Finding shed hands at shearing time has become problematic for many woolgrowers as the industry divides between professionals at the top and those, well, who seem to have disappeared from the shearing workforce.
When shearing starts on “Woodville” next Monday, Andrew Wood, will be educating three university students to do the rouseabouting on the shearing floor of his property.
Mr Wood wished he didn’t have to educate people, but he has no choice, given he couldn’t encourage any locals to take up the work.
Ian Law, “Mayo”, Emmaville, says the same thing is happening in his district on the Northern Tablelands, where he says it has been hard to find shed hands for at least 10 years.
As with many graziers he depends a lot on his family to fill the roles.
Also he can depend on his mates, fellow farmers like Brian Lewis and Geoff Hadan to do the hard yards in the shed. Ian also reciprocates, helping with pressing at other farms with his A-team crew which happens to include Australian shearing champion Daniel MacIntyre, and woolclasser Rebecca Mills.
At Young, Landmark’s Simon Flick said there was enough workers available for most shearing sheds and it was not a problem. He said it might be harder in those districts where woolgrowing was fading out.
But West Wyalong woolclasser Laurie Baker said finding young people for rouseabout work was getting harder and harder.
He suspected it was because of the casual nature of being a shed hand, while there were probably less young people on farms who knew about shearing and working in a shearing shed.
“When they find a permanent job they just don’t go rouseabouting again,” he said.
“It is hard when you have to keep training new shed hands all the time. You certainly have to look around, it’s hard to get experienced ones especially.”
An experienced shed had hand gets about $54.10 a run, a junior 18-20 gets $48 a run, and an under 18 gets $37 a run. (Four runs a day). They are expected to do many things including wool pressing.