who first went north on a coastal steamer in 1943.

On Friday some of the shearers were reunited for the documentary with a 1948 Bedford shearers' truck, part of the display at Revolutions Transport Museum, Whiteman Park.

The truck is one of two on permanent loan to the museum by the family of contractor Marc Synnot who was involved with shearing and the wool industry for more than 50 years.

"I wish I had a $100 for every mile we pushed or pulled those trucks - through bog holes and across rivers," Mr Plunkett reminisced - his father was "an old bladie", a blade shearer, and he followed him into the industry in 1951.

"One year it took us two and a half days to do 85 miles from Derby to Liveringa.

"And the mosquitos, you could only fit two in a matchbox they were that big".

Mr Sears said he joined PLB and went north for seven years and then worked Goldfields sheds for a few more years.

"They were good days for me, happy days travelling up to the North West," he recalled.