GIRL POWER FIGHTING FOR OUR R SHEARING SHEDS!
With the shearing season steaming ahead at full throttle, there’s been a changing of the guard on our farms
The humming of the shears sounds the same, as does the bleating of the flock about to get a haircut. The work ethic remains high and the bustling nature of sheep shearing hasn’t changed a bit.
But for some shearing sheds out the back of NSW, there’s been a changing of the guard in the past few years in this traditional and almost exclusively male domain. Gone are the local barrel-chested roustabouts who try to ease the back-breaking burden on the shearers. Gone are the greyhaired wool classers who silently stretch the fibre before piling it into bales. And gone too is the gentle echo of country music to pass away the time.
In its place has come in-your-face, rock’n’roll millennial wool classers and roustabouts that have swapped thick denim for exercise pants as the unintentional canvas for their lanolin art.
Yep, the girls have taken over the sheds – and the blokes could not be any more impressed.
Take Mullengudgery Station, a family-owned, 16,000 hectare
sprawl near Nyngan in northwest NSW, which has produced some of the best wool in the country for almost 100 years.
This season, after five years of soul-destroying drought that brought the farming industry to its knees, shearers will plough their way through nearly 10,000 sheep in three weeks on Mullengudgery.
And if it wasn’t for their foreign-born female workers, there would be no hope of getting the job done. Their respective backgrounds may make them seem like a motley crew of six, but collectively they have taken the sheep by the horns.
ONE BIG FAMILY
You’ve got Hannah Bonn, a tuba-playing German, working the boards with the likes of Sara Johnsen, a Swede-turned-norwegian who now has a hint of an Aussie drawl after a few years in wool sheds such as this one.
‘All we ask for is hard workers, and these girls just don’t stop’
“It is like one big family, a family away from home,’’ says Sara, 26.
“We live in each other’s pockets. We work together, we sit around campfires together. We share our goals and our fears. We even share our hatred for the heat.
“It keeps you fit and it is great fun. You meet new people and visit new places, the real Australia.’’
Lucile Brossard, a French occupational therapist looking for a change of scene, arrived in Australia in February after a year travelling, and got a job within a month.
“I told myself that I wanted to learn new skills and abilities and this is exactly that,’’ says
Lucile, 27. “It is completely different from anything I have ever done. It is so demanding physically but I am enjoying it very much.’’
As is the case with all of the international shearing workers, they are interviewed in person to see whether they fit the bill.
These girls are employed by Michael Taylor, a contractor who hires young men and women to fill a huge void in rural work.
Michael says the push for all school leavers to attend university has left a significant hole in the rural workforce, which is being propped up by people like the six women working at Mullengudgery. He also sends overseas workers to some of Australia’s most prestigious studs.
“You have seen how hard they work,’’ says Michael.
“I dare anyone to work harder than these women do. The owners love them, the shearers love them and they get the job done. We couldn’t be more impressed.’’
“Bomber” Moxham, the 90-year-old patriarch at Mullengudgery, is also suitably impressed.
“All we ask for is hard workers, and these girls just don’t stop,’’ says Bomber.
HARD YAKKA
The women are based at a holiday park at Nyngan and travel across the bush for work.
Dutch event organiser Sharon Steenbergen decided to pack up her life, store her beloved motorcycle in a friend’s shed and travel to Australia to try out shearing.
“It is definitely tough work – I have been sleeping very well because I am so tired,’’ says Sharon, 23.
“The lifting of the wool all day, every day is something that you need to get used to.
“You just have to keep going. It is definitely very good cardio.’’
Niki’s amputation inspired her fashion label.
Niki Lea Williams doesn’t remember the details of the horrific car crash that changed her life forever when she was just 19 years old. But from what she’s been told, she’s incredibly lucky to have even survived it.
After being trapped in a car for more than two hours as emergency workers tried desperately to free her from the wreckage, Niki Lea endured 11 hours of surgery and came out of the experience with two broken femurs, a fractured temple bone and a below-knee amputation of her right leg.
“I know a lot of this because I had paramedics come and visit me in hospital afterwards, saying, ‘Wow, you should not have got out of that car’,” she says.
Niki Lea, who hails from Newcastle, NSW, began the healing process of moving on by renaming her right leg “Pegi” so that the doctors in hospital would stop calling it a “stump”. And just a few years later she started Pegi Lea, a fashion and accessories label featuring one-of-a-kind flower crowns and mohawks, race day fashion, festival headpieces and couture bras.
Niki Lea, 37, uses fashion to empower herself – whether it’s making a mark at the Melbourne Cup and Royal Ascot with Pegi Lea’s signature feather and flower creations, or attracting the attention of global pop superstar Lady Gaga with a one-of-a-kind prosthetic leg covered in dazzling embellishments.
“I think once you wear a Pegi Lea headpiece you’re suddenly empowered and adventurous,” says Niki Lea.
“And then for me, wearing that bling-bling fancy leg to the Lady Gaga concert was quite a big thing,” she recalls.
“When Lady Gaga saw me, she was just amazed by the effort that I put in and I think her mind was blown that I was an amputee. She signed my leg straight away and kissed it – put her big red lipstick marks on it.”