Hall of fame kudos for shearing pioneer

Known by his middle name Graeme, Mr Tyers had virtually no formal education and was shearing from age 14, but ended up as Australian Wool Corporation (AWC) senior shearing instructor.

From the mid 1940s to the early 1960s he travelled north on the trucks with shearing teams for 18 years, including nine consecutive years to the Kimberley, starting as a shed hand and graduating to a learner shearer on his third trip.

He also worked the "cockies"- as the southern agriculture area was known to shearers - for the spring shearing and did a season shearing in New Zealand in 1956-57.

In 1968 he accepted a position with AWC as shearing instructor, teaching the new Tally Hi method developed by champion shearers Vin Parkes and Kevin Sarre who have already been inducted into the hall of fame.

Mr Tyers was AWC senior shearing instructor for 22 years, setting up the first structured shearing courses at Muresk Institute near Northam and running courses on various stations throughout the Murchison.

Prior to that there was no formal training for WA shearers, who learnt their trade on the job.

He went back to New Zealand to study shearing teaching methods there, and entered shearing competitions and was judging with wool industry identity Ron Myers, who went on to become wool operations manager for Wesfarmers Dalgety Ltd.

Mr Tyers attended the South East Highland Games in Jakarta, Indonesia, in 1978 for an AWC sheep handling and shearing demonstration.

For a variety of reasons beyond his control, including a tropical downpour, it turned into a comical disaster which he later laughed about, although it was embarrassing at the time.

The AWC also sent him to Uruguay in South America to teach shearing under an agreement with the International Wool Secretariat.

Mr Tyers ran courses in Queensland, NSW and Victoria.

He won the World Shearing Championship competition held at the Perth Royal Show in 1986 and a commemorative pullover he was awarded is displayed in The Shearers' and Pastoral Workers' Museum, Carnarvon.

Mr Tyers, who lived in Kelmscott, retired in 1990 but continued to judge shearing competitions and give shearing demonstrations at a recreated pioneer village near his home.

He was also involved with an annual shearing truck and shearing teams memorabilia display at the Royal Show.

Mr Tyers would man the display to tell people about the decades when shearing teams left Perth on trucks in February and March to work shearing sheds in the Kimberley.

Until the Pilbara mining boom in the 1970s took their workforce away, many northern pastoral stations now associated with cattle, like Liveringa and Noonkanbah, ran sheep and produced wool.

The shearing teams were self-contained units which generally comprised a registered wool classer, mechanic, wool presser, shearers, roustabouts and cook who lived and worked together until the run was finished.

They would often be away most of the year going from shed to shed.

They would start in the Kimberley after the threat of cyclones passed and work their way south through the Pilbara, Gascoyne and Murchison, aiming to be back for spring shearing in the south.

This enabled the shearers to earn up to three times the wage of the average qualified tradesman.

A heavy smoker for most of his life, Mr Tyers died of cancer in 2007, two days before his 75th birthday.

Friend, author and shearing historian Valerie Hobson said Mr Tyers was well respected throughout Australia.

"He was born in Kojonup where his parents worked a farm," Ms Hobson said.

"He had no formal education, his mother taught him at home by correspondence until they left the farm when he was almost 14 and he went to work on a nearby farm.

"He always had trouble with paperwork because of his difficulty with reading and writing, but for a man with no formal education he did extremely well," she said.

Mr Tyers was one of the WA shearing identities Ms Hobson featured in her 2002 book Across The Board, a collection of recollections and colourful stories by shearers from a previous era.

She also acknowledged his help in verifying information and names for the book.

In an interview for the book he recalled for her how he became a shearer.

He was taught the basics by shearers on the farm where he worked as a teenager and claimed he used to "worry the wool off the odd killer (sheep killed for meat on the farm)".

As a cocky 14-year-old who wanted to be a shearer, he approached legendary shearing contractor Marc Synnot and asked for a "learner's pen".

"When I said I could do one (sheep) in 10 minutes he laughed," Mr Tyers recalled in Across The Board.

But he was taken on as a shed hand by Synnot & Dunbar and went north, gaining experience by "barrowing" - finishing off part-shorn sheep for shearers when the first bell went to signal "smoko" or lunch in three minutes.

He got his first learner's pen later in the year at Broomehill and managed to shear 10 sheep cleanly in a two-hour run.

For the next two years he was a roustabout in the north and in the second year got a pen of sheep to shear at Liveringa and was shearing from then on.

"The dust was shocking," he recalled of going north on the trucks in Across The Board.

"If it rained and the roads became boggy we were out the front of the truck with a big rope, pulling,'' he recalled.

"The Kimberley sheds were very hot, and so were the corrugated iron quarters."

Mr Tyers will be one of five shearers inducted into the Australian Shearers Hall of Fame at the Shear Outback tourist centre, Hay, NSW, on Easter Sunday.

He will join Kevin Gellatly and blade specialist Ron Niven as WA's representatives in the hall of fame.

Others to be inducted next Easter are Longreach, Queensland shearing contractor for more than 50 years Ron "Toll" Bowden and Kyneton, Victoria shearing contractor John Conlan, who will join his former World Champion hall of fame member sibling Mark to become the first pair of brothers inducted.

Life member of the Australian Workers' Union and shearer for 56 years Robert "Bob" Cuttler from Geelong and former three-times Australian Shearing Championship winner Peter Kelly from Mt But near Ballarat will also be inducted posthumously.